KYIV: President Volodymyr Zelensky announced on Thursday a set of measures to protect Ukraine’s energy system, including protection for plants coming under Russian fire and the development of alternative renewable energy sources.
“Life in Ukraine must be preserved and that includes in particular energy security,” Zelensky said in his nightly video address.
Russia pounded Ukraine’s energy system in the first winter of the war, launched in February 2022, and renewed its assault on energy targets last March as Ukraine was running low on stocks of Western air defense missiles.
Drone and missile strikes have knocked out half of energy generating capacity since March, according to official accounts.
Attacks overnight on Thursday hit four regions and cut power to more than 218,000 consumers, the Energy Ministry said.
Zelensky outlined plans to minimize the effects of such attacks, including a program of developing solar energy and energy storage facilities and a schedule for critical infrastructure sites to come up with alternative energy sources.
The work, he said, must be completed before winter and the increased energy demand associated with the change in seasons.
Zelensky said the government would “continue to work on creating new energy generation and new decentralized energy capacities.” Also planned was “the construction of new balanced and manoeuvrable capacities for energy.”
“This process is quite challenging in wartime conditions, but we must implement it just as we have already implemented many difficulty projects,” he said.
And work was proceeding, Zelensky said, on measures to protect existing energy sites.
Russia says energy infrastructure is a legitimate military target and denies targeting civilians or civilian infrastructure.
Zelensky calls for measures to preserve Ukraine’s energy system
https://arab.news/n3h4q
Zelensky calls for measures to preserve Ukraine’s energy system
- “Life in Ukraine must be preserved and that includes in particular energy security,” Zelensky said
- Drone and missile strikes have knocked out half of energy generating capacity since March
Biden blasts landmark Supreme Court ruling on Trump immunity
- This is a fundamentally new principle, and it’s a dangerous precedent,” Biden said in a speech at the White House
WASHINGTON: President Joe Biden warned Monday that the US Supreme Court’s landmark ruling on presidential immunity sets a “dangerous precedent” that Donald Trump would exploit if elected in November.
The conservative-dominated high court ruled earlier that day that Trump — and all presidents — enjoy “absolute immunity” from criminal prosecution for “official acts” taken while in office, but can still face criminal penalties for “unofficial acts.”
Trump is facing criminal charges over his attempts to overturn his 2020 election loss to Biden, but that trial had been put on hold while the Supreme Court considered his immunity claims.
“For all practical purposes today’s decision almost certainly means there are no limits to what a president can do. This is a fundamentally new principle, and it’s a dangerous precedent,” Biden said in a speech at the White House.
The 6-3 ruling on Monday, split along ideological lines, is set to further delay proceedings in Trump’s case as lower courts work through myriad questions raised in the Supreme Court decision.
With only four months left until the presidential election, the delays likely mean the case will not reach trial before voters head to the polls.
“The American people must decide if they want to entrust... once again, the presidency to Donald Trump, now knowing he’ll be more emboldened to do whatever he pleases, whenever he wants to do it,” Biden said.
Trump was quick to revel in what he called a “big win.”
Conservative Chief Justice John Roberts, in his majority opinion, said a president is “not above the law” but does have “absolute immunity” from criminal prosecution for official acts taken while in office.
“The president therefore may not be prosecuted for exercising his core constitutional powers,” Roberts said.
“As for a President’s unofficial acts, there is no immunity,” the chief justice added, sending the case back to a lower court to determine which of the charges facing Trump involve official or unofficial conduct.
Both a District Court and an appeals court panel had previously rejected Trump’s immunity claims in a historic case with far-reaching implications for executive power.
Trump is charged with conspiracy to defraud the United States as well as obstruction of an official proceeding — when a violent mob of his supporters tried to prevent the January 6, 2021, joint session of Congress held to certify Biden’s victory.
The 78-year-old former president is also charged with conspiracy to deny Americans the right to vote and to have their votes counted.
The three liberal justices dissented from Monday’s ruling with Justice Sonia Sotomayor saying she was doing so “with fear for our democracy.”
“Never in the history of our Republic has a President had reason to believe that he would be immune from criminal prosecution if he used the trappings of his office to violate the criminal law,” Sotomayor said. “In every use of official power, the President is now a king above the law.”
“Orders the Navy’s Seal Team 6 to assassinate a political rival? Immune. Organizes a military coup to hold onto power? Immune. Takes a bribe in exchange for a pardon? Immune. Immune, immune, immune,” she said.
Trump, in posts on Truth Social, welcomed the decision calling it a “big win for our Constitution and democracy.”
“Today’s Historic Decision by the Supreme Court should end all of Crooked Joe Biden’s Witch Hunts against me,” he said.
Trump’s original trial date in the election subversion case had been March 4.
But the Supreme Court — dominated by conservatives, including three appointed by Trump — agreed to hear his argument for absolute immunity, putting the case on hold while they considered the matter in April.
Steven Schwinn, a law professor at the University of Illinois Chicago, said the ruling means the case “is going to drag on more and more and longer and longer and well beyond the election.”
“To the extent that Trump was trying to drag his feet and extend this beyond the election, he has succeeded wildly,” Schwinn said.
The opinion also provides a “roadmap” for a US leader to avoid prosecution for a particular action “simply by intertwining it with official government action,” he added.
“That’s going to seriously hamstring the prosecution of a former president because the president’s official actions and unofficial actions are so often intertwined,” he said.
Facing four criminal cases, Trump has been doing everything in his power to delay the trials until after the election.
Trump was convicted in New York in May of falsifying business records to cover up a sex scandal in the final stages of the 2016 campaign, making him the first former US president ever convicted of a crime.
His sentencing will take place on July 11.
By filing a blizzard of pre-trial motions, Trump’s lawyers have managed to put on hold the three other trials, which deal with his attempts to overturn the 2020 election and hoarding top-secret documents at his home in Florida.
If reelected, Trump could, once sworn in as president in January 2025, order the federal cases against him closed.
Haiti violence displacing one child every minute: UNICEF
UNITED NATIONS: Violence raging in troubled Haiti is forcibly displacing one child every minute, on average, with some 300,000 already affected, the United Nations children’s agency warned on Monday.
Displaced children account for more than half of the 600,000 people who have been forced to flee their homes due to violence, according to UNICEF, particularly in the capital Port-au-Prince, much of which is controlled by gangs.
“The number of internally displaced children in Haiti has increased by an estimated 60 percent since March — the equivalent of one child every minute — a result of ongoing violence caused by armed groups,” it said in a report.
Haiti has long been rocked by gang violence, but conditions sharply worsened at the end of February when armed groups launched coordinated attacks in Port-au-Prince, saying they wanted to overthrow then-prime minister Ariel Henry.
“Children in Haiti continue to endure an onslaught of multiple dangers, including horrific violence and critical levels of displacement,” said UNICEF executive director Catherine Russell.
“The humanitarian catastrophe unfolding before our eyes is taking a devastating toll on children. Displaced children are in desperate need of a safe and protective environment, and increased support and funding from the international community.”
When displaced children and teenagers are forced to move — often without their families — it puts them at risk of dropping out of school and making them vulnerable to sexual assault, exploitation and abuse.
Additionally, young people are increasingly joining the armed groups that sow terror in a country where 90 percent of the population lives in poverty, and three million children need humanitarian aid, UNICEF warned.
Kenyan police finally arrived in Haiti last month, on a long-awaited international mission to help stabilize the Caribbean nation.
The violence in Port-au-Prince has affected food security and humanitarian aid access, with much of the city in the hands of gangs accused of abuses including murder, rape, looting and kidnappings.
The multinational Kenyan force, greenlit last year by the UN Security Council, had been held up for months amid challenges to its deployment in Kenyan courts.
Belgrade police arrest man with crossbow two days after Israeli embassy attack
- Serbia has been on high alert since Saturday, when a member of a special police unit was shot in the neck with a crossbow outside the Israeli embassy
BELGRADE: Belgrade police on Monday arrested a man who approached a police station carrying a backpack with a crossbow, two days after a crossbow attack at the Israeli embassy in the Serbian capital, police said.
In a statement, police authorities said the man crossed a barrier in front of the station and, after being ordered to stop, hurriedly started to walk away. Officers then caught up with him and carried out a search.
“In his backpack, a crossbow with seven arrows, several knives, and a jar with firecrackers were found. Motives are being investigated and a search of his apartment is being conducted,” police said.
It said the suspect was not on the government’s list of potential “extremists,” without adding details.
Police said he claimed that he was “being pursued by the mafia and secret services.”
“A medical examination will be carried out, and further actions will be decided by the prosecutor,” Serbia’s police minister Ivica Dacic said in the statement.
Serbia has been on high alert since Saturday, when a member of a special police unit was shot in the neck with a crossbow outside the Israeli embassy.
The officer then opened fire and killed the attacker, said Dacic, denouncing a “heinous terrorist act.” The officer remains in hospital recovering after undergoing surgery.
Authorities said the assailant was a Serbian convert to Islam. His wife, currently in Montenegro, is being questioned by police at Serbia’s request.
UK’s Sunak urges right-wing voters to stand by his party
- “If there is an unchecked, unaccountable Labour Party in power with a super majority, think what that would mean for everyone,” Sunak told voters at a rally
LONDON: British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak on Monday urged voters on the political right to stick with his Conservatives at this week’s election, saying a huge win for Labour would be bad for the country and its democracy.
Appearing to all but concede defeat before Thursday’s election, Sunak appealed to Conservative voters, some of whom have been shifting to Nigel Farage’s right-wing Reform UK in protest at his Conservative government, to prevent what he called a Labour “super majority.”
The Conservatives look set to be kicked out of office after 14 turbulent years, marked by Britain’s vote to leave the European Union in 2016 and the cost of living crisis that followed the COVID-19 pandemic and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
Opinion polls have consistently given Keir Starmer’s center-left Labour Party an around 20-point lead, with support for Reform potentially splitting the center-right vote and the centrist Liberal Democrats further draining Conservative support.
“If there is an unchecked, unaccountable Labour Party in power with a super majority, think what that would mean for everyone,” Sunak told voters at a rally.
“Once you’ve given Labour a blank check, you won’t be able to get it back, and that means that your taxes are going up ... it’s in their DNA.”
Farage, one of Britain’s most recognizable and divisive politicians, has spent decades railing against the establishment and the European Union, and has in recent years campaigned for Donald Trump in the United States.
SPLIT THE RIGHT
He entered the election in early June — his eighth attempt at winning a seat in the Westminster parliament — vowing to supplant the Conservatives as the main party of the right.
Polls appear to show that Reform’s support peaked in the second half of June, shortly before Farage said the West provoked Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Some of his candidates and supporters have been dropped for racist or inappropriate remarks.
While Britain’s electoral system means Reform may win millions of votes, the party is unlikely to win more than a handful of parliamentary seats. But that could be enough to split the right in many areas and hand victory to Labour.
Reform said on Monday its membership had doubled from 30,000 to 60,000 in a month, and that donations would help it fund an advertising campaign through the last week.
“It is humbling but also very telling that they are prepared to back their faith in Reform UK with hard-earned cash and I thank each and every one of them,” Farage said in a statement.
Britain will likely elect a center-left government as much of Europe swings right, including in France where Marine Le Pen’s far-right National Rally won the first round of a parliamentary election on Sunday.
With polls showing many voters are undecided, Sunak made a final plea for people to limit Labour’s power if it gets into government, saying: “I say to every Conservative: don’t surrender to Labour, fight for every vote, fight for our values, and fight for our vision of Britain.”
China says US targeting of AI not helpful to healthy development
UNITED NATIONS: US targeting of certain investments in artificial intelligence in China is not helpful to the “healthy development” of AI technology and will be divisive when it comes to global governance, China’s UN envoy said on Monday.
The United States last month issued draft rules for banning or requiring notification of certain investments in artificial intelligence and other technology sectors in China that could threaten US national security.
“We are firmly opposed to these sanctions,” Chinese UN Ambassador Fu Cong told reporters after the 193-member UN General Assembly adopted by consensus a Chinese-drafted resolution aimed at boosting international cooperation on AI capacity-building.
The UN resolution calls upon the international community to “provide and promote a fair, open, inclusive and non-discriminatory business environment across the life cycle of safe, secure and trustworthy artificial intelligence systems.”
Fu said the US actions do not foster an inclusive business environment and he urged Washington to reverse its decision.
“We don’t believe that the US government’s position or decision will be helpful to the healthy development of the AI technology, per se, and will — by extension — divide the world in terms of the standards and in terms of the rules governing the AI,” he said.
The US Treasury Department published the proposed rules after US President Joe Biden signed an executive order last August as part of a broader push to prevent US know-how from helping the Chinese to develop sophisticated technology and dominate global markets.
