MANILA: The Philippines said on Friday it will evacuate 11,000 citizens from Lebanon the moment Israeli forces cross the border to launch a ground offensive against Hezbollah.
Israeli bombing of Iran-backed Hezbollah strongholds around neighboring Lebanon has killed hundreds of people this week, while the militant group has retaliated with rocket barrages.
Israel has rejected a US-backed 21-day ceasefire call, and its military chief has told soldiers to prepare for a possible ground offensive.
“A ground invasion will lead to mandatory repatriation,” Foreign Undersecretary Eduardo de Vega said at a press conference in Manila, adding the plan was to move thousands out of the country via the sea.
He did not provide other details.
Manila had earlier urged Filipinos to leave Lebanon before airlines stopped flying to Beirut but most of its citizens did not heed the call, Filipino diplomats said.
Millions of Filipinos work overseas — with large numbers concentrated in the Middle East — due to limited job opportunities at home. Around 90 percent of those working in Lebanon are women migrant domestic workers.
“To some of them, getting killed in war is preferable to starving to death,” de Vega said, adding there have so far been no Filipino casualties from the Israeli air campaign against Hezbollah.
After Israel’s war with Hamas erupted last year following the Palestinian militant group’s October 7 attack, Manila began voluntary repatriations of its citizens from the areas affected by the fighting.
The conflict has since spilled into Lebanon, with Israel’s ongoing bombardments in the country raising fears of an all-out regional war in the Middle East.
So far, only 500 Filipinos have taken up the government’s offer to leave Lebanon, De Vega said.
Filipino ambassador to Beirut Raymond Balatbat said 196 Filipinos have fled southern Lebanon, where the Israeli campaign has been concentrated.
Most Filipinos working in the country are based in central Lebanon around Beirut, he added.
Anthony Mandap, consul-general at the Philippine embassy in Tel Aviv, said there are no plans as of now to repatriate some 30,000 Filipinos working in Israel.
Philippines says to evacuate thousands from Lebanon if Israel invades
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Philippines says to evacuate thousands from Lebanon if Israel invades
- Israeli bombing of Iran-backed Hezbollah strongholds around neighboring Lebanon has killed hundreds of people this week, while the militant group has retaliated with rocket barrages
Arrest made after Islamophobic cyberattack on UK railway Wi-Fi networks
- Unnamed man detained after post claiming ‘Islamisation of Europe already underway’
- Stations across London, as well as major hubs in Manchester, Leeds, Liverpool, Birmingham, Edinburgh affected
LONDON: A man has been arrested in the UK for posting an Islamophobic message on 19 railway station Wi-Fi networks across the country.
Manchester Piccadilly, Birmingham New Street, Edinburgh Waverley, Glasgow Central, Liverpool Lime Street, Leeds and Bristol Temple Meads were caught up in the cyberattack on Wednesday, alongside London Bridge, Cannon Street, Charing Cross, Clapham Junction, Euston, King’s Cross, Liverpool Street, Paddington, Victoria and Waterloo in the capital.
Users at the stations were met with a page after logging in to free station Wi-Fi networks with the words “we love you, Europe,” accompanied by the claim that “the Islamisation of Europe is already underway.”
The message added that “this is just a small taste of what’s coming,” detailing the 2017 Manchester Arena bombing followed by images of the 22 victims.
The message was quickly taken down and a man, who has not been identified, was detained under the 1990 Computer Misuse Act and 1998 Malicious Communications Act.
He is understood to be an employee of Global Reach Technology, which provides internet services at many stations in the UK.
A spokesperson for British Transport Police said: “We received reports … of a cyberattack displaying Islamophobic messaging on some Network Rail Wi-Fi services.”
A spokesperson for Network Rail, the group in charge of UK tracks and stations, said no data had been compromised in the incident, adding: “Once our final security checks have been completed we anticipate the service will be restored by the weekend.”
A spokesperson for Telent, the company responsible for providing Wi-Fi at UK stations, said: “We are aware of the cybersecurity incident affecting the public Wi-Fi at Network Rail’s managed stations and are investigating with Network Rail and other stakeholders.”
US returns to Iran latest batch of ancient clay tablets
- The tablets were returned with President Masoud Pezeshkian who had attended the United Nations General Assembly in New York
Tehran: The United States has returned to Iran more than 1,000 clay tablets dating from the Achaemenid-era, official media said, reporting the sixth such handover of its kind.
Iran’s official IRNA news agency said Thursday evening that the tablets, 1,100 in all, were returned with President Masoud Pezeshkian who had attended the United Nations General Assembly in New York.
Found at the ruins of Persepolis, the capital of the Persian Achaemenid Empire which ruled from the 6th to 4th centuries BC in southern Iran, the repatriated tablets reflect how the ancient society was organized and its economy managed.
The tablets constitute records of “the rituals and the way of life of our ancestors,” said Ali Darabi, vice-minister of cultural heritage, cited by IRNA.
The tablets were returned to Iran by the University of Chicago’s Institute for the Study of Ancient Cultures, West Asia & North Africa, formerly known as the Oriental Institute.
A large portion of the tablets were returned in three batches between 1948 and 2004 before the rest were blocked by legal action until 2018.
More than 3,500 tablets were repatriated in September, 2023.
“The American side undertook to return the rest,” Darabi said, cited by Iran’s ISNA news agency.
Seven-year-old Indian boy killed in ritual sacrifice for school’s ‘good fortune’
- The boy was found dead in hostel bed, school director hid the body in the trunk of his car
- Indian officials lodged 103 cases of human sacrifice in the country between 2014 and 2021
LUCKNOW, India: Five people were arrested in India for the killing of a seven-year-old boy in an alleged ritual sacrifice aimed at bringing good fortune to a public school, police said Friday.
The victim was found dead in his bed on Sunday night at the hostel where he lived in the city of Hathras, not far from the country’s famed Taj Mahal.
Instead of alerting authorities, police said that school director Dinesh Baghel hid the body in the trunk of his car.
Police officer Himanshu Mathur told AFP that the boy was killed before a black magic ceremony conducted by Baghel’s father.
“The boy was meant to be taken to an altar as part of a ritual, but got killed before the ceremony could be completed,” he said.
Baghel and his father were arrested along with three other teachers at the school, Mathur added.
Mathur did not give further details on how the child had died and local media reports said the body was undergoing a post-mortem examination.
India’s National Crime Records Bureau lodged 103 cases of human sacrifice in the country between 2014 and 2021.
Ritual killings are usually conducted to appease deities and are more common in tribal and remote areas, where belief in witchcraft and the occult is widespread.
Last year police arrested five men for the 2019 murder of a 64-year-old woman who was killed and decapitated with a machete after visiting a temple in India’s remote northeast.
Police said the alleged ringleader had been conducting a religious rite to mark the anniversary of his brother’s death.
Harris heads to the US-Mexico border to face down criticism of her record
- Ahead of Harris’ visit, Trump predicted that the vice president would try to make her record look better but he said “it’s not possible”
PHOENIX: Vice President Kamala Harris on Friday will make her first visit to the US-Mexico border since becoming the Democratic presidential nominee to confront head-on one of her biggest vulnerabilities ahead of the November election.
She is scheduled to appear in Douglas, Arizona, as former President Donald Trump and his fellow Republicans pound Harris relentlessly over the Biden administration’s record on migration and fault the vice president for spending little time visiting the border during her time in the White House.
Immigration and border security are top issues in Arizona, the only battleground state that borders Mexico and one that contended with a record influx of asylum seekers last year. Trump has an edge with voters on migration, and Harris has gone on offense to improve her standing on the issue and defuse a key line of political attack for Trump.
In nearly every campaign speech she gives, Harris recounts how a sweeping bipartisan package aiming to overhaul the federal immigration system collapsed in Congress earlier this year after Trump urged top Republicans to oppose it.
“The American people deserve a president who cares more about border security than playing political games,” Harris plans to say, according to an excerpt of her remarks previewed by her campaign.
After the immigration legislation stalled, the Biden administration announced rules that bar migrants from being granted asylum when US officials deem that the southern border is overwhelmed. Since then, arrests for illegal border crossings have fallen.
Harris will also use her trip to remind voters about her work as attorney general of California in confronting crime along the border. During an August rally in Glendale, outside Phoenix, she talked about helping to prosecute drug- and people-smuggling gangs that operated transnationally and at the border.
“I prosecuted them in case after case, and I won,” Harris said then.
Florida Democratic Rep. Maxwell Frost, at 27 the youngest member of Congress and a leading advocate for Harris with young and Hispanic voters, said that in backing stricter enforcement, Harris is trying to “strike a chord” and “she understands that, right now, there is a crisis at the border. It’s a humanitarian crisis.”
“That’s why she’s pushing for more resources at the border so that we have an orderly process, which is really important,” Frost said. “But, the thing is, that’s where Donald Trump stops, is just at enforcement.”
The vice president’s trip to Douglas thrusts the issue of immigration into the brightest spotlight yet less than six weeks before Election Day.
Trump didn’t wait for her to arrive there before pushing back.
On Thursday, he delivered a lengthy diatribe from New York, declaring that “anything she says tomorrow, you know is a fraud because she was the worst in history at protecting our country. So she’ll try and make herself look a little bit better. But it’s not possible.”
A day earlier, at a rally in North Carolina, Trump told voters that “when Kamala speaks about the border, her credibility is less than zero.”
The Trump campaign has also countered with its own TV ads deriding the vice president as a failed “border czar.”
“Under Harris, over 10 million illegally here,” said one spot. However, estimates on how many people have entered the country illegally since the start of the Biden administration in 2021 vary widely.
Harris also never held the position of border czar. Instead, her assignment was to tackle the “root causes” of migration from three Central American nations — El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras — that were responsible for a significant share of border crossers.
The vice president took a long-term approach to an immediate problem, helping persuade multinational corporations and Latin American businesses to invest in the region. That, she argued, would create jobs and give locals more reasons to stay home rather than take the arduous trek north.
Still, Trump has continued to decry an “invasion” of border crossers.
Polls show that most American trust him to handle immigration more than they do Harris.
Douglas, where Harris will appear, is an overwhelmingly Democratic border town in GOP-dominated Cochise County, where the Republicans on the board of supervisors are facing criminal charges for refusing to certify the 2022 election results. Trump was in the area last month, using a remote stretch of border wall and a pile of steel beams to draw a contrast between himself and Harris on border security.
The town of 16,000 people has strong ties to its much larger neighbor, Agua Prieta, Mexico, and a busy port of entry that’s slated for a long-sought upgrade. Many locals are as concerned with making legal border crossings more efficient as they are with combatting illegal ones.
Veteran Ishiba to become Prime Minister after being elected as President of Japan’s ruling party
- Earlier, the two frontrunners had defeated seven other candidates to set up the final showdown
TOKYO: ISHIBA Shigeru, a veteran politician who has tried to become Prime Minister of Japan on several occasions, succeeded at the fifth attempt on Friday as he was elected President of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party.
Ishiba, 67, won a runoff with TAKAICHI Sanae, a conservative who was vying to become Japan’s first female leader, picking up 215 votes to 194.
Earlier, the two frontrunners had defeated seven other candidates to set up the final showdown.
“I will do my utmost to believe in the people, to speak the truth with courage and sincerity, and to make this country a safe and secure place where everyone can live with a smile on their face once again,” he said in a short speech.
Ishiba, a former defense minister with an unusually blunt attitude for a Japanese politician, is seen as more progressive than Takichi, a close ally of former Prime Minister ABE Shinzo.
The election took place after Prime Minister KISHIDA Fumio decided to step down following a finance scandal within the party that undermined his leadership.
Ishiba previously held the powerful post of Secretary-General of the LDP as well as the agriculture portfolio. He was supported in his bid to become a politician by controversial former Prime Minister TANAKA Kakuei, who stepped down after the Lockheed Scandal. Ishiba became an MP at the young age of 29, representing the district of Tottori, where his father had been governor.
As Defense Minister, Ishiba was regarded as a “hawk,” but has taken progressive stances on other issues, such as allowing a female to become Emperor. He has also suggested that Japan might need to carry out a preemptive strike against North Korea and hasn’t ruled out Japan pursuing the development of nuclear weapons.
