LONDON: Three people were stabbed during the first day of the Notting Hill Carnival, Europe’s biggest street festival, with a 32-year-old woman suffering “life-threatening” injuries, London’s Metropolitan Police Service said.
More than 1 million people are expected to attend the carnival, a celebration of Afro-Caribbean culture that takes place every year on the streets of the Notting Hill neighborhood in west London. Some 7,000 police officers have been assigned to the event, which concludes Monday.
Police said they made 90 arrests on Sunday, including 10 people who were detained for assaulting emergency workers, 18 for possession of offensive weapons and four for sexual offenses.
“Hundreds of thousands of people came to Notting Hill Carnival today to enjoy a fantastic celebration,” the Met said in a statement. “Regrettably, a minority came to commit crime and engage in violence.”
Police: 3 people stabbed during London’s Notting Hill Carnival
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Police: 3 people stabbed during London’s Notting Hill Carnival
- Police said they made 90 arrests on Sunday
Zelensky says will meet Biden ‘this month’ to present Ukraine ‘victory plan’
- Announcement comes as US president to discuss whether or not to let Kyiv fire Western-provided long-range missiles into Russia with UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer
The announcement came as Biden is due to discuss whether or not to let Kyiv fire Western-provided long-range missiles into Russia with UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer.
“My meeting with President Joe Biden is planned,” Zelensky said at an international conference in Kyiv. “I will present him with a victory plan.”
He gave no specific details on how to end more than 30 months of fighting, saying only that his proposal will involve “a system of interconnected solutions that will give Ukraine enough power — enough to put this war on a course to peace.”
Kyiv has been pressing the West for a green light to use Western weapons to strike into Russia, saying that it could change the course of the war.
Zelensky announced he would meet Biden just over a month into Kyiv’s surprise incursion into the Kursk region, which he had said at the time was partly aimed at forcing Russia into “fair” negotiations.
Zelensky has said he aims to host another international peace summit outlining his vision to end the war in November, to which Russia will be invited.
Bangladesh urges India to keep Sheikh Hasina ‘quiet’ in ‘best interest’ of bilateral ties
- Ousted Bangladeshi PM is in India, with which she enjoyed close ties during 15-year rule
- New caretaker government in Dhaka says it also seeks a good relationship with New Delhi
DHAKA: For the sake of bilateral relations, India should influence Bangladesh’s ex-PM Sheikh Hasina to “keep quiet,” Dhaka’s top diplomat said, as the ousted prime minister continued to give instructions from her exile in New Delhi.
After 15 straight years in power, Hasina resigned and fled to neighboring India on Aug. 5, forced out by weeks of student-led rallies and a nationwide uprising in the wake of a police crackdown on demonstrators that left hundreds of people dead.
In the following days, the parliament was dissolved, and a new temporary administration was appointed, with Nobel Prize-winning economist Muhammad Yunus at the helm.
With the new government in office, Hasina kept making political remarks from India and official calls to her party supporters. She also demanded a “thorough investigation” into the protests-related violence to “bring to justice those responsible for these heinous killings and acts of sabotage” and claimed that the US was behind her ouster.
“As long as she is in India … it is not in the best interest of relations that she continues to sermonize from there. Since she is being given shelter there, we would prefer that she keeps quiet and her hosts tell her that she keeps quiet,” Bangladesh’s Foreign Affairs Adviser Touhid Hossain told Arab News in an interview at his office in Dhaka this week.
A former foreign secretary and ambassador, Hossain was appointed last month as chief of the interim government’s foreign affairs.
While Hasina enjoyed close strategic and economic ties with India during her 15-year rule, Hossain said that the new government in Dhaka also wanted “a good relationship” with New Delhi.
Amid calls for Hasina’s extradition from India to face trial at home for the violence preceding her downfall, he added that time will show if such a request will be made.
“It’s a much wider issue,” he said. “But for the moment, I think that it is in her best interest — and also the interests of her hosts and us — that she keeps quiet.”
Hasina, 76, was one of the world’s longest-ruling female leaders and played a pivotal role in the politics of Bangladesh, a nation of about 170 million people that declared its independence in 1971.
She is the daughter of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, the country’s charismatic founding leader, who was killed in 1975 in a military coup when Hasina was 28. She served as prime minister from 1996 to 2001 and regained power in 2009.
Under her leadership, Bangladesh became one of the fastest-growing economies in the region, with World Bank estimates showing that more than 25 million people in the country have been lifted out of poverty in the last two decades.
But critics say she has grown increasingly autocratic and called her a threat to the country’s democracy, with many saying that the sudden collapse of Hasina’s government had reflected a broader discontent against her rule.
The student-led demonstrations that began peacefully in July were against a quota system for government jobs, which was widely criticized for favoring those with connections to the ruling party.
The rallies then turned violent as security forces clashed with protesters, leading to the killing of hundreds of people and triggering a civil disobedience movement that forced Hasina’s resignation.
Bangladesh’s interim government has agreed to a probe into the events by the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights. According to the OHCHR’s preliminary analysis of the unrest and state violations in addressing it, immediately available data indicates that more than 600 people were killed, but “the reported death toll is likely an underestimate.”
The violations include cases of “extrajudicial killings, arbitrary arrests and detention, enforced disappearances, torture and ill-treatment.”
European, Muslim countries meet in Spain eyeing schedule for Palestinian statehood
- European, Muslim nations meet to talk two-state solution
- Participants want to work out clear implementation schedule Spain, Norway, Ireland now recognize Palestinian state
MADRID: Spain, hosting a high-level meeting on Friday of several Muslim and European countries on ways to end the Gaza war, called for a clear schedule for the international community to implement a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
“We meet to make another push for the end of the war in Gaza, for a way out of the unending spiral of violence between the Palestinians, the Israelis... That way is clear. The implementation of the two-state solution is the only way,” Spanish Foreign Minister Jose Manuel Albares told reporters.
In attendance were his counterparts including from Norway and Slovenia, European Union foreign policy chief Josep Borrell, Palestinian Prime Minister Mohammad Mustafa and members of the Arab-Islamic Contact Group for Gaza that includes Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Jordan, Indonesia, Nigeria and Turkiye.
Albares said there was “a clear willingness” among the participants, who notably do not include Israel, “to move on from words to actions and to make strides toward a clear schedule for the effective implementation” of a two-state solution, starting with Palestine joining the United Nations.
Israel was not invited because it was not part of the contact group, Albares said, adding though that “we will be delighted to see Israel at any table where peace and the two-state solution are discussed.”
On May 28, Spain, Norway and Ireland formally recognized a unified Palestinian state ruled by the Palestinian Authority comprising the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, with East Jerusalem as its capital. With them, 146 of the 193 member states of the United Nations now recognize Palestinian statehood.
Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez has repeatedly described the co-existence of two sovereign states on the territory of the former Mandatory Palestine as the only viable path to peace in the region.
Such a two-state solution was set out in the 1991 Madrid Conference and the 1993-95 Oslo Accords, but the peace process has been moribund for years.
However, the search for a peaceful solution has been given new urgency by the 11-month-long war in the Gaza Strip between Israel and the Palestinian militant groups Hamas — the bloodiest episode yet in the overall conflict — as well as escalating violence in the occupied West Bank.
The West Bank, including East Jerusalem, was captured by Israel in the 1967 Middle East war and has been occupied ever since, with expanding Jewish settlements complicating the issue. Israel annexed East Jerusalem in 1980 in a move generally not recognized internationally.
Israel also says guarantees on its security are of paramount importance.
Norwegian Foreign Minister Espen Barth Eide has told Reuters the meeting also needed to discuss the demobilization of Hamas — which controlled Gaza prior to the war — and the normalization of ties between Israel and some other states, notably Saudi Arabia.
Ukrainian pilots begin F-16 training in Romania
- The first four Ukrainian pilots arrived earlier this week and have started their “theoretical training“
- Ukraine’s Defense Minister Rustem Umerov welcomed the program on social media, saying it would ensure that there are “more F-16s in Ukrainian skies“
BUCHAREST: The first group of Ukrainian pilots has started its F-16 fighter jet training at Romania’s regional hub this week, the NATO country’s defense ministry told AFP on Friday.
Since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022, Kyiv has been looking to boost its air force, asking the West to donate advanced military jets and sending pilots to train in NATO countries, including France.
Romania inaugurated a hub for F-16 training at its Fetesti air base in November 2023, pledging to also train Ukrainians there.
The first four Ukrainian pilots arrived earlier this week and have started their “theoretical training,” Romanian defense ministry spokesperson Constantin Spinu told AFP.
He said that practical training could begin “toward the end of the year.”
Ukraine’s Defense Minister Rustem Umerov welcomed the program on social media, saying it would ensure that there are “more F-16s in Ukrainian skies.”
The Fetesti hub is part of the country’s air base situated about 150 kilometers outside the capital Bucharest, and was inaugurated after an agreement with the Netherlands was reached to make several F-16s available for training.
The planes are maintained by its US-based manufacturer Lockheed Martin, who also provides the training.
The Romanian army has 26 F-16 jets in total, of which 17 were bought from Portugal and nine from Norway.
Norway is due to supply a further 23 jets to Romania by the end of 2025.
Kremlin says it disagrees with Turkiye’s Erdogan that Crimea should return to Kyiv’s control
- Kremlin said this week that President Vladimir Putin may visit Turkiye for talks with Erdogan once preparations are completed
- Erdogan said this week that Turkish support for Ukraine’s territorial integrity, sovereignty and independence was unwavering
MOSCOW: Russia completely disagrees with comments from Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan that Crimea should return to Ukrainian control, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Friday.
Erdogan said this week that Turkish support for Ukraine’s territorial integrity, sovereignty and independence was unwavering, and that the return of Crimea — which Russia seized from Ukraine and annexed in 2014 — was a requirement of international law.
Asked about Erdogan’s comments, Peskov said the topic of Crimea “falls under the category of disagreements between us and our Turkish friends.
“Here we have completely divergent opinions. At the same time, we do not abandon our deliberate attempts to explain to our Turkish friends and colleagues our point of view, our position.”
Peskov said that Erdogan was under pressure from the United States over its traditionally close economic ties with Moscow
“As for Turkiye’s attempts to mitigate US pressure, indeed, the US is exerting undisguised pressure on the Turkish Republic, not shying away from intimidation, with consequences for the Turkish economy,” said Peskov.
The Kremlin said this week that President Vladimir Putin may visit Turkiye for talks with Erdogan once preparations are completed.
Turkiye, a NATO member, has played a key role as a go-between for Russia and Ukraine during their
2-1/2-year-old conflict, including arranging an export deal for Ukrainian grain.
Erdogan told Putin at a summit in Kazakhstan in July that Ankara could help end the conflict, but the Kremlin has not taken the Turkish leader up on his offer.
