CALI: Countries at the UN COP16 summit on nature in Colombia on Friday approved a measure to create a permanent body for Indigenous peoples to consult on United Nations decisions on nature conservation.
The consultative body is considered a breakthrough in recognizing the role that Indigenous peoples play in conserving nature globally, including some of the most biodiverse areas of the planet, according to Indigenous and environmental advocates.
Nearly 200 countries convened in the city of Cali aiming to implement the 2022 Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework agreement, which aims to halt the rapid decline of nature by 2030.
The consultative body — which will also extend to local communities — will help to incorporate traditional knowledge and practices into conservation efforts.
Countries also agreed to adopt a measure that recognizes the role of people of African descent in caring for nature, which COP16 host Colombia said would grant such communities easier access to resources to fund their biodiversity projects and participate in global environmental discussions.
UN COP16 nature summit creates permanent body for Indigenous peoples
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UN COP16 nature summit creates permanent body for Indigenous peoples
- Nearly 200 countries convened in the city of Cali aiming to implement the 2022 Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework agreement
Despite bans, firecrackers sizzle across India for Diwali
- Firecracker bans have been difficult to implement, especially during Diwali, despite the threat of jail and fines
- While the bans didn’t stop people using firecrackers, factories that make the devices say sales have fallen this year
VANCH VILLAGE: Firecrackers are central to Diwali celebrations for millions of Indian Hindus and this year was no different even as some cities, including New Delhi, banned their use to curb some of the worst pollution levels in the world.
Diwali honors the victorious return of Lord Rama, one of Hindiusm’s most revered figures, and was celebrated in India on Thursday. It is also known as the festival of lights to symbolize the triumph of light over darkness, or good over evil, explaining why fireworks are so central to the celebrations.
“Firecrackers damage the environment, but they are a way of bringing good fortune to us,” said Yash Gadani, a local business owner, in Ahmedabad, a city in western Gujarat state.
While the bans didn’t stop people using firecrackers, factories that make the devices say sales have fallen this year as the rising cost of living, including higher prices for firecrackers, dampened demand.
In the village of Vanch, near Ahmedabad, thousands of workers covered in silver gunpowder make firecrackers by hand.
The industry is largely informal with lax safety standards. Nearly all of Vanch’s 10,000 residents are involved and workers are paid 500 rupees ($5.95) a day, often for 16-hour days.
“A couple of fires in factories as well as unseasonal rains have led to an increase in raw material prices,” Dipan Patel, who runs a unit in Vanch, said.
Firecracker bans have been difficult to implement, especially during Diwali, despite the threat of jail and fines.
New Delhi, a city of 20 million people, is the world’s most polluted capital. From October each year, air quality worsens as factors including the burning of farm stubble following the harvest, car fumes, and firecracker smoke get trapped over the city.
“The incidents of stubble burning are decreasing, but ... the smoke created by firecrackers needs to be controlled,” Delhi Environment Minister Gopal Rai told news agency ANI.
Former US cop convicted of civil rights abuse in Breonna Taylor case
- Brett Hankison is the first officer to be convicted of the four police federally charged over Breonna Taylor’s 2020 death
- It was the second time Hankison appeared in federal court: his first trial ended in a mistrial
WASHINGTON: A former Kentucky police officer was convicted in federal court Friday of a civil rights abuse in the killing of Breonna Taylor, whose death sparked police reform and racial justice protests across the United States in 2020.
Brett Hankison was convicted on one count of civil rights abuse, the Justice Department said in a statement.
Though Hankinson’s shots did not hit Taylor, a Black woman who died during a police raid on her home, he fired blindly through a bedroom window that had a curtain and blinds drawn.
Hankison is the first officer to be convicted of the four police federally charged over Taylor’s 2020 death. Two other officers remain charged with falsifying a search warrant affidavit and another pleaded guilty to charges around the search warrant.
However no one was ever charged for killing Taylor.
The deaths of Taylor, 26, and George Floyd, a 46-year-old Black man who was murdered by a white police officer in Minneapolis in May 2020, became the focus of a wave of mass protests in the United States and beyond against racial injustice and police brutality.
“The Justice Department will continue to vigorously defend the civil rights of every person in this country to be free from unlawful police violence,” assistant attorney general Kristen Clarke said in the Justice Department statement.
Taylor and her boyfriend, Kenneth Walker, were sleeping in her apartment around midnight on March 13, 2020 when they heard a noise at the door.
Walker, believing it was a break-in, fired his gun, wounding one police officer.
Police, who had obtained a controversial no-knock warrant to make a drug arrest, fired more than 30 shots back, mortally wounding Taylor.
Hankison argued he fired his gun to protect his fellow officers.
It was the second time Hankison appeared in federal court: his first trial ended in a mistrial.
Also on Friday, the jury found Hankison not guilty of violating Taylor’s neighbors’ rights, for firing through a sliding glass door, also with its blinds and curtain drawn.
Hankison will be sentenced in March next year, the Justice Department said.
Harris assails Trump for saying Liz Cheney should have rifles ‘shooting at her’
- Republican former Rep. Liz Cheney and her father, former Vice President Dick Cheney, have thrown their support behind Democrat Harris
- Trump has been using increasingly threatening rhetoric against his adversaries and talked of “enemies from within” undermining the country
MADISON, Wisconsin: Kamala Harris said Friday it was “disqualifying” for Donald Trump to say former Rep. Liz Cheney, one of the former president’s most prominent Republican critics, should have rifles “shooting at her” to see how she feels about sending troops to fight.
The Democratic vice president has campaigned extensively with Cheney, especially in the “blue wall” battleground states that make up her strongest path to victory on Tuesday, while Trump has been going after the former Wyoming congresswoman and her father, former Vice President Dick Cheney, over the Iraq war and US military interventions abroad.
Speaking to reporters after arriving in Madison, Wisconsin, Harris asked voters to consider who they’d prefer sitting in the Oval Office, driving the message she’s been emphasizing in the campaign’s closing week. Harris called Cheney “a true patriot” and said Trump “has increased his violent rhetoric.”
“His enemies list has grown longer. His rhetoric has grown more extreme,” Harris said. “And he is even less focused than before on the needs and the concerns and the challenges facing the American people.”
Trump and his allies say his comments are being misconstrued. They say he was arguing that Cheney is a “war hawk” but would be less supportive of using the military if she had to fight in wars herself.
He doubled down Friday, repeating the same imagery that drove the backlash.
“If you gave Liz Cheney a gun and put her into battle, facing the other side with the guns pointing at her, she wouldn’t have the courage and the strength or the stamina to even look the enemy in the eye,” Trump said during a rally in Warren, Michigan.
The Republican presidential candidate has been using increasingly threatening rhetoric against his adversaries and talked of “enemies from within” undermining the country. Some of his former senior aides and Harris have labeled him a fascist in response.
Cheney, who broke with Trump after a mob of his supporters stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, on Friday called the former president a “cruel, unstable man who wants to be a tyrant.”
Trump has ramped up his critiques of the Cheneys in swing state Michigan, where he is competing with Harris for the votes of Arab Americans opposed to US backing of Israel’s offensive in Gaza after Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack and its subsequent invasion of Lebanon.
At an event late Thursday in Arizona with former Fox News host Tucker Carlson, Trump was asked whether it was strange to see Cheney campaign against him. The former congresswoman has vocally opposed Trump since the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the US Capitol and endorsed Harris, joining the vice president at recent stops as they try to win over Republicans disaffected with Trump.
Trump called Cheney “a deranged person” and added: “But the reason she couldn’t stand me is that she always wanted to go to war with people. If it were up to her we’d be in 50 different countries.”
The former president continued: “She’s a radical war hawk. Let’s put her with the rifle standing there with nine barrels shooting at her. OK, let’s see how she feels about it. You know, when the guns are trained on her face.
“You know they’re all war hawks when they’re sitting in Washington in a nice building saying, oh gee, well, let’s send 10,000 troops right into the mouth of the enemy,” Trump said.
Cheney responded Friday in a post on X: “This is how dictators destroy free nations. They threaten those who speak against them with death. We cannot entrust our country and our freedom to a petty, vindictive, cruel, unstable man who wants to be a tyrant.”
One prominent Trump critic, former Republican congressman Joe Walsh, argued the former president’s comment had been taken out of context and that Trump was “NOT calling for Liz Cheney to be executed in front of a firing line.”
“In Trump’s typically stupid, ugly fashion, he’s trying to make a point about Cheney’s stance on war,” Walsh said on X.
Ian Sams, a spokesperson for the Harris campaign, suggested that Trump was “talking about sending a prominent Republican to the firing squad, and you have Vice President Harris talking about sending one to her Cabinet. This is the difference in this race.”
Trump said he was making a point about Cheney’s foreign policy record.
“She wanted to ... go to war with everybody because she, like Kamala, is a stupid person,” Trump said of Cheney in Michigan. “It’s easy for her to say she wants to start wars from the comfort of her nice home.”
Earlier, during a stop at a restaurant in nearby Dearborn, he called Cheney a “coward” and said “she’d be the first one to chicken out” if put on a battlefield. Women were not allowed to serve in direct combat roles until 2013, when Cheney was 47.
His spokesperson, Karoline Leavitt, said his comments were being taken out of context, calling the controversy “the latest fake media outrage.”
Throughout his campaign, Trump has been fixated on the Americans he believes have wronged or betrayed him. He has portrayed them as worse than the United States’ foreign adversaries, referring to them as “enemies from within.”
He’s threatened to use the federal government, including the military, to go after them. And he has repeatedly threatened “long term prison sentences” for those “involved in unscrupulous behavior” this election, including political operatives, donors and elected officials.
He said people he labeled as “the enemy from within” should be “very easily handled by, if necessary, by National Guard, or if really necessary, by the military.”
Some of Trump’s supporters have said his talk of vengeance is either justified or hyperbole.
Trump meets with Arab Americans in Dearborn, Michigan, but top community leaders skipped the event
- Metro Detroit is home to the nation’s largest concentration of Arab Americans, with a large chunk of them living in Dearborn
- The city is a Democratic bailiwick many supporters are upset with the Biden-Harris administration’s handling of the Israel-Hamas war
- But many community leaders say that while Harris has never earned their endorsement, they are still overwhelmingly opposed to Trump
LANSING, Michigan: Donald Trump on Friday met with Arab Americans in Dearborn, Michigan — the nation’s largest Arab-majority city — as the Republican presidential nominee works to court the potentially decisive group despite his history of Islamophobic rhetoric and policy.
Trump was greeted with cheers and applause from a modest crowd at The Great Commoner restaurant in one of his campaign’s final attempts to garner support in the key battleground state.
Metro Detroit is home to the nation’s largest concentration of Arab Americans, with a large chunk of them living in Dearborn. The city — which Democrat Joe Biden won by a 3-to-1 margin in 2020 — has been roiled by political turmoil, with many upset with the Biden-Harris administration’s handling of the Israel-Hamas war.
Democrats worry that anger over the war will lead traditionally loyal voters to shift their votes to Trump or third-party candidates like Jill Stein — or skip the top of the ballot altogether. This could prove pivotal in Michigan, a state both parties see as a toss-up.
While the Democratic presidential nominee, Vice President Kamala Harris, has been working through surrogates to ease community tensions, Trump’s visit marked the first by either candidate, according to a local leader, Osama Siblani. Earlier this year, Harris met with the city’s Democratic mayor, Abdullah Hammoud, though their discussion took place outside Dearborn.
The meeting with Arab supporters Friday follows Trump’s rally in Michigan last week, when he brought local Muslims up onstage with him. Trump has also received endorsements from two Democratic mayors of Muslim-majority cities.
“It is time to prioritize our nation’s best interests and foster lasting peace for all,” Albert Abbas, an Arab American, said Friday while standing next to Trump. “This current administration has failed miserably in all aspects of humanity.”
He added, “We look to a Trump presidency with hope and envisioning a time where peace flourishes, particularly in Lebanon and Palestine.”
While many Democratic leaders in the Arab community have not endorsed Harris, they are still deeply negative toward Trump and say his endorsements don’t reflect a majority of the community. They remember his call for a “total and complete shutdown” on Muslims entering the country and his travel restrictions on visitors from Muslim-majority countries. And some point out that Trump has suggested he would give Israel even more leeway to attack its rivals in the region.
Top community leaders in Dearborn, including Hammoud, declined an invitation to meet with Trump while he was in town. Many community leaders say that while Harris has never earned their endorsement, they are still overwhelmingly opposed to Trump.
Siblani, a prominent figure in the community who has engaged with Democratic leaders about ongoing tensions, noted that many “do not trust” Trump because of his past policies and remarks. However, he emphasized the significance of Trump’s visit to Dearborn.
“Kamala should have done this months ago,” Siblani said.
Harris defended her record on the issue Friday, telling reporters that she’s “proud to have significant amount of support from the Arab American community,” while adding that she continues to push for a ceasefire in Gaza and the release of hostages.
Israel invaded Gaza after Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attack and last month launched an invasion of Lebanon to suppress Hezbollah, the militia that has continuously launched rockets into Israeli territory. At least 43,000 people have died in Gaza, according to Gaza’s health ministry, which does not distinguish in its death toll between combatants and civilians.
Abbas said Trump allies had reached out to him several weeks ago about hosting Trump in Dearborn. Before hosting Trump, Abbas said he wanted to see a statement from Trump that he said showed Trump “has the intentions of ending the war and helping us rebuild Lebanon and helping the displaced and the injured.”
That statement came Wednesday, when Trump posted on X that he wanted to “stop the suffering and destruction in Lebanon.”
“I will preserve the equal partnership among all Lebanese communities,” Trump said on X. “Your friends and family in Lebanon deserve to live in peace, prosperity, and harmony with their neighbors, and that can only happen with peace and stability in the Middle East.”
Once Trump put out the statement, Abbas said he agreed to host the event.
Ethiopia ‘not interested in war over Somalia row’
ADDIS ABABA: Ethiopia’s Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed said he had “no interest in getting involved in a war” as tensions mount over his deal with a breakaway Somali region.
In January, land-locked Ethiopia signed an agreement with the separatist region of Somaliland to lease a stretch of its coastline for 50 years. The deal sparked outrage in Somalia, which has refused to accept Somaliland’s independence since it was declared in 1991.
Speaking to his parliament, Abiy described the deal as a “development agreement” based on its long-standing need for maritime access.
“We have demanded access to the sea, which is what it is all about. We will not take offensive action, but we will defend ourselves effectively if something happens,” he said.
Somalia has described Ethiopia’s deal with Somaliland as “illegal.”
It expelled Ethiopia’s ambassador in April.
