Thousands of pro-Palestinians march in UK against Trump’s Gaza plan

Protesters hold placards and wave Palestinian flags as they take part in a Pro-Palestinian march in central London, on February 15, 2025, organised by the Palestine Solidarity Campaign. (AFP)
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Updated 16 February 2025
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Thousands of pro-Palestinians march in UK against Trump’s Gaza plan

  • Protesters held banners that read, “Stand up to Trump” and “Mr Trump, Canada is not your 51st state. Gaza is not your 52nd”

LONDON: Thousands of pro-Palestinian demonstrators marched through central London to the United States embassy on Saturday to protest against President Donald Trump’s proposal that the US “take over” Gaza.
Waving Palestinian flags and placards saying “Hands off Gaza,” several thousand people walked from Whitehall in Westminster over the River Thames to the embassy in Nine Elms.
Earlier this month, Trump stunned the world when he suggested the US could redevelop the war-ravaged Gaza Strip into the “Riviera of the Middle East.”
His proposal envisages resettling Palestinians elsewhere, with no plan for them ever to return.




Pro-Palestinian demonstrators wearing ultra-Orthodox Jewish clothing participate in a march in opposition to U.S President Donald Trump's plan to displace Palestinians from Gaza and "take over" the territory, in London, Britain February 15, 2025. (REUTERS)

Other western leaders and the Arab world have widely condemned the idea.
Protesters held banners that read, “Stand up to Trump” and “Mr Trump, Canada is not your 51st state. Gaza is not your 52nd.”
“I think it’s completely immoral and illegal and also impractical and absurd,” 87-year-old Holocaust survivor Stephen Kapos told AFP.
“You simply cannot deport two million people, especially that the surrounding countries already said that they wouldn’t take them, not out of the goodness of their heart but because it would destabilize those countries.
“So it’s not going to happen but it does a lot of damage simply stating that as an endgame,” he added.
The march, organized by the Palestine Solidarity Campaign (PSC), was the 24th major pro-Palestinian protest in Britain’s capital since Hamas’s October 7, 2023 attack on Israel.
A heavy police presence was deployed as officers kept protesters away from a counter-march called “Stop the Hate,” where participants waved Israeli flags.
Hamas’s attack resulted in the deaths of 1,211 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally of Israeli official figures.
Israel’s retaliatory campaign has killed at least 48,264 people in Gaza, the majority of them civilians, according to figures from the health ministry in the Hamas-run territory that the United Nations considers reliable.
On Saturday, Hamas released three Israeli hostages in exchange for hundreds of Palestinian inmates freed by Israel, completing the latest swap of a fragile Gaza truce deal.
 

 


Pakistan test fires ballistic missile as tensions with India spike after Kashmir gun massacre

Updated 59 min 33 sec ago
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Pakistan test fires ballistic missile as tensions with India spike after Kashmir gun massacre

ISLAMABAD: Pakistan test-fired Saturday a ballistic missile as tensions with India spiked over last week’s deadly attack on tourists in the disputed Kashmir region.
The surface-to-surface missile has a range of 450 kilometers (about 280 miles), the Pakistani military said.
The launch of the Abdali Weapon System was aimed at ensuring the “operational readiness of troops and validating key technical parameters,” including the missile’s advanced navigation system and enhanced manoeuvrability features, according to a statement from the military.
Pakistan’s President Asif Ali Zardari and Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif congratulated the scientists, engineers and those behind the successful missile test.


Russia declares state of emergency at port after Ukrainian drone attack on Novorossiysk

Updated 03 May 2025
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Russia declares state of emergency at port after Ukrainian drone attack on Novorossiysk

  • There was no immediate comment from Ukraine

MOSCOW: The mayor of the Russian port city of Novorossiysk declared a state of emergency on Saturday after he said a Ukrainian drone attack had damaged residential buildings and injured at least five people, including two children.
Andrei Kravchenko, the mayor, announced his decision on his official Telegram account which showed him inspecting the damage to apartment buildings and giving orders to officials.
Kravchenko said one of the injured people, a woman, was in hospital in a serious situation.
There was no immediate comment from Ukraine, whose air force said Russia had attacked Ukraine overnight with 183 drones and two ballistic missiles.


US worker safety agency notifies employees of firings

Updated 03 May 2025
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US worker safety agency notifies employees of firings

WASHINGTON: The Trump administration sent termination notices late on Friday to employees of a worker health and safety agency that provides research and services for coal miners, firefighters and others, despite appeals by a lawmaker from Trump’s Republican Party to preserve its programs.
Employees of the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health received reduction-in-force notices that said the job losses were necessary to reshape the workforce of the Department of Health and Human Services, according to a copy of the notices reviewed by Reuters.
Nearly all NIOSH employees were placed on administrative leave in February but around 40 who worked on coal-mining and firefighter safety were asked to return temporarily to work several days ago, the union for the agency’s employees said. At least two of those employees have now been notified of termination.
US Senator Shelley Moore Capito, a Republican from West Virginia, had lobbied Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to restore the programs, including the coal-focused work of its Morgantown, West Virginia, office.
The Department of Health and Human Services, which oversees NIOSH, did not immediately respond to a request for comment after regular business hours. A spokesperson earlier this week said NIOSH’s functions would join the new Administration for a Healthy America, alongside multiple agencies. It was not clear whether any of the terminated employees would be transferred elsewhere.
Reuters reported last month that the halting of NIOSH’s key services ended vital health and safety programs for coal miners, such as mobile health and lung screenings, and a program to relocate miners afflicted with black lung disease to less dusty parts of a mine.
There has been a resurgence of black lung disease in the last decade, including among young coal miners. At the same time, President Donald Trump has led a high-profile campaign to revive coal mining and use, which had been declining in the US. 


Lives on hold in India’s border villages with Pakistan

Updated 03 May 2025
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Lives on hold in India’s border villages with Pakistan

  • Relations between the neighbors have plummeted after India accused Pakistan of backing an attack in disputed Kashmir region
  • Islamabad has rejected the charge of aiding gunmen who killed 26 people, with both countries since exchanging diplomatic barbs

SAINTH: On India’s heavily fortified border with arch-rival Pakistan, residents of farming villages have sent families back from the frontier, recalling the terror of the last major conflict between the rival armies.
Those who remain in the farming settlement of Sainth, home to some 1,500 people along the banks of the broad Chenab river, stare across the natural division between the nuclear-armed rivals fearing the future.
“Our people can’t plan too far ahead,” said Sukhdev Kumar, 60, the village’s elected headman.
“Most villagers here don’t invest beyond a very basic house,” he added.
“For who knows when a misdirected shell may fall from the other side and ruin everything?”
Relations between the nuclear-armed neighbors have plummeted after India accused Pakistan of backing the worst attack on civilians in Indian-administered Kashmir in years.
Indian police have issued wanted posters for three men accused of carrying out the April 22 attack at Pahalgam — two Pakistanis and an Indian — who they say are members of the Pakistan-based Lashkar-e-Taiba group, a UN-designated terrorist organization.
Islamabad has rejected the charge of aiding gunmen who killed 26 people, with both countries since exchanging diplomatic barbs including expelling each other’s citizens.
India’s army said Saturday its troops had exchanged gunfire with Pakistani soldiers overnight along the de facto border with contested Kashmir — which it says has taken place every night since April 24.
Muslim-majority Kashmir has been divided between India and Pakistan since their independence from British rule in 1947, with both governing part of the disputed territory separately and claiming it in its entirety.
Sainth, with its open and lush green fields, is in the Hindu-majority part of Indian-run Jammu and Kashmir.
Security is omnipresent.
Large military camps dot the main road, with watchtowers among thick bushes.
Kumar said most families had saved up for a home “elsewhere as a backup,” saying that only around a third of those with fields remained in the village.
“Most others have moved,” he said.
The region was hit hard during the last major conflict with Pakistan, when the two sides clashed in 1999 in the high-altitude Himalayan mountains further north at Kargil.
Vikram Singh, 40, who runs a local school, was a teenager at the time.
He remembers the “intense mortar shelling” that flew over their heads in the village — with some exploding close by.
“It was tense then, and it is tense now,” Singh told AFP.
“There is a lot to worry since the attack at Pahalgam... The children are scared, the elderly are scared — everyone is living in fear.”
International pressure has been piled on both New Delhi and Islamabad to settle their differences through talks.
The United States has called for leaders to “de-escalate tensions,” neighboring China urged “restraint,” with the European Union warning Friday that the situation was “alarming.
On the ground, Singh seemed resigned that there would be some fighting.
“At times, we feel that war must break out now because, for us, it is already an everyday reality,” he said.
“We anyways live under the constant threat of shelling, so, maybe if it happens, we’d get to live peacefully for a decade or two afterwards.”
There has been a flurry of activity in Trewa, another small frontier village in Jammu.
“So far, the situation is calm — the last cross-border firing episode was in 2023,” said Balbir Kaur, 36, the former village head.
But the villagers are preparing, clearing out concrete shelters ready for use, just in case.
“There were several casualties due to mortar shelling from Pakistan in the past,” she said.
“We’ve spent the last few days checking our bunkers, conducting drills, and going over our emergency protocols, in case the situation worsens,” she added.
Kaur said she backed New Delhi’s stand, with Prime Minister Narendra Modi vowing “to punish every terrorist and their backer” and to “pursue them to the ends of the Earth.”
Dwarka Das, 65, a farmer and the head of a seven-member family, has lived through multiple India-Pakistan conflicts.
“We’re used to such a situation,” Das said.
“During the earlier conflicts, we fled to school shelters and nearby cities. It won’t be any different for us now.”


Woman dies when a bomb she is carrying explodes in the Greek city of Thessaloniki, police say

Updated 03 May 2025
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Woman dies when a bomb she is carrying explodes in the Greek city of Thessaloniki, police say

ATHENS: A woman was killed early Saturday in the northern Greek city of Thessaoloniki when a bomb she was carrying exploded in her hands, police said.
The 38-year-old woman was apparently was carrying the bomb to place it outside a nearby bank around 5 a.m., police said.
Several storefronts and vehicles were damaged by the explosion.
The woman was known to authorities after taking part in several past robberies, according to police, who said they are investigating her possible ties to extreme leftist groups.