LONDON: New and expanded powers for British police took effect on Sunday, including measures targeting activists who stop traffic and major building works with protests.
Authorities have repeatedly condemned environmental protest groups, including Just Stop Oil and Extinction Rebellion, which have sought to raise awareness about the urgency of climate change by staging multiple high-profile protests at the busiest highways and roads. Their protests in recent years often caused serious disruption for motorists.
From Sunday, police will have powers to move static protests. Critics have argued the toughened laws are a threat to the right to protest, but UK officials say the measures were to stop “disruption from a selfish minority.”
“The public have had enough of their lives being disrupted by selfish protesters. The mayhem we’ve seen on our streets has been a scandal,” Home Secretary Suella Braverman said.
Authorities say that under the new Public Order Act, protesters found guilty of “tunnelling” — or digging underground tunnels to obstruct the building of new infrastructure works — could face three years in prison. Anyone found guilty of obstructing a major transportation project could be jailed for up to six months.
The law also makes “locking on,” or protesters attaching themselves to other people, objects or buildings, a criminal offense.
Hundreds of climate change protesters were arrested last year in the UK for blocking major roads and bridges. Many activists protested by sitting in the middle of the roads or gluing themselves to the roadway to make them harder to move.
The civil disobedience is a wave of direct action that has also seen activists glue themselves to famous museum paintings or throw soup at artworks to draw media attention to their cause.
Police have said it’s costly to deal with the protests and that they diverted thousands of officers from other work like dealing with crime.
UK police have new expanded powers to crack down on protests
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UK police have new expanded powers to crack down on protests
- Measures include targeting activists who stop traffic and building works with protests
Top Democrats rule out replacing Biden amid calls for him to quit 2024 race
- “Absolutely not,” responded Georgia Democratic Senator Raphael Warnock, one of several Democrats seen as a possible replacement for Biden
WASHINGTON: Top Democrats on Sunday ruled out the possibility of replacing President Joe Biden as the Democratic nominee after a feeble debate performance and called on party members to focus instead on the consequences of a second Donald Trump presidency.
After days of hand-wringing about Biden’s poor night on stage debating Trump, Democratic leaders firmly rejected calls for their party to choose a younger presidential candidate for the Nov. 5 election.
Biden, 81, meanwhile, was huddling with family members at the Camp David presidential retreat on Sunday.
The New York Times cited people close to the situation as saying that Biden’s family were urging him to stay in the race and keep fighting. The paper said some members of his clan privately expressed exasperation at how his staff prepared him for Thursday night’s event.
A drumbeat of calls for Biden to step aside has continued since Thursday and a post-debate CBS poll showed a 10-point jump in the number of Democrats who believe Biden should not be running for president, to 46 percent from 36 percent in February.
“The unfortunate truth is that Biden should withdraw from the race, for the good of the nation he has served so admirably for half a century,” the Atlanta Journal-Constitution said in an editorial on Sunday. “The shade of retirement is now necessary for President Biden.”
Democratic leaders rejected this.
“Absolutely not,” responded Georgia Democratic Senator Raphael Warnock, one of several Democrats seen as a possible replacement for Biden.
“Bad debates happen,” he told NBC’s Meet the Press program. “The question is, ‘Who has Donald Trump ever shown up for other than himself and people like himself?’ I’m with Joe Biden, and it’s our assignment to make sure that he gets over the finish line come November.”
House of Representatives Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries, who could become speaker next year if his party can take control of the House in November, acknowledged that Biden had suffered a setback, but this was “nothing more than a setup for a comeback.”
“So the moment that we’re in right now is a comeback moment,” he told MSNBC.
Senator Chris Coons of Delaware, a leading Biden surrogate, told ABC’s This Week program Biden needed to stay in the race to ensure Trump’s defeat.
“I think he’s the only Democrat who can beat Donald Trump,” Coons said.
RASKIN SOUNDS LESS CERTAIN
With Democratic leaders rallying around him, it will be up to Biden to decide whether he wants to end his re-election bid.
But other Democrats held open the possibility of choosing a different presidential candidate.
Representative Jamie Raskin, a prominent Democrat in Congress, told MSNBC that “very honest and serious and rigorous conversations” were taking place within the party.
“Whether he’s the candidate or someone else is the candidate, he’s going to be the keynote speaker at our convention. He will be the figure that we rally around to move forward,” Raskin said.
During the debate, a hoarse-sounding Biden delivered a shaky, halting performance in which he stumbled over his words on several occasions. Some Democrats later said privately that the showing could prove to be a disqualifying factor.
For his part in the debate, Trump made a series of well-worn falsehoods, including claims that migrants have carried out a crime wave, that Democrats support infanticide and that he actually won the 2020 election.
Trump’s daughter-in-law Lara, co-chair of the Republican National Committee, told Fox News that Trump was feeling “great” after “probably the best debate of his political career.”
Biden headed to Camp David after a frenzied run of seven campaign events across four states following the debate.
While the Camp David trip had been planned for months, the timing and circumstances of Biden being surrounded by family members who have weighed heavily in his past decisions to run for the presidency have added to the scrutiny around the visit.
Two people familiar with the scheduling said the gathering would include a family photo shoot. The attendees include his wife Jill, as well as the Biden children and grandchildren.
The New York Times said one of the strongest voices imploring Biden to resist pressure to drop out was his son Hunter, who on June 11 became the first child of a sitting president to be convicted of a felony after a jury found him guilty of lying about illegal drug use when he purchased a handgun in 2018.
DNC Chairman Jaime Harrison and Biden campaign manager Julie Chavez Rodriguez held a Saturday afternoon call with dozens of committee members across the country, a group of some of the most influential members of the party.
The call was part pep talk, part planning meeting for the upcoming national convention, according to two people who were on the call who requested anonymity to discuss private discussions.
US military raises alert level for Europe bases: reports
- European nations have been on heightened alert since the deadly terror attack outside Moscow last March
- The highest level “Delta” is applied when a terrorist attack has occurred or one is “imminent”
WASHINGTON: The US military has raised the alert level of several bases in Europe to its second-highest level, multiple American media outlets reported Sunday.
The American bases, located across Europe, were raised to the “Charlie” alert level, ABC News and CNN reported, both citing unnamed officials.
That level is ordered when “an incident occurs or intelligence is received indicating some form of terrorist action or targeting against personnel or facilities is likely,” the US Army says on its website.
The highest level “Delta” is applied when a terrorist attack has occurred or one is “imminent.”
The US European Command (USEUCOM) did not confirm the status change when contacted by AFP, but said: “we remain vigilant.”
The Pentagon meanwhile said that “due to a combination of factors potentially impacting the safety and security of US service members and their families stationed in the European theater, US European Command is redoubling its efforts to stress vigilance during the summer months.”
The US State Department currently advises American citizens in Germany, where the USEUCOM is headquartered, to exercise increased caution due to terrorism.
While no specific threat has been mentioned, European nations have been on heightened alert since gunmen in March killed nearly 150 people outside Moscow, an attack claimed by the Daesh group, an offshoot of the Al-Qaeda terrorist network.
France has also increased its state of alert ahead of the Paris Olympics, while Germany is currently hosting an international football tournament.
French far right eyes power after election win
- The two-round vote could put the far-right in power in France for the first time since the Nazi occupation in World War II
PARIS: France’s far right was on Sunday eyeing a historic chance to form a government and claim the post of prime minister after winning the first round of legislative elections with the centrist forces of President Emmanuel Macron coming in only third.
But it remained unclear if the far-right National Rally (RN) party of Marine Le Pen would win the absolute majority of seats in the new National Assembly in the July 7 second round. That is what it would need to be certain of taking power and for Le Pen’s protege Jordan Bardella, 28, to become prime minister.
Macron had stunned the nation and baffled even some allies by calling snap polls after the RN trounced his centrist forces in European Parliament elections this month.
But that gamble risks backfiring, with Macron’s alliance now expected to win a far smaller minority contingent in parliament. That would make the president a far less powerful figure for the remaining three years of his term.
Projections from prominent French polling firms gave the RN 33.2-33.5 percent of the vote, compared to 28.1-28.5 percent for the left-wing New Popular Front alliance, and 21.0-22.1 percent for Macron’s centrist camp.
The polling agencies projected this would give the RN a majority of seats in the 577-seat National Assembly after the second round. But it was far from clear the party would garner the 289 seats needed for an absolute majority.
The projections varied sharply, with Ipsos forecasting 230-280 seats, Ifop 240-270 and Elabe the only organization to put it in the range of an absolute majority on 260-310 seats.
In a statement, Macron called for a “broad” alliance against the far right in the second round, which will see run-off votes where there was no outright winner in the first round.
The leftwing alliance and the president’s camp will be hoping that tactical voting to prevent RN candidates winning seats will leave it short of the absolute majority.
French Prime Minister Gabriel Attal, who is likely to be forced to resign after the second round, warned the far right was now at the “gates of power.” The RN should not get a “single vote” in the second round, he said.
“We have seven days to spare France from catastrophe,” said Raphael Glucksmann, a key figure in the left-wing alliance.
With the French facing their most polarizing choices in recent history, turnout soared to 65 percent, way above the turnout in 2022 polls of just 47.5 percent.
Macron said the high turnout in the first round spoke of “the importance of this vote for all our compatriots and the desire to clarify the political situation.”
The arrival of anti-immigration and euroskeptic RN in government would be a turning point in French modern history and be the first time a far-right force has taken power in the country since World War II when it was occupied by Nazi Germany.
“Nothing is won and the second round is decisive,” Le Pen, who has long worked to distance the party from its extremist origins, told supporters.
“We need an absolute majority so that Jordan Bardella is in eight days named prime minister by Emmanuel Macron.”
Bardella said he wanted to be the “prime minister of all French.”
This would create a tense period of “cohabitation” with Macron, who has vowed to serve out his term until 2027.
Bardella has said he will only form a government if the RN wins an absolute majority in the elections.
The alternative is months of political paralysis and negotiations to find a solution for a sustainable government that can survive no-confidence votes.
Hard-left leader Jean-Luc Melenchon said Macron’s centrist alliance had suffered a “heavy and undisputable” defeat in the snap polls.
Risk analysis firm Eurasia Group said the RN now looked “likely” to fall short of an absolute majority. France was facing “at least 12 months with a rancorously blocked National Assembly and — at best — a technocratic government of ‘national unity’ with limited capacity to govern,” it added.
Macron’s decision to call the snap vote sparked uncertainty in Europe’s second-biggest economy. The Paris stock exchange suffered its biggest monthly decline in two years in June, dropping by 6.4 percent, according to figures released on Friday.
The turmoil also risks undermining Macron’s stature as an international leader taking a prime role in helping Ukraine fight the Russian invasion. In the immediate aftermath of the second round he is due to attend the NATO summit in Washington.
French daily Liberation urged voters to unite to halt the march of the far-right. “After the shock, form a block,” the newspaper said on its Monday front page.
Two detained after attack outside Israeli embassy in Belgrade
- Assailant shot a Serbian police officer in the neck with a crossbow while he was on duty in front of the embassy early Saturday
- The attacker was shot and killed by the officer
BELGRADE: Two men were remanded in custody Sunday in connection with an attack outside the Israeli embassy in Belgrade that Serbian authorities called a “targeted terrorist act,” a minister said.
The assailant, whom the police identified as being a “convert” to Islam, shot a Serbian police officer in the neck with a crossbow while he was on duty in front of the embassy early Saturday.
The attacker was shot and killed by the officer.
The assailant, from Mladenovac, near Belgrade, lived in Novi Pazar, a historical and political center of Serbia’s Bosniak Muslim minority, police said.
Authorities said a number of people known to the security services were suspected of being linked to the attack.
“Searches were conducted at several locations in Serbia, dozens of people were questioned,” Interior Minister Ivica Dacic told the state-run RTS broadcaster on Sunday.
The prosecutors will establish whether they were linked with the “targeted terrorist attack,” he added.
Two men were remanded in custody, the minister said.
Security was stepped up to the highest level throughout the country and the police operation was continuing, Dacic added.
“It is an operation against extremists and terrorists, people directly involved in the attack, but... also against those for whom there are indications they might belong to terrorist groups,” he said.
Police have traced the attacker’s movement in Belgrade, where he arrived early Saturday, saying he headed to the synagogue before the attack, but said he was deterred by a high police presence.
After that he proceeded to the Israeli embassy.
“From that it is clear what the main and possible targets were,” Dacic said.
Israel’s Foreign Minister Israel Katz on Saturday thanked Serbian authorities for “strong support and cooperation following the attempted terror act.”
“Terrorism cannot be tolerated!” he wrote on X, formerly Twitter.
The Israeli ambassador to Serbia, Yahel Vilan, on Sunday visited the wounded officer in a Belgrade hospital.
The 34-year-old policeman underwent an operation to remove an arrow from his neck and was in stable condition, a doctor said.
Serbia has continued arms sales to Israel since Hamas’s October 7 attack on southern Israel, which claimed 1,195 lives, mostly of civilians, according to an AFP tally based on Israeli figures.
Israel’s retaliatory offensive has killed at least 37,877 people, also mostly civilians, according to data from the health ministry in Hamas-run Gaza.
Delhi airport accident raises concerns over India’s infrastructure drive
- About $532 billion in new infrastructure will become operational in the next 2 years in India
- Modernizing infrastructure was key part of PM Modi’s campaign during this year’s election
NEW DELHI: The recent deadly roof collapse at New Delhi's main airport was the latest in a series of construction safety incidents in the country, triggering concerns over India’s multibillion-dollar infrastructure drive.
A portion of a canopy and pillars at a departure terminal in the Indira Gandhi International Airport, one of the country’s busiest, collapsed following heavy rain on Friday morning, killing at least one person and injuring several others.
The collapse also caused a temporary suspension of operations at the airport’s Terminal 1, which is used for domestic flights, impacting the travel plans of thousands of people.
It joins a growing list of infrastructure incidents in India in recent years that have raised questions about the rapid pace of mega-development projects in the country under Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
Narayan Moorthy, a Delhi-based architect, blamed it on many factors, including “slipshod work culture,” frequent use of poor-quality materials, “reckless hurry towards the end of projects so that some politician can inaugurate it on a pre-decided and politically significant date,” and lack of maintenance after construction.
“This whole cocktail comes together to result in unmitigated disasters, like the collapsed airport roof in Delhi that killed one hapless soul and injured many others … Similar is the case of the roof of the brand-new Jabalpur airport that thankfully had no human casualties but exposes our systemic rot,” he told Arab News.
“We have much to be ashamed of in the quality of our supposedly ‘world-class’ constructions.”
A day before the Delhi accident, a part of the canopy of Jabalpur airport in Rajasthan collapsed under heavy rains, while on Saturday, a canopy fell down at the passenger pickup area at Rajkot airport in Gujarat.
In the eastern state of Bihar, four bridges also recently collapsed and an $80 million underpass in Delhi, which was inaugurated just ahead of India’s hosting of the G20 summit last year, has been waterlogged for several days, disrupting traffic in Delhi’s main thoroughfare.
Under Modi’s building spree, about 44.4 trillion rupees ($532 billion) in new infrastructure will become operational over the next two years, according to Bloomberg Economics.
Modi has presided over many ribbon-cutting ceremonies of these projects, as modernizing infrastructure was a key part of his campaign during this year’s national election, when he won a third term as India’s premier. Over the past decade, his government said it has built 80 new airports, upgraded railways and expanded highways by thousands of kilometers.
The projects have been criticized by India’s opposition leaders, with Mallikarjun Kharge, president of the Indian National Congress party, among the latest to accuse Modi’s government of corruption following Friday’s incident.
“Corruption and criminal negligence is responsible for the collapse of shoddy infrastructure falling like a deck of cards, in the past 10 years of Modi Govt,” Kharge wrote on X.
Niranjan Sahoo, a senior fellow at the Observer Research Foundation in New Delhi, highlighted how infrastructure was “turned into a vote bank ploy” under Modi’s government at an unmatched level.
“While the government might have good intent to build infrastructure at a rapid pace to match the requirements of a growing nation, (it) is done without adequate attention to their up-keeping, reliable maintenance and auditing,” Sahoo told Arab News.
“Never before has the country witnessed a kind of infrastructure blitz largely timed before the elections,” he added. “In a sense, infrastructure fits into populist narratives of taking India to the comity of great powers. However, the recent incidents badly expose India’s ambition and capabilities.”
Prof. A.K. Gosain, a civil engineer at the Indian Institute of Technology in Delhi said one of the major reasons for infrastructural failures can be traced back to “falling quality” of construction, adding that “there is no accountability at the top,” leaving people at the lower levels as scapegoats whenever problems arise.
Anuj Srivastava, an architect from the School of Planning and Architecture in the Indian capital and a veteran of the Corps of Engineers of the Indian Army, also highlighted the lack of maintenance and accountability in India’s infrastructure projects and the indifference toward the environment amid a rapidly changing climate.
“The reason for accidents and collapse of infrastructure is the lack of concern for the environment and the haste in planning and executing the project, proving the adage ‘haste makes waste’,” Srivastava told Arab News.
“Infrastructure disaster damages India’s reputation in the world. In the unseemly haste to build ‘world-class infrastructure’ in a hurry and its subsequent collapse, irreparable damage is being caused to India’s reputation.”
