Day: May 9, 2023

The Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) on Tuesday strongly condemned Israeli airstrikes on the blockaded Gaza Strip. At least 13 Palestinians were killed and 20 others injured in Israeli air raids on the coastal territory early Tuesday, according to the Health Ministry. The fatalities included four children and four women. “This heinous crime is another manifestation of the brutal Israeli military aggression against the Palestinians in flagrant violation of international law and international humanitarian law and with full impunity,’ the OIC said in a statement. The Jeddah-based organization held Israel fully responsible for the repercussions ‘of these continuous crimes, attacks and organized state terrorism that have undermined security and stability in the region.’ The pan-Islamic grouping called on the international community “to assume its responsibilities in providing international protection for the Palestinian people and to hold the Israeli occupation accountable for all its crimes and violations against the Palestinian people, their land and their sanctities.’ Palestinian factions in Gaza have vowed to retaliate against the Israeli airstrikes that killed three top military commanders from the Islamic Jihad group. Several countries and regional bodies have condemned the Israeli airstrikes on Gaza, including Jordan, Egypt, Qatar, Trkiye and the Arab League. At least 123 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli fire since the start of this year, according to Palestinian figures. Nineteen Israelis have also been killed in separate attacks during the same period.

Source: Anadolu Agency

German authorities banned on Tuesday the use of Russian flags and symbols during the Victory Day commemorations. Berlin police enforced strict controls at memorial sites as hundreds of people gathered to mark the 78th anniversary of the Soviet victory over Nazi Germany in World War II. The commemorations started in the morning at the Soviet War Memorial in Treptower Park in Berlin, and participants laid wreaths and flowers at the monument to pay tribute to fallen soldiers. Hundreds of demonstrators later marched from Berlin’s landmark Brandenburg Gate to the Soviet Memorial in Tiergarten, carrying pictures of Soviet soldiers who fought against Nazi Germany. Members of the infamous pro-Russian motorcycle group the Night Wolves also arrived at the memorial and laid flowers at the monument. A large police presence was deployed to prevent possible tensions between pro-Russia groups and Ukrainian protesters.

Source: Anadolu Agency

Soldiers in Somalia’s northeastern semiautonomous state of Puntland on Tuesday staged a mutiny over unpaid salaries, an official said. Abdinour Abdi Ahmed, a security official in Puntland’s Bari region, told Anadolu over the phone that soldiers seized a security checkpoint in Garowe, the state’s administrative capital, in the early hours on Tuesday. “The situation is under control right now,” Ahmed said, adding that “but there has been a mutiny staged by some soldiers who claim they haven’t received their salaries.” However, the soldiers who staged the mutiny acted professionally, and they did not harm anyone while closing a key highway connecting Garowe and Bosaso city in the state. Located on the southern coast of the Gulf of Aden, Bosaso is also a commercial port city of the semiautonomous state, 1,414 kilometers (878 miles) northeast of the capital Mogadishu. The mutiny occurred on the same day that the region’s President Said Abdullahi Deni was holding a campaign rally in Galkayo town ahead of the disputed local council elections. The planned local elections in Puntland sparked controversy in the state, and Dani’s critics described the election as divisive. Addressing his Kaah party supporters in Galkayo on Tuesday, Deni accused Somalia’s President Hassan Sheikh Mahamud of opposing Puntland’s democratization. This comes hours after Somalia’s Prime Minister Hamza Abdi Barre criticized Puntland’s leaders for the strained relations with the federal government, accusing him of undermining development projects in the state. Relations between the federal government in Mogadishu and the northern state have soured since Puntland announced it would govern itself as an independent government.

Source: Anadolu Agency

LinkedIn announced it will phase out its China-based jobs app, InCareer, and reduce its workforce by 716 employees. “Though InCareer experienced some success in the past year thanks to our strong China-based team, it also encountered fierce competition and a challenging macroeconomic climate,” the US-based business and employment online service provider said Monday in a statement. The company said it will focus its China strategy on assisting companies operating in the country to hire, market and train abroad, which will involve maintaining talent, marketing and learning businesses, while phasing out InCareer in China by Aug. 9. It added that its strategy in China will result in a reduction of 716 employees. The figure makes up around 3.7% of its 19,000 employees around the world. The number of InCareer members in China exceeded 57 million, while there were more 875 million LinkedIn members worldwide as of July 2022, according to the company. LinkedIn had announced in October 2021 that it will close operations in China to launch a new jobs app for the country. Amid tight control by Beijing on the internet, some major US-based tech companies have left China. Google left in 2010, Facebook and Twitter have been blocked for more than a decade.

Source: Anadolu Agency

Pakistan’s 75-year political history has been marred by martial laws, arrests, assassinations, and the hanging of elected leaders amid strained civil-military relations. Unlike India, Pakistan’s political landscape has remained uneven since the two independent nations came into being in 1947, following the end of British Colonial rule. Liaquat Ali Khan, the country’s first Prime Minister and the second towering personality after founding father Mohammad Ali Jinnah was assassinated on Oct. 17, 1951, in historic Liaquat Bagh (named after him after his assassination) in the garrison city of Rawalpindi. Several other political leaders were disqualified under a controversial law introduced by the country’s first military ruler Gen. Ayub Khan in 1958. Pakistan’s first democratically elected Prime Minister, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, who came to power through the 1970 general election, was ousted by his army chief, Gen. Zia-ul-Haq, on May 5, 1977. He was later arrested in a murder case, and hanged on April 4, 1979, after the Lahore Court found him guilty, and his appeal was rejected by the Supreme Court of Pakistan. Two-time Premier Benazir Bhutto, the daughter of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, had left the country days before the Lahore High Court sentenced her to three-year in prison in 1998. She returned from exile in London to Pakistan on Oct. 18, 2007, and escaped a massive suicide bombing that killed nearly 150 people in the port city of Karachi. She was assassinated in Liaquat Bagh Rawalpindi on Dec. 27, 2007, minutes after she addressed an election rally. Prior to the assassination, her two governments were also dismissed by the presidents on corruption charges in 1990 and 1996. Three-time Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, who could not even complete a single five-year term, was arrested on Oct. 12, 1999, after his elected government was toppled by then-army chief Gen. Pervez Musharraf. He remained in jail for over a year after being handed down a life term for his involvement in a hijacking case. His brother and incumbent Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif, and former Premier Shahid Khaqan Abbasi also remained in jail with him, although they were exonerated by the court in the hijacking case. In Dec. 2000, the Sharifs left for Saudi Arabia in exile following a deal brokered by the then-Saudi King Shah Abdullah bin Abdelaziz. They returned to Pakistan in 2007, months before Musharraf resigned following an impeachment threat. Nawaz Sharif was imprisoned again after being disqualified by the Supreme Court in a case stemming from the whistleblower Panama Papers scandal in 2017 and later convicted by an anti-corruption court in a corruption case in 2018. He was later allowed to go to London for treatment on “humanitarian grounds’ in 2019 and he has remained there since. His younger brother Shehbaz Sharif was also arrested twice between 2018 and 2020 in various corruption cases, though none of them were proven. Former President Asif Ali Zardari has remained in jail for a collective period of 11 years for his alleged involvement in multiple corruption and murder cases from 1990 to 2004. Most recently, he was arrested on June 10, 2019, in a corruption case and released on bail in December of the same year. Former Prime Minister Imran Khan, who ruled the South Asian nuclear state from August 2018 to April 2022, is the latest in a string of such events in the country, as the anti-corruption agency arrested him in a corruption case on May 9, 2023.

Source: Anadolu Agency

Western elites have forgotten the consequences of the Nazis’ “insane ambitions,” Russian President Vladimir Putin has said during his Victory Day Parade speech on Red Square in Moscow.

Russia believes that “any ideology of superiority is by its nature disgusting, criminal and deadly,” the president pointed out.

“The globalist elites keep insisting on their exceptionalism; they pit people against each other, split societies, provoke bloody conflicts and coups, sow hatred, Russophobia and aggressive nationalism, destroy traditional family values that make human a human,” Putin said.

According to the Russian leader, all this is being done by the US and allies in order to “further dictate their will, their rights and their rules” and implement what is basically “a system of robbery, violence and suppression” on the international stage.

“It seems that they have forgotten what the insane ambitions of the Nazis led to. They have forgotten who defeated this monstrous, total evil,” he stressed.

Referring to the conflict in Ukraine, Putin said that “a real war has been unleashed against out Motherland. But we resisted international terrorism. We’ll also defend the residents of Donbass and assure our security.”

The aim of the West is “to achieve the disintegration and destruction of our country, nullify the results of World War II, completely break down the system of global security and international law, and strangle any sovereign centers of development,” he insisted.

The US and its allies are to blame for the outbreak of the conflict in Ukraine, the head of state said.

“Overwhelming ambitions, arrogance and permissiveness inevitably lead to tragedies. This is the reason for the catastrophe that the Ukrainian people are now experiencing,” he pointed out.

The Ukrainians became “hostages” of the coup that took place in the country in 2014 and were turned into “a bargaining chip” by the West, which uses the country to implement its “cruel selfish plans.”

Source: Russia Today