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.
Two detained after attack outside Israeli embassy in Belgrade
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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
Le Pen first had success in an ex-mining town. Her message there is now winning over French society
Le Pen implanted herself in the northern town of Henin-Beaumont in the early 2000s, hoping to win over disenchanted voters feeling left behind by the new economy and growing tired of decades of Socialist local governance. It was the start of a decade-long effort to detoxify her anti-immigration National Rally and win over voters from across French society.
Several waves of industrial shutdowns have left unemployment levels above the national average, and 60 percent of the population earns so little it does not need to pay tax, according to data from France’s national statistics agency, INSEE. The construction of a mammoth shopping center on Henin-Beaumont’s outskirts emptied out the town and dozens of shops, hairdressers and restaurants remain empty.
In 2013, the town’s Socialist mayor, Gérard Dalongeville, was sentenced to four years in prison and a 50,000-euro ($53,000) fine for embezzlement of public funds.
“There was a winning cocktail,” including the mayor’s corruption and the closure of industrial plants, said Edouard Mills-Affif, a filmmaker who has done two documentaries on Henin-Beaumont and the rise of its far-right mayor, Steeve Briois.
Le Pen easily won her own race for a parliamentary seat in the first-round voting Sunday — garnering more than 64 percent of the votes in the town. Since she won more than 50 percent of the vote, she won’t have to compete in a second round on July 7.
Overall, her National Rally and its allies won a third of the nationwide vote, official results showed, ahead of leftist coalition New Popular Front and President Emmanuel Macron’s centrist party. Sunday’s results provide an overall picture of how each camp fared, but they do not indicate how many seats the groups will get in the end.
Still, for the first time since World War II, a majority in Parliament for a party like Le Pen’s is within reach.
Although France has some of the highest standards of living in the world, lower unemployment than it’s had in decades and a relatively low crime rate compared to its peers, discontent has simmered in some parts in the post-industrial era. But for many National Rally voters, Sunday’s victory is a long-coming revenge on a political class that they see as out of touch with everyday people and their concerns, such as crime, purchasing power and immigration.
“The French have almost wiped out the ‘Macronist’ bloc,” a victorious Le Pen told supporters in Henin-Beaumont. The results, Le Pen added, showed voters’ “willingness to turn the page after seven years of contemptuous and corrosive power.”
Henin-Beaumont is where Le Pen began her efforts to turn her father’s party from political pariah to a voter-friendly alternative — a strategy she then sought to replicate on the national level when she took the reins of the party in 2012.
Her father, Jean-Marie Le Pen, ran a fringe political party, which too often relied on antisemitism and racism to provoke and draw attention, according to Stanford University professor Cecile Alduy.
“Since (Marine) has been at the helm of the party, she has tried to smooth out the rhetoric, embrace a kind of democratic rhetoric,” said Alduy. “Since 2012, it’s been a constant rise, in the ballot box and in the polls.”
Le Pen’s father, now 96, was “a little too extreme” for Magali Quere, born and raised in the town.
“But the National Rally does not scare me,” said Quere, 54, who runs a second-hand furniture shop. “It scared me 30 years ago, but not anymore.”
And it’s not just voters, Alduy said. “Other parties on the right have started to copy her vocabulary or arguments or themes, mainly around immigration and insecurity,” she explained, including Macron and former French President Nicolas Sarkozy.
“It normalizes even more what they (the National Rally) have to offer,” she said.
Briois, Henin-Beaumont’s mayor, was elected in 2014 and reelected for a second term in 2020 with 74 percent of the votes. He remains a close ally of Marine Le Pen and has been heralded as a model for other National Rally candidates.
A former salesman, his style was a contrast with his predecessors’. He was everywhere. “He associated marketing and advertising techniques with the oldest practices of political action, which is to be at the markets, to go door to door,” said Mills-Affif, the filmmaker who followed him for months on the campaign trail.
Briois encouraged dutiful local residents to inform him of any acts of misconduct or vandalism, taking pictures when they could, that he would then use in his campaigns.
Many residents in Henin-Beaumont say it’s looking better now than it had in a long time. Briois seems to have set aside some of his most extreme projects, such as building a coalition of mayors who are against migrants or a decree he passed to ban begging in the town center that critics said unfairly targeted the Roma population.
Instead, the town renovated the church and the city hall, improved roads, and sent police to regularly patrol the streets, giving locals a sense of security.
Murielle Busine, 57, who described herself as anti-National Rally, praised the work done by Briois. “I will not go as far as voting for them, but I cannot deny everything he has done for the city, and that he is very accessible,” Busine said. “When there’s a problem, he tries to fix it.”
Now there is Jordan Bardella, the party president and Le Pen’s 28-year-old protégé with a huge TikTok following.
“People often say it’s the old people who vote National Rally. Bardella brings the youthful momentum that was missing,” said 22 year-old student Ewan Vandevraye, who attended the event in Henin-Beaumont from Lille, about 30 kilometers (18 miles) away, with three friends.
On Sunday night, supporters were not just shouting “Marine! Marine!” Men, women and youth alike also chanted Bardella’s name.
If the National Rally wins an absolute majority on July 7, Bardella will become France’s youngest-ever prime minister. Le Pen has her eyes on a bigger prize: the presidency in 2027.
Campaigners seek to harness Gaza anger among UK Muslim voters in July 4 elections
- Shanaz Saddique is one of a surge of pro-Palestinian candidates hoping to mobilize Muslim votes
- Labour has committed to recognizing a Palestinian state but not set out a definitive timetable for doing so
OLDHAM : Shanaz Saddique is one of a surge of pro-Palestinian candidates hoping to mobilize Muslim votes at Britain’s July 4 election by tapping into discontent over the two main political parties’ positions on the war in Gaza.
Both the ruling Conservatives and the resurgent Labour party have said they want the fighting to stop, but have also backed Israel’s right to defend itself — angering some among the 3.9 million Muslims who make up 6.5 percent of Britain’s population.
Few, if any, of the pro-Palestinian candidates running as independents or for non-mainstream parties will get elected to parliament, but “The Muslim Vote” campaign is looking to win enough votes to send a strong message to those who do.
“Gaza is ... not about a political argument. It’s a human rights argument,” Saddique, who is running to be elected as a Member of Parliament for Oldham East and Saddleworth north of Manchester told Reuters,
“We do not apologize for being the Gaza party.”
The Muslim Vote campaign is advising voters to pick pro-Palestine candidates running as independents or from smaller parties like the left-wing Workers Party, which has put up 152 candidates including Saddique.
The party’s outspoken leader George Galloway won a special election in March for a vacant parliamentary seat in Rochdale, a neighboring town to Oldham, which also has a big Muslim population, after Labour withdrew support from its candidate over a recording espousing conspiracy theories about Israel.
The latest war began when Hamas burst into southern Israel on Oct. 7, killed 1,200 people and took around 250 hostages, according to Israeli tallies. The offensive launched by Israel in retaliation has killed nearly 38,000 people, according to the Gaza health ministry.
There are around 230 more independent candidates running in this election than at the last vote in 2019. In areas with large concentrations of Muslim voters, many of those independents are running on a pro-Palestinian platform, according to Sophie Stowers of the UK in a Changing Europe think tank.
The most likely to feel the effect of unhappiness among Muslim voters is Keir Starmer’s Labour Party which is still predicted to win the election, but has long counted on the backing of Muslim and other minority groups.
Starmer’s Labour has faced criticism and risks losing voters for only gradually shifting toward calling for a ceasefire in Gaza. Labour has committed to recognizing a Palestinian state but has not set out a definitive timetable for doing so.
“I’ve been a long Labour supporter ... but no more, not my family. We are not supporting Labour,” said Rafit Hussain, 51, a shop-owner in the historically Labour-voting Oldham.
“Genocide is happening in front of our eyes and nothing’s been done about it ... which is very upsetting and very sad.”
A Savanta poll last month found that 44 percent of Muslims who ranked the conflict as one of the top five issues would consider backing an independent running on the issue.
Poppy Yousaf, another Oldham local, is one of those who has heard their message: “I will vote this year looking at independents, because I don’t think the Tory (Conservative) government or the Labour government have quite promised or done things that sit right with my conscience.”
Kremlin says it can’t comment on Trump’s idea for ending war in Ukraine
- Former president said last week during a debate against Joe Biden that if he won the November US election, he would have the war settled before he took office in January
MOSCOW: Russia cannot comment on Donald Trump’s idea for ending the war in Ukraine because Moscow does not know what it involves, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Tuesday.
Trump said last week during a debate against President Joe Biden that if he won the November US election, he would have the war settled before he took office in January.
“This is not Trump’s first statement on this, and he has made statements along these lines before. Without knowing the essence of what this is about, we cannot comment on it,” Peskov told reporters.
The Kremlin has said that any peace plan for Ukraine proposed by a possible future Trump administration would have to reflect the reality on the ground, where its forces control nearly a fifth of Ukraine, but that President Vladimir Putin was open to talks. Ukraine says Russia’s terms for ending the war amount to a demand for its
surrender.
Trump has not said how he would go about ending the war, now well into its third year. In last week’s debate, he said Russia would not have invaded Ukraine in February 2022 if there had been a “real president” in the US who was respected by Putin.
Biden said Trump had “no idea what the hell he’s talking about.”
UK general election gives hope to first time immigrant voters
- Opposition Labour Party is widely expected to win by landslide, replacing PM Rishi Sunak’s Conservative Party
- Refugees and immigrants from Commonwealth countries, mainly former territories of the British Empire, eligible to vote
LONDON: Voting for the first time in a British election, Prathesh Panjak and other immigrant voters are excited to take part in the July 4 ballot, hoping they can influence change in the country that they have chosen to call home.
The opposition Labour Party is widely expected to win by a landslide, replacing Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s Conservative Party which has been in power for 14 years.
Refugees and immigrants from Commonwealth countries, mainly former territories of the British Empire such as Nigeria, India, and Malaysia, are eligible to vote in British elections.
Panjak, 27, who came to Britain in February last year, said he was excited to cast his vote after missing the election in his native India.
“In my country, they don’t allow people from other countries to vote ... I came here on a student visa, but they are giving us an opportunity, like British citizens,” said Panjak who works part-time as an ambassador at his university in Manchester, northwest England.
Teh Wen Sun, a 33-year-old Malaysian student from Salford, not far from Manchester, said she did not see much difference between the two main parties, but she was keen to vote for a party that is more receptive to immigrants.
Immigration is an electoral battleground in Britain, with Sunak promising to cut net migration levels if the Conservatives win, amid concern from many British voters that it was too high and put excessive pressure on the state-run National Health Service, housing and education.
Sunak has since tightened visa rules and made international headlines for a policy to send asylum seekers to Rwanda.
Oyinkansola Dirisu, 31, a support worker from Manchester who came to Britain in 2022, said she was looking forward to voting for Labour, and said she wanted whoever won power to make it easier for people like her to move to Britain.
Others, like Esther Offem, 26, who came from Nigeria last September, are still undecided: “None (of the parties) have done much in the areas that I’m most interested in. But at the moment, I would probably go for the Conservatives ... I’m not sure yet.”
Floods and landslides triggered by heavy rains in India’s northeast kill at least 16 people
GUWAHATI, India: Floods and landslides triggered by heavy rains have killed at least 16 people over the last two weeks in India’s northeast, where more than 300,000 have been displaced from their submerged homes, authorities said on Tuesday.
The Indian army and air force have been assisting with rescue efforts in Assam, one of the worst-hit states, where a military helicopter flew early Tuesday morning 13 fishermen to safety after being stranded for four days on a small island on the Brahmaputra, one of Asia’s largest rivers, officials said.
The Brahmaputra River, which flows 1,280 kilometers (800 miles) across Assam state before running through Bangladesh, overflows annually. However, this year, increased rainfall has made the river — already known for its powerful, unpredictable flow — even more dangerous to live near or on one of the more than 2,000 island villages in the middle of it.
In neighboring Arunachal Pradesh state, which borders China, landslides have wiped out several roads. Army troopers there rescued 70 students and teachers from a flooded school in Changlang district, police said. Similarly, heavy flooding in the states of Sikkim, Manipur and Meghalaya swept away roads and collapsed bridges.
So far, more than 80 people across six northeastern states have died since the end of May due to floods and mudslides brought on by the rains, according to official figures.
Back in Assam, animals at the famed Kaziranga National Park, home to some 2,500 one-horned Rhinos, are moving to higher ground to escape the floods. Park rangers are monitoring their movements to ensure their safety, the state’s chief minister Himanta Biswa Sarma said.
Disasters caused by landslides and floods are common in the country’s northeast region during the June-September monsoon season. India, and Assam state in particular, is seen as one of the world’s most vulnerable regions to climate change because of more intense rain and floods, according to a 2021 report by the Council on Energy, Environment and Water, a New Delhi-based climate think tank.
