GENEVA: The UN political chief accused allies of Sudan’s warring military and paramilitary forces on Tuesday of “enabling the slaughter” that has killed more than 24,000 people and created the world’s worst displacement crisis.
“This is unconscionable,” Rosemary DiCarlo told the UN Security Council. “It is illegal, and it must end.”
She didn’t name the countries funding and providing weapons to Sudan’s military and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces, but she said they have a responsibility to press both sides to work for a negotiated settlement of the war.
Sudan plunged into conflict in mid-April 2023, when long-simmering tensions between its military and paramilitary leaders broke out in the capital, Khartoum, and spread to other regions, including western Darfur, which was wracked by bloodshed and atrocities in 2003. The UN recently warned that the country has been pushed to the brink of famine.
Last month, the RSF rampaged through the province of Gezira, attacking towns and villages, killing dozens of people and raping women and girls, according to the UN and local groups.
DiCarlo told the council that nongovernmental organizations say those attacks have been marked by “some of the most extreme violence in the last 18 months.”
She strongly condemned the RSF’s continuing attacks against civilians and said the UN is also “appalled by the attacks against civilians perpetrated by forces affiliated with the Sudanese Armed Forces in the Khartoum area.”
DiCarlo said it is long past time for the rival forces to come to the negotiating table, but she said both sides seem convinced they can win on the battlefield, and this is being fueled by outside support and weapons.
“As the end of the rainy season approaches, the parties continue to escalate their military operations, recruit new fighters and intensify their attacks,” she said. “This is possible thanks to considerable external support, including a steady flow of weapons into the country.”
Sudan has accused the United Arab Emirates of arming the RSF, which the UAE vehemently denies. The RSF has also reportedly received support from Russia’s Wagner mercenary group. And UN experts said in a report earlier this year that the RSF received support from Arab-allied communities and new military supply lines running through Chad, Libya and South Sudan.
As for the government, Gen. Abdel Fattah Burhan, who led a military takeover of Sudan in 2021, is a close ally of neighboring Egypt and its president, former army chief Abdel-Fattah El-Sisi. In February, Sudan’s foreign minister held talks in Tehran with his Iranian counterpart amid unconfirmed reports of drone purchases for government forces.
DiCarlo called for stepped up international action to protect civilians and promote talks.
She said UN special envoy for Sudan Ramtane Lamamra “is considering the next phase of his engagement with the warring parties, including another round of ‘proximity talks’ focused on commitments related to the protection of civilians.”
Sudan’s military boycotted proximity talks in Geneva, Switzerland, in July aimed at spurring humanitarian aid and starting peace talks despite international pleas that it take part. The RSF sent a delegation to Geneva.
DiCarlo said Lamamra will travel to Sudan and other places in the region in the coming weeks to meet key stakeholders to discuss a new attempt at talks.
Ramesh Rajasingham, coordination director in the UN humanitarian office, told the council the “shocking atrocities” in Gezira and fighting in West Darfur and North Darfur are causing more people to flee.
Since April 2023, more than 11 million people have fled their homes, with 3 million crossing into neighboring countries, he said. Last month, 58,000 people from the two Darfur states crossed into neighboring Chad, which is now hosting more than 710,000 refugees, he said.
Rajasingham said fighting continues to intensify around North Darfur’s capital, El Fasher — the only capital in Darfur that the RSF doesn’t hold. In July, hunger experts confirmed famine conditions in the Zamzam displacement camp nearby.
Rajasingham said a recent nutrition screening in the camp found about 34 percent of children malnourished including 10 percent who are severely malnourished.
“And we are now seeing troubling indications that deepening food insecurity is spreading to other areas, with reports in recent weeks of particularly alarming levels of hunger in South Kordofan,” he said.
“I just cannot put strongly enough how serious this situation is,” Rajasingham said, urging the international community to take immediate action.
Allies providing Sudan’s warring parties with weapons are ‘enabling the slaughter,’ UN official says
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Allies providing Sudan’s warring parties with weapons are ‘enabling the slaughter,’ UN official says
- Last month, the RSF rampaged through the province of Gezira, attacking towns and villages, killing dozens of people and raping women and girls, according to the UN and local groups
1 million migrants in the US rely on temporary protections that Trump could target
- People from 17 countries, including Haiti, Afghanistan, Sudan and recently Lebanon, are currently receiving such relief
- But President-elect Donald Trump promised mass deportations and suggested he would scale back the use of Temporary Protected Status
NEW YORK: Maribel Hidalgo fled her native Venezuela a year ago with a 1-year-old son, trudging for days through Panama’s Darien Gap, then riding the rails across Mexico to the United States.
They were living in the US when the Biden administration announced Venezuelans would be offered Temporary Protected Status, which allows people already in the United States to stay and work legally if their homelands are deemed unsafe. People from 17 countries, including Haiti, Afghanistan, Sudan and recently Lebanon, are currently receiving such relief.
But President-elect Donald Trump and his running mate, JD Vance, have promised mass deportations and suggested they would scale back the use of TPS that covers more than 1 million immigrants. They have highlighted unfounded claims that Haitians who live and work legally in Springfield, Ohio, as TPS holders were eating their neighbors’ pets. Trump also amplified disputed claims made by the mayor of Aurora, Colorado, about Venezuelan gangs taking over an apartment complex.
“What Donald Trump has proposed doing is we’re going to stop doing mass parole,” Vance said at an Arizona rally in October, mentioning a separate immigration status called humanitarian parole that is also at risk. “We’re going to stop doing mass grants of Temporary Protected Status.”
Hidalgo wept as she discussed her plight with a reporter as her son, now 2, slept in a stroller outside the New York migrant hotel where they live. At least 7.7 million people have fled political violence and economic turmoil in Venezuela in one of the biggest displacements worldwide.
“My only hope was TPS,” Hidalgo said. “My worry, for example, is that after everything I suffered with my son so that I could make it to this country, that they send me back again.”
Venezuelans along with Haitians and Salvadorans are the largest group of TPS beneficiaries and have the most at stake.
Haiti’s international airport shut down this week after gangs opened fire at a commercial flight landing in Port-Au-Prince while a new interim prime minister was sworn in. The Federal Aviation Administration barred US airlines from landing there for 30 days.
“It’s creating a lot of anxiety,” said Vania André, editor-in-chief for The Haitian Times, an online newspaper covering the Haitian diaspora. “Sending thousands of people back to Haiti is not an option. The country is not equipped to handle the widespread gang violence already and cannot absorb all those people.”
Designations by the Homeland Security secretary offer relief for up to 18 months but are extended in many cases. The designation for El Salvador ends in March. Designations for Sudan, Ukraine, and Venezuela end in April. Others expire later.
Federal regulations say a designation can be terminated before it expires, but that has never happened, and it requires 60 days’ notice.
TPS is similar to the lesser-known Deferred Enforcement Departure Program that Trump used to reward Venezuelan exile supporters as his first presidency was ending, shielding 145,000 from deportation for 18 months.
Attorney Ahilan T. Arulanantham, who successfully challenged Trump’s earlier efforts to allow TPS designations for several countries to expire, doesn’t doubt the president-elect will try again.
“It’s possible that some people in his administration will recognize that stripping employment authorization for more than a million people, many of whom have lived in this country for decades, is not good policy” and economically disastrous, said Arulanantham, who teaches at the University of California, Los Angeles School of Law, and helps direct its Center for Immigration Law and Policy. “But nothing in Trump’s history suggests that they would care about such considerations.”
Courts blocked designations from expiring for Haiti, Sudan, Nicaragua and El Salvador until well into President Joe Biden’s term. Homeland Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas then renewed them.
Arulanantham said he “absolutely” could see another legal challenge, depending on what the Trump administration does.
Congress established TPS in 1990, when civil war was raging in El Salvador. Members were alarmed to learn some Salvadorans were tortured and executed after being deported from the US Other designations protected people during wars in Bosnia-Herzegovina and Kuwait, from genocidal violence in Rwanda, and after volcanic eruptions in Montserrat, a British territory in the Caribbean, in 1995 and 1997.
A designation is not a pathway to US permanent residence or citizenship, but applicants can try to change their status through other immigration processes.
Advocates are pressing the White House for a new TPS designation for Nicaraguans before Biden leaves office. Less than 3,000 are still covered by the temporary protections issued in 1998 after Hurricane Mitch battered the country. People who fled much later under oppression from President Daniel Ortega’s government don’t enjoy the same protection from deportation.
“It’s a moral obligation” for the Biden administration, said Maria Bilbao, of the American Friends Service Committee.
Elena, a 46-year-old Nicaraguan who has lived in the United States illegally for 25 years, hopes Biden moves quickly.
“He should do it now,” said Elena, who lives Florida and insisted only her first name be used because she fears deportation. “Not in January. Not in December. Now.”
India’s toxic smog cuts off visibility in several areas
- Delhi pollution ranked in the ‘severe’ category for the second day in a row
- Pollution in New Delhi is likely to stay in the ‘severe’ category on Friday as well
NEW DELHI: Toxic smog blanketed northern India on Thursday, becoming too thick to see through in several places, as high levels of pollution combined with humidity, low wind speed, and a drop in temperature, officials said.
The city of Lahore in neighboring Pakistan ranked as the world’s most polluted in winter’s annual scourge across the region, worsened by dust, emissions, and smoke from fires burnt illegally in India’s farming states of Punjab and Haryana.
However, operations at New Delhi’s international airport were not affected by the smog, which weather officials expect to scatter during the day as breezes pick up.
Visibility remained at 300 m (980 ft), the airport operator, Delhi International Airport Limited (DIAL) said, while some airlines warned flights could be affected.
“Winter fog may impact flights” with Delhi, the city of Amritsar in Punjab, where authorities said visibility was zero, and the temple city of Varanasi in Uttar Pradesh, IndiGo said in a message on X.
New Delhi’s international airport diverted some flights on Wednesday.
The minimum temperature in Delhi fell to 16.1°Celsius (61°F) on Thursday from 17°C the previous day, weather officials said.
Its pollution ranked in the ‘severe’ category for the second day in a row, with a score of 430 on an index of air quality maintained by the top pollution panel that rates a score of zero to 50 as ‘good’.
Pollution in New Delhi is likely to stay in the ‘severe’ category on Friday as well, the earth sciences ministry said, worsening to ‘very poor’ later, or an index score in the range of 300 to 400.
The number of farm fires to clear fields of paddy stubble in preparation for the planting of wheat in north India has risen steadily this week to almost 2,300 on Wednesday from 1,200 on Monday, the ministry’s website showed.
In Pakistan, Lahore, the capital of the eastern province of Punjab, was rated the world’s most polluted city on Thursday, in live rankings kept by Swiss group IQAir. Authorities there have also battled hazardous air this month.
The province has already shut schools, halted some building work, banned most outdoor activity, and ordered early closures of some businesses in efforts to combat the problem.
Pakistan rover to join China’s Chang’E 8 mission to explore lunar surface in 2028
- Chang’E 8 mission is a robotic exploration of the lunar south pole, known for its challenging terrain, by China in 2028
- Pakistan’s rover will conduct scientific experiments such as lunar soil study and conduct tests for human presence
ISLAMABAD: Pakistan’s national space agency announced this week its rover will join China’s Chang’E 8 mission to explore the moon’s surface in 2028, describing the development as a “significant milestone” for the South Asian country.
The Chang’E 8 mission is a robotic exploration of the lunar south pole by China, expected to launch in 2028. The Pakistan Space and Upper Atmosphere Research Commission (SUPARCO), the country’s space program, said its rover will land on the lunar south pole in 2028 as part of the Chang’ E 8 mission. The south pole of the moon is known for its challenging terrain and potential scientific discoveries.
In May, Pakistan launched its first lunar satellite aboard China’s Chang’e-6 probe, which was tasked with landing on the far side of the moon that perpetually faces away from the Earth. China was the first country to make such an ambitious attempt.
“SUPARCO’s rover, with an approximate weight of 35 kilograms, will join China’s Chang’E 8 mission, which is part of the larger International Lunar Research Station (ILRS) project,” SUPARCO said in a statement on Wednesday.
“This collaboration marks a significant milestone for Pakistan’s space program, as SUPARCO’s indigenous rover will be part of the mission to explore the lunar surface.”
SUPARCO said the mission would involve scientific experiments such as lunar soil study, lunar surface mapping and testing new technologies for human presence on the moon. It highlighted that the rover, equipped with state-of-the-art scientific instruments, would play a pivotal role in collecting data.
“This collaboration with China highlights the strong bilateral relations between the two countries and their shared vision for space exploration,” it concluded.
After ODI series win, Rizwan to lead Pakistan in first T20I against Australia today
- Pakistan to play three-match series against Australia on Nov. 14, 16 and 18 in Brisbane, Sydney and Hobart
- Rizwan’s side defeated Australia 2-1 in three-match series last week to win first series in Australia since 2002
ISLAMABAD: Pakistan skipper Mohammad Rizwan will lead his side for the first time against Australia in a T20I format at Brisbane today, Thursday, after steering the green shirts to their first ever ODI series victory against the 2023 world champions since 2022.
Rizwan will become the 12th person to assume Pakistan’s T20 captaincy when he takes the field in Brisbane for the first T20I. Pakistan’s cricket team, encouraged by stellar performances from fast bowlers Haris Rauf, Shaheen Shah Afridi and Naseem Shah, beat Australia 2-1 in the three-match series that concluded last week.
After Thursday’s match, Pakistan will play against Australia in Sydney and Hobart on Nov. 16 and 18 respectively. Pakistani cricketers Jahandad Khan, Mohammad Abbas Afridi, Omair Bin Yousuf, Sahibzada Farhan, Sufiyan Moqim and Usman Khan joined the T20I squad in Brisbane on Nov. 11 after undergoing a five-day training camp in the southern port city of Karachi.
“We are confident after beating Australia in the ODI series but international cricket is always challenging so we aim to do things as better as we can going into this T20I series against Australia,” Rizwan said a day before the match.
“We have determined the roles of various players in the team and look forward to executing our best plans not just in this series but also in the upcoming white-ball fixtures against Zimbabwe and South Africa.”
The Pakistan captain said he wanted to keep all the players involved in the series motivated.
“Of course, the conditions have helped the bowlers on this tour so far but we also want to prove our mettle as a batting unit and I look forward to an exciting contest in the three matches,” he said.
Pakistan last faced Australia in a T20 contest in March 2022 when the two teams played a one-off T20I in Lahore, which Australia won. In Pakistan’s last T20I series in Australia in November 2019, the hosts won 2-0 after the opening match ended in a no result.
Josh Inglis will lead Australia in the T20I series while Tim David and Nathan Ellis have joined Australia’s T20I squad. Josh Philippe, meanwhile, has replaced the injured Cooper Connolly.
Pakistan: Mohammad Rizwan (captain – wicket-keeper), Salman Ali Agha (vice-captain), Arafat Minhas, Babar Azam, Haris Rauf, Haseebullah, Jahandad Khan, Mohammad Abbas Afridi, Muhammad Irfan Khan, Naseem Shah, Omair Bin Yousuf, Sahibzada Farhan, Shaheen Shah Afridi, Sufyan Moqim, Usman Khan
Philippines Marcos’ says will not block ICC if ex-president Duterte wants to be investigated
- Ferdinand Marcos Jr.: ‘The Philippines will not cooperate with the ICC but it has obligations with Interpol’
- ’If that’s the wish of (Duterte), we will not block ICC. We will not just cooperate’
MANILA: Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. said on Thursday his government would not block the International Criminal Court (ICC) if former leader Rodrigo Duterte wants to be investigated for alleged crimes against humanity in his anti-drugs crackdown.
The Philippines will not cooperate with the ICC but it has obligations with Interpol, Marcos told reporters.
“If that’s the wish of (Duterte), we will not block ICC. We will not just cooperate,” Marcos said. “But if he agrees to be investigated, it is up to him.”
The remarks follow a marathon congressional hearing on Wednesday during which Duterte, president from 2016-2022, refused to apologize for his role in the bloodshed and urged the ICC to start its investigation
All testimony provided by Duterte will be assessed to see their legal consequences, Marcos said.
Duterte unilaterally withdrew the Philippine as a member of the ICC in 2019 after it announced it had started a preliminary examination into thousands of killings in his anti-narcotics campaign. He questioned its authority to conduct an investigation.
Under Duterte, police said they killed 6,200 suspected dealers who had resisted arrest during their anti-drug operations.
But human rights groups believe the real toll to be far greater, with thousands more users and peddlers gunned down in mysterious circumstances by unknown assailants.
Authorities at the time said those were vigilante killings and drugs gangs eliminating rivals. Rights groups and some victims accuse police of systematic cover-ups and executions, which they deny.
