World News

Fires on French railway tracks have delayed journeys for 800,000 travelers in what the transport minister described as “coordinated attacks of malicious intent.”

A co-ordinated arson attack on the French rail system is turning the first weekend of the 2024 Summer Olympics in Paris into a nightmare for hundreds of thousands of travelers.

French rail company SNCF announced on Friday its high-speed train system had been hit by "deliberate arson attacks to damage \[its] facilities" causing delays and cancellations which are expected to last all weekend.

The disruptions are affecting trains heading East, North and West of Paris, and travelers have been asked to postpone their plans.

A Russian vessel is suspected of a territorial violation of Finland’s marine area in the Gulf of Finland, an arm of the Baltic Sea, the Finnish defense ministry said on Friday.

The suspected violation, which the Finnish Border Guard is currently investigating, took place in the eastern part of the Gulf of Finland Friday afternoon, a brief government statement said.

The ministry didn’t disclose further details of the incident but the Finnish newspaper Helsingin Sanomat said, citing information from border officials, that the suspected vessel is the Russian Navy’s hydrographic survey ship, the Mikhail Kazansky.

The Russian vessel, used among other things for underwater topography and repair work, entered into Finnish territorial waters south of the town of Hamina without authorization just after noon Friday, and the violation lasted about seven minutes, the newspaper said.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/17975216

> "Every day that we continue supplying weapons and munitions to Israel is another day that women are shredded by our bombs and children are murdered with our bullets."

Vice Admiral Eduardo Santos was in charge of the Philippine navy at a time of ‘creeping invasion’ by China. Then along came an unusual idea

More than 25 years ago, the BRP Sierra Madre was sent off for one final, secret voyage. In the darkness of night, the Philippine navy ship sailed from Manila Bay into the remote waters of the South China Sea. Then, to the surprise of many, it ran aground, and hasn’t moved since.

“I did it as quietly as I could, so I would not raise any hackles among anybody,” says retired Vice Adm Eduardo Santos, who was chief of the navy at the time. To him, it was a case of mission accomplished. His plan had been to run the ship on to a small reef known as Second Thomas Shoal, one of the world’s most fiercely contested maritime sites, without China knowing. The move would help the Philippines defend the area for decades to come.

“The first reaction was the Chinese ambassador knocking at my office early in the morning when they heard about it … I said, ‘well, it was supposed to be on the way [to a mission], and it ran aground’,” says Santos. With hindsight, Santos, who is now 80, can smile about it, though he, more than most, is keenly aware of how delicate the issue remains.

If the shoal had been left unoccupied, it would have been lost to Beijing, he says, because the Philippines was already facing a “creeping invasion” by China.

Beijing had already seized Mischief Reef, an atoll just 21 nautical miles away, despite being within the Philippines’ exclusive economic zone (EEZ) – an area that stretches 200 nautical miles from a state’s coast, giving it special rights to build or exploit resources in the area. Second Thomas Shoal is also with the Philippines’ EEZ.

MANILA, Philippines (AP) — There is no indication that a big cargo of industrial fuel oil stored in a tanker that sank in stormy weather in Manila Bay has started to leak, the Philippine coast guard said Friday, and plans are being firmed up to try to siphon off the highly toxic shipment to prevent a major spill that could reach the bustling capital.

The tanker Terra Nova had left Bataan province en route to the central province of Iloilo with about 1.4 million liters (370,000 gallons) of industrial fuel oil stored in watertight tanks when it got lashed by huge waves and took on water. The crew struggled to steer the tanker back to port but it eventually sank shortly after midnight Thursday. The coast guard rescued 16 crewmembers but one drowned, coast guard spokesperson Rear Adm. Armando Balilo said.

“We’re racing against time to siphon off the oil to avoid an environmental catastrophe,” Balilo told reporters, adding that the plans could be hampered if the weather turns bad.

TOKYO (AP) — Depending on who you ask, the bones that have been sitting in a Tokyo repository for decades could be either leftovers from early 20th century anatomy classes, or the unburied and unidentified victims of one of the country’s most notorious war crimes.

A group of activists, historians and other experts who want the government to investigate links to wartime human germ warfare experiments met over the weekend to mark the 35th anniversary of their discovery and renew a call for an independent panel to examine the evidence.

Japan’s government has long avoided discussing wartime atrocities, including the sexual abuse of Asian women known as “comfort women” and Korean forced laborers at Japanese mines and factories, often on grounds of lack of documentary proof. Japan has apologized for its aggression in Asia, but since the 2010s it has been repeatedly criticized in South Korea and China for backpedalling.

Around a dozen skulls, many with cuts, and parts of other skeletons were unearthed on July 22, 1989, during construction of a Health Ministry research institute at the site of the wartime Army Medical School. The school’s close ties to a germ and biological warfare unit led many to suspect that they could be the remains of a dark history that the Japanese government has never officially acknowledged.

KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — The former prisoners of war still puzzle over the strange events leading up to the night now seared into their memories, when an explosion ripped through the Russian-controlled Olenivka prison barracks and killed so many comrades two years ago.

Among the survivors: Kyrylo Masalitin, whose months in captivity and long beard age him beyond his 30 years. Arsen Dmytryk, the informal commander of the group of POWs that was shifted without explanation to a room newly stocked with bare bunks. And Mykyta Shastun, who recalled guards laughing as the building burned, acting not at all like men under enemy attack.

“Before my eyes, there were guys who were dying, who were being revived, but it was all in vain,” said Masalitin, who is back on the front line and treated as a father-figure by the men he commands.

An “egregious” refusal by successive Canadian governments to honor a key treaty signed with Indigenous nations made a “mockery” of the deal and deprived generations of fair compensation for their resources, Canada’s top court has ruled.

But while the closely watched decision will likely yield billions in payouts, First Nation chiefs say the ruling adds yet another hurdle in the multi-decade battle for justice.

In a scathing and unanimous decision released on Friday, Canada’s supreme court sharply criticized both the federal and Ontario governments for their “dishonourable” conduct around a 174-year-old agreement, which left First Nations people to struggle in poverty while surrounding communities, industry and government exploited the abundant natural resources in order to enrich themselves.

“For almost a century and a half, the Anishinaabe have been left with an empty shell of a treaty promise,” the court wrote in the landmark ruling.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/18426493

MELBOURNE, Australia (AP) — At least 26 people were killed by a gang in three remote villages in Papua New Guinea’s north and eight villagers remained missing Friday in the latest violence in the South Pacific island nation relating to contested land ownership and sorcery allegations, officials said.

“It was a very terrible thing … when I approached the area, I saw that there were children, men, women. They were killed by a group of 30 young men,” the acting police commander in East Sepik province, James Baugen, told Australian Broadcasting Corp. on Friday.

CARACAS, Venezuela (AP) — The future of Venezuela is on the line. Voters will decide Sunday whether to reelect President Nicolas Maduro, whose 11 years in office have been beset by crisis, or allow the opposition a chance to deliver on a promise to undo the ruling party’s policies that caused economic collapse and forced millions to emigrate.

Historically fractured opposition parties have coalesced behind a single candidate, giving the United Socialist Party of Venezuela its most serious electoral challenge in a presidential election in decades.

Maduro is being challenged by former diplomat Edmundo González Urrutia, who represents the resurgent opposition, and eight other candidates. Supporters of Maduro and Gonzalez marked the end of the official campaign season Thursday with massive demonstrations in the capital, Caracas.

The Philippine Coast Guard has deployed floating barriers and started to clean up an oil spill to prevent it from reaching the capital, Manila.

Authorities are racing to stop the oil spill from the 65-metre-long (213 feet) MT Terra Nova, which capsized on Thursday as monsoon rains battered large swathes of the country.

The leak appeared to be coming from the ship's engine, not its cargo tank, which was carrying close to 1.5 million litres of industrial fuel, officials said.

There are fears that the spill, which stretches out over several kilometres, could be the worst in the country's history if it is not contained.

> Iranian-designed Shahed attack drones, which fly to their target and detonate on impact, have become a staple of Russian aerial attacks since they began being used in the first year of Russia's full-scale invasion launched in February 2022.

> The new Russian drones with cameras do not carry explosives but closely resemble regular Shahed drones and fly with groups of them, Cherniak said. The second new type of drone contains no explosive charge or only a small one and is being used as a decoy, Cherniak added.

NEW DELHI (AP) — India and China have agreed to work urgently to achieve the withdrawal of tens of thousands of troops stationed along their disputed border in a long-running standoff, India’s government said.

Indian Foreign Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar met his Chinese counterpart, Wang Yi, on Thursday on the sidelines of Association of Southeast Asian Nations meetings in Laos, where they stressed the need for an early resolution of outstanding issues along the disputed Line of Actual Control, the long Himalayan border shared by the two Asian giants.

The 2-year-old toddler lay on a foil blanket, her face covered with salve for her burns and her little body riddled with scars from shrapnel. She squirmed, her breath heaving, as doctors examined her and the tube in her chest.

Siwar Abdel-Hadi is now an orphan. She’s the lone survivor of an Israeli strike that hit their family home in central Gaza, killing her parents, her two sisters and her brother, along with a brother of her mother.

“The whole family was gathered around a table for lunch” when the missile struck Tuesday in the Bureij refugee camp, said Nour Abdel-Hadi, one of Siwar’s paternal aunts. She spoke at nearby Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in Deir al-Balah, where the overwhelmed staff rushed around her dealing with influxes of wounded.

Israel’s campaign of bombardment and offensives in Gaza has left thousands of orphans. Cases like Siwar’s have become so common, doctors created an acronym for it: WCNSF, “wounded child, no surviving family.” The United Nations estimated in February that some 17,000 children in the territory are now unaccompanied, and the number is likely to have grown since.

The Philippines Coast Guard is setting up a massive operation to contain an oil spill after the Terra Nova tanker sank in Manila Bay with 1.4 million liters of industrial oil on board.

Philippines' authorities on Friday were racing to contain an oil spill from a tanker that sank in Manila Bay on Thursday.

The ship, transporting some 1.4 million liters (370,000 gallons) of industrial oil, faced stormy seas as Typhoon Gaemi passed by the Philippines on the day before.

The tanker's crew was hoping to steer the vessel to port, but the ship capsized and sank.

MOSCOW (AP) — Russia’s top security agency said Friday that it arrested a man accused of staging a car bombing on Ukrainian orders.

The Federal Security Service, or FSB, showed a video of the handcuffed suspect walking off a plane from Turkey escorted by masked officers.

Turkish authorities said that they detained the suspect, Yevgeniy Serebryakov, on Russia’s request on Wednesday. He arrived in Turkey’s resort of Bodrum hours after a car bomb went off in Moscow.

ABUJA, Nigeria (AP) — When a group of military officers appeared on state television in Niger one year ago to make a dramatic announcement of a coup, they said they deposed the West African nation’s elected government for two key reasons: its security, and economic crises.

But those challenges have persisted, even worsened. The country’s 26 million people — among the world’s youngest and poorest — are struggling after the junta severed ties with key international partners, who have imposed sanctions and suspended security and development support affecting close to half of Niger’s budget.

The coup was the latest and perhaps most significant of the recent military takeovers in Africa’s Sahel, the vast, arid expanse south of the Sahara Desert that has become a global hot spot for extremist violence. Niger had been the West’s last reliable partner in the region in battling jihadists linked to al-Qaida and the Islamic State group.

Now, a crucial U.S. drone base is going, along with U.S. forces vacating ahead of a September deadline. More than 1,000 French troops also pulled out after being told to leave. A key China-backed pipeline once meant to turn Niger into an oil exporter has stalled with the insecurity and uncertainty.

Bangladesh’s prime minister Sheikh Hasina is under fire for “shedding crocodile tears” over damage caused to a railway station during a protest against her government that left more than 150 people dead.

Ms Hasina was seen wiping away tears in pictures taken during her visit to a metro station in Mirpur, as social media users lambasted her for what they saw as her apparent lack of empathy for the victims of violence.

Police fired rubber bullets, released teargas, and threw sound-grenades in an effort to disperse tens of thousands of protesters who came out onto the streets to rail against job quotas. The government denied that any live rounds had been fired, but hospital sources said dead and injured people had wounds from bullets and shotgun pellets.

Rights groups and critics accuse Ms Hasina of becoming increasingly autocratic during her 15 years in power. They say her time in office has been marked by mass arrests of political opponents and activists, forced disappearances, and extrajudicial killings. She denies all of these charges.

After weeks of Israeli bombardment left them with nowhere else to go, hundreds of Palestinians have ended up in a former Gaza prison built to hold murderers and thieves.

Yasmeen al-Dardasi said she and her family passed wounded people they were unable to help as they evacuated from a district in the southern city of Khan Younis towards its Central Correction and Rehabilitation Facility.

They spent a day under a tree before moving on to the former prison, where they now live in a prayer room. It offers protection from the blistering sun, but not much else.

Israel has said it goes out of its way to protect civilians in its war with the Palestinian militant group Hamas, which runs Gaza and led the attack on Israel on Oct. 7 that sparked the latest conflict.

ADDIS ABABA, Ethiopia (AP) — Search teams were still digging at the site of deadly mudslides in southern Ethiopia on Friday, as the death toll rose to 257, according to the U.N. humanitarian office.

Heavy rain triggered deadly slides on Sunday and Monday in a remote part of the country. The U.N. humanitarian office, known as OCHA, said in an update Thursday that the death toll could rise to as many as 500, citing local officials.

JOHANNESBURG (AP) — South African police arrested 95 Libyan nationals in a raid on a suspected secret military training camp on Friday and authorities said they were investigating whether there were more illegal bases in other parts of the country.

The camp was discovered at a farm in White River in the Mpumalanga province, about 360 kilometers (220 miles) northeast of Johannesburg, police said.

National police spokesperson Athlenda Mathe said in a post on the social media site X that the Libyans stated they had entered the country on study visas to train as security guards, but police investigations suggest they have received military training.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/18427024