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Tag: Humanitarian crises

  • In a first, doctors treat fatal genetic disease before birth

    In a first, doctors treat fatal genetic disease before birth

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    A toddler is thriving after doctors in the U.S. and Canada used a novel technique to treat her before she was born for a rare genetic disease that caused the deaths of two of her sisters.

    Ayla Bashir, a 16-month-old from Ottawa, Ontario, is the first child treated as fetus for Pompe disease, an inherited and often fatal disorder in which the body fails to make some or all of a crucial protein.

    Today, she’s an active, happy girl who has met her developmental milestones, according to her father, Zahid Bashir and mother, Sobia Qureshi.

    “She’s just a regular little one-and-a-half year old who keeps us on our toes,” Bashir said. The couple previously lost two daughters, Zara, 2 ½, and Sara, 8 months, to the disease. A third pregnancy was terminated because of the disorder.

    In a case study published Wednesday in the New England Journal of Medicine, doctors describe an international collaboration during the COVID-19 pandemic that led to the treatment that may have saved Ayla’s life – and expanded the field of potential fetal therapies. The outlook for Ayla is promising but uncertain.

    “It holds a glimmer of hope for being able to treat them in utero instead of waiting until damage is already well-established,” said Dr. Karen Fung-Kee-Fung, a maternal-fetal medicine specialist at The Ottawa Hospital who gave the treatment and delivered Ayla.

    Fung-Kee-Fung was following a new treatment plan developed by Dr. Tippi MacKenzie, a pediatric surgeon and co-director of the Center for Maternal-Fetal Precision Medicine at the University of California, San Francisco, who shared her research after the pandemic prevented Ayla’s mother from traveling for care.

    “We were all motivated to make this happen for this family,” MacKenzie said.

    Doctors have treated fetuses before birth for three decades, often with surgeries to repair birth defects such as spina bifida. And they’ve given blood transfusions to fetuses through the umbilical cord, but not medicines. In this case, the crucial enzymes were delivered through a needle inserted through the mother’s abdomen and guided into a vein in the umbilical cord. Ayla received six biweekly infusions that started at about 24 weeks of gestation.

    “The innovation here wasn’t the drug and it wasn’t accessing the fetal circulation,” said Dr. Pranesh Chakraborty, a metabolic geneticist at Childrens Hospital of Eastern Ontario, who has cared for Ayla’s family for years. “The innovation was treating earlier and treating while still in utero.”

    The unusual partnership also involved experts at Duke University in Durham, N.C., which has led research on Pompe disease, and University of Washington in Seattle.

    Babies with Pompe disease are often treated soon after birth with replacement enzymes to slow devastating effects of the condition, which affects fewer than 1 in 100,000 newborns. It is caused by mutations in a gene that makes an enzyme that breaks down glycogen, or stored sugar, in cells. When that enzyme is reduced or eliminated, glycogen builds up dangerously throughout the body.

    In addition, the most severely affected babies, including Ayla, have an immune condition in which their bodies block the infused enzymes, eventually stopping the therapy from working. The hope is that Ayla’s early treatment will reduce the severity of that immune response.

    Babies with Pompe disease have trouble feeding, muscle weakness, floppiness and, often, grossly enlarged hearts. Untreated, most die from heart or breathing problems in the first year of life.

    In late 2020, Bashir and Qureshi had learned they were expecting Ayla and that prenatal tests showed she, too, had Pompe disease.

    “It was very, very scary,” recalled Qureshi. In addition to the girls who died, the couple have a son, Hamza, 13, and a daughter, Maha, 5, who are not affected.

    Both parents carry a recessive gene for Pompe disease, which means there’s a 1 in 4 chance that a baby will inherit the condition. Bashir said their decision to proceed with additional pregnancies was guided by their Muslim faith.

    “We believe that what will come our way is part of what’s meant or destined for us,” he said. They have no plans for more children, they said.

    Chakraborty had learned of MacKenzie’s early stage trial to test the enzyme therapy and thought early treatment might be a solution for the family.

    The treatment could be “potentially very significant,” said Dr. Brendan Lanpher, a medical geneticist at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn., who was not involved in the research.

    “This is a progressive disease that builds up over time, so every day a fetus or baby has it, they’re accumulating more of the material that affects muscle cells.”

    Still, it’s too early to know whether the protocol will become accepted treatment, said Dr. Christina Lam, interim medical director of biochemical genetics at the University of Washington and Seattle Children’s Hospital in Seattle.

    “It’s going to take some time to really be able to establish the evidence to definitively show that the outcomes are better,” she said.

    Ayla receives drugs to suppress her immune system and weekly enzyme infusions that take five to six hours — a growing challenge for a wiggly toddler, her mother said. Unless a new treatment emerges, Ayla can expect to continue the infusions for life. She is developing normally — for now. Her parents say every milestone, such as when she started to crawl, is especially precious.

    “It’s surreal. It amazes us every time,” Qureshi said. “We’re so blessed. We’ve been very, very blessed.”

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    The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Department of Science Education. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

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  • Editorial Roundup: United States

    Editorial Roundup: United States

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    Excerpts from recent editorials in the United States and abroad:

    Nov. 6

    The Washington Post on the humanitarian crisis in Haiti

    Haiti is in the throes of one of the most dire emergencies in its crisis-prone recent history, one increasingly likely to wash up on U.S. shores in the form of desperate migrants. Its government, which is integral to the problem, last month requested international military intervention, and United Nations Secretary General António Guterres agreed that “armed action” is urgently required. In response, the United States, Canada and other key powers have dithered — even as the Biden administration is reported to be preparing to house waves of Haitian refugees at the U.S. military base at Guantánamo Bay. The situation is untenable.

    In the absence of boots on the ground, there are few good means for halting a humanitarian and security meltdown in Haiti that has paralyzed fuel supplies, endangered fresh water and food delivery, triggered a cholera outbreak, and intensified what the United Nations has called “emergency” hunger threatening nearly one-fifth of the country’s 11.5 million people. Still, even without deploying police or soldiers, the Biden administration and its key allies have options for acting more forcefully and should move swiftly.

    The most immediate priority is to break an inland blockade by armed gangsters that for nearly two months has sealed off the country’s main fuel supply depot in Port-au-Prince, the capital. The cutoff, allegedly in protest of fuel price increases owing to the government slashing subsidies, has resulted in drastic consequences — shuttered gas stations, schools, hospitals and shops, as well as severe shortages of food and medicine. The United States and Canada have sent armored cars and other supplies to help Haiti’s police break the blockade, but those shipments have been inadequate.

    Washington could also flex its diplomatic muscle with Haitian authorities to encourage sustained negotiations between the unelected government of Prime Minister Ariel Henry and a broad opposition association of Haitian civic and nonprofit groups, known as the Montana Accord. The groups correctly argue that Mr. Henry’s administration is illegitimate and ineffectual. (Mr. Henry himself has been implicated in last year’s unsolved assassination of President Jovenel Moïse.)

    The Accord, named for a hotel in Port-au-Prince, has proposed a transitional period leading to elections, which are now impossible given the pandemonium that grips the nation. While the groups lack the means to organize elections, let alone confront the gangs, they at least enjoy a modicum of popular support, which the current government lacks. They deserve a role in determining Haiti’s future; Washington could give them that.

    Simultaneously, the United States should extend temporary protected status, set to expire in February, for tens of thousands of Haitians already living and working legally in the United States, thereby shielding them from the prospect of deportation to a country gripped by pandemonium.

    Without armed intervention, no prospective relief will be easy to achieve in a country that has dissolved into chaotic violence and florid dysfunction. However, to acquiesce to the status quo, as the Biden administration has done since the Moïse assassination, is to be morally complicit in an unfolding humanitarian tragedy. Washington cannot continue to pay lip service to resolving the crisis in Haiti. It can and should use its considerable influence to relieve the suffering of millions in the hemisphere’s poorest country.

    ONLINE: https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/11/06/haiti-government-crisis-us-intervention/

    ———

    Nov. 3

    The New York Times on Democracy and political violence in the United States

    Over the past five years, incidents of political violence in the United States by right-wing extremists have soared. Few experts who track this type of violence believe things will get better anytime soon without concerted action. Domestic extremism is actually likely to worsen. The attack on Paul Pelosi, the husband of the speaker of the House of Representatives, was only the latest episode, and federal officials warn that the threat of violence could continue to escalate after the midterm elections.

    The embrace of conspiratorial and violent ideology and rhetoric by many Republican politicians during and after the Trump presidency, anti-government anger related to the pandemic, disinformation, cultural polarization, the ubiquity of guns and radicalized internet culture have all led to the current moment, and none of those trends are in retreat. Donald Trump was the first American president to rouse an armed mob that stormed the Capitol and threatened lawmakers. Taken together, these factors form a social scaffolding that allows for the kind of endemic political violence that can undo a democracy. Ours would not be the first.

    Yet the nation is not powerless to stop a slide toward deadly chaos. If institutions and individuals do more to make it unacceptable in American public life, organized violence in the service of political objectives can still be pushed to the fringes. When a faction of one of the country’s two main political parties embraces extremism, that makes thwarting it both more difficult and more necessary. A well-functioning democracy demands it.

    The legal tools to do so are already available and in many cases are written into state constitutions, in laws prohibiting private paramilitary activity. “I fear that the country is entering a phase of history with more organized domestic civil violence than we’ve seen in 100 years,” said Philip Zelikow, the former executive director of the 9/11 Commission, who pioneered legal strategies to go after violent extremists earlier in his career. “We have done it in the past and can do so again.”

    As the range of violence in recent years shows, the scourge of extremism in the United States is evident across the political spectrum. But the threat to the current order comes disproportionately from the right.

    Of the more than 440 extremism-related murders committed in the past decade, more than 75% were committed by right-wing extremists, white supremacists or anti-government extremists. The remaining quarter stemmed from a range of other motivations, according to a study by the Anti-Defamation League. There were 29 extremist-related homicides last year: 26 committed by right-wing extremists, two by Black nationalists and one by an Islamic extremist. The Department of Homeland Security has warned again and again that domestic extremism motivated by white supremacist and other right-wing ideologies is the country’s top terrorism threat … the threat of violence has begun to have a corrosive effect on many aspects of public life: the hounding of election workers until they are forced into hiding, harassment of school board officials, threats to judges, armed demonstrations at multiple statehouses, attacks on abortion clinics and anti-abortion pregnancy centers, bomb threats against hospitals that offer care to transgender children, assaults on flight attendants who try to enforce COVID rules and the armed intimidation of librarians over the books and ideas they choose to share.

    Meanwhile, threats against members of Congress are more than ‌10 times as numerous as they were just five years ago … There are four interrelated trends that the country needs to address: the impunity of organized paramilitary groups, the presence of extremists in law enforcement and the military, the global spread of extremist ideas and the growing number of G.O.P. politicians who are using the threat of political violence not just to intimidate their opponents on the left but also to wrest control of the party from those Republicans who are committed to democratic norms …. Preserving the health of our democracy is as much a matter of preventive care as it is the application of a tourniquet. A promising place to start combating political violence is with extremist paramilitary groups.

    While the majority of such violence in the United States comes at the hands of people not strictly affiliated with these groups — the man who is accused of attacking Mr. Pelosi, for example, echoed their hatred of Nancy Pelosi, but it’s not clear whether the man had links to any of them — they are nonetheless often the vanguard of violent episodes, such as the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol, and they are active in spreading their brands of ideological extremism online.

    They go by many names: the Oath Keepers, the Proud Boys, the Boogaloo Bois, the Three Percenters, the Wolverine Watchmen. Some fancy themselves militias, but they aren’t, according to the law. These groups have been around in their modern incarnations since the end of the Vietnam War, and their popularity has waxed and waned. In fact, ‌political violence is as old as the nation itself; right-wing frustrations with democratic outcomes have birthed militia movements throughout American history. Most notably, the Ku Klux Klan has spent over a century and a half, from Reconstruction to the present day, terrorizing Black Americans and others in service of political ends.

    Today, levels of political violence are high and climbing. In 2020 the Center for Strategic and International Studies found that violence from all political ideologies reached its highest level since the group began collecting data in 1994. And extremist paramilitary groups have again become a common presence in American life, on college campuses, at public protests and at political rallies‌.

    ONLINE: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/03/opinion/political-violence-extremism.html

    ———

    Nov. 4

    The Wall Street Journal on the labor market

    The Labor Department reported Friday that the economy created 261,000 new jobs in October, which beat Wall Street’s expectations. Upward revisions for September added to the evidence that the job market is holding up despite rising interest rates.

    But hold the confetti. The labor market also showed the beginning of some cracks, as the unemployment rate rose to 3.7% from 3.5% and 328,000 fewer people were employed. The labor participation rate fell for the second month in a row, and unemployment ticked up for nearly every demographic group except teenagers. This evidence suggests that while employers are still hiring, the pace of hiring is slowing.

    The upshot is that the job market is headed for harder time as the Federal Reserve’s interest-rate increases continue. Companies are already reporting job freezes and in some cases layoffs, especially in the tech industry where stock prices have been hammered this year.

    Elon Musk sent sacking notices to 3,700 Twitter employees on Friday, about half the workforce. Amazon said it is pausing new hires for the corporate workforce, citing the “unusual macro-economic environment.” Lyft is laying off workers, as is CNN. The larger story is that companies are putting up the storm windows in case there’s a recession coming in 2023, which there may be.

    The mixed jobs news is unlikely to deter the Federal Reserve from its drive to restrain inflation. Average hourly earnings rose at a healthy 4.7% rate in the last year, which is good news for workers but not for inflation. Wage pressure continues across the economy, especially for workers who leave for new jobs. The Atlanta Fed’s tracker has wage growth growing at an annual rate of 6.3% in the three months through September. Workers should enjoy the gains while they can because there are rougher days ahead as the Fed moves to fix Washington’s great inflation mistake.

    ONLINE: https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-contradictory-labor-market-jobs-report-october-hiring-labor-force-participation-unemployment-11667600385

    ———

    Nov. 2

    China Daily on U.S. trade with China

    Australian Resources Minister Madeleine King hit the nail on the head in an interview on Tuesday when she described the hope of some Western countries that they could soon end their reliance on China for rare earths as a “pipe dream”.

    This is because China holds the world’s largest reserves of the mineral resources and accounts for around 80% of global production of rare earths, which are needed for a wide variety of products, ranging from smartphones to aerospace technology to wind turbines.

    Yet rather than calling for joint international efforts to ensure the safety and stability of the industry and supply chains for the good of all countries, King insinuated that Australia and the United States should cooperate to boost investments in the minerals in order to break China’s monopoly, as it is a country “that has seen this need coming and made the most of it.”

    But despite being the world’s largest trading and manufacturing country, China has never and will not seek to weaponize trade or its dominant position in certain fields such as rare earths’ production. Rather, it continues to advocate and uphold free trade and economic globalization as a means to counter protectionism and the “decoupling” trend initiated by Washington that hurts the interests of all nations.

    King’s remarks highlight the dilemma that Australia finds itself in when it comes to its economic and trade ties with China. On the one hand, China has long been Australia’s biggest trading partner for both the export and import of goods. On the other hand, Canberra is willingly playing the role of Washington’s vanguard in the Asia-Pacific in its strategy to contain China, which means it has to toe the U.S. line even at the expense of its own interests.

    In the latest move, the U.S. is reportedly preparing to deploy up to six nuclear-capable B-52 bombers in northern Australia to send “a strong message to adversaries.” Australia had earlier joined the U.S. in banning Chinese telecommunications giant Huawei citing national security concerns, and has had running spats with China on such issues as human rights and the South China Sea after Washington began hyping up its groundless allegations of human rights abuses and coercive behavior on the part of China.

    China is doing its best to play its part in keeping the world economy and international trade stable. Other countries likewise need to shoulder their due responsibilities to ensure the normal functioning of relevant trade and economic cooperation, rather than trying to use the economy and trade as political tools or weapons, which only destabilizes the global economic system to the detriment of all.

    ONLINE: https://www.chinadaily.com.cn/a/202211/02/WS6362583ca310fd2b29e7fee6.html

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  • Two-thirds of South Sudan at risk of severe hunger in 2023 – UN

    Two-thirds of South Sudan at risk of severe hunger in 2023 – UN

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    The food shortages are worse than at the height of a civil war in 2013 and 2016, United Nations agencies said in a joint statement.

    As many as 7.8 million people in South Sudan, two-thirds of the population, may face severe food shortages during next year’s April-to-July lean season due to floods, drought and conflict, United Nations agencies said on Thursday.

    The shortages are worse than at the height of a civil war in 2013 and 2016, the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) and the World Food Programme (WFP) said.

    “The decline in food security and high prevalence of malnutrition is linked to a combination of conflict, poor macroeconomic conditions, extreme climate events, and spiralling costs of food and fuel,” they said in a joint statement.

    “At the same time, there has been a decline in funding for humanitarian programmes despite the steady rise in humanitarian needs.”

    A surge in global food prices triggered by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, a major grains exporter, left humanitarian agencies with funding shortfalls as donors diverted their focus to that conflict.

    In June, the WFP said it was forced to suspend some food aid to South Sudan just as it was facing its “hungriest year” since independence. In August, the UN agencies estimated that 7.7 million suffered severe food shortages in the country in the April-July period between two harvests.

    More than one million people were affected by torrential rain and flooding at the end of October, the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) has said.

    The opening of Uganda’s dams to relieve congestion would likely exacerbate flooding downstream in South Sudan, it added.

    South Sudan erupted into civil war shortly after declaring independence from Sudan in 2011, and while a peace agreement signed four years ago is largely holding, the transitional government has been slow to unify various military factions.

    “Urgent action is required … we need to refocus our attention and redirect resources,” Josephine Lagu, South Sudan’s minister of agriculture and food security, said during the report’s release.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XeV9Tgq02AY

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  • S. Korea police admit responsibility for Halloween tragedy

    S. Korea police admit responsibility for Halloween tragedy

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    SEOUL, South Korea — South Korea’s police chief admitted “a heavy responsibility” for failing to prevent a recent crowd surge that killed more than 150 people during Halloween festivities in Seoul, saying Tuesday that officers didn’t effectively handle earlier emergency calls about the impending disaster.

    The admission came as the South Korean government faces growing public scrutiny over whether the crowd surge Saturday night in Seoul’s Itaewon district, a popular nightlife neighborhood, could have been prevented and who should take the responsibility for the country’s worst disaster in years.

    “I feel a heavy responsibility (for the disaster) as the head of one of related government offices,” Yoon Hee Keun, commissioner general of the Korean National Police Agency, told a televised news conference. “Police will do their best to prevent a tragedy like this from happening again.”

    Yoon said an initial investigation has found that there were many urgent calls by citizens notifying authorities about the potential danger of a crowd gathering in Itaewon, but officers who had received those calls didn’t respond to them in a satisfactory manner.

    Yoon said police have subsequently launched an intense internal probe to look deeper into the officers’ handling of the emergency calls and other issues like their on-the-spot response to the crowd surge in Itaewon at that night.

    The disaster — which left at least 156 people dead and 151 others injured — was concentrated in a downhill, narrow alley in Itaewon. Witnesses described people falling on one another, suffering severe breathing difficulties and falling unconscious. They also recalled rescuers and ambulances failed to reach the crammed alleys in time because the entire Itaewon area was extremely packed with slow-moving vehicles and a crowd of partygoers clad in Halloween costumes.

    During a Cabinet council meeting Tuesday, President Yoon Suk Yeol also acknowledged that South Korea lacks research on a crowd management. He called for using drones and other high-tech resources to develop an effective crowd control capability. He said the government will soon hold a meeting with experts to review overall national safety rules.

    The crowd surge is South Korea’s deadliest disaster since the 2014 ferry sinking that killed 304 people and exposed the country’s lax safety rules and regulatory failures. Saturday’s crowd surge has subsequently raised public questions about what South Korea has done to prevent human-made disasters.

    After the Itaewon disaster, police launched a 475-member task force to find its cause.

    Senior police officer Nam Gu-Jun told reporters Monday that officers have obtained videos taken by about 50 security cameras in the area and were analyzing video clips posted on social media. Nam said police have also interviewed more than 40 witnesses and survivors so far.

    Police said they had sent 137 officers to maintain order during Halloween festivities on Saturday, much more than the 34-90 officers mobilized in 2017, 2018 and 2019 before the pandemic. But some observers questioned whether the 137 officers were enough to handle the estimated 100,00 people gathered Saturday in Itaewon.

    Adding more questions about the role of police was the fact that they sent 7,000 officers to another part of Seoul earlier Saturday to monitor dueling protests involving tens of thousands of people. Police also acknowledged that the 137 officers dispatched to Itaewon were primarily assigned to monitor crime, with a particular focus on narcotics use — not the crowd control.

    The death toll could rise as officials said that 29 of the injured were in serious condition. The dead included some 26 foreign nationals from Iran, China, Russia, the United States, Japan and elsewhere.

    President Yoon asked officials to provide the same government support to the bereaved families of the foreign victims as to South Korean dead and injured people. He also thanked many world leaders for sending condolence messages over the disaster.

    The Itaewon area, known for its expat-friendly, cosmopolitan atmosphere, is the country’s hottest spot for Halloween-themed events and parties, with young South Koreans taking part in costume competitions at bars, clubs and restaurants. Saturday’s gathering of the estimated 100,000 people in Itaewon was the biggest Halloween celebration in the area since the pandemic began.

    Halloween festivities in Itaewon have no official organizers. South Korean police said Monday they don’t have any specific procedures for handling incidents such as crowd surges during an event that has no organizers.

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  • Blinken in Canada: Haiti military force ‘work in progress’

    Blinken in Canada: Haiti military force ‘work in progress’

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    VANCOUVER, Canada — The U.S. and Canada will work together to “cut the insecurity knot” that has allowed gangs to create a humanitarian crisis in Haiti, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Thursday.

    But neither Blinken nor Canadian Foreign Affairs Minister Melanie Joly committed their country to leading a military force to the Caribbean nation.

    “This is a work in progress and we are continuing to pursue it,” Blinken told a news conference in Ottawa during his first visit to Canada.

    Blinken said Canada and the U.S. agree that “more likely needs to be done” to support the Haitian national police to restore their grip on security.

    “We’ve been talking about what that might look like,” said Blinken. “We have both been talking to a variety of countries to gauge their interest in and willingness to participate in that.”

    Joly said Canada has sent an “assessment mission” to gather information to find the solutions that are supported by Hattians.

    Haiti’s interim government has operated in chaos since the July 2021 assassination of former president Jovenel Moise.

    Since September, armed gangs have been blockading fuel access, leading to a shortage of basic goods, clean water and medical services, all during a cholera outbreak.

    Canada and the U.S. have sent tanks, and the United Nations is considering a military intervention to restore order, which has been endorsed by Secretary-General Antonio Guterres.

    Later, prior to a meeting with Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, Blinken said Canada and the U.S. “are the two most integrated countries in the world” and have a history of working together to solve issues.

    “Not one of the problems that is having an effect on our own people or what we need to deal with around the world can be solved by one of us acting alone,” he said. “The more we find ways to cooperate, to work together, the more effective we’re going to be.”

    During the news conference Blinken and Joly reiterated their support for Ukraine, condemned Iran for its treatment of women and for supplying drones to Russia, and pledged to work together to increase Arctic security.

    Blinken called Russia’s use of Iranian drones to kill Ukrainian civilians and destroy infrastructure as “appalling.”

    “We keep working with our allies and partners to deter and counter Iran’s provision of these weapons,” he said.

    Joly said Canada said stands with the women and girls in Iran who are fighting against tyranny.

    “Women’s rights are human rights,” she said. “We have a moral obligation to support the brave women of Iran and hold those persecuting them accountable.”

    There have been protests across Iran sparked by the death of Mahsa Amini who died in police custody after being arrested for allegedly wearing her hijab “improperly”.

    Blinken also touched on Canadian and U.S. citizens being held by other countries.

    Canadians Michael Spavor and Michael Kovrig were held in China for over 1,000 days in what was seen as a retaliation for the arrest in Canada of Huawei CFO Meng Wanzhou.

    U.S. basketball star Brittney Griner is facing a nine-year jail term in Russia after being convicted of smuggling and possessing cannabis oil.

    “We support Canada’s efforts to rally countries around the world in ending the unlawful practice of detaining innocent individuals and using them as political pawns,” said Blinken. “Both our countries have suffered from this.”

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  • UN: Almost 1 million drought-hit Somalis in al-Shabab areas

    UN: Almost 1 million drought-hit Somalis in al-Shabab areas

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    A woman walks past makeshift shelters at a camp for the internally-displaced on the outskirts of Baidoa, in the South West State of Somalia, Wednesday, Oct. 12, 2022. The World Food Programme said Thursday, Oct. 20, 2022 it is delivering life-saving food and nutrition assistance to over 4 million people a month to prevent famine in the face of the region’s worst drought in over 40 years. (Geneva Costopulos/WFP via AP)

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  • UN ready to vote on sanctions against Haitian gang leader

    UN ready to vote on sanctions against Haitian gang leader

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    UNITED NATIONS — The U.N. Security Council planned to vote Friday on a resolution that would demand an immediate end to violence and criminal activity in Haiti and impose sanctions on a powerful gang leader.

    The United States and Mexico, which drafted the 10-page resolution, delayed the vote from Wednesday so they could revise the text in hopes of gaining more support from the 15 council members.

    The final text, obtained by The Associated Press on Thursday, eliminated a reference to an Oct. 7 appeal by Haiti’s Council of Ministers for the urgent dispatch of an international military force to tackle the country’s violence and alleviate its humanitarian crisis.

    Also dropped was mention of an Oct. 8 letter from U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres outlining options to help Haiti’s National Police combat high levels of gang violence.

    A second resolution, which was still being worked on late Thursday, would address the issue of combating Haiti’s violence. It would authorize an international force to help improve security in the country if approved.

    U.S. Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfields said Monday that the “non-U.N.” mission would be limited in time and scope and would be led by unspecified “partner country” with a mandate to use military force if necessary.

    The sanctions resolution being put to a vote Friday named only a single Haitian — Jimmy “Barbecue” Cherizier, whose gang has blocked a key fuel terminal leading to severe shortages. Cherizier, a former police officer who leads an alliance of gangs known as the G9 Family and Allies, would be hit with a travel ban, asset freeze and arms embargo if the resolution passes.

    The resolution, however, would also establish a Security Council committee to impose sanctions on other Haitian individuals and groups whose actions threaten the peace, security or stability of the Western Hemisphere’s poorest nation. Targeted actions would include criminal activity, violence and arms trafficking, human rights abuses and obstruction of aid deliveries.

    Political instability has simmered in Haiti since last year’s still-unsolved assassination of President Jovenel Moïse, who had faced opposition protests calling for his resignation over corruption charges and claims that his five-year term had expired. Moïse dissolved Parliament in January 2020 after legislators failed to hold elections in 2019 amid political gridlock.

    Daily life in Haiti began to spin out of control last month just hours after Prime Minister Ariel Henry said fuel subsidies would be eliminated, causing prices to double. Cherizier’s gang blocked the Varreux fuel terminal to demand Henry’s resignation and to protest a spike in petroleum prices.

    Haiti already was gripped by inflation, causing rising prices that put food and fuel out of reach for many, and protests have brought society to the breaking point. Violence is raging, making parents afraid to send their kids to school. Hospitals, banks and grocery stores are struggling to stay open. Clean water is scarce and the country is trying to deal with a cholera outbreak.

    “Cherizier and his G9 gang confederation are actively blocking the free movement of fuel from the Varreux fuel terminal — the largest in Haiti,” the draft resolution said. “His actions have directly contributed to the economic paralysis and humanitarian crisis in Haiti.”

    It added that Cherizier “has engaged in acts that threaten the peace, security, and stability of Haiti and has planned, directed, or committed acts that constitute serious human rights abuses.”

    While serving in the police, it said, Cherizier planned and participated in a November 2018 attack by an armed gang on the capital’s La Saline neighborhood that killed at least 71 people, destroyed over 400 houses and led to the rapes of at least seven women.

    He also led armed groups “in coordinated, brutal attacks in Port-au-Prince neighborhoods throughout 2018 and 2019” and in a five-day attack in multiple neighborhoods in the capital in 2020 in which civilians were killed and houses set on fire, the resolution said.

    In a video posted on Facebook last week, Cherizier called on the government to grant him and G9 members amnesty. He said in Creole that Haiti’s economic and social situation was worsening by the day, so “there is no better time than today to dismantle the system.”

    He outlined a transitional plan for restoring order in Haiti. It would include creation of a “Council of Sages,” with one representative from each of Haiti’s 10 departments, to govern with an interim president until a presidential election could be held in February 2024. It also calls for restructuring Haiti’s National Police and strengthening the army.

    The draft resolution expresses “grave concern about the extremely high levels of gang violence and other criminal activities, including kidnappings, trafficking in persons and the smuggling of migrants, and homicides, and sexual and gender-based violence including rape and sexual slavery, as well as ongoing impunity for perpetrators, corruption and recruitment of children by gangs and the implications of Haiti’s situation for the region.”

    It demands “an immediate cessation of violence, criminal activities, and human rights abuses which undermine the peace, stability and security of Haiti and the region.” And it urges “all political actors” to engage in negotiations to overcome the crisis and allow legislative and presidential elections to be held “as soon as the local security situation permits.”

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  • New report: A record 4.7 million Haitians face acute hunger

    New report: A record 4.7 million Haitians face acute hunger

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    UNITED NATIONS — A record 4.7 million people in Haiti are facing acute hunger, including 19,000 in catastrophic famine conditions for the first time, all in a slum controlled by gangs in the capital, according to a report released Friday.

    The U.N. World Food Program and Food and Agriculture Organization said unrelenting crises have trapped Haitians “in a cycle of growing desperation, without access to food, fuel, markets, jobs and public services, bringing the country to a standstill.”

    The Cite Soleil district of the capital, Port-au-Prince, where violence has increased as armed gangs vye for control, is facing the most urgent need of humanitarian assistance, they said.

    The report by the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification, which is a global partnership of 15 U.N. agencies and international humanitarian groups, paints a grim picture of escalating hunger in Latin the Western Hemisphere’s poorest country,

    The partnership uses five categories of food security, from Phase 1 in which people have enough to eat to Phase 5 in which households have an extreme lack of food and face famine, starvation, death and destitution. The 19,000 people in Cite Soleil are now in the latter group, the report said.

    According to the analysis, a record 4.7 million Haitians are in the three worst categories — 2.9 million in “crisis” Phase 3 characterized by gaps in food consumption and acute malnutrition, 1.8 million in “emergency” Phase 4 in which there are large gaps in food consumption, very high acute malnutrition and excess deaths, and 19,000 in “famine” Phase 5.

    The report said food security has also continued to deteriorate in Haiti’s rural areas, with several dropping from the “crisis” phase into the “emergency” phase.

    The World Food Program and the Food and Argiculture Organization said food insecurity has increased over the past three years and 65% of Haitians “are in high levels of food insecurity with 5% of them in urgent need of humanitarian assistance.”

    Haiti has been gripped by inflation and political gridlock that have exacerbated protests and brought society to the breaking point.

    Daily life in the country began to spin out of control last month just hours after Prime Minister Ariel Henry said fuel subsidies would be eliminated, causing prices to double. Rising prices have put food and fuel out of reach of many Haitians, clean water is scarce, and the country is trying to deal with a cholera outbreak.

    “Harvest losses due to below average rainfall and last year’s earthquake that devastated parts of the country’s south are among the shocks that worsened conditions for people,” U.N. deputy spokesman Farhan Haq said.

    He said violence, unrest and tensions in Cite Soleil have limited access by humanitarian workers to the district.

    “So, we don’t know necessarily how bad it’s getting, although it’s very clear it’s very bad, indeed. And we need to get access to people; we need to make sure that we can get food to people,” he said.

    The World Food Program is seeking $105 million for the next six months, while the Food and Agriculture Organization said it urgently needs some $33 million.

    Jean-Martin Bauer, country director in Haiti for the World Food Program, said, “We all need to be steadfast and focus on delivering urgent humanitarian assistance and supporting long-term development.”

    The Food and Agriculture Organization’s representative in Haiti, Jose Luis Fernandez Filgueiras, said, “We need to help Haitians produce better, more nutritious food to safeguard their livelihoods and their futures.”

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  • Haitians push for local solutions as insecurity and violence soar

    Haitians push for local solutions as insecurity and violence soar

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    With violence gripping the streets of Port-au-Prince and no neighbourhood spared from the insecurity wrought by armed gangs or critical shortages of fuel, virtually everyone in Haiti’s capital is living in a state of uncertainty, says resident Judes Jonathas.

    “We don’t know what will happen tomorrow,” Jonathas, senior programme manager at the Mercy Corps humanitarian group in Haiti, recently told Al Jazeera in a video call, describing how not a day had gone by in the past week in which he hadn’t heard gunshots ring out.

    “It’s as if we’re living minute to minute. We go out, we don’t know if we’ll be coming back.”

    Haiti, which has faced years of political instability, is in the middle of a deepening crisis as powerful gangs recently seized control of a key petrol terminal in Port-au-Prince, cutting residents and healthcare facilities off from much-needed supplies.

    Last week, acting Prime Minister Ariel Henry appealed to the international community to set up a “specialised armed force” to quell the violence, but civil society groups and rights advocates have said Henry has no legitimacy — and they have rejected the prospect of foreign intervention.

    “There is frustration, there is anger, there is resignation … it’s across all classes [of people],” said Jonathas, about the worsening conditions. “Most Haitians are traumatised.”

    International intervention

    Haiti’s council of ministers authorised Henry late last week to seek assistance from “international partners” to help immediately deploy the “specialised armed force” to address a humanitarian crisis unfolding across the country as a result of the gangs.

    The Caribbean nation this month reported its first cholera cases in more than three years, and rights groups said the fuel blockade was impeding healthcare workers’ response. Many communities do not have access to clean water, already-high rates of hunger are set to worsen, and about 1.2 million children are at risk due to the cholera outbreak.

    Bocchit Edmond, the Haitian ambassador to the United States, recently told the Reuters news agency that he hoped the US and Canada would “take the lead and move fast” on the country’s call for help.

    The US Department of State said on Saturday that it was reviewing Haiti’s request, and United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres a day later urged “the international community, including the members of the Security Council, to consider [it] as of matter of urgency”.

    Meanwhile, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said the Biden administration “will accelerate the delivery of additional humanitarian relief to the people of Haiti”. Blinken on Wednesday also announced new visa restrictions on Haitian officials and others “involved in the operation of street gangs and other Haitian criminal organisations”. He did not specify which officials were targeted.

    Brian Nichols, the assistant US secretary of state for Western hemisphere affairs, also travelled to Port-au-Prince on Wednesday for a series of meetings, saying Washington remained “committed to the health, safety, and security of the Haitian people”.

    Translation: We appreciate the commitment of Canada and the US alongside Haiti in these difficult times. It is absolutely urgent that our [international] partners act in solidarity with us to help us get out of this [situation].

    While some Haitians said outside help is urgently needed, many view potential international intervention with scepticism and scorn after a long history of foreign occupations.

    Over the past decades, various UN deployments aimed at restoring security and strengthening the country’s institutions have largely failed. UN peacekeepers also have been linked to sexual violence against women and girls in Haiti, and to a 2010 outbreak of cholera that killed about 10,000 people and caused more than 820,000 infections.

    The Groupe de Travail sur la Securite (GTS), a Haitian citizen-led, security think-tank, in August rejected the prospect of a new UN deployment “under the false pretext of helping us restore a climate of security”.

    “The Haitian people have kept the bitter taste of a foreign force in charge of our situation: theft, rape, cholera, food dependence, deregulation of the economic system, without mentioning the fact that we don’t remember seeing then-gang leaders be arrested or rendered unable to do harm.”

    Rosy Auguste Ducena, a lawyer and programme director at the National Network for the Defense of Human Rights (RNDDH) in Haiti, said, “History has shown us more than once that foreign forces bring us more problems than solutions.”

    “It’s a bit like repeating the same mistakes,” Ducena told Al Jazeera, explaining that RNDDH had warned for years about a deteriorating security situation and called for the Haitian National Police (PNH) to be vetted to remove corrupt officers and then strengthened to take on armed groups.

    But Ducena said the Haitian authorities never acted to address that key problem, while rights groups also documented that members of Moise and Henry’s Parti Haitien Tet Kale (PHTK) were linked to gangs (PDF). “The Haitian state needs to be de-gangster-ised,” she said.

    “We stand firm on this: there is nothing in terms of insecurity that the police would not be able to resolve”, added Ducena — if given the “arms, munitions and equipment proportional to all the arms and munitions that have been distributed to the armed bandits”.

    Flow of weapons, sanctions

    People also have denounced Western nations for continuing to back Henry, despite the prime minister’s decision last year to indefinitely postpone presidential and legislative elections, as well as a constitutional referendum, amid the political crisis.

    Henry, who is backed by the CORE Group of nations, which includes the US and Canada, has opposed a citizen-led initiative known as the Montana Accord, which was formulated by leading Haitian civil society groups and would set up a two-year transitional government.

    US lawmakers recently urged (PDF) President Joe Biden’s administration to “lend its support for legitimate efforts to create a transitional Haitian government that respects the will of the Haitian people”, as well as “make it clear to Henry that it will not support him as he blocks progress”.

    While the political deadlock has persisted, Haitian rights advocates have called for other measures to try to bring an end to the crisis, including ending the flow of weapons to gangs — particularly from the US — and sanctioning corrupt figures.

    “Impose sanctions on high-profile individuals involved in corruption and who support and facilitate gang violence in Haiti [and] adopt drastic measures to stop the illicit trafficking of weapons from the US to Haiti,” Velina Elysee Charlier, an activist with anti-corruption group Nou Pap Domi, told the US House Foreign Affairs Committee during a hearing in late September.

    “For decades, the international community has been violating Haiti’s self-determination and sovereignty; that must end. What we need is cooperation in a spirit of solidarity and mutual respect,” she said.

    That was echoed by Jonathas in Port-au-Prince, who said the country’s problems did not happen overnight, nor will there be a “magic solution”.

    “You have to go to the root causes. You will always find a story behind the gangs … a story of frustration, a story of social inequality,” he told Al Jazeera. “We can always say, ‘we’re going to dismantle the gangs.’ But what will we do then to make sure this doesn’t keep happening?

    “We need partnership and collaboration from all those who really want to support us.”

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  • UN assembly to meet on Ukraine hours after Russian strikes

    UN assembly to meet on Ukraine hours after Russian strikes

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    UNITED NATIONS — The U.N. General Assembly was due to start debate Monday on whether to demand that Russia reverse course on annexing four regions of Ukraine, but the discussion came as Moscow’s most extensive missile strikes in months alarmed much of the international community anew.

    The assembly meeting, planned before Monday’s barrage, was intended to respond to Russia’s purported absorption last month of Ukraine’s Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia regions. The move followed Kremlin-orchestrated “referendums” that the Ukrainian government and the West have dismissed as illegitimate.

    But countries may take the occasion to speak out on the Monday morning rush-hour attacks that hit at least 14 Ukrainian regions, including the capital of Kyiv, and killed at least 11 people. Russia said it targeted military and energy facilities. But some of the missiles smashed into civilian areas.

    Russia said it was retaliating for what it called a Ukrainian “terrorist” attack Saturday on an important bridge. Ukrainian presidential adviser Mikhail Podolyak has called the bridge accusation “too cynical even for Russia.”

    The U.N. assembly was set to gather in the afternoon to consider a proposed resolution that would condemn the “referendums” and claimed annexations as illegal.

    The European Union-led measure also would demand that Moscow “immediately and unconditionally” scrap its purported annexations, call on all countries not to recognize them and insist upon the immediate, complete and unconditional withdrawal of Russian forces from all of Ukraine’s internationally recognized territory.

    A vote is expected later in the week. Russia wants secret balloting, an unusual move that would need to win a procedural vote in itself.

    Russia recently vetoed a similar but legally binding U.N. Security Council resolution that would have condemned the supposed annexations. Under a decision made earlier this year, Security Council vetoes must now be explained in the General Assembly.

    The assembly doesn’t allow vetoes and its resolutions aren’t legally binding. During the war, the assembly has voted to demand that Russia withdraw, to blame Moscow for the humanitarian crisis in Ukraine and to suspend Russia from the U.N. Human Rights Council.

    Meanwhile, the Security Council has been stalemated because of Russia’s veto power.

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  • Ukrainian authorities take stock of ruins in liberated Lyman

    Ukrainian authorities take stock of ruins in liberated Lyman

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    LYMAN, Ukraine — Ukrainian authorities are just beginning to sift through the wreckage of the devastated city of Lyman in eastern Ukraine as they assess the humanitarian toll, and possibility of war crimes, from a months-long Russian occupation.

    Few of the buildings in the city in the Donetsk region — an area which Moscow illegally claimed as Russian territory last week following a staged “referendum” — have survived without damage, and most houses are without basic utilities.

    Walls around the town bear graffitied reminders of the four-month occupation by Russian troops, with words like “Russia,” “USSR” and “Russian World” scrawled on surfaces that are riddled by bullets.

    Mark Tkachenko, communications inspector for the Kramatorsk district police of the Donetsk region, said Friday that authorities are still searching for the bodies of civilians amid the destruction, and trying to determine causes of death.

    “They will look at when people died and how they died. If it was in the period when the city was occupied and they have injuries from Kalashnikov rifles, then of course, it’s a war crime,” Tkachenko told The Associated Press.

    While it is still unclear how many died in the city since it was overrun by Russian forces in May, he said, Lyman today has become a “humanitarian crisis” which could still hold further grim discoveries.

    “Some people died in their houses, some people died in the streets, and the bodies are now being sent to experts for examination,” he said. “For now we are looking for grave sites, and there are probably mass graves.”

    The road approaching Lyman, which Russians used as a strategic logistics and transport hub during its occupation, is littered with miles of desolation left behind from intense fighting as Ukrainian troops pressed to retake it late last week.

    The forests surrounding the city were decimated by the fighting, and the burned out and twisted wreckage of dozens of vehicles lined the road which was pockmarked by craters from falling rockets.

    Tetyana Ignatchenko, spokeswoman for the Donetsk regional administration, said the city’s civilian infrastructure had been “completely destroyed,” and that an effort was ongoing to clear it of the bodies of Russian soldiers abandoned during their army’s retreat.

    “Police and criminologists are working, looking for Russian bodies and collecting them in the streets and forests. There are very many of them because the occupiers didn’t bring them with them,” Ignatchenko said.

    As they left Lyman, Russian soldiers placed mines on the bodies of some of their fallen comrades, set to explode when Ukrainian authorities attempted to clear them, said Tkachenko of the Kramatorsk district police. Some had exploded, but caused no injuries.

    As Ukrainian authorities entered the city, they found that many civilian residents had been killed by shelling while others, mostly older people, had died during the Russian occupation because of a lack of food and medicine, Tkachenko said.

    Looting of civilian homes by Russian soldiers, he said, was widespread.

    Anatolii, 71, a Lyman resident who lined up in the city’s central square Friday to receive humanitarian aid, said Russian soldiers generally left people his age alone, but that he had heard rumors of prolonged detentions of civilians and that his daughter’s home had been robbed.

    “I was looking after my daughter’s house when they came over and opened the house with a crowbar and stole everything that they needed and escaped,” he said. “What could I say, and to whom? Could I fight with them? No.”

    The liberation of Lyman came as the latest in a series of gains by Ukrainian forces as part of successful counteroffensive operations in the Kharkiv, Donetsk and Kherson regions.

    Even as Ukraine has recovered thousands of square miles of territory in the last month, Russian President Vladimir Putin signed treaties to illegally annex the Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia regions. Western leaders decried the move as illegitimate and a reckless escalation of the war, which began on Feb. 24.

    As Ukrainian forces moved back into liberated cities and towns, they discovered some instances of mass graves and torture sites, such as those recently observed by AP journalists in recaptured settlements in the Kharkiv region.

    In one liberated city, Izium, an AP investigation uncovered 10 separate torture sites.

    Ukrainian media earlier reported the discovery of a mass grave in Lyman, but authorities on site wouldn’t confirm or deny its existence and wouldn’t elaborate further, saying only that investigations were ongoing.

    But Donetsk Gov. Pavlo Kyrylenko on Friday said that two burial sites had been found in Lyman, including around 200 individual civilian graves and a mass grave with an undetermined number of bodies.

    On Friday, Tetyana, who didn’t want to give her last name, wheeled a hand cart full of squashes toward her house on the outskirts of Lyman on a street where most houses bore damage from the fighting.

    Her home had been heavily damaged in a Russian attack, she said, pointing at what used to be a window in her kitchen from when a rocket came through the wall.

    “I was at home and fell into the bathroom, and my daughter was in the hallway. How we weren’t killed, I don’t know,” she said. “The storage shed is destroyed, the roof was destroyed, but now we’ve repaired it. Here you see the doors are also damaged.”

    Tetyana pointed to a pair of green trousers she was wearing, and several camouflage coats hanging on hooks outside her house. She’d found the Russian uniforms, she said, “laying around. All my stuff was destroyed so I have nothing to wear.”

    Daria Yevheniivna, 15, said that while she had spent most of the occupation at home in hiding, she now feels a new sense of hope that her city can be salvaged.

    “Everything got better,” she said. “It became very calm. I don’t hear shooting anymore, and I can sleep in the house, not in the cellar. People became more kind.”

    Anatolii, who also didn’t give his last name, complained as he spoke on the central square that some of his neighbors only watched Russian television, which he said had “messed with their heads.” He has tried to influence them, he said, but without success.

    “There are some people who were waiting for the Russians, but I am Ukrainian, and we don’t like them,” he said.

    “War is war. This is a real war,” he said. “Russians shout that it’s a special operation, but it’s only a special operation for them. For us, it’s a real war.”

    ———

    Follow the AP’s coverage of the war at https://apnews.com/hub/russia-ukraine

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  • Yemen’s warring sides fail to agree extension to UN-backed truce

    Yemen’s warring sides fail to agree extension to UN-backed truce

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    Yemen’s warring sides have failed to reach an agreement to extend a nationwide ceasefire, the United Nations has said.

    In a statement, the UN’s envoy to Yemen called on all sides to refrain from acts of provocation as the talks continue, after an October 2 deadline for extending the agreement expired.

    The UN-backed truce initially took effect in April and raised hopes for a longer pause in fighting.

    The devastating conflict began in 2014 when the Iranian-backed Houthis seized the capital of Sanaa and much of northern Yemen and forced the government into exile. A Saudi-led coalition, including the United Arab Emirates, intervened in 2015 to try to restore the internationally-recognised government to power.

    In a statement, UN Envoy for Yemen Hans Grundberg said he “regrets that an agreement has not been reached today”. He did not call out the Houthis by name for failing to agree to his proposal but thanked the internationally-recognised government for “engaging positively” in talks to extend the truce. He called on leaders to continue to try and reach an agreement.

    “I urge them to fulfill their obligation to the Yemeni people to pursue every avenue for peace,” he said.

    The foreign minister for Yemen’s internationally-recognised government placed the blame for the truce ending on the Houthis. In comments made with the pan-Arab Satellite channel Al-Hadath, Ahmed Awad Bin Mubarak said that Houthis had obstructed the ceasefire and gone against the interest of the Yemeni people.

    “The government made many concessions to extend the truce,” he said.

    There was no immediate comment from the Houthis, but on Saturday they said that discussions around the truce had reached a “dead-end,” and that they were continuing to advocate for a full opening of the Sanaa airport and lifting of the blockade on the key port city of Hodeida.

    The group hosted a large military parade last month, showcasing rockets and large weaponry, drawing condemnation from observers.

    In the hours leading up to the deadline, a Houthi military spokesperson threatened private oil companies still working in the country to leave or their facilities would be seized. Yahya Saree wrote on Twitter that the fossil fuels belong to the people of Yemen and could be used to pay public servants’ salaries.

    April’s truce had originally established a partial opening of the Sanaa airport and the Red Sea port of Hodeida. The ensuing months have seen flights start again from the capital’s airport to Jordan and Egypt. It also called for lifting a Houthi blockade on Taiz, the country’s third-largest city. But little progress has been made there after talks aimed at reopening local roads stalled. Another sticking point is how the salaries of public employees will be funded, many of whom have not been compensated for years.

    Sunday’s statement came a few days after Grundberg met in Sanaa with the top leader of the Houthis, Abdel-Malek al-Houthi, and other senior officials who have been pushing for a full opening of the airport. The envoy warned last week that the risk of return to war was a real possibility.

    “Millions will now be at risk if airstrikes, ground shelling and missile attacks resume,” said Ferran Puig, country director in Yemen for the international charity Oxfam, reacting to the news of the truce expiring.

    Analysts say it remains unclear if further talks could make progress, with Houthis feeling empowered and the coalition fighting them splintered by inter-alliance trouble.

    Peter Salisbury, an expert on Yemen with Crisis Group, an international think tank, said the Houthis have been behaving as if they had more leverage throughout the negotiations because they were more willing than the other side to return to war.

    Compared with forces fighting with the Saudi coalition, ″they run an effective police state and operate a pretty functional and motivated fighting force,’’ he said.

    In recent years, the Houthi forces have deployed increasingly effective weaponry against Saudi Arabia and their rivals, including cruise missiles and drones, drawing accusations that their main backer, Iran, is helping the group obtain them.

    Meanwhile, cracks within the anti-Houthi coalition have surfaced in the southern provinces. In August, United Arab Emirates-supported armed groups seized vital southern oil and gas fields controlled by other forces fighting with the Saudi-led coalition. Clashes between them and other forces from within the alliance have killed dozens.

    But the truce has led to a significant overall lull of direct warfare despite claims of violations by both sides.

    International charity Save The Children said that the truce had led to a 60 percent decrease in displacement and a 34 percent drop in child casualties in Yemen.

    The conflict, which in recent years turned into a regional proxy war between Saudi Arabia and Iran, has killed more than 150,000 people, including more than 14,500 civilians, according to The Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project, and created one of the world’s worst humanitarian crises.

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  • UN chief urges Yemen’s warring sides to renew expiring truce

    UN chief urges Yemen’s warring sides to renew expiring truce

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    UNITED NATIONS — The U.N. chief is strongly urging Yemen’s warring parties to not only renew but expand a truce that expires Sunday, saying it has brought the longest period of relative calm since the conflict began in 2014.

    Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said Friday that the internationally recognized government and Houthi rebels should prioritize the national interests of the Yemeni people and “choose peace for good.”

    His statement followed a stark warning Tuesday from the U.N. envoy for Yemen, Hans Grundberg, that the risk of a return to fighting “is real.”

    Yemen’s brutal civil war began in 2014 when the Houthis seized the capital, Sanaa, and much of northern Yemen and forced the government into exile. A Saudi-led coalition entered the war in early 2015 to try to restore the internationally recognized government to power.

    The conflict has created one of the world’s worst humanitarian crises and over the years turned into a regional proxy war between Saudi Arabia, which backs the government, and Iran, which supports the Houthis. More than 150,000 people have been killed, including over 14,500 civilians.

    Both sides accepted the U.N.-brokered truce for two months at the start of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan on April 2. It has been extended twice, and Grundberg and the secretary-general have been pushing both sides for a longer extension to try to start negotiations toward ending the conflict.

    “Over the past six months,” Guterres said, “the government of Yemen and the Houthis have taken important and bold steps towards peace by agreeing to, and twice renewing, a nationwide truce negotiated by the United Nations.”

    With the Sunday deadline looming, Guterres strongly urged the parties to expand the duration and terms of the truce in line with a proposal presented by Grundberg that has not been made public.

    Nabil Jamel, a government negotiator, said the U.N. proposal includes ways to pay civil servants in Houthi-held territories and reopen roads of blockaded cities, including Taiz.

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  • Top Pakistan diplomat urges flood aid, patience with Taliban

    Top Pakistan diplomat urges flood aid, patience with Taliban

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    WASHINGTON (AP) — Pakistan’s foreign minister says the international community should work with Afghanistan’s ruling Taliban, not against them, when it comes to combatting foreign extremist groups and the economic and humanitarian crises in that country — even as many U.S. officials say the Taliban have proved themselves unworthy of such cooperation.

    Bilawal Bhutto Zardari, Pakistan’s top diplomat, spoke to The Associated Press in the final days of a trip to the United Nations General Assembly in New York and to Washington that has focused on trying to draw more world attention to unprecedented flooding that has one-third of his country underwater.

    Unrelenting monsoon rains that scientists say are worsened by climate change have killed more than 1,000 people in Pakistan, caused tens of billions of dollars in damage and destroyed much of the country’s staple food and commercial crops.

    Pakistan is among many countries hardest-hit by climate change that have become increasingly outspoken in seeking more financial assistance from richer nations. Past and current economic and industrial booms of China, the United States and other leading economies are the biggest contributors to climate change, which is primarily caused by burning fossil fuels.

    The roughly 30 million people in Pakistan reported to be displaced by the floods are “truly paying in the forms of their lives and their livelihoods for the industrialization of other countries,” said Zardari.

    “And justice would be that we work together” globally, “that we’re not left alone, to deal with the consequences of this tragedy,” he said.

    Zardari is the son of a past Pakistani prime minister and a past president. He became foreign minister in April.

    He met with Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Monday. The Biden administration on the same day announced another $10 million in food aid for Pakistan, on top of more than $56 million in flood relief and humanitarian assistance this year.

    More broadly, however, the Biden administration and other governments of leading economic nations have delivered only a small part of the $100 billion in annual aid they have pledged to help less-wealthy nations survive the droughts, rising seas and other disasters of climate change and switch to cleaner energy themselves.

    “We expect the United States to be one of the leading players” in that, said Zardari, who also spoke approvingly of a nascent proposal out of the U.N. in which developed nations could cancel out existing debt as a form of climate aid.

    “We’ve not yet seen — and that doesn’t mean we won’t see — the translation of this vision to practicalities on the ground” in terms of the overall climate aid, he said.

    Zardari, who spoke to the AP on Tuesday at Pakistan’s embassy, also gave contentious recommendations that the U.S. work more directly with Afghanistan’s Taliban. Pakistan and the United States have shared widely varying amounts of cooperation against violent armed groups sheltering in Afghanistan over the decades. The U.S. long has been at odds with many Pakistani officials over sympathetic handling and support for the Taliban.

    No country recognizes the Taliban, a group sanctioned as a terrorist organization that retook power by military force in August 2021, as Afghanistan’s legitimate government. The United States and the international community at large have sought to deal with billions of dollars in frozen Afghan Central Bank funds, to institute financial reforms, and to deliver badly needed aid to ordinary Afghans with minimal involvement by the Taliban.

    “At the risk of hurting anyone’s feelings, I think it’s important to mention that these funds, it’s not the Taliban’s funds, it’s not the Americans’ funds. These are funds that belong to the people of Afghanistan,” Zardari said.

    Economic isolation and privation such as Afghanistan has experienced since the Taliban takeover only feed authoritarianism and extremism, he said. The best financial outcomes would work through existing institutions, now in Taliban hands, not through “some sort of parallel government.”

    Asked if he meant the U.S. needed to hold its nose and deal with Afghanistan’s ruling power, Zardari said, “Pretty much.”

    Meanwhile, the U.S. discovery that the global leader of al-Qaida, Ayman al-Zawahiri, had taken up refuge in the heart of Afghanistan’s capital since the Taliban had returned to power has left U.S. leaders condemning Taliban officials for alleged complicity. The U.S. killed Zawahiri in a drone strike in July.

    The Taliban had yet to have the time and ability to grapple with extremist groups as a government should, Zardari said. “For them to demonstrate their will to take on terrorist organizations, we need to help them build their capacity to also do so” before judging them, he said.

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