World

Veteran Al Jazeera journalist Shireen Abu Aqleh was killed by Israeli troops Wednesday as she covered a raid on Jenin refugee camp in the occupied West Bank, the network and Palestinian witnesses said. 

Al Jazeera said its journalist had been shot dead “deliberately” and “in cold blood” by Israeli troops but Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett said it was likely Palestinian gunfire had killed the reporter.

Abu Aqleh, 51, a Palestinian Christian, was a prominent figure in the channel’s Arabic news service. 

The Israeli army confirmed it had conducted an operation in Jenin refugee camp early Wednesday, but firmly denied it had deliberately targeted a reporter. 

“The (army) of course does not aim at journalists,” a military official told AFP.

A statement from Al Jazeera said: “In a blatant murder, violating international laws and norms, the Israeli occupation forces assassinated in cold blood Al Jazeera’s correspondent in Palestine.” 

It called on the international community to hold the Israeli occupation forces accountable for their “intentional targeting and killing” of the journalist.

Foreign Minister Yair Lapid said Israel was seeking a “joint pathological investigation into the sad death of journalist Shireen Abu Aqleh”.

“Journalists must be protected in conflict zones and we all have a responsibility to get to the truth,” Lapid added. 

The prime minister said Palestinian gunmen in the camp were likely responsible for Abu Aqleh’s death.

“According to the information we’ve gathered, it appears likely that armed Palestinians — who were indiscriminately firing at the time — were responsible for the unfortunate death of the journalist,” Bennett said in a statement. 

Another Al Jazeera journalist, producer Ali al-Samudi, was wounded in the incident, the broadcaster added.

The fatal shooting comes nearly a year after an Israeli air strike destroyed a Gaza building that housed the offices of Al Jazeera and news agency AP.

Israel has said the building also hosted offices for key members of the Hamas Islamist group, which controls the Israeli-blockaded Gaza strip. 

– ‘Palestinian gunmen’? –

The army said there was an exchange of fire between suspects and security forces and that it was “investigating the event and looking into the possibility that journalists were hit by the Palestinian gunmen.”

Producer Samudi said there were no Palestinian fighters in the area where Abu Aqleh was shot. 

“If there were resistance fighters, we would not have gone into the area,” he said in testimony posted online, stating that the Israelis “fired towards us”.

An AFP photographer at the scene said Abu Aqleh was wearing a press flak jacket when she was shot. The photographer reported that Israeli forces were firing in the area and then saw Abu Aqleh’s body lying on the ground. 

In recent weeks, the army has stepped up operations in Jenin, an historic flashpoint in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Several of the assailants blamed for deadly attacks on Israelis in recent weeks were from the area. 

The army said that during its operation in the camp, “massive fire was shot toward Israeli forces by tens of armed Palestinian gunmen”.

People in the camp “also hurled explosive devices toward the soldiers, endangering their lives. The soldiers responded with fire toward the sources of the fire and explosive devices. Hits were identified.”

– Rising tensions –

The Palestinian Authority called Abu Aqleh’s killing an “execution,” and part of an Israeli effort to obscure the “truth” about its occupation of the West Bank.

Hamas called the incident “a premeditated murder.” 

Qatar’s assistant foreign minister Lolwah Al Khater said Israeli troops had killed Abu Aqleh “by shooting her in the face” in what she called an act of “state sponsored Israeli terrorism”.

Tensions have risen in recent months as Israel has grappled with a wave of attacks which has killed at least 18 people since March 22, including an Arab-Israeli police officer and two Ukrainians.

A total of 30 Palestinians and three Israeli Arabs have died during the same period, according to an AFP tally, among them perpetrators of attacks and those killed by Israeli security forces in West Bank operations.

The casing of a cluster munition stood upright like a fence pole not far from a team of Ukrainian medics rushing a bleeding soldier from the eastern front.

One of the doctors reassured the wincing fighter that the tourniquet being squeezed just above his knee did not mean he was about to lose a part of his leg.

Another peered back at the smoke rising above one of the biggest battles of Russia’s methodical assault on its pro-Western neighbour and cursed.

Some soldiers formed a protective circle around the scrambling paramedics and took down coordinates over their walkie-talkies for the next medical evacuation from the front.

“They come in waves,” volunteer fighter Mykola said of the Russians’ repeated attempts to push south past a strategic river near a rural settlement called Bilogorivka.

“They tried over the weekend and we pushed them back. Now they are trying again. It goes back and forth. First they hit us, then we hit them.”

– Pockmarked with holes –

Neither Moscow nor Kyiv is a signatory to a 2008 convention banning the use of bombs and rockets that spread small but deadly munitions over larger areas such as fields or city blocks.

Their use in Ukraine highlights the brutal and often indiscriminate nature of the weapons falling from the sky on civilians and soldiers in the two-and-a-half-month war.

The casing from the cluster munition was lying near the last checkpoint leading to Bilogorivka — a village whose fall would help the Russians launch an assault on Ukraine’s eastern administrative capital of Kramatorsk.

Ukraine has been pouring in forces in what appears to be an increasingly desperate effort to hold the line.

Two besieged cities just east of Bilogorivka — Lysychansk and Severodonetsk — are a deserted but still contested war zone that the Russians might claim any day.

What happens inside Bilogorivka is nearly impossible to verify because both the settlement and its surrounding roads are being bombed and shelled incessantly with munitions of various type.

But the earth shakes around it and Ukrainian soldiers’ faces darken when the settlement is mentioned by name.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said 60 people died when Russia bombed a school sheltering 90 villagers over the weekend.

Soldiers emerging from Bilogorivka were unable to confirm the claim because the school was in a northern area under the Russians’ control.

“We went in and this is how we come out,” a volunteer fighter who uses the nom de guerre Leto (“summer”) said next to a green van pockmarked with holes the size of a child’s fist.

“We’re preparing to go back in again,” he said at a rear base used by some east Ukrainian units.

“What can you do — an order is an order. But we have no cover. We have no mortar guns. I do not know how our unit is going to fight.”

– ‘A little bit scary’ –

Surging military morale and a national outpouring of support for the army have been instrumental to Ukraine’s ability to first defend Kyiv and then stall Russia’s advance across the east.

This may be harder to maintain as the death toll mounts and Russia’s superior strength in numbers and military muscle starts to translate into lasting gains.

The fog of war and military secrecy make it difficult to estimate how many soldiers both sides have lost in the battles.

But medics treating the wounded soldier near the cluster munition fired at the Bilogorivka checkpoint think it is far higher than what Ukraine suffered at the start of a Kremlin-backed insurgency in 2014.

“In all, if you look at the statistics, it is a little bit scary,” volunteer doctor Yuriy Kozhumyaka said after helping lift the wounded soldier into an ambulance waiting a relatively safe distance away from the shellfire.

“You must be prepared for that. But it is shame,” the 37-year-old art instructor-turned-doctor said.

Fellow volunteer paramedic Andriy Kukhar sounded a similarly sombre note.

“Many die,” the 38-year-old dentist by training said. “We cannot do anything to help many guys and they die. But this is war. We know this.”

Cambodian fishermen on the Mekong River got a shock when they inadvertently hooked an endangered giant freshwater stingray four metres long and weighing 180 kilos, scientists said on Wednesday.

The female leviathan, one of Southeast Asia’s largest and rarest species of fish, was caught by accident last week in Stung Treng province when it swallowed a smaller fish that had taken a baited hook.

An international team of experts on the US-funded Wonders of the Mekong project worked with the fishermen to unhook the ray before weighing and measuring it and returning it unharmed to the river.

The giant Mekong is a crucial habitat for a vast array of species large and small, but project leader Zeb Hogan, a fish biologist from the University of Nevada, said the river’s underwater ecosystem was poorly understood.

“They are unseen worlds, underappreciated and out of sight,” he said in a statement issued by his university.

More than 1,000 fish species call the Mekong home and the stingray is not the only giant lurking in the muddy waters — the giant catfish and giant barb also reach up to three metres long and 270 kilos in weight.

The study group said in the statement that the remote location where the ray was caught has pools up to 80 metres deep and could harbour even bigger specimens.

But they also warned that underwater video footage showed plastic waste even in the deepest stretches of the Mekong, along with “ghost nets” — abandoned by fishers but still able to snare fish. 

Environmentalists have long voiced concerns about dam building along the Mekong River that will destroy fish stocks

The famous waterway starts in China and twists south through parts of Thailand, Laos, Myanmar, Cambodia and Vietnam, feeding 60 million people through its basin and tributaries.

Ferdinand Marcos Junior visited the grave of his dictator father hours after his thumping victory in the Philippine presidential election, his team said Wednesday, posting photos of the intimate moment on social media.

Marcos senior died in exile in 1989, but his remains were only interred in the national heroes’ cemetery in Manila in 2016 after President Rodrigo Duterte defied public outcry to order their burial with full military honours. 

Marcos Jr, popularly known as “Bongbong”, won Monday’s election by a landslide after a decades-long effort to whitewash the family’s past and return them to the presidential palace.

In 1986, the patriarch was toppled from power and the family chased out of the country by a popular revolt involving millions of Filipinos fed up with his brutal and corrupt 20-year rule.

Hours after initial counting showed Marcos Jr with an unassailable lead over his main rival Leni Robredo, he visited his father’s tomb.

“The young Marcos is grateful to the Filipino people for giving him the landslide victory and to his father, who have (sic) been his inspiration throughout his life and taught him the value and meaning of true leadership,” the Marcos team said in a statement, describing the son as the “president-in-waiting”.

Photos posted on official Marcos social media accounts showed him standing before the oversized tomb with his head slightly bowed and covering his eyes with his right hand, as if crying.  

He left a large bouquet of white lilies, carnations and baby’s breath on the grave, which is flanked by a bust and a black and white portrait of the dictator.

Another photo showed Marcos Jr sitting in a chair before the tomb as if in contemplation. 

Before being interred in Manila, Marcos senior’s remains were housed for decades in an air-conditioned crypt in the family’s ancestral home in their stronghold of Ilocos Norte.

Marcos Jr has described his father as a “political genius” and portrayed his decades in power as a golden era of peace and economic development.

In reality, he carried out a brutal crackdown on dissent and oversaw massive corruption and the plunder of billions of dollars from state coffers that left the country impoverished. 

Assisted by a massive social media misinformation campaign targeting young Filipinos with no direct experience of his father’s rule, Marcos Jr was swept to a historic win.

He won more than half of the votes in the election, making him the first presidential candidate to win an outright majority since his father was ousted. 

His team has said he will claim victory after the vote counting has finished. A fully certified tally is not expected before May 28.

The overwhelming win has devastated Robredo’s supporters, who saw the election as a make-or-break moment for the country’s fragile democracy.

Many of them went door to door across the vast archipelago in a months-long effort to convince voters to support the liberal candidate for the top job. 

After six bloody years of authoritarian rule by Duterte, activists and religious leaders fear Marcos Jr could further degrade human rights and weaken democratic checks and balances.

Marcos’s running mate Sara Duterte, the daughter of the outgoing president, also won the vice presidency, which is elected separately, in a landslide.

Their success at the ballot box means the two offspring of authoritarian leaders will hold the highest elected positions for the next six years. 

A prolonged summer heatwave in Australia left 91 percent of the Great Barrier Reef’s coral damaged by bleaching, according to a new government monitoring report.

It was the first time on record the reef had suffered bleaching during a La Nina weather cycle, when cooler temperatures would normally be expected.

The Reef Snapshot report offered new details of the damage caused by the fourth “mass bleaching” the world’s largest coral reef system has experienced since 2016, which was first revealed in March.

“Climate change is escalating, and the Reef is already experiencing the consequences of this,” the report warned.

The Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority, which published the report late Tuesday, conducted extensive surveys of the World Heritage-listed reef between September 2021 and March 2022.

It found that after waters began to warm last December, all three major regions of the reef experienced bleaching — a phenomenon that occurs when coral is stressed and expels brightly coloured algae living in it.

– ‘Higher mortality’ –

Although bleached corals are still alive, and moderately affected sections of the reef may recover, “severely bleached corals have higher mortality rates”, the report said.

Of the 719 reefs surveyed, the report said 654 — or 91 percent — showed some level of coral bleaching.

The report was published 10 days before Australia’s May 21 federal election, in which climate change policy has emerged as a key issue for voters.

Australia’s 2019-2020 “Black Summer” bushfires and deadly east coast floods that swept away cars and engulfed homes this year have highlighted the country’s growing climate risks.

Prime Minister Scott Morrison has, however, resisted calls to make the country’s 2030 emissions reduction target more ambitious, while vowing to mine and export coal for as long as there are buyers.

The Labor opposition has promised to boost renewables and commit to a 43 percent cut in greenhouse gases by 2030 but made no mention of phasing out coal burning. 

– ‘Not normal’ –

“Although bleaching is becoming more and more frequent, this is not normal, and we should not accept that this is the way things are,” Australian Marine Conservation Society campaigner Lissa Schindler said.

“Both major political parties need to face up to the fact that their climate goals are not enough for the Reef.”

During Australia’s election campaign, there has been another force in favour of climate action at play, with more than 20 climate-focused independent candidates running for key seats.

These independents — mostly women — are being financed to stand for election by a fund, Climate 200, set up by activist-philanthropist Simon Holmes a Court.

Most of them are standing in urban, conservative seats against ruling Liberal Party candidates, seeking to sway voters who want stronger climate action. 

Polls indicate a few conservative-held seats may be at risk, including Treasurer Josh Frydenberg’s.

Greenpeace activist Martin Zavan, meanwhile, said fossil fuels were to blame for the coral bleaching.

“Whoever leads the Australian government after the election must have the courage to stand up to the vested interests of the fossil fuel industry and drastically cut emissions by replacing coal and gas with clean energy,” he said.

Next month, the United Nations’ World Heritage Committee will decide whether to list the reef as “in danger”.

Australia was able to avoid a threatened UN downgrade of the reef’s World Heritage status in 2015 by creating a “Reef 2050” plan and pouring billions of dollars into protection.

Elon Musk said on Tuesday that as owner of Twitter he would lift the ban on Donald Trump, contending that kicking the former US president off the platform “alienated a large part of the country.”

Musk’s endorsement of a Trump return to the global messaging platform triggered fears among activists that Musk would “open the floodgates of hate.”

“I would reverse the permanent ban,” the billionaire said at a Financial Times conference, noting that he doesn’t own Twitter yet, so “this is not like a thing that will definitely happen.”

Trump has stated publicly that he would not come back to Twitter if permitted, opting instead to stick with his own social network, which has failed to gain traction.

The Tesla chief’s $44-billion deal to buy Twitter must still get the backing of shareholders and regulators, but he has voiced enthusiasm for less content moderation and “time-outs” instead of bans.

Trump was booted from Twitter and other online platforms after supporters fired up by his tweets and speech alleging election fraud attacked the US Capitol on January 6, 2021 in a deadly bid to stop Joe Biden from being certified as the victor in the US presidential election.

“I think that was a mistake because it alienated a large part of the country, and did not ultimately result in Donald Trump not having a voice,” Musk said.

Musk maintained that permanent bans undermine trust in Twitter as an online town square where everyone can be heard.

“Elon Musk would open the floodgates of hate and disinformation on Twitter,” said Media Matters for America president Angelo Carusone.

“Whether Elon Musk is a fully red-pilled right-wing radical or just someone very interested in enabling right-wing extremists, the result is the same.”

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), however, backed Musk’s perspective.

“Elon Musk’s decision to re-platform President Trump is the right call,” said organization director Anthony Romero.

“Like it or not, president Trump is one of the most important political figures in this country, and the public has a strong interest in hearing his speech.”

Romero pointed out that some of Trump’s controversy causing tweets have wound up being evidence in lawsuits against the former president by the ACLU and others.

Musk reasoned that permanent bans at Twitter should be rare, and reserved for accounts that are spam, scams or run by software “bots.”

“That doesn’t mean that somebody gets to say whatever they want to say,” Musk said.

“If they say something that is illegal or otherwise just destructive to the world, then there should be a perhaps a timeout, a temporary suspension, or that particular tweet should be made invisible or have very limited attraction.”

– Ad boycott? –

Activist groups have called on Twitter advertisers to boycott the service if it opens the gates to abusive and misinformative posts with Musk as its owner.

“Under Musk’s management, Twitter risks becoming a cesspool of misinformation, with your brand attached,” said an open letter signed by more than two dozen groups including Media Matters, Access Now and Ultraviolet.

Twitter makes most of its revenue from ads, and that could be jeopardized by advertisers’ reaction to content posted on the platform, the San Francisco-based tech firm said in a filing with US regulators.

“We believe that our long-term success depends on our ability to improve the health of the public conversation on Twitter,” the company said in a regulatory filing.

Efforts toward that goal include fighting abuse, harassment, and spam, Twitter told regulators.

“Elon Musk owes the world a better explanation of how the platform will deal with the likes of Trump than an edict that his ouster was wrong because it proved unpopular in some places,” said Suzanne Nossel, chief of human rights nonprofit PEN America.

The Knight Foundation said that a survey it commissioned found that only 41 percent of adults in the United States believe Trump was deprived of free expression rights by social media platforms that banned him.

“People died because of Donald Trump’s Twitter account,” said Muslim Advocates senior policy counsel Sumayyah Waheed.

“I’m terrified of what else would be allowed under Musk’s watch.”