One year after mosque massacre, New Zealand is fighting rising hate

Above, an armed policeman stands guard in front of the Masjid Al Noor Mosque, one of those attacked by right-wing extremist, in Christchurch in this March 16, 2019 photo. (AFP)
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Updated 14 March 2020
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One year after mosque massacre, New Zealand is fighting rising hate

  • Brenton Tarrant, an Australian national, faces 92 charges in relation to the attacks on Al Noor and Linwood mosques
  • Attack inspired far right nationalists and anti-immigration campaigners to be more active both online and offline

WELLINGTON: Days before the first anniversary of a shooting in Christchurch that killed 51 Muslim worshippers, a post appeared on an encrypted messaging app showing a balaclava-clad man outside one of the attacked mosques with a threat and a gun emoji.
The message was the latest in a number of threats against minorities in New Zealand, evidence of what experts say is an increase in hate crime and xenophobia since the mosque massacre by a suspected white supremacist on March 15 last year.
The gunman, armed with semi-automatic weapons, attacked Muslims attending Friday prayers in the South Island’s largest city, broadcasting New Zealand’s worst mass shooting live on Facebook.
Brenton Tarrant, an Australian national, faces 92 charges in relation to the attacks on Al Noor and Linwood mosques. He has pleaded not guilty and faces trial in June.
New Zealand’s extraordinary outpouring of love and compassion for the Muslim community after the attack was led from the front by Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern. She swiftly introduced new gun laws and started a global movement to stamp out online hate in a response that was hailed as a model for other leaders.
But the attack also inspired far right nationalists and anti-immigration campaigners to be more active both online and offline, according to Muslim leaders, activists and experts.
“The attack certainly emboldened people who want to spread hate,” said Anjum Rahman from the Islamic Women’s Council of New Zealand.
The council has repeatedly alerted the government in the past year about the rise of the extreme right and the growing threat felt by Muslim women in New Zealand.
Rahman reported the latest threat against the Al Noor mosque to police after she was shown the image which was being shared on the encrypted social media messaging app Telegram.
Police said a 19-year-old man was charged with failing to assist police with a search warrant in relation to the incident and would appear in court later this month.
Local media reports have linked the man to a white nationalist group called Action Zealandia, which was formed in July 2019, just months after the Christchurch attack. On its website it says it is focused on “building a community for European New Zealanders.”
In response to the incident, Action Zealandia said in a statement on Twitter the alleged actions of the accused are not within its code of conduct and was “immature and unproductive as we do not use violence to reach our goals.”
Police said they were working to ensure they have an in-depth knowledge of individuals and groups whose actions pose a threat but did not comment on any specific group.
In a parliamentary committee meeting chaired by Ardern last month, New Zealand’s spy chief laid down the growing challenge since the attack.
“It (the attack) has given encouragement to some people, it has been inspirational to other people, and so it remains still quite a fluid picture,” NZ Security Intelligence Service Director-General Rebecca Kitteridge told the committee, according to transcripts of the meeting seen by Reuters.
“We have got more information about more people who are expressing extremist views than we had before 15 March, and some of those people existed beforehand, and then there is the impact of the attacks themselves afterwards,” she said.
Between 30 and 50 people are being actively investigated by the agency at any given moment for posing a terror threat, a higher number than in previous years.
Kitteridge said between March 15 and the end of June 2019 the spy agency received leads about people who had expressed racist, Nazi, identitarian, or white supremacist views.
A survey by online safety agency Netsafe in December showed hate speech online increased in New Zealand in the last 12 months, with about 15 percent of the adult population targeted with online hate.
Offline too, white supremacist posters have appeared in Auckland universities in the past few weeks leading up to the March 15 memorial.
There are about 60 to 70 groups and somewhere between 150 and 300 core right-wing activists in New Zealand, said Paul Spoonley, from Massey University, who has been researching far-right extremism for decades.
Proportionate to population the number was similar in size to far-right activists in Germany, he said.
“New Zealand is now part of an international far-right ecosystem in a way that you can’t have said 20 years ago,” Spoonley said.
“We do well on the league tables for tolerance, but that does not mean there are no extreme elements,” he said.
Ardern said she was “devastated” by the latest threats against Al Noor mosque and it indicated that more the work needed to be done.
“We have to get back to the basics of why is it that people would feel that they can make those kinds of threats against other people’s lives,” she told reporters.
A big part of the problem was that unlike the United States or Britain, New Zealand has never recorded specific hate crime offenses, raising questions about what signs security agencies may have missed.
Police have now started recording instances of offenses that appear to be motivated by hate, Justice Minister Andrew Little told Reuters.
The ministry is also reviewing the country’s hate speech laws, although these plans have been challenged by groups who say free speech would be curtailed by such laws.
“Further work is needed on where the line on free speech is drawn. But I anticipate a balanced approach will be taken when the review process is complete,” Little said.
A decision is expected within months.


End to war in Gaza ‘is Saudi Arabia’s priority’: FM Prince Faisal

Updated 5 sec ago
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End to war in Gaza ‘is Saudi Arabia’s priority’: FM Prince Faisal

  • Says Israeli crushing of civilians ‘completely unacceptable and has to stop’:

A permanent ceasefire and an end to the war in Gaza are Saudi Arabia’s current priority, the Kingdom’s foreign minister said on Friday.

Prince Faisal bin Farhan was speaking on a visit to Moscow, where he was asked about the possibility of Saudi Arabia normalizing ties with Israel. 

The Kingdom’s main aim was peace in the Palestinian enclave, he said. “What we are seeing is the Israelis are crushing Gaza, the civilian population of Gaza. This is completely unnecessary, completely unacceptable, and has to stop.”

In 2024, the foreign minister said that there can be no normalization of ties with Israel without resolving the Palestinian issue.

US President Donald Trump said he expected Hamas to respond to his “final proposal” for a ceasefire in Gaza in the next 24 hours. 

Hamas said it was still studying the plan and consulting other Palestinian factions. 

The militant group is demanding guarantees that talks to end the war would take place during the proposed 60-day ceasefire, and that the pause in fighting would be extended until both sides came to terms.

At least 20 Palestinians were killed early on Friday in Israeli airstrikes in Gaza, 15 in an attack on a tent city for displaced people near Khan Younis in the south and the other five in Jabaliya in the north.

At funeral prayers for the dead in Khan Younis, Mayar Al-Farr, 13, wept over the body of her brother Mahmoud. “The ceasefire will come, and I have lost my brother? There should have been a ceasefire long before I lost my brother,” she said.

Adlar Mouamar, whose nephew Ashraf was also killed, said: “Our hearts are broken. We ask the world, we don’t want food ... we want them to end the bloodshed. We want them to stop this war.”

The local health ministry in Gaza says more than 57,000 Palestinians have been killed in Israel’s assault on the region since an October 7 attack on Israel by the Palestinian Islamist group Hamas.

According to Israel, 1,200 people were killed in that attack and more than 250 taken hostage into Gaza. 

 

 

 


 


Ukraine blames Russian strike for power cut to Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant

Updated 05 July 2025
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Ukraine blames Russian strike for power cut to Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant

  • Ukrainian minister says Russian shelling caused the outage
  • Ukrainian energy distribution company says it restored power

VIENNA: All external power lines supplying electricity to the Russian-occupied Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant in Ukraine were down for several hours on Friday, the UN nuclear watchdog said, but the station’s management later said power had been restored.
The head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, Rafael Grossi, acknowledged that power had been restored after 3 1/2 hours. But he added in a statement on X that nuclear safety “remains extremely precarious in Ukraine.”
Ukraine’s energy minister blamed Russian shelling for severing the last power line to the plant and its six reactors. The country’s power distribution operator said its technicians had taken action to restore it.
Europe’s biggest nuclear power plant, which is not operating but still requires power to keep its nuclear fuel cool, switched during the outage to running on diesel generators, the IAEA said.
The organization has repeatedly warned of the risk of a catastrophic accident at Zaporizhzhia, which is located near the front line in the war in Ukraine. Its reactors are shut down, but the nuclear fuel inside them still needs to be cooled, which requires constant power.
The plant’s Russia-installed management issued a statement on Telegram saying the high-voltage line to the plant had been restored.
The statement said there had been no disruptions to operations at the plant, no violations of security procedures and no rise in background radiation levels beyond normal levels.
The IAEA had earlier said that the plant had lost all off-site power for the ninth time during the military conflict and for the first time since late 2023. “The ZNPP currently relies on power from its emergency diesel generators, underlining (the) extremely precarious nuclear safety situation,” it said.
Ukrainian Energy Minister German Galuschenko wrote on Telegram that a Russian strike had cut off the plant.
“The enemy struck the power line connecting the temporarily occupied (Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Plant) with the integrated power system of Ukraine.”
Ukrenergo, the sole operator of high-voltage lines in Ukraine, said its specialists had brought it back into service.
“Ukrenergo specialists have brought back into service the high-voltage line which supplies the temporarily occupied power station,” it said on Telegram.
Neither the IAEA nor the plant’s Russian-installed management initially cited a cause for the cut-off. Russian forces seized the Zaporizhzhia station in the first weeks of Russia’s February 2022 invasion of Ukraine. Each side regularly accuses the other of firing or taking other actions that could trigger a nuclear accident.


At least 13 dead in Texas floods and more than 20 children missing from a girls summer camp

Updated 51 min 34 sec ago
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At least 13 dead in Texas floods and more than 20 children missing from a girls summer camp

  • Missing girls were among 750 attending summer camp at Camp Mystic in Kerr County
  • Flooded site is in an area of Texas known as “flash flood alley”

KERRVILLE, Texas: Months worth of heavy rain fell in a matter of hours on Texas Hill Country, leaving at least 13 people dead and many more unaccounted for Friday, including about 20 girls attending a summer camp, as search teams conducted boat and helicopter rescues in fast-moving floodwaters.
Desperate pleas peppered social media as loved ones sought any information about people caught in the flood zone. At least 10 inches  of rain poured down overnight in central Kerr County, causing flash flooding of the Guadalupe River.
Authorities stressed that the situation was still developing and that the death toll could change, with rescue operations ongoing for an unspecified number missing. Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick said six to 10 bodies had been found so far. Around the same time, Kerr County Sheriff Larry Leitha reported that 13 people had died in the flooding.
“Some are adults, some are children,” Patrick said during a news conference. “Again, we don’t know where those bodies came from.”
Judge Rob Kelly, the chief elected official in Kerr County, said authorities were still working to identify those who died.
“Most of them, we don’t know who they are,” Kelly said during a news conference.

Pleading for information after flash flood
On the Kerr County sheriff’s office Facebook page, people pleaded for help finding loved ones and posted pictures of them. Patrick said at least 400 people were on the ground helping in the response. Nine rescue teams, 14 helicopters and 12 drones were being used in the search, and Patrick said some people were being rescued from trees.
About 23 of the roughly 750 girls attending Camp Mystic were among those who were unaccounted for, Patrick said.
Search crews were doing “whatever we can do to find everyone we can,” he said.
At Hunt, where the Guadalupe forks, a river gauge recorded a 22 foot rise  in about two hours, according to Bob Fogarty, meteorologist with the National Weather Service’s Austin/San Antonio office. Fogarty said the gauge failed after recording a level of 29 and a half feet .
“The water’s moving so fast, you’re not going to recognize how bad it is until it’s on top of you,” Fogarty said.
‘Pitch black wall of death’
In Ingram, Erin Burgess woke to thunder and rain at 3:30 a.m. Just 20 minutes later, water was pouring into her home directly across from the river, she said. She described an agonizing hour clinging to a tree and waiting for the water to recede enough so they could walk up the hill to a neighbor’s home.
“My son and I floated to a tree where we hung onto it, and my boyfriend and my dog floated away. He was lost for a while, but we found them,” she said.
Of her 19-year-old son, Burgess said: “Thankfully he’s over 6 feet tall. That’s the only thing that saved me, was hanging on to him.”
Matthew Stone, 44, of Kerrville, said police came knocking on doors at 5:30 a.m. but that he had received no warning on his phone.
“We got no emergency alert. There was nothing,” Stone said. Then: “a pitch black wall of death.”
Stone said police used his paddle boat to help rescue a neighbor. Stone said he and the rescuers thought they heard someone yelling “help!” from the water but couldn’t see anyone.
At a reunification center set up in Ingram, families cried and cheered as loved ones got off vehicles loaded with evacuees. Two soldiers carried an older woman who could not get down a ladder. Behind her, a woman in a soiled T-shirt and shorts clutched a small white dog.
Later, a girl in a white “Camp Mystic” T-shirt arrived. Standing in white socks in a puddle, she sobbed in her mother’s arms.

‘No one knew this kind of flood was coming’
The forecast had called for rain, with a flood watch upgraded to a warning overnight for at least 30,000 people. But totals in some places exceeded expectations, Fogarty said.
Patrick noted that the potential for heavy rain and flooding covered a large area.
“Everything was done to give them a heads up that you could have heavy rain, and we’re not exactly sure where it’s going to land,” Patrick said. “Obviously as it got dark last night, we got into the wee morning of the hours, that’s when the storm started to zero in.”
Asked about how people were notified in Kerr County so that they could get to safety, Kelly said, “We do not have a warning system.”
When reporters pushed on why more precautions weren’t taken, he responded: “Rest assured, no one knew this kind of flood was coming.”
“We have floods all the time,” he added. “This is the most dangerous river valley in the United States.”
Popular tourism area prone to flooding
It’s in an area of Texas known as “flash flood alley” because of the hills’ thin layer of soil, said Austin Dickson, CEO of the Community Foundation of the Texas Hill Country, which was collecting donations to help nonprofits responding to the disaster.
“When it rains, water doesn’t soak into the soil,” Dickson said. “It rushes down the hill.”
River tourism industry is a key part of the Hill Country economy, said Dickson. Well-known, century-old summer camps bring in kids from all over the country, he said. Between Hunt and Ingram are many river homes and cabins for rent.
“It’s generally a very tranquil river with really beautiful clear blue water that people have been attracted to for generations,” Dickson said.
Deaths in New Jersey blamed on thunderstorms
The flooding in Texas occurred as severe weather moved through central New Jersey, where thunderstorms were blamed for at least three deaths.
Among them were two men in Plainfield who died after a tree fell onto their vehicle, according to a city Facebook post.
The city canceled its July Fourth parade, concert and fireworks show.


IAEA pulls inspectors from Iran as standoff over access drags on

Updated 05 July 2025
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IAEA pulls inspectors from Iran as standoff over access drags on

  • Tehran has passed law to suspend cooperation with IAEA
  • Iran’s stock of near-bomb-grade uranium unaccounted for

VIENNA: The UN nuclear watchdog said on Friday it had pulled its last remaining inspectors from Iran as a standoff over their return to the country’s nuclear facilities bombed by the United States and Israel deepens.
Israel launched its first military strikes on Iran’s nuclear sites in a 12-day war with the Islamic Republic three weeks ago. The International Atomic Energy Agency’s inspectors have not been able to inspect Iran’s facilities since then, even though IAEA chief Rafael Grossi has said that is his top priority.
Iran’s parliament has now passed a law to suspend cooperation with the IAEA until the safety of its nuclear facilities can be guaranteed. While the IAEA says Iran has not yet formally informed it of any suspension, it is unclear when the agency’s inspectors will be able to return to Iran.
“An IAEA team of inspectors today safely departed from Iran to return to the Agency headquarters in Vienna, after staying in Tehran throughout the recent military conflict,” the IAEA said on X.
Diplomats said the number of IAEA inspectors in Iran was reduced to a handful after the June 13 start of the war. Some have also expressed concern about the inspectors’ safety since the end of the conflict, given fierce criticism of the agency by Iranian officials and Iranian media.
Iran has accused the agency of effectively paving the way for the bombings by issuing a damning report on May 31 that led to a resolution by the IAEA’s 35-nation Board of Governors declaring Iran in breach of its non-proliferation obligations.
IAEA chief Rafael Grossi has said he stands by the report. He has denied it provided diplomatic cover for military action.

IAEA wants talks
Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi said on Thursday Iran remained committed to the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT).
“(Grossi) reiterated the crucial importance of the IAEA discussing with Iran modalities for resuming its indispensable monitoring and verification activities in Iran as soon as possible,” the IAEA said.
The US and Israeli military strikes either destroyed or badly damaged Iran’s three uranium enrichment sites. But it was less clear what has happened to much of Iran’s nine tons of enriched uranium, especially the more than 400 kg enriched to up to 60 percent purity, a short step from weapons grade.
That is enough, if enriched further, for nine nuclear weapons, according to an IAEA yardstick. Iran says its aims are entirely peaceful but Western powers say there is no civil justification for enriching to such a high level, and the IAEA says no country has done so without developing the atom bomb.
As a party to the NPT, Iran must account for its enriched uranium, which normally is closely monitored by the IAEA, the body that enforces the NPT and verifies countries’ declarations. But the bombing of Iran’s facilities has now muddied the waters.
“We cannot afford that .... the inspection regime is interrupted,” Grossi told a press conference in Vienna last week. 


Trump signs ‘big, beautiful’ bill on US Independence Day

Updated 05 July 2025
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Trump signs ‘big, beautiful’ bill on US Independence Day

  • The passage of the unpopular bill caps two weeks of significant wins for Trump

WASHINGTON: US President Donald Trump signed his flagship tax and spending bill into law Friday, capping a pomp-laden White House Independence Day ceremony featuring a stealth bomber fly-by.
“America is winning, winning, winning like never before,” Trump said at the event where he signed the so-called “One Big Beautiful Bill” flanked by Republican lawmakers.
The party fell into line and pushed the bill through a reluctant Congress on Thursday, in time for Trump to sign the bill as he had hoped on the Fourth of July holiday marking America’s 249th birthday.
Two B-2 bombers of the type that recently struck Iranian nuclear sites roared over the White House at the start of the ceremony, accompanied by fighter jets on their wingtips.
Pilots who carried out the bombing on Iran were among those invited to the White House event.
The passage of the unpopular bill caps two weeks of significant wins for Trump, including an Iran-Israel ceasefire that was sealed after what he called the “flawless” US air strikes on Iran.

Ever the showman, Trump melded his various victory laps into one piece of political theater at the ceremony marking 249 years of independence from Britain.
The sprawling mega-bill honors many of Trump’s campaign promises: extending tax cuts from his first term, boosting military spending and providing massive new funding for Trump’s migrant deportation drive.
Trump glossed over deep concerns from his own party and voters that it will balloon the national debt, while simultaneously gutting health and welfare support.
“The largest spending cut,” Trump said with First Lady Melania Trump at his side, “and yet you won’t even notice it.”
Trump forced through the “big beautiful bill” despite deep misgivings in the Republican Party — and the vocal opposition of his billionaire former ally, Elon Musk.
It squeezed past a final vote in the House of Representatives 218-214 after Republican Speaker Mike Johnson worked through the night to corral the final group of dissenters.
Trump thanked Johnson at the White House event.
The legislation is the latest in a series of big wins for Trump that also included a Supreme Court ruling last week that curbed lone federal judges from blocking his policies, and a NATO deal to increase spending.
But the bill is expected to pile an extra $3.4 trillion over a decade onto the US deficit.
At the same time it will shrink the federal food assistance program and force through the largest cuts to the Medicaid health insurance scheme for low-income Americans since its 1960s launch.
Up to 17 million people could lose their insurance coverage under the bill, according to some estimates. Scores of rural hospitals are expected to close as a result.
Democrats hope public opposition to the bill will help them flip the House in the 2026 midterm election, pointing to data showing that it represents a huge redistribution of wealth from the poorest Americans to the richest.