VALENCIA, Spain: Thousands of Spaniards marched in the eastern city of Valencia on Saturday to demand the resignation of the regional president in charge of the emergency response to last week’s catastrophic floods that left more than 200 dead and others missing.
Some protesters clashed with riot police in front of Valencia’s city hall, where the protesters started their march to the seat of the regional government. Police used batons to beat them back.
Regional leader Carlos Mazón is under immense pressure after his administration failed to issue flood alerts to citizens’ cellphones until hours after the flooding started on the night of Oct. 29.
Many marchers held up homemade signs or chanted “Mazón Resign!” Others carried signs with messages like “You Killed Us!”
Mazón, of the conservative Popular Party, is also being criticized for what people perceive as the slow and chaotic response to the natural disaster. Thousands of volunteers were the first boots on the ground in many of the hardest hit areas on Valencia’s southern outskirts. It took days for officials to mobilize the thousands of police reinforcements and soldiers that the regional government asked central authorities to send in.
In Spain, regional governments are charged with handling civil protection and can ask the national government in Madrid, led by the Socialists, for extra resources.
Mazón has defended his handling of the crisis saying that its magnitude was unforeseeable and that his administration didn’t receive sufficient warnings from central authorities.
But Spain’s weather agency issued a red alert, the highest level of warning, for bad weather as early as 7:30 a.m. on Tuesday morning as the disaster loomed.
Some communities were flooded by 6 p.m. It took until after 8 p.m. for Mazón’s administration to send out alerts to people’s cellphones.
The death toll stood at 220 victims on Saturday, with 212 coming in the eastern Valencia region, as the search for bodies goes on.
Thousands more lost their homes and streets are still covered in mud and debris 11 days since the arrival of a tsunami-like wave following a record deluge.
Thousands of Spaniards demand the resignation of Valencia leader for bungling flood response
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Thousands of Spaniards demand the resignation of Valencia leader for bungling flood response
- Regional leader Carlos Mazón is under immense pressure after his administration failed to issue flood alerts to citizens’ cellphones until hours after the flooding started
- Many marchers held up homemade signs or chanted “Mazón Resign!” Others carried signs with messages like “You Killed Us!”
Former Russian minister found guilty of breaching UK sanctions
- Dmitrii Ovsiannikov, 48, was found guilty of six counts of evading sanctions between February 2023 and January 2024
- He became the first person to be convicted for breaching the United Kingdom’s Russia sanctions
LONDON: A former Russian minister and ally of President Vladimir Putin was found guilty of breaching sanctions along with his brother by a London court Wednesday, in the first such UK case.
Dmitrii Ovsiannikov, 48, was found guilty of six counts of evading sanctions between February 2023 and January 2024, becoming the first person to be convicted for breaching the United Kingdom’s Russia sanctions.
His brother Alexei Owsjanikow, 47, was convicted of two counts of breaching sanctions, while Dmitrii’s wife, Ekaterina Ovsiannikova, 47, was cleared of all charges by Southwark Crown Court.
The brothers are due to be sentenced at a later date.
The former minister breached restrictions imposed for his role in Russian-occupied Crimea by opening a UK bank account, receiving nearly £80,000 ($100,000) from his wife, and a car from his brother.
When the bank realized he was on the UK sanctions list, it froze the account.
Ovsiannikov was appointed by Putin as mayor of Crimea’s largest city, Sevastopol, two years after the peninsula’s annexation by Russia from Ukraine in 2014. He previously served as Russia’s deputy minister for industry and trade.
As a result, the European Union imposed financial sanctions on him in 2017, which the UK maintained after leaving the EU.
While the EU lifted its sanctions in February 2023, the UK ones still apply, banning him from traveling to and accessing funds in the country.
Ovsiannikov traveled from Russia to Turkiye in August 2022 and applied online for a UK passport, which was granted despite the sanctions, as his father was born in the UK.
He arrived in the UK to join his wife and two younger children in February 2023.
His brother was convicted for paying more than £40,000 in school fees for Ovsiannikov’s two youngest children to attend a school in London.
However, he was cleared of three counts of sanctions breach involving arranging car insurance for his brother and buying a Mercedes-Benz.
“We are resolutely committed to increasing pressure on Putin, his cronies, and all those who aid his barbaric war in Ukraine,” said Foreign Office sanctions minister Stephen Doughty.
Graeme Biggar, head of the National Crime Agency, said: “These convictions demonstrate not only that designated individuals are on our radar, but so are those who enable breaches of the regulations.”
Israel’s ambassador is ejected from African Union event
- The pan-African body has strong ties to the Palestinians, often inviting their leaders to address major gatherings
- South Africa has brought a case against Israel at the ICJ, accusing it of genocide during its military operations in Gaza
ADDIS ABABA: Israel’s ambassador to Ethiopia was ejected from an African Union event this week and has described it as outrageous.
An Israeli official on Wednesday told The Associated Press the ejection from the annual event commemorating the 1994 Rwanda genocide was at the request of AU Commission Chairperson Mahmoud Youssouf. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to a journalist.
“The new African Union Commission chairperson chose to introduce anti-Israel political elements,” the ambassador, Avraham Nigusse, asserted Tuesday on social media. It “reveals a fundamental misunderstanding of the histories of both the Rwandan and Jewish peoples,” he added, saying he had been invited by Rwanda.
The spokesperson for Youssouf, a former foreign minister of Djibouti, did not respond to requests for comment. Youssouf started his four-year AU term in February.
A diplomat at the AU on Wednesday said Israel’s ambassador was removed because they no longer had observer status at the continental body based in Ethiopia’s capital, Addis Ababa. The diplomat spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to journalists.
Israel regained observer status at the AU in 2021, two decades after it was revoked over its conflict with the Palestinians, as Jerusalem sought wider ties with African nations. However, the observer status was suspended again in 2023 pending review by a committee of African heads of state.
They have yet to deliver a verdict. In 2023, a senior Israeli diplomat was evicted from the AU’s annual summit for not having proper accreditation.
The pan-African body has strong ties to the Palestinians, often inviting their leaders to address major gatherings.
Israel last month shattered a ceasefire and renewed its military offensive in Gaza. The territory’s Health Ministry says more than 50,000 Palestinians have been killed since the war with Hamas started with the militant group’s Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel.
South Africa, a prominent AU member, has brought a case against Israel at the International Court of Justice, accusing it of genocide during its military operations in Gaza. Israel has denied the allegations and called them outrageous.
Trump pauses tariffs on most nations for 90 days, raises taxes on Chinese imports
- S&P 500 stock index jumped nearly 7 percent after the announcement
- Trump says pause is because more than 75 Countries had reached out to the US for trade talks
WASHINGTON: Facing a global market meltdown, President Donald Trump on Wednesday abruptly backed down on his tariffs on most nations for 90 days, but raised the tax rate on Chinese imports to 125 percent.
It was seemingly an attempt to narrow what had been an unprecedented trade war between the US and most of the world to a showdown between the US and China. The S&P 500 stock index jumped nearly 7 percent after the announcement, but the precise details of Trump’s plans to ease tariffs on non-China trade partners were not immediately clear.
Trump posted on Truth Social that because “more than 75 Countries” had reached out to the US government for trade talks and have not retaliated in meaningful way “I have authorized a 90 day PAUSE, and a substantially lowered Reciprocal Tariff during this period, of 10 percent, also effective immediately.”
The 10 percent tariff was the baseline rate for most nations that went into effect on Saturday. It’s meaningfully lower than the 20 percent tariff that Trump had set for goods from the European Union, 24 percent on imports from Japan and 25 percent on products from South Korea. Still, 10 percent would represent an increase in the tariffs previously charged by the US government.
The announcement came after the global economy appeared to be in open rebellion against Trump’s tariffs as they took effect Wednesday, a signal that the US president was not immune from market pressures.
Business executives were warning of a potential recession caused by his policies, some of the top US trading partners are retaliating with their own import taxes and the stock market is quivering after days of decline.
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said the walk back was part of some grand negotiating strategy by Trump.
“President Trump created maximum negotiating leverage for himself,” she said, adding that the news media “clearly failed to see what President Trump is doing here. You tried to say that the rest of the world would be moved closer to China, when in fact, we’ve seen the opposite effect the entire world is calling the United States of America, not China, because they need our markets.”
But market pressures had been building for weeks ahead of Trump’s move.
Particularly worrisome was that US government debt had lost some of its luster with investors, who usually treat Treasury notes as a safe haven when there’s economic turbulence. Government bond prices had been falling, pushing up the interest rate on the 10-year US Treasury note to 4.45 percent. That rate eased after Trump’s reversal.
Gennadiy Goldberg, head of US rates strategy at TD Securities, said before the announcement that markets wanted to see a truce in the trade disputes.
“Markets more broadly, not just the Treasury market, are looking for signs that a trade de-escalation is coming,” he said. “Absent any de-escalation, it’s going to be difficult for markets to stabilize.”
John Canavan, lead analyst at the consultancy Oxford Economics, noted that while Trump said he changed course due to possible negotiations, he had previously indicated that the tariffs would stay in place.
“There have been very mixed messages on whether there would be negotiations,” Canavan said. “Given what’s been going on with the markets, he realized the safest thing to do is negotiate and put things on pause.”
Presidents often receive undue credit or blame for the state of the US economy as their time in the White House is subject to financial and geopolitical forces beyond their direct control.
But by unilaterally imposing tariffs, Trump is exerting extraordinary influence over the flow of commerce, creating political risks and pulling the market in different directions based on his remarks and social media posts. There still appear to be 25 percent tariffs on autos, steel and aluminum, with more imports set to be tariffed in the weeks ahead.
On CNBC, Delta Air Lines CEO Ed Bastian said the administration was being less strategic than it was during Trump’s first term. His company had in January projected it would have its best financial year in history, only to scrap its expectations for 2025 due to the economic uncertainty.
“Trying to do it all at the same time has created chaos in terms of being able to make plans,” he said, noting that demand for air travel has weakened.
Before Trump’s reversal, economic forecasters say his second term has had a series of negative and cascading impacts that could put the country into a downturn.
“Simultaneous shocks to consumer sentiment, corporate confidence, trade, financial markets as well as to prices, new orders and the labor market will tip the economy into recession in the current quarter,” said Joe Brusuelas, chief economist at the consultancy RSM.
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has previously said it could take months to strike deals with countries on tariff rates, and the administration has not been clear on whether the baseline 10 percent tariffs imposed on most countries will stay in place. But in an appearance on “Mornings with Maria,” Bessent said the economy would “be back to firing on all cylinders” at a point in the “not too distant future.”
He said there has been an “overwhelming” response by “the countries who want to come and sit at the table rather than escalate.” Bessent mentioned Japan, South Korea, and India. “I will note that they are all around China. We have Vietnam coming today,” he said.
What’s not yet known is what Trump does with the rest of his tariff agenda. In a Tuesday night speech, he said taxes on imported drugs would happen soon.
Pressure builds on Afghans fearing arrest in Pakistan
- According to the UN refugee agency, more than 24,665 Afghans have left Pakistan since April 1, 10,741 of whom were deported
KARACHI: Convoys of Afghans pressured to leave Pakistan are driving to the border, fearing the “humiliation” of arrest, as the government’s crackdown on migrants sees widespread public support.
Islamabad wants to deport 800,000 Afghans after canceling their residence permits — the second phase of a deportation program which has already pushed out around 800,000 undocumented Afghans since 2023.
According to the UN refugee agency, more than 24,665 Afghans have left Pakistan since April 1, 10,741 of whom were deported.
“People say the police will come and carry out raids. That is the fear. Everyone is worried about that,” Rahmat Ullah, an Afghan migrant in the megacity Karachi told AFP.
“For a man with a family, nothing is worse than seeing the police take his women from his home. Can anything be more humiliating than this? It would be better if they just killed us instead,” added Nizam Gull, as he backed his belongings and prepared to return to Afghanistan.
Abdul Shah Bukhari, a community leader in one of the largest informal Afghan settlements in the coastal city, has watched multiple buses leave daily for the Afghan border, about 700 kilometers away.
The maze of makeshift homes has grown over decades with the arrival of families fleeing successive wars in Afghanistan. But now, he said “people are leaving voluntarily.”
“What is the need to cause distress or harassment?” said Bukhari.
Ghulam Hazrat, a truck driver, said he reached the Chaman border crossing with Afghanistan after days of police harassment in Karachi.
“We had to leave behind our home. We were being harassed every day.”
In Peshawar, the capital of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, on the Afghan border, police climb mosque minarets to order Afghans to leave: “The stay of Afghan nationals in Pakistan has expired. They are requested to return to Afghanistan voluntarily.”
Police warnings are not only aimed at Afghans, but also at Pakistani landlords.
“Two police officers came to my house on Sunday and told me that if there are any Afghan nationals living here they should be evicted,” Farhan Ahmad told AFP.
Human Rights Watch has slammed “abusive tactics” used to pressure Afghans to return to their country, “where they risk persecution by the Taliban and face dire economic conditions.”
In September 2023, hundreds of thousands of undocumented Afghans poured across the border into Afghanistan in the days leading up to a deadline to leave, after weeks of police raids and the demolition of homes.
After decades of hosting millions of Afghan refugees, there is widespread support among the Pakistani public for the deportations.
“They eat here, live here, but are against us. Terrorism is coming from there (Afghanistan), and they should leave; that is their country. We did a lot for them,” Pervaiz Akhtar, a university teacher, told AFP at a market in the capital Islamabad.
“Come with a valid visa, and then come and do business with us,” said Muhammad Shafiq, a 55-year-old businessman.
His views echo the Pakistani government, which for months has blamed rising violence in the border regions on “Afghan-backed perpetrators” and argued that the country can no longer support such a large migrant population.
However, analysts have said the deportation drive is political.
Relations between Kabul and Islamabad have soured since the Taliban returned to power in 2021.
“The timing and manner of their deportation indicates it is part of Pakistan’s policy of mounting pressure on the Taliban,” Maleeha Lodhi, the former permanent representative of Pakistan to the UN told AFP.
“This should have been done in a humane, voluntary and gradual way.”
Beijing rejects Ukraine claim ‘many’ Chinese fighting for Russia
- Chinese foreign ministry said it was 'absolutely groundless' to suggest many Chinese citizens were fighting in Ukraine
- Beijing was verifying relevant information with Kyiv while Moscow declined to comment on the matter
KYIV: China on Wednesday rejected Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s claim that many Chinese citizens were fighting for Russia, calling it “absolutely groundless.”
Zelensky said Tuesday that Kyiv had captured two Chinese citizens fighting alongside Russian forces, and that there was evidence “many more Chinese citizens” were fighting with Moscow.
Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Lin Jian told a press conference it was “absolutely groundless” to suggest many Chinese citizens were fighting in Ukraine.
“The Chinese government has always asked its citizens to stay away from areas of armed conflict (and) avoid involvement in armed conflicts in any form,” he said.
He added that Beijing was verifying relevant information with Kyiv.
The Kremlin declined to comment on the matter.
China presents itself as a neutral party in the conflict and says it is not sending lethal assistance to either side, unlike the United States and other Western nations.
But it is a close political and economic partner of Russia, and NATO members have branded Beijing a “decisive enabler” of Moscow’s offensive, which it has never condemned.
“The Chinese side’s position on the issue of the Ukraine crisis is clear and unequivocal, and has won widespread approval from the international community,” Lin said.
“The Ukrainian side should correctly view China’s efforts and constructive role in pushing for a political resolution to the Ukraine crisis.”
Zelensky told reporters on Tuesday that Ukrainian troops had captured the two Chinese citizens fighting with Russian forces in the Donetsk region.
The media outlet Ukrainska Pravda, citing the Ukrainian army, reported that one of the captives had paid $3,480 to an intermediary in China to join the Russian army because he wanted to receive Russian citizenship.
The captive, who is now cooperating with the Ukrainian authorities, also said he was trained in the Russian-occupied Lugansk region as part of a group of Chinese nationals, some of whom had legal issues back home, according to Ukrainska Pravda.
Kyiv released a video of one of the alleged Chinese prisoners showing a man wearing military fatigues with his hands bound.
He mimicked sounds from combat and uttered several words in Mandarin during an apparent interview with a Ukrainian official not pictured.
A senior Ukrainian official told AFP they were captured “a few days ago,” adding that there might be more of them.
The official said the prisoners were likely Chinese citizens who were enticed into signing a contract with the Russian army, rather than being sent by Beijing.
