GENEVA: Attacks on medics and health facilities in war zones jumped in 2023 to the highest level since records began 11 years ago, a group of non-governmental organizations said on Wednesday, with nearly half attributed to state forces.
The Safeguarding Health in Conflict Coalition, composed of 40 groups including medical charities, reported 2,562 incidents of violence or obstructions including arrests, killings and kidnappings of doctors and strikes across hospitals in 30 conflicts including Gaza, Ukraine and Sudan.
That is up by about a quarter compared with 2022.
Unlike the World Health Organization which also documents attacks on health care, the group apportions responsibility and said governments were to blame for nearly half of the attacks.
Len Rubenstein, chair of the coalition and a Johns Hopkins University professor, called for “far more assertive action to end the scourge of violence against health care,” asking governments to cease arms transfers to perpetrators and press prosecutors to hold them accountable.
The group uses open source data and partner contributions and cross checks to ensure no double counting.
The coalition attributed 489 incidents in Gaza last year to Israeli forces, including medic deaths or injuries and strikes or raids on hospitals. No responsibility had been established in seven other cases, including the deaths of six Israeli military medics killed in fighting in separate incidents between October and December, and the bombing of the Al-Ahli Hospital on Oct. 17, 2023, it said.
Israel, whose military offensive in Gaza began after the deadly Hamas cross-border attacks of Oct. 7, says hospitals in the Palestinian enclave are used by Hamas militants as bases.
Attacks on health care in war zones surge 25 percent last year, NGOs say
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Attacks on health care in war zones surge 25 percent last year, NGOs say
- The Safeguarding Health in Conflict Coalition, composed of 40 groups including medical charities, reported 2,562 incidents
- The group apportions responsibility and said governments were to blame for nearly half of the attacks
Pakistan, India among countries suffering from world’s most polluted air— report
- Only 17 percent of global cities met WHO air quality standard, says Swiss monitoring firm IQAir
- Pakistan has been ranked third in air pollution rankings behind Bangladesh and Chad
SINGAPORE: Only seven countries met World Health Organization (WHO) air quality standards last year, data showed on Tuesday, as researchers warned that the war on smog would only get harder after the United States shut down its global monitoring efforts.
Chad and Bangladesh were the world’s most polluted countries in 2024, with average smog levels more than 15 times higher than WHO guidelines, according to figures compiled by Swiss air quality monitoring firm IQAir.
Only Australia, New Zealand, the Bahamas, Barbados, Grenada, Estonia and Iceland made the grade, IQAir said.
Significant data gaps, especially in Asia and Africa, cloud the worldwide picture, and many developing countries have relied on air quality sensors mounted on US embassy and consulate buildings to track their smog levels.
However, the State Department has recently ended the scheme, citing budget constraints, with more than 17 years of data removed last week from the US government’s official air quality monitoring site, airnow.gov, including readings collected in Chad.
“Most countries have a few other data sources, but it’s going to impact Africa significantly, because oftentimes these are the only sources of publicly available real-time air quality monitoring data,” said Christi Chester-Schroeder, IQAir’s air quality science manager.
Data concerns meant Chad was excluded from IQAir’s 2023 list, but it was also ranked the most polluted country in 2022, plagued by Sahara dust as well as uncontrolled crop burning.
Average concentrations of small, hazardous airborne particles known as PM2.5 hit 91.8 micrograms per cubic meter (mg/cu m) last year in the country, slightly higher than 2022.
The WHO recommends levels of no more than 5 mg/cu m, a standard met by only 17 percent of cities last year.
India, fifth in the smog rankings behind Chad, Bangladesh, Pakistan and the Democratic Republic of Congo, saw average PM2.5 fall 7 percent on the year to 50.6 mg/cu m.
But it accounted for 12 of the top 20 most polluted cities, with Byrnihat, in a heavily industrialized part of the country’s northeast, in first place, registering an average PM2.5 level of 128 mg/cu m.
Climate change is playing an increasing role in driving up pollution, Chester-Schroeder warned, with higher temperatures causing fiercer and lengthier forest fires that swept through parts of South East Asia and South America.
Christa Hasenkopf, director of the Clean Air Program at the University of Chicago’s Energy Policy Institute (EPIC), said at least 34 countries will lose access to reliable pollution data after the US program was closed.
The State Department scheme improved air quality in the cities where the monitors were placed, boosting life expectancy and even reducing hazard allowances for US diplomats, meaning that it paid for itself, Hasenkopf said.
“(It) is a giant blow to air quality efforts worldwide,” she said
Ukraine’s biggest drone attack on Moscow kills one, disrupts air and train transport
- Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin said that at least 69 drones were destroyed that approached the city in several waves
- Moscow and its surrounding region, with a population of at least 21 million, is one of the biggest metropolitan areas in Europe
Ukraine targeted Moscow early on Tuesday in what seemed its biggest drone attack of the war on the Russian capital, killing at least one person, sparking fires and suspending air and train transport in the region, authorities said.
“Today at 4 a.m. a massive drone attack began on Moscow and the Moscow region,” Moscow Region Governor Andrei Vorobyov said in a post on the Telegram messaging app. “At the moment, one person is known to have died and three were injured.”
Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin said that at least 69 drones were destroyed that approached the city in several waves.
Moscow and its surrounding region, with a population of at least 21 million, is one of the biggest metropolitan areas in Europe, alongside Istanbul.
Russia’s aviation watchdog said flights were suspended at all four of Moscow’s airports to ensure air safety after the attacks. Two other airports, in the Yaroslavl and Nizhny Novgorod regions, both east of Moscow, were also closed. Vorobyov said that at least seven apartments were damaged and residents forced to evacuate in a multi-story building in the Ramenskoye district of the Moscow region, about 50 km (31 miles) southeast of the Kremlin.
Rail infrastructure at the train station in the Domodedovo district, about 35 km south of Moscow, was damaged as result of falling drone debris, RIA news agency reported.
Baza, a news Telegram channel that is close to Russia’s security services, and other Russian news telegram channels posted videos of several residential fires around Moscow that they said were sparked by the attacks. The strikes came as the United States is pushing for an end to the three-year war that Russia started with its invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. On Tuesday, US and Ukrainian teams are scheduled to meet for peace talks in Saudi Arabia.
Governors of Ryazan region, just southeast of the Moscow region, and the Belgorod region on border with Ukraine, also said that their regions were under drone attacks. Several settlements in the Belgorod region were left without power, the regional governor said.
A November drone attack on Moscow, the largest in the war at that point, led to the destruction of at least 34 drones. At least one civilian was killed and dozens of homes wrecked around the capital.
Kyiv has often said that its strikes inside Russia are aimed at destroying infrastructure key to Moscow’s overall war efforts and are in response to Russia’s continued bombing of Ukraine.
Both sides deny targeting civilians in the attacks, but thousands of them have died in the conflict so far, the vast majority of them Ukrainian.
Former Philippine president Duterte arrested for crimes against humanity
- Duterte was arrested after landing at Manila’s international airport following a brief trip to Hong Kong
- Duterte is still hugely popular among many in the Philippines, and he remains a potent political force
MANILA: Former Philippines president Rodrigo Duterte was arrested Tuesday in Manila by police acting on an International Criminal Court (ICC) warrant citing crimes against humanity tied to his deadly war on drugs.
The 79-year-old faces a charge of “the crime against humanity of murder,” according to the ICC, for a crackdown in which rights groups estimate tens of thousands of mostly poor men were killed by officers and vigilantes, often without proof they were linked to drugs.
“Early in the morning, Interpol Manila received the official copy of the warrant of the arrest from the ICC,” the presidential palace said in a statement.
“As of now, he is under the custody of authorities.”
The statement added that “the former president and his group are in good health and are being checked by government doctors.”
Duterte was arrested after landing at Manila’s international airport following a brief trip to Hong Kong.
Speaking to thousands of overseas Filipino workers there on Sunday, the former president decried the investigation, labelling ICC investigators “sons of whores” while saying he would “accept it” if an arrest were to be his fate.
The Philippines quit the ICC in 2019 on Duterte’s instructions, but the tribunal maintained it had jurisdiction over killings before the pullout, as well as killings in the southern city of Davao when Duterte was mayor there, years before he became president.
It launched a formal inquiry in September 2021, only to suspend it two months later after Manila said it was re-examining several hundred cases of drug operations that led to deaths at the hands of police, hitmen and vigilantes.
The case resumed in July 2023 after a five-judge panel rejected the Philippines’ objection that the court lacked jurisdiction.
Since then, the government of President Ferdinand Marcos has on numerous instances said it would not cooperate with the investigation.
But Undersecretary of the Presidential Communications Office Claire Castro on Sunday said that if Interpol would “ask the necessary assistance from the government, it is obliged to follow.”
Duterte is still hugely popular among many in the Philippines who supported his quick-fix solutions to crime, and he remains a potent political force. He is running to reclaim his job as mayor of his stronghold Davao in the May mid-term election.
Charges have been filed locally in a handful of cases related to drug operations that led to deaths, only nine police have been convicted for slaying alleged drug suspects.
A self-professed killer, Duterte told officers to fatally shoot narcotics suspects if their lives were at risk and insisted the crackdown saved families and prevented the Philippines from turning into a “narco-politics state.”
At the opening of a Philippine Senate probe into the drug war in October, Duterte said he offered “no apologies, no excuses” for his actions.
“I did what I had to do, and whether or not you believe it or not, I did it for my country,” he said.
Australian police say crime ring preyed on Jewish ‘vulnerability’
- New South Wales Police said Tuesday that 14 people had been arrested and charged with 65 offenses, including taking part in a “criminal group,” arson and destroying property
SYDNEY: Australian police said Tuesday they have charged 14 members of an organized crime ring accused of menacing the country with attacks dressed up as religiously motivated hate crimes.
Jewish neighborhoods in Sydney city have in recent months seen synagogues daubed in anti-Semitic graffiti, buildings firebombed in the dead of night and cars torched by vandals.
Although the crime wave stoked fears about rising anti-Semitism in Australia, police said they no longer believed many of these incidents were driven by “ideology.”
Instead, police said it appeared to be an attempt by organized criminals to gain favor by carrying out high-profile attacks — and then tipping off authorities later.
New South Wales Police said Tuesday that 14 people had been arrested and charged with 65 offenses, including taking part in a “criminal group,” arson and destroying property.
“None of the individuals we have arrested... have displayed any form of anti-Semitic ideology,” NSW Police deputy commissioner David Hudson said Monday evening after a series of raids.
“I think these organized crime figures have taken an opportunity to play off the vulnerability of the Jewish community,” he added.
The most alarming incident was the discovery of explosives in an abandoned caravan alongside a purported list of Jewish targets.
At the time, NSW Premier Chris Minns said the caravan appeared to be part of a foiled “mass casualty” terror plot.
Police now believe it was nothing more than a carefully constructed “criminal con job.”
“I can reveal that the caravan was never going to cause a mass casualty event, but instead was concocted by criminals who wanted to cause fear for personal benefit,” senior officer Krissy Barrett said on Monday evening.
Police said they suspected the same “individual or individuals” were behind both the anti-Semitic attacks and the caravan hoax.
“It was about causing chaos within the community, causing threat, causing angst, diverting police resources away from their day jobs to have them focus on matters that would allow them to get up to, engage in other criminal activity,” said deputy commissioner Hudson.
“There are a variety of reasons why individuals do this.”
Arrest of Palestinian activist stirs questions about protections for students and green card holders
Arrest of Palestinian activist stirs questions about protections for students and green card holders
- A green card holder is someone who has lawful permanent residence status in the United States
- Secretary of State Marco Rubio said in a message posted Sunday on X that the administration will be “revoking the visas and/or green cards of Hamas supporters in America so they can be deported”
WASHINGTON: The arrest of a Palestinian activist who helped organize campus protests of the war in Gaza has sparked questions about whether foreign students and green card holders are protected against being deported from the US
Mahmoud Khalil was arrested Saturday by Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents. Homeland Security officials and President Donald Trump have indicated that the arrest was directly tied to his role in the protests last spring at Columbia University in New York City.
Khalil is being held at an immigration detention center in Jena, Louisiana, while he awaits immigration court proceedings that could eventually lead to him being deported. His arrest has drawn criticism that he’s being unfairly and unlawfully targeted for his activism while the federal government has essentially described him as a terrorist sympathizer.
A look at what kind of protections foreign students and green card holders have and what might be next for Khalil:
Can someone with a green card be deported?
A green card holder is someone who has lawful permanent residence status in the United States.
Jaclyn Kelley-Widmer is a law professor at Cornell Law School who teaches immigration law. She said lawful permanent residents generally have many protections and “should be the most protected short of a US citizen.”
But that protection isn’t absolute. Green card holders can still be deported for committing certain crimes, failing to notify immigration officials of a change in address or engaging in marriage fraud, for example.
The Department of Homeland Security said Khalil was taken into custody as a result of Trump’s executive orders prohibiting antisemitism.
Trump has argued that protesters forfeited their rights to remain in the country by supporting the Palestinian group Hamas, which controls Gaza and has been designated as a terrorist organization.
Khalil and other student leaders of Columbia University Apartheid Divest have rejected claims of antisemitism, saying they are part of a broader anti-war movement that also includes Jewish students and groups. But the protest coalition, at times, has also voiced support for leaders of Hamas and Hezbollah, another Islamist organization designated by the US as a terrorist group.
Experts say that officials seem to indicate with their rhetoric that they are trying to deport Khalil on the grounds that he’s engaging in some sort of terrorist activity or somehow poses a threat.
Khalil has not been convicted of any terrorist-related activity. In fact, he has not been charged with any wrongdoing.
But experts say the federal government has fairly broad authority to arrest and try to deport a green card holder on terrorism grounds.
Under the Immigration and Nationality Act, green card holders do not need to be convicted of something to be “removable,” Kelley-Widmer said. They could be deported if the secretary of homeland security or the attorney general have reasonable grounds to believe they engaged in, or are likely to engage in, terrorist activities, she said.
But Kelley-Widmer said she’s never seen a case where the alleged terrorist activity happened in the US, and she questioned whether taking part in protests as Khalil did qualifies.
What did ICE say about why they were arresting him?
One of the key issues in Khalil’s case is what ICE agents said to his lawyer at the time he was arrested.
His lawyer, Amy Greer, said the agents who took him into custody at his university-owned home near Columbia initially claimed to be acting on a State Department order to revoke his student visa.
But when Greer informed them that Khalil was a permanent resident with a green card, they said they would revoke that documentation instead.
Kelley-Widmer said that exchange raises questions about how familiar the agents who arrested him were with the law or whether there was a “real disregard for the rule of law.”
“I think we should be really concerned that this is happening,” she said.
What are the next steps in his case?
Secretary of State Marco Rubio said in a message posted Sunday on X that the administration will be “revoking the visas and/or green cards of Hamas supporters in America so they can be deported.”
If someone is in the country on a student visa, the State Department does have authority to revoke it if the person violates certain conditions. For example, said Florida immigration attorney John Gihon, it’s quite common for the State Department to cancel visas of foreign students who get arrested for drunk driving.
But when it comes to someone who’s a lawful permanent resident, that generally requires an immigration judge to determine whether they can be deported.
Gihon said the next step is that Khalil would receive charging documents explaining why he’s being detained and why the government wants to remove him, as well as a notice to appear in immigration court.
Generally, he should receive those within 72 hours of being arrested, and then he would make an initial appearance before an immigration judge. That could take from 10 days to a month, Gihon said.
But he cautioned that right now he’s seeing extensive delays across the immigration court system, with clients often moved around the country to different facilities.
“We are having people who are detained and then they’re bounced around to multiple different detention facilities. And then sometimes they’re transferred across the country,” he said.
Khalil’s lawyers have also filed a lawsuit challenging his detention. A federal judge in New York City ordered that Khalil not be deported while the court considered his case. A hearing is scheduled for Wednesday.
