The Democratic-majority Senate is expected to vote on the bill next week, sending it to President Joe Biden to sign into law.
The United States House of Representatives with broad bipartisan support has passed a $95bn legislative package providing security assistance to Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan, despite bitter objections from Republican hardliners.
The legislation proceeded on Saturday to the Democratic-majority Senate, which passed a similar measure more than two months ago.
US leaders from Democratic President Joe Biden to top Senate Republican Mitch McConnell had been urging embattled Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson to bring it up for a vote.
The Senate is expected to pass the measure next week, sending it to Biden to sign into law.
The bills provide about $61bn to address the conflict in Ukraine, including $23bn to replenish US weapons, stocks and facilities; $26bn for Israel, including $9bn for humanitarian needs; and $8bn for the Asia Pacific, including Taiwan.
Zelenskyy thanks the House
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy expressed his thanks, saying US lawmakers moved to keep “history on the right track” by supporting his country after it was invaded by Russia.
“The vital US aid bill passed today by the House will keep the war from expanding, save thousands and thousands of lives, and help both of our nations to become stronger,” Zelenskyy said on X.
Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova, meanwhile, said the new US legislation would “deepen crisis throughout the world”.
“Military assistance to the [Kyiv] regime is a direct sponsorship of terrorist activities,” Zakharova said on Telegram.
It was unclear how quickly the new military funding for Ukraine will be depleted, likely leading to calls for further action by Congress.
Biden, who had urged Congress since last year to approve the additional aid to Ukraine, said in a statement: “It comes at a moment of grave urgency, with Israel facing unprecedented attacks from Iran and Ukraine under continued bombardment from Russia.”
The vote on the passage of the Ukraine funding was 311-112. Only 101 Republicans supported the legislation, with 112 voting against it.
Al Jazeera’s Patty Culhane, reporting from Washington, DC, said the number of Republicans who voted against the bill in the House is significantly high.
“It is very notable that 112 Republicans voted ‘no’ for different reasons,” she said.
“Some believe the European Union should do more to help Ukraine, while some others said the money should be spent at home and Ukraine has no accountability on how it spends the funds.
“This package passed, but it calls into question what might happen next if Ukraine needs more funds in the future,” our correspondent added.
House backs Israel
Meanwhile, the House’s actions during a rare Saturday session put on display some cracks in what is generally solid support for Israel within Congress.
Saturday’s vote, in which the Israel aid was passed 366-58, had 37 Democrats and 21 Republicans in opposition.
Al Jazeera’s Culhane said the Democrats who voted against the bill on Israel were very vocal in their criticism of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
“The number might not sound like a lot… but this is really remarkable. It would be unimaginable a decade or two ago,” she said. “I believe it shows a great shift in the Democratic Party.”
The passage of the long-awaited legislation was closely watched by US defence contractors, who could be in line for huge contracts to supply equipment for Ukraine and other US partners.
House Speaker Johnson this week chose to ignore removal threats by hardline members of his fractious 218-213 majority and push forward the measure that includes funding for Ukraine as it struggles to fight off the two-year Russian invasion.
The unusual four-bill package also contains a measure that includes a threat to ban the Chinese-owned social media app TikTok, as well as a potential transfer of seized Russian assets to Ukraine.
Some Republicans repeatedly raised the threat to remove Johnson. who became speaker in October after his predecessor, Kevin McCarthy, was taken down by party hardliners.
Twelve jurors and one alternate have been sworn in to serve in the criminal trial against former United States President Donald Trump, as the third day of his New York court proceedings concludes.
Thursday saw Trump return to court after Wednesday’s weekly break. There, lawyers for both the defence and prosecution continued haggle over which candidates to select from the jury pool.
But the proceedings started with a setback. Seven jurors had been selected and sworn in on Tuesday — only for two of those jurors to be dismissed during Thursday’s hearing.
One claimed to face pressure from family and friends about her appointment to the jury. The other was scrutinised for allegedly misrepresenting his previous interactions with the justice system.
But jury selection quickly got back on track — and a process that sometimes can stretch for weeks was wrapped up in a couple of hours, with seven more jurors picked for the 12-person panel.
Then it was time for the lawyers and the presiding judge, Juan Merchan, to turn their attention to the alternates.
Merchan has indicated he plans to have six alternate jurors for Trump’s trial, in case any of the principle members of the jury needs to be replaced. By the end of the Thursday, one had been sworn in, with five more slated to be picked as early as Friday.
Trump stands accused of 34 felony counts of falsifying business records, in relations to hush-money payments he allegedly made to the adult film star Stormy Daniels in the run-up to the 2016 elections. He has pleaded not guilty.
Selecting a jury to render a fair and impartial verdict has been a key hurdle in the proceedings so far. Here are the highlights from day three of the historic trial:
Former President Donald Trump attends the start of the court proceedings on April 18 [Jeenah Moon/AP Photo, pool]
A full panel of jurors
The defence and prosecution quickly whittled down a second batch of 96 potential jurors on Thursday, with many being promptly dismissed after saying they could not be fair and impartial.
The rest filled out the 42-point questionnaire, asking them about their employment, their educational background and their media consumption habits.
The prosecution and defence then had an opportunity to speak and question the potential jurors in a process called “voir dire”. Both sides reminded the jury pool about their responsibilities to the court.
“The problem with biases is they colour the way you look at the world. What you may believe and may not,” said Susan Necheles, a lawyer for Trump’s defence. “We wouldn’t allow someone who has a strong dislike for a certain type of people to sit on a jury of that type of person.”
Ultimate, seven more jurors were selected, filling out the 12-member jury. One alternate was named.
Another group of prospective jurors was sworn in before the end of the day, in anticipation of Friday’s continued search for alternates.
A courtroom sketch shows defence lawyer Todd Blanche whispering to Donald Trump in court on April 18 [Jane Rosenberg/Reuters]
First dismissed juror describes public pressure
But Thursday’s additions to the jury panel came after some losses.
A nurse who had been previously selected to serve on the jury earlier this week was dismissed after she explained that friends, coworkers and family members had deduced her identity from media reports.
The jury in the Trump trial is supposed to be anonymous. But the woman explained she had started to face questions from her contacts about her participation in the trial.
“I don’t believe at this point that I can be fair and unbiased and let the outside influences not affect my decision-making in the courtroom,” the juror said.
Judge Merchan ultimately excused her from the jury panel. He reiterated that, “after sleeping on it overnight, she had concerns about her ability to be fair and impartial in this case”.
Judge Juan Merchan is presiding over Donald Trump’s criminal trial in New York City [File: Seth Wenig/AP Photo]
Questions raised about second dismissed juror
But the nurse was only one of two seated jurors from Tuesday to be dismissed. The second faced questions about the veracity of the information he provided to the court.
Prosecutors early in the day raised concerns that the juror, identified in media reports as an IT professional, may have misrepresented himself when answering a question about whether he had ever been accused or convicted of a crime.
He had answered he had not. But on Thursday, prosecutors noted that a man with the same name had been arrested in the 1990s for tearing down political posters in Westchester County, a suburban area north of New York City.
Without offering details, Judge Merchan ultimately excused the juror. “He does not need to come back and should not come back Monday morning,” he told the court.
With that, the original seven jurors seated on Tuesday dropped down to five.
Assistant Manhattan District Attorney Joshua Steinglass led the prosecution’s ‘voir dire’ on Thursday [File: John Minchillo/AP Photo]
Warnings about protecting the jury pool’s identity
With one of the formerly seated jurors citing privacy concerns as a reason for leaving, Judge Merchan issued a stern warning to the court about protecting the jury pool’s privacy.
“There’s a reason that this is an anonymous jury,” Merchan said. “It kind of defeats the purpose of that when so much information is put out there that it is very easy for anyone to identify who the jurors are.”
Last month, Merchan ruled that the jury would not be publicly named, given the sensitivity of the case — and the risk of jurors being harassed or intimidated.
Aside from the judge and court administrators, only the prosecution and the defence are allowed to know certain personal details about the candidates, in order to make informed decisions about jury selection.
But that creates a dilemma for media outlets covering the trial, as they seek to document other details about the jury candidates — without divulging their identities.
On Thursday, Judge Merchan tightened the restrictions further, calling on journalists to stop reporting on the physical appearance of potential jurors, as well as specifics about their employment history.
“We just lost what probably would have been a very good juror,” the judge said of the woman who had been previously seated on the jury. “She said she was afraid and intimidated by the press, all the press.”
Defence lawyer Susan Necheles, centre left, is seen entering the Manhattan criminal courthouse on April 18 [Jeenah Moon/AP Photo, pool]
A literal chill falls over the courtroom
The comfort of the jury pool cropped up in a different sense later in the day, as the judge addressed the chilly conditions in the courtroom.
The Manhattan criminal courthouse where the trial is unfolding is an Art Deco building that is more than 80 years old: Construction was completed in 1941.
Judge Merchan cited the older infrastructure in brushing aside a request from Trump lawyer Todd Blanche to raise the thermostat.
“There’s no question it’s cold, but I’d rather be a little cold than sweat,” the judge said.
But complaints continued, notably from Trump himself. As he left for lunch, the former president stopped by the rows of reporters seated in the courtroom and asked, “Is it cold enough?”
The frosty temperatures were also enough to merit a second comment from Judge Merchan later in the day.
“I want to apologise that it’s chilly in here,” Merchan said, earning chuckles from the court. “We’re trying to do the best we can to control the temperature, but it’s one extreme or the other.”
Former US President Donald Trump speaks to reporters about articles covering his New York criminal trial [Timothy A Clary/Reuters, pool]
Witnesses under wraps
In one of the final moments before Thursday’s proceedings ended, Trump’s lawyer Todd Blanche asked the prosecution for the names of the first witnesses it planned to call.
But a lawyer for the prosecution, Joshua Steinglass, declined to provide the names, pointing out that Trump had a habit of bashing witnesses on his social media account.
Blanche maintained that Trump could “commit to the court and the people” that he would not write posts about any witnesses.
Judge Merchan, however, cast doubt on that argument. “That he will not tweet about any witnesses? I don’t think you can make that representation,” he said before the proceedings adjourned for the day.
Trump left the courtroom, and when he appeared outside, he carried a stack of articles to show reporters.
“These are all stories over the last few days from legal experts,” he said, flipping through the thick bunch of pages. “All of these stories are from legal experts saying how this is not a case. The case is ridiculous.”
Trump is currently facing a total of four criminal indictments, including the New York case. April’s proceedings make him the first US president, past or present, to stand trial on criminal charges.
The former president has denied wrongdoing in all the cases. He is also running for re-election this November.
Budget proposes higher capital gains taxes and billions in spending on education, housing, jobs and mental health.
Canada will ask the wealthy to pay higher taxes as Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s government seeks to shore up flagging support among young voters ahead of an election expected next year.
Minister of Finance Chrystia Freeland said in the annual budget announcement on Tuesday that the wealthiest Canadians should pay more, while billions of dollars would be invested in education, housing, jobs and mental health services.
The budget proposes 53 billion Canadian dollars ($38bn) in new spending over five years, much of it directed towards Millennials and Generation Z in the form of affordable housing, student grants and loans, rent subsidies and work placement programmes.
Under the proposals, capital gains over 250,000 Canadian dollars ($180,804) would be taxed at 66.7 percent, up from 50 percent, raising nearly 20 billion Canadian dollars ($14.5bn) in revenue over five years.
Freeland said the opportunity for young people to build a comfortable middle-class life had “always been the promise of Canada”.
“But today, Millennial and Gen Z Canadians can get a good job, they can work hard, they can do everything their parents did and more, and too often the reward remains out of reach,” she said.
“They look at their parents’ lives and wonder: ‘How will I ever be able to afford that?’”
Freeland acknowledged that the tax hike would prompt some pushback but said the increase would ensure the wealthiest pay their fair share.
“But before they complain too bitterly, I would like Canada’s 1 percent – Canada’s 0.1 percent – to consider this: What kind of Canada do you want to live in?” she said.
The Business Council of Canada (BCC) slammed the proposed budget as “good politics to some” but “bad economic policy for all.”
“Wealth redistribution is not wealth creation and the spending measures introduced today will saddle Canadians with debt without encouraging the strong and sustained economic growth they deserve,” BCC President and CEO Goldy Hyder said in a statement.
The budget will need the backing of the left-leaning New Democratic Party, which is keeping Trudeau’s minority government in power, to pass through parliament.
Trudeau’s Liberal government is badly trailing the Conservatives, led by Pierre Poilievre, ahead of general elections due to be held by the end of October 2025.
Trudeau, who has led Canada since 2015, has seen his popularity severely dented amid widespread discontent over the cost of living and housing.
In a poll by Nanos Research released in January, two in three Canadians said that Trudeau was doing a poor job of addressing the problem of unaffordable housing.
Trudeau earlier this month announced plans to build nearly 3.9 million houses by 2031 to close the yawning gap between housing supply and demand.
The NBA postseason begins on Tuesday night with the play-in tournament.
The top six teams from each conference have already qualified for the playoffs while seeds seven through 10 enter the play-in tournament for an opportunity to qualify for the final two playoff spots in each conference.
Here are three key Western Conference talking points ahead of the NBA playoffs:
1. Can anybody beat the defending champions Denver?
The Nuggets were the only team in the NBA regular season that looked like they were in cruise control for large chunks of the season with an additional gear available when needed.
Here are some compelling reasons why Denver should repeat as Western Conference champions:
They have the NBA’s Most Valuable Player (MVP). Nikola Jokic is an odds-on favourite to win his third MVP this season, placing him in illustrious company. Incredibly, the centre almost averaged a triple double for the entire season (26.4 points, 12.4 rebounds and 9 assists), but Jokic doesn’t care about stats – only winning.
They win when it matters. Since early in the season, many experts have predicted a Boston vs Denver matchup in June’s NBA finals. In their two meetings this season, Denver swept the league-leading Celtics, controlling the games in the pressure-filled final minutes to win both contests.
NBA’s best starting lineup. Depending on how one rates Denver’s lineup, they also have the league’s best starting five with Jokic, Jamal Murray, Michael Porter Jr, Kentavious Caldwell-Pope and Aaron Gordon. They are talented, they have great chemistry and each player clearly understands their role during crunch time.
West’s best number two. NBA TV commentators aren’t exaggerating when they call Jokic’s teammate Murray “Playoff Murray”. In the 2023 playoffs, the point guard averaged a scintillating 26.1 points, 7.1 assists and 5.7 rebounds in 20 games en route to his first NBA championship. When healthy, Murray has been nearly unstoppable from the perimeter during his playoff career and relentlessly attacks the teeth of the defence to score from close range.
Murray’s only weakness is his frequent injury history – and it’s perhaps the only thing that could derail another Western Conference title charge for Denver.
Denver Nuggets guard Jamal Murray, right, confers with centre Nikola Jokic against the Atlanta Hawks on April 6, 2024, in Denver [David Zalubowski/AP Photo]
2. Can the ageing greats from the Los Angeles Lakers or Golden State Warriors make one last run in the West Conference postseason?
The two superstar faces of the league – LeBron James (Lakers) and Stephen Curry (Warriors) – will have to fight their way out of the NBA play-in tournament just to take part in this year’s playoffs.
The Lakers (17-9) and the Warriors (19-10) have been impressive since the All-Star break, but with so many strong Western Conference teams already ahead of them in the standings, they were unable to chase down a top-six seed to automatically qualify for the playoffs.
Now, they will have to do it the hard way.
But if recent history is any guide, there might be some cause for optimism for these two league icons. Last season, the Lakers clawed their way out of two play-in eliminator games and all the way to the Western Conference finals.
To climb the Western Conference mountain again with evergreen 39-year-old James playing heavy minutes may be too big an ask, even for the “King”.
But incredibly, James has added an extra dimension to his game in his 21st season: super-efficient three-point shooting, making 41 percent of his attempts and becoming a legitimate threat from beyond the arc.
Curry, meanwhile, has endured a frustrating “what could have been” type of season with the Warriors, thanks namely to the volatile actions of key teammate Draymond Green.
Green made headlines during the season for all the wrong reasons, getting suspended twice for a total of 17 games related to two aggressive on-court incidents: putting Minnesota Timberwolves centre Rudy Gobert into a chokehold in November and striking Phoenix Suns player Jusuf Nurkic in the face in December.
Curry used the Green adversity as a rallying cry to reclaim their season, and now the Warriors postseason success or failure will ride on the shoulders of the 35-year-old guard, considered by many to be the best shooter of all time.
Fans around the world – not to mention the NBA itself – will be hoping James and Curry progress out of the NBA play-in and deep into the Western Conference playoff fold.
With such a loaded conference, these stellar four-time NBA champions will likely need a little luck to top the West.
Golden State Warriors guard Stephen Curry (30) and Los Angeles Lakers forward LeBron James (23) talk during an NBA game in Los Angeles on March 16, 2024 [Ashley Landis/AP Photo]
3. Are the Dallas Mavericks now the main challenger in the Western Conference?
Despite finishing in fifth place in the Western Conference, no team comes into the postseason with more momentum than Dallas.
A clear case can be made for the Mavericks to make a deep playoff run in the Western Conference. Prior to their meaningless final season game blowout loss to the Oklahoma City Thunder on Sunday night, Dallas had:
The league’s best win-loss record in the last month of the season (13-3).
The NBA’s best offence in the last 10 games.
The NBA’s best defence in the last 10 games.
Arguably the league’s best (or second best) player in Luka Doncic, who finished with season averages of 33.9 points, 9.2 rebounds, 9.8 assists per game.
Guard Kyrie Irving is once again playing like an All-Star, finishing in the top 15 in scoring with 25.6 points per game.
The Mavs made a huge gamble back at the 2023 trade deadline, acquiring Irving from the Brooklyn Nets to provide an electrifying 1-2 offensive combination with Doncic.
That gamble didn’t pay off last season – they missed the playoffs – but this season, Doncic and Irving, plus a cast of reliable role players, have the Mavericks primed to do something special this postseason.
The most unexpected reason why the Mavericks could win the West lies with the one thing they are least known for: defence.
In the final month of the season, the Mavs were the NBA’s number one defensive team.
If their defensive intensity holds up in the playoffs, coupled with Doncic and Irving’s scoring masterclass – averaging a combined 59.5 points per game – it’s going to be awfully difficult for anyone to deny Dallas in the Western Conference.
Dallas Mavericks guards Luka Doncic, left, and Kyrie Irving celebrate their win over the San Antonio Spurs on March 19, 2024 [Eric Gay/AP Photo]
The No Labels group announced on Thursday that it will not field a third-party candidate to challenge Democrat Joe Biden and Republican Donald Trump in November’s presidential election.
The move comes after the organisation, which has billed itself as a bipartisan antidote to hyper-partisanship in the United States, failed to attract a high-profile centrist to be its champion. The US has long been dominated by two main parties — Republicans and Democrats — with third-party candidates generally failing to gain traction. They are often accused of siphoning votes from mainstream candidates.
“No Labels has always said we would only offer our ballot line to a ticket if we could identify candidates with a credible path to winning the White House,” Nancy Jacobson, the group’s CEO, said in a statement sent out to allies.
“No such candidates emerged, so the responsible course of action is for us to stand down.”
The announcement further cements the general election matchup between Biden and Trump, both of whom have occupied the White House — and both of whom have seen tanking popularity in recent months.
The update leaves only anti-vaccine activist Robert F Kennedy Jr, a scion of the Kennedy political dynasty, as the only prominent outsider still seeking the presidency.
Kennedy said this week that he had collected enough signatures to qualify for the fall ballot in five states.
No Labels’ decision comes just days after the death of founding chairman Joe Lieberman, a former Democratic senator and vice presidential candidate who became a political independent during his final term in office.
Thursday’s move caps months of internal discussions at No Labels, during which the group raised tens of millions of dollars from a donor list it has kept secret.
Democrats had feared the ticket would be damaging to Biden and threatened to fracture the diverse coalition of voters seen as his best pathway to victory, particularly in key battleground states. No Labels never named all of its delegates and most of its deliberations took place in secret, further stoking concerns it could scuttle Biden’s chances.
“Millions of Americans are relieved that No Labels finally decided to do the right thing to keep Donald Trump out of the White House,” said Rahna Epting, a No Labels critic and executive director of the progressive organisation MoveOn.
“Now, it’s time for Robert Kennedy Jr to see the writing on the wall that no third party has a path forward to winning the presidency. We must come together to defeat the biggest threat to our democracy and country: Donald Trump.”
Kennedy’s campaign did not immediately comment.
No Labels had previously said it qualified to appear on ballots in 21 states.
But several potential presidential candidates said they would not be the group’s standard-bearer. They include former United Nations Ambassador Nikki Haley, who suspended her campaign for the Republican presidential nomination last month.
Senator Joe Manchin, a Democrat who has long roiled the party, also ruled out running, and former Maryland Governor Larry Hogan, a centrist Republican, decided to run for the US Senate instead.
Last month, former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, a Republican candidate for the presidency in 2024, also said he would not run under the No Label banner.
The group had been weighing a so-called “unity ticket” with a presidential candidate from one major party and a vice presidential candidate from the other, to appeal to voters unhappy with both Biden and Trump.
“We are deeply relieved that everyone rejected their offer, forcing them to stand down,” said Matt Bennett of the centrist group Third Way, which has been fighting No Labels’ 2024 ambitions. “While the threat of third-party spoilers remains, this uniquely damaging attack on President Biden and Democrats from the centre has at last ended.”
Dan DuPraw, a 33-year-old sales worker in Philadelphia who would have been a delegate for the No Labels convention, called Thursday’s decision disappointing but prudent. He said he trusts the No Labels leadership to make the right call.
“I understand why they made the decision, and I think it’s the right thing to do in this moment,” DuPraw told The Associated Press news agency. “But I’m so disappointed that we get Trump and Biden again. I think it’s such a horrible thing for our country.”
DuPraw said he will now decide between Biden and Kennedy.
“I’m excited that there are other options than the two main parties,” he said.
New York – In the early 1990s, a mysterious illness began to spread rapidly among villagers across several provinces in central China.
At the time, HIV/AIDS had already emerged in other parts of the world, including Europe and the United States, where cases were transmitted mostly through sexual contact. In China, however, people were infected after selling their blood and plasma or receiving transfusions contaminated in the trade.
Over the following decade, as many as 300,000 people in Henan province, the epicentre of the trade, were infected – a scandal exposed by local retired gynaecologist Dr Gao Yaojie.
Long before eye doctor Li Wenliang sounded the alarm on COVID-19 and succumbed to the virus in early 2020, Dr Gao was China’s best-known whistleblower. Her decision to expose the source of China’s AIDS epidemic made her an exile for the last 14 years of her life. She died last December at the age of 95 in New York.
Despite official erasure (Baidubake, China’s Wikipedia equivalent, says Gao settled overseas on a visiting fellowship), Chinese netizens mourned Gao’s death on the same Weibo “wailing wall” page where they commemorated Li.
Gao’s descent from national prominence to relentless official persecution exposed just how ruthless Beijing could be, even at a time when it was seen as opening up to the world.
“All she wanted was the freedom to speak out, to tell the whole world the truth behind China’s AIDS epidemic and to keep a record for history,” said former journalist Lin Shiyu, who edited most of the books Gao published while in exile in the US. “That was why she fled China.”
As the yet-unsolved origin of the COVID-19 pandemic shows, the secrecy Beijing enforces has repercussions for the rest of the world. Across the globe, more than 7 million people have died from the “mysterious virus” that first emerged in Wuhan in late 2019, according to the latest figures from the World Health Organization.
Gao did not set out to be an activist, much less a whistleblower. She became alarmed when she started to see patients in Henan province with tumours that she knew were common symptoms of AIDS. Few had been tested for HIV, let alone diagnosed, until Gao insisted.
“As a doctor I couldn’t turn a blind eye; I had a responsibility to do all I could to prevent this epidemic from spreading. However, at the time, I was unaware of the unfathomable forces underlying the widespread transmission of HIV,” Gao wrote in her 2008 memoir, The Soul of Gao Yaojie. “Had I known, I might not have been able to muster the courage.”
Soon enough, she discovered that the plasma trade – especially prevalent in rural areas where impoverished villagers needed to supplement their income – had become a vector for transmission. Once Beijing banned most imported blood products, part of its attempt to frame the virus as having a “foreign” origin, pharmaceutical firms ratcheted up domestic demand, making the problem worse.
Even the Chinese Red Cross and its People’s Liberation Army-run hospitals got into the booming blood business. Local officials who stood to profit told villagers that selling plasma was also great for their health. Many were infected with HIV because dirty needles were routinely reused to draw blood.
Half of the 3,000 villagers in one county in Henan province made ends meet with the blood money at the time; 800 developed AIDS, Gao noted in her memoir.
‘Officially controlled process’
As much as Gao’s fight to expose the source of transmissions and to staunch the blood trade rankled local officials, the central government recognised her efforts. When provincial officials put her under house arrest in 2007, the health minister intervened so Gao could travel to the US to receive an award.
Gao, with fellow campaigners Xie Lihua (left), founder and editor of Rural Women Knowing All magazine and secretary-general of Beijing’s Development Center for Rural Women, and Wang Xingjuan, founder of a non-governmental women’s research institute, as they were recognised in the US for their work in 2007 [Yuri Gripas/Reuters]
Even though “whistleblowing” is translated literally into Chinese, the idea is not new, and the right to report wrongdoings was protected in the first constitution of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) of 1954. This stated that “all the PRC citizens had the right to make oral or written reports of any power abuses to the authorities”, according to political scientist Ting Gong in her 2000 paper titled Whistleblowing: what does it mean in China?
But that right has limits.
“In China, whistleblowing is an officially controlled process,” Gong noted.
The tide soon turned on Gao and others. Dr Wan Yanhai, a health official-turned-advocate, was detained in 2002 after distributing a secret government document on 170 AIDS-related deaths.
As with COVID-19, in the case of AIDS, “the impulse to cover up is ideological: Beijing deems its communist system the best in the world and brooks no fault”, Wan told Al Jazeera in February from New York after being barred from returning home to China since 2010. That was the year Wan defied officials’ warnings and attended the Nobel Peace Prize ceremony in Oslo to honour Liu Xiaobo, the Chinese dissident scholar who eventually died in prison in 2017.
For Gao, accolades worldwide and foreign media coverage of her work only gave Chinese officials further cause to rein her in.
After her book tour to Hong Kong in 2008, officials stepped up their surveillance and even cut her off from her family members. Several months later, Gao escaped with only a blood pressure meter and a floppy disk containing details and photos of patients.
At 81, Gao was the oldest dissident ever to have fled China. Barely one month after her death, prominent economist Mao Yushi set a new record. Mao, whose liberal think tank known for advocating market reforms was shut down by officials, shared pictures on social media of his 95th birthday celebrations in Vancouver, Canada, not long after he fled China.
Gao kept writing books into her last days.
“She was used to running around to tend to her patients. She felt useless merely writing on a notepad,” said Lin. Yet, Gao never took her final years in exile for granted.
“The US is no paradise,” wrote Gao, but she added: “Had I never left [China], I wouldn’t have lived past 90.”
It was an explosive night at the 96th annual Academy Awards, with the biopic Oppenheimer running away with the most trophies — and artists and protesters taking advantage of the spotlight to call attention to deadly conflicts in Gaza and Ukraine.
Outside the Dolby Theatre in Los Angeles, California, traffic snarled to a standstill as demonstrators called for a ceasefire in Gaza, the Palestinian enclave that has been subject to a five-month-long Israeli military offensive.
And inside the auditorium, actors and artists used their wins to call for peace, drawing on themes presented in the various nominated films.
With 13 nominations, the biopic Oppenheimer was the frontrunner going into the night’s Oscar ceremony. And it made good on early predictions about its Oscar success, with seven wins in major categories.
Here are the night’s biggest takeaways.
Emma Thomas, left, and Christopher Nolan accept the award for Best Picture for Oppenheimer [Chris Pizzello/AP Photo]
Oppenheimer cleans up with seven wins
With its blistering portrayal of J Robert Oppenheimer, the so-called father of the atomic bomb, the film Oppenheimer started the night slow but quickly built momentum, grabbing some of the ceremony’s biggest prizes.
Robert Downey Jr scored the first win of the night with his much-expected Best Supporting Actor trophy. But his co-star Cillian Murphy faced tight competition in the Best Actor category — and still made off with the golden statuette, prevailing over leading men like Paul Giamatti.
The film also delivered a long-awaited win in the Best Director category for Christopher Nolan, whose relationship with the Academy Awards stretches back over two decades.
Nolan was first nominated for an Academy Award in 2002 for the memory-loss mystery Memento, but while his films have earned major prizes at the Oscars, Nolan himself had consistently come up empty-handed.
That changed, however, with Sunday’s ceremony. Not only did Nolan grab Best Director, but his wife, producer Emma Thomas, took the stage with him to receive the Best Picture honour, the most-coveted trophy of the night.
Lily Gladstone from Killers of the Flower Moon lost the Best Actress race to Emma Stone of Poor Things [John Locher/AP Photo]
Killers of the Flower Moon shut out
One of the final categories of the night was Best Actress — and the auditorium at the Dolby Theatre held its collective breath while the presenters unveiled the winner.
The race was one of the tightest of the evening, but Lily Gladstone was widely believed to be the frontrunner, on the cusp of delivering a history-making win for her role in Killers of the Flower Moon.
Never before had a Native American woman won the category, much less been nominated. Gladstone, a member of the Nez Perce and Blackfeet nations, played the role of Mollie Kyle, a real-life Osage woman who lost close family in a 1920s killing spree known as the Osage Reign of Terror.
It was a quietly stunning performance, with Gladstone exuding steady intelligence in every scene. But in a surprise twist, she lost the Best Actress category to another top contender, Emma Stone, who delivered a zany, off-kilter performance in the surreal comedy Poor Things.
With Gladstone’s loss, Killers of the Flower Moon was entirely shut out of the Oscar race, despite 10 nominations. Poor Things, meanwhile, picked up four wins, largely in technical categories like Best Production Design and Best Makeup and Hairstyling.
Singer Billie Eilish, right, wore a ‘Artists for Ceasefire’ pin on the red carpet at the 96th annual Academy Awards [Chris Pizzello/AP Photo]
Gaza in the Oscars spotlight with red-button pins
On stage and off, however, world events dominated the conversation. Outside the Dolby Theatre, groups like the Los Angeles branch of Jewish Voice for Peace held up placards and chanted for a ceasefire in Gaza, blocking several lanes of traffic.
Among the protesters was SAG-AFTRA Members for a Ceasefire, a group of working actors.
The demonstrators said they sought to ensure that Israel’s assault on the southern Gaza city of Rafah was not ignored, even amid the glitz and glamour of the evening.
More than 30,000 Palestinians have been killed so far in Israel’s military offensive, which has prompted concerns over the risk of genocide and famine.
On the Oscar red carpet, appeals for peace in Gaza continued, with celebrities like singer Billie Eilish and Poor Things star Ramy Youssef sporting “Artists for Ceasefire” pins to raise awareness about the unfolding humanitarian crisis.
“I think it’s a universal message of just: Let’s stop killing kids,” Youssef told the magazine Variety. “Let’s not be part of more war.”
The director of the chilling Holocaust drama The Zone of Interest likewise lent his voice to the cause, while accepting his Oscar for Best International Feature.
“Right now, we stand here as men who refute their Jewishness and the Holocaust being hijacked by an occupation that has led to conflict for so many innocent people, whether the victims of October 7 in Israel or the ongoing attack on Gaza,” he said to applause.
Mstyslav Chernov accepts the award for Best Documentary Feature film for 20 Days in Mariupol [Chris Pizzello/AP Photo]
Documentary renews calls for Ukraine peace
The war in Gaza was not the only international conflict to grab the Oscar spotlight. With a win in the Best Documentary Feature category, the film 20 Days in Mariupol renewed attention about the ongoing Russian invasion in Ukraine.
It has been over two years since Russia launched its full-scale military assault in February 2022. With his documentary, filmmaker Mstyslav Chernov captured the early days of that war, as the southeastern city of Mariupol faced Russian bombs.
Chernov’s win in the category was historic. He explained from the Oscar stage that he was bringing home Ukraine’s first Oscar, but that he would trade it all for peace in his homeland.
“Probably, I’m the first director on this stage who will say: I wish I had never made this film. I wish to be able to exchange this to Russia never attacking Ukraine, never occupying our cities,” he said with deep emotion as he faced the crowd.
“But I cannot change the history. I cannot change the past,” he continued, appealing to the filmmakers in the audience to continue to shine a light on Ukraine.
“We can make sure the history record is set straight, and that the truth will prevail, and that the people of Mariupol and those who have given their lives will never be forgotten. Because cinema forms memories and memories form history.”
Currently, the US Congress is struggling to pass foreign aid to Ukraine, amid Republican opposition to the funding.
Jimmy Kimmel holds up a pair of pink sparkly pants, similar to those worn by Ryan Gosling during his performance of the song I’m Just Ken [Chris Pizzello/AP Photo]
Host Kimmel roasts Trump from the stage
The political divides in the US — and the presidential election looming in November — also briefly coloured the night’s events.
The Oscars delivered its usual mash-up of spectacle and glamour. In one of the night’s highlights, Canadian actor Ryan Gosling took to the stage for a live performance of his Barbie-themed power ballad I’m Just Ken, dressed in a sparkly pink suit and backed by cowboy-hatted dancers.
In another eye-ball popping moment, actor and wrestler John Cena appeared naked on stage to present the Best Costume prize.
But four-time Oscar host Jimmy Kimmel couldn’t resist sprinkling a little political humour into the night’s movie-themed zingers.
He first took a shot at Katie Britt, a US senator from Alabama who recently delivered the rebuttal to President Joe Biden’s State of the Union speech.
Kimmel compared Britt to the Frankenstein-like heroine of Poor Things, played by Oscar winner Stone.
“Emma played an adult woman with the brain of a child, like the lady that gave the rebuttal to the State of the Union on Thursday night,” Kimmel quipped.
Then, before the night closed, Kimmel reappeared on stage to read a mean social media post directed at him. Its author? Former President Donald Trump, a frequent target of Kimmel’s comedy.
“Has there ever been a worse host than Jimmy Kimmel at The Oscars?” Kimmel said, reading from his phone screen. Looking up, he addressed the president, who faces four criminal indictments, directly: “Thanks for watching. Isn’t it past your jail time?”
Tech giant’s head of EU affairs says team will bring together experts from across the company.
Facebook owner Meta has unveiled plans to launch a dedicated team to combat disinformation and harms generated by artificial intelligence (AI) ahead of the upcoming European Parliament elections.
Marco Pancini, Meta’s head of EU affairs, said the “EU-specific Elections Operations Center” would bring together experts from across the company to focus on tackling misinformation, influence operations and risks related to the abuse of AI.
“Ahead of the elections period, we will make it easier for all our fact-checking partners across the EU to find and rate content related to the elections because we recognize that speed is especially important during breaking news events,” Pancini said in a blog post on Sunday.
“We’ll use keyword detection to group related content in one place, making it easy for fact-checkers to find.”
Pancini said Meta’s efforts to address the risks posed by AI would include the addition of a feature for people to disclose when they share AI-generated video or audio and possible penalties for noncompliance.
“We already label photorealistic images created using Meta AI, and we are building tools to label AI generated images from Google, OpenAI, Microsoft, Adobe, Midjourney, and Shutterstock that users post to Facebook, Instagram and Threads,” he said.
The launch of AI platforms such as OpenAI’s GPT-4 and Google’s Gemini has raised concerns about the possibility of false information, images and videos influencing voters in elections.
The EU parliament elections, which take place between June 6 and 9, are among a raft of major polls taking place in 2024, which has been dubbed the biggest election year in history.
Voters in more than 80 countries, including the United States, India, Mexico and South Africa, are set to go to the polls in elections representing about half the world’s population.
Meta earlier this month joined 19 other tech companies, including Google, Microsoft, X, Amazon and TikTok, in signing a pledge to clamp down on AI content designed to mislead voters.
Under the “Tech Accord to Combat Deceptive Use of AI in 2024 Elections”, the companies agreed to take eight steps to address election risks, including developing tools to identify AI-generated content and enhancing transparency about efforts to address potentially harmful material.
The influence of AI on voters has already come under scrutiny in a number of elections.
Pakistan’s jailed former Prime Minister Imran Khan used AI-generated speeches to rally supporters in the run-up to the country’s parliamentary elections earlier this month.
In January, a fake robocall claiming to be from United States President Joe Biden urged voters not to cast their ballots in the New Hampshire primary.
On January 16, the European Court of Human Rights issued an important ruling in the context of accountability for abuses perpetrated during the United States-led “war on terror”. In the case of Mustafa al-Hawsawi v Lithuania, the court found that the latter violated the European Convention on Human Rights due to its complicity in the CIA’s secret detention programme and its mistreatment of al-Hawsawi, a Saudi national.
Lithuania was ordered to pay compensation to the victim worth $108,660 for the time he was at “Detention Site Violet”, a CIA black site it hosted. Al-Hawsawi is currently detained at the Guantánamo Bay detention centre, alongside 29 other Muslim men.
This judgment is the latest in a series of court rulings holding European countries accountable for their involvement in post-9/11 abuses. The European Court previously ruled against Poland, Romania, Italy and Macedonia.
Other European institutions, including the European Parliament and the Council of Europe, as well as individual European countries, have also taken measures for accountability, although they have not always been ideal. The UK paid over $28.8m to Iraqi victims for documented war crimes and abuses during its involvement in the US-led invasion of Iraq.
Additionally, compensation was provided to British citizens detained in Guantánamo and to two Libyan families who were kidnapped and tortured with the help of British intelligence. However, the UK abandoned an independent inquiry into post-9/11 extraordinary rendition and torture by its forces and closed an investigation into alleged crimes in Iraq.
Italy convicted in absentia 23 Americans, including CIA agents and an air force colonel, for kidnapping Hassan Nasr, an Egyptian imam based in Milan and handing him over to Egypt, where he was tortured. An Italian court also sentenced the former military intelligence chief and his former deputy to 10 and nine in jail respectively for their involvement in the case.
Sweden compensated Mohammed Alzery and Ahmed Agiza, who were forcibly deported to Egypt at the request of the CIA and tortured. Prosecutors also opened investigations in France, Portugal and Spain over the CIA’s use of their airports for renditions, although they did not result in formal charges. There remains an ongoing criminal investigation into CIA activities in Poland.
Canada, too, apologised and paid $8.1m to Omar Khadr, a Canadian national, over its role in his imprisonment in Guantánamo; it also compensated Maher Arar, another Canadian national, with the same amount over its role in the US government’s decision to deport him to Syria, where he was detained for a year and tortured.
While these court cases and settlements highlight efforts to bring to justice European and other countries complicit in the abuses perpetrated during the “war on terror”, they underscore the persistent lack of accountability for the US, its chief architect and leader.
As a state party to the Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment, the US is obligated to provide redress to survivors of torture carried out by its government forces. But legal barriers have often prevented survivors from pursuing justice in US courts.
By invoking the state secrets privilege, for example – most recently used in the United States v Zubaydah case – the government can withhold information it deems sensitive to national security. In the lawsuit filed by Abu Zubaydah, a Saudi-born Palestinian man currently held in Guantanamo, the defence sought evidence about his torture that the government argued would harm national security; the Supreme Court ruled in the government’s favour.
Similarly, historically, court dismissals, have been the result of the US government citing immunity – which has protected its forces as well as private contractors.
The US has also bypassed global and regional instruments of justice. It has warned of reprisals against the International Criminal Court if it launches an investigation into US crimes in Afghanistan. Additionally, it maintains that the American Declaration of the Rights and Duties of Man is not binding, rendering decisions and recommendations from the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) nonbinding. In 2020, the IACHR found the US responsible for the torture, abuse and indefinite detention of Djamel Ameziane, a former Guantanamo detainee, and recommended the US compensate him, which the US government has not done so far.
There have been only minimal steps towards accountability within the US judicial system. An investigation into abuse at Abu Ghraib prison resulted in the court martial of 11 low-level soldiers. An Obama-era investigation into 101 CIA interrogations that used “enhanced interrogation techniques” found only two merited further inquiries. In 2012, the investigation was closed without further action.
According to Human Rights Watch, out of 506 claims made as of 2007 under the Foreign Claims Act, which allows foreign nationals to seek compensation, there is a record of only one being paid – $1,000 for unlawful detention in Iraq.
Settlements were reached in two lawsuits against private military contractors. In 2013, a defence contractor paid $5.28m to 71 former detainees held in Abu Ghraib and other black sites. In 2017, a case brought by the American Civil Liberties Union on behalf of three torture victims reached a confidential settlement with psychologists James Mitchell and Bruce Jessen, who were paid over $80m by the US government to create the torture programme.
And despite 18 dismissal attempts, a lawsuit launched by four Iraqi torture victims against government contractor CACI International for torture at Abu Ghraib is heading to trial.
These lawsuits and investigations have fallen short of adequately addressing the scale and severity of the harm inflicted on victims during the “war on terror”. Lack of redress further compounds the suffering of those who have endured physical and psychological trauma. To date, no senior government or military official has been held responsible for post-9/11 policies and actions.
The US remains unwilling to face accountability for acts of torture, as it continues to detain 30 men in Guantánamo in conditions that amount to ongoing cruel treatment. It is long past due for a reckoning. The US is not above international law and must not be allowed to continue dodging justice.
The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.
The frontrunner for the Republican nomination shows no signs of easing hostile stance towards military alliance.
The White House has condemned Donald Trump’s comments suggesting the United States should not help NATO protect allies from a potential Russian attack as “unhinged”.
The former United States president, who appeared to be talking about a previous meeting with NATO leaders during his latest political rally in South Carolina on Saturday, claimed he had spoken with the president of “a big country” about allies rushing to defend each other.
“Well sir if we don’t pay, and we’re attacked by Russia – will you protect us?” he recounted the leader as saying.
“I said: ‘You didn’t pay? You’re delinquent?’ He said: ‘Yes, let’s say that happened.’ No, I would not protect you. In fact, I would encourage them to do whatever the hell they want. You gotta pay.”
“Encouraging invasions of our closest allies by murderous regimes is appalling and unhinged – and it endangers American national security, global stability and our economy at home,” said White House spokesperson Andrew Bates.
President Joe Biden, who is seeking re-election in November, has empowered the alliance since taking office in 2021, making sure NATO is now “the largest and most vital it has ever been”, Bates added.
“Rather than calling for wars and promoting deranged chaos, President Biden will continue to bolster American leadership and stand up for our national security interests – not against them,” he said in a statement.
The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), a military alliance of 29 European and two North American countries, has a provision in its statute that says it must defend any member that is attacked.
This is not the first time the frontrunner for the Republican nomination in the upcoming presidential elections has criticised the alliance.
When president, Trump threatened to pull the US out of NATO. He also suggested he could cut Washington’s funding of the organisation, and repeatedly complained that the US pays more than it should.
With the war in Ukraine showing no signs of stopping, concerns have mounted over the ramifications of a potential Trump victory in November.
Kyiv is desperately seeking funding to drive its war effort. The European Union agreed earlier this month to dedicate an additional 50-billion-euro ($54bn) aid package to Ukraine, however, Biden’s bid to win approval for a US aid package is bogged down amid domestic political spats.
NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg last month said he did not believe a second Trump presidency would jeopardise US membership in the military bloc.
The official, who has been pushing member states to boost military spending, said European allies were increasing their military contributions and “moving in the right direction”.
Since the start of the Ukraine war in February 2022, US aid to Ukraine has totalled around $75bn, according to Stoltenberg, who said other NATO members and partner states combined have provided more than $100bn.
Montreal, Canada – Human rights advocates are accusing Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s government of misleading the public over weapons sales to Israel, which have come under greater scrutiny amid the deadly Israeli bombardment of Gaza.
At issue is legislation that prohibits the government from exporting military equipment to foreign actors if there is a risk it can be used in human rights abuses.
But regulatory loopholes, combined with a lack of clarity over what Canada sends to Israel, have complicated efforts to end the transfers.
Dozens of Canadian civil society groups this month urged Trudeau to end arms exports to Israel, arguing they violate Canadian and international law because the weapons could be used in the Gaza Strip.
But in the face of mounting pressure since Israel’s war on Gaza began on October 7, Canada’s foreign affairs ministry has tried to downplay the state’s role in helping Israel build its arsenal.
“Global Affairs Canada can confirm that Canada has not received any requests, and therefore not issued any permits, for full weapon systems for major conventional arms or light weapons to Israel for over 30 years,” the department told Al Jazeera in an email on Friday.
“The permits which have been granted since October 7, 2023, are for the export of non-lethal equipment.”
But advocates say this misrepresents the total volume of Canada’s military exports to Israel, which totalled more than $15m ($21.3m Canadian) in 2022, according to the government’s own figures.
It also shines a spotlight on the nation’s longstanding lack of transparency around these transfers.
“Canadian companies have exported over [$84m, $114m Canadian] in military goods to Israel since 2015 when the Trudeau government was elected,” said Michael Bueckert, vice president of Canadians for Justice and Peace in the Middle East, an advocacy group.
“And they have continued to approve arms exports since October 7 despite the clear risk of genocide in Gaza,” Bueckert told Al Jazeera.
“Unable to defend its own policy, this government is misleading Canadians into thinking that we aren’t exporting weapons to Israel at all. As Canadians increasingly demand that their government impose an arms embargo on Israel, politicians are trying to pretend that the arms trade doesn’t exist.”
Lack of information
While Canada may not transfer full weapons systems to Israel, the two countries enjoy “a consistent arms trade relationship”, said Kelsey Gallagher, a researcher at Project Ploughshares, a peace research institute.
The vast majority of Canada’s military exports to Israel come in the form of parts and components. These typically fall into three categories, Gallagher explained: electronics and space equipment; military aerospace exports and components; and finally, bombs, missiles, rockets and general military explosives and components.
But beyond these broad categories, which were gleaned by examining Canada’s own domestic and international reports on weapons exports, Gallagher said it remains unclear “what these actual pieces of technology are”.
“We don’t know what companies are exporting them. We don’t know exactly what their end use is,” he told Al Jazeera.
Global Affairs Canada did not immediately respond to Al Jazeera’s question about what “non-lethal equipment” the government has approved for export to Israel since October 7.
“What does this mean? No one knows because there’s no definition of that and it really could be quite a number of things,” said Henry Off, a Toronto-based lawyer and board member of the group Canadian Lawyers for International Human Rights (CLAIHR).
Human rights lawyers and activists also suspect that Canadian military components are reaching Israel via the United States, including for installation in fighter jets such as the F-35 aircraft.
But these transfers are difficult to track because a decades-old deal between Canada and the US – 1956’s Defence Production Sharing Agreement – has created “a unique and comprehensive set of loopholes that are afforded to Canadian arms transfers to the US”, said Gallagher.
“These exports are treated with zero transparency. There is no regulation of, or reporting of, the transfer of Canadian-made military components to the US, including those that could be re-transferred to Israel,” he said.
The result, he added, is that “it is very difficult to challenge what are problematic transfers if we do not have the information with which to do so”.
Domestic, international law
Despite these hurdles, Canadian human rights advocates are pressuring the government to end its weapons sales to Israel, particularly in light of the Israeli military’s continued assault on Gaza.
Nearly 28,000 Palestinians have been killed over the past four months and rights advocates have meticulously documented the impact on the ground of Israel’s indiscriminate bombing, and its vast destruction of the enclave. The world’s top court, the International Court of Justice, also determined last month that Palestinians in Gaza face a plausible risk of genocide.
Against that backdrop, eliminating weapons transfers to Israel is effectively a demand for “Canada [to] abide by its own laws”, said Off, the Toronto lawyer.
That’s because Canada’s Export and Import Permits Act obliges the foreign minister to “deny exports and brokering permit applications for military goods and technology … if there is a substantial risk that the items would undermine peace and security”.
The minister should also deny exports if they “could be used to commit or facilitate serious violations of international humanitarian and human rights laws” or in “serious acts of gender-based violence or serious acts of violence against women and children”, the law states.
Meanwhile, Canada is also party to the Arms Trade Treaty (ATT), a United Nations pact that bans transfers if states have knowledge the arms could be used in genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes and other violations of international law.
But according to Off, despite a growing list of Israeli human rights violations since October 7, Canada “has been approving the transfer of military goods and technology that might fuel” them.
Late last month, Canadian Lawyers for International Human Rights wrote a letter to Canadian Foreign Minister Melanie Joly demanding an immediate end to the transfers. The group said it would consider next steps, including possible legal action, if action is not taken.
‘It takes a village’
Still, Canada insists that it maintains one of the strongest arms export control regimes in the world.
Asked whether his government intends to end arms transfers to Israel, Trudeau said in Parliament on January 31 that Canada “puts human rights and protection of human rights at the centre of all our decision-making”.
“It has always been the case and we have been consistent in making sure that we are responsible in the way we do that. We will continue to be so,” the prime minister said.
Gallagher, at Project Ploughshares, told Al Jazeera, however, that Canada maintains “a level of permissibility” in choosing which countries it chooses to arm, including Israel.
“More than [27,000] Palestinians killed, the vast majority civilians; much of the Gaza Strip absolutely destroyed,” he said, referring to Israel’s offensive. “This is obviously an operation that is not being conducted within the bounds of international humanitarian law, which should be colouring the risk assessment performed by Canadian officials.”
Destroyed houses in the Al Bureij refugee camp, Gaza, on February 7, 2024 [Mohammed Saber/EPA]
And while Canadian weapons exports to the Israeli government pale in comparison to other countries – notably the US, which sends billions of dollars in military aid to Israel annually – Off said, “Any difference is a difference.”
“It takes a village to make these instruments of death and it should make a difference if we cut off Canada’s contributions,” he told Al Jazeera, adding that the pressure on Canada also sends a message to other countries “potentially aiding and abetting Israel’s slaughter of Gaza”.
“If you send arms to countries committing serious violations of international humanitarian law, you will be held to account.”
In 2021, Ethan Crumbley walked out of a toilet, pulled a gun from his backpack at school and killed four students.
A Michigan jury has convicted a school shooter’s mother of involuntary manslaughter in a first-of-its-kind trial to determine whether she had any responsibility in the killing of four students in 2021.
Prosecutors said on Tuesday that Jennifer Crumbley was negligent when she failed to tell Oxford High School that the family owned guns, including a 9mm handgun that her son, Ethan, used at the November 30 attack.
Crumbley, 45, faced four counts of involuntary manslaughter, one for each of the victims. Her husband, James, 47, is set to face his trial next month.
Oakland County prosecutors argued during the trial that the mother, despite not pulling the trigger herself, negligently stored the gun and ammunition and, therefore, should be held criminally responsible for the deaths.
They said that she and her husband knew Ethan was mentally in a “downward spiral” and posed a danger to others but allowed him access to the fateful pistol.
Ethan Crumbley, in Pontiac, US, February 22, 2022 [File: David Guralnick/Pool via Reuters]
They added that Crumbley had a duty under Michigan law to prevent her son, who was 15 at the time, from harming others.
But Shannon Smith, the lawyer for Crumbley, argued that she was not responsible for buying or storing the gun used by her son and that there were no warning signs that he would harm his classmates or to foresee a crime taking place.
Crumbley testified in her defence during the trial and said her husband was responsible for securely storing firearms at home and that her son had been anxious about getting into college.
During Smith’s closing arguments, she asked the jury, comprising six men and six women, including some gun owners, to find her client not guilty since her son’s crimes were “unforeseeable”.
“Can every parent really be responsible for everything that their children do?” Smith asked.
School shooting
On the morning of the school shooting, staff members who were concerned with Ethan’s drawing of a gun, bullet and wounded man next to the words “Blood everywhere,” “My life is useless,” and “The thoughts won’t stop – help me”, on his math assignment, met the Crumbleys.
According to prosecutors, Ethan’s parents were told that he needed counselling and they needed to take him home, but the couple resisted taking him and did not search his bag or ask about the gun.
However, Jennifer challenged that account, telling jurors they had mutually agreed that Ethan could remain in school that day and did not think he posed a danger to other students.
Hours later, Ethan walked out of a toilet, pulled a gun from his backpack and shot 10 students and a teacher, killing four students.
The gun used was a Sig Sauer 9mm that his father, James, had bought just four days earlier. Jennifer had also taken her son to a shooting range that weekend.
Ethan, now 17, pleaded guilty to murder and “terrorism” and is serving a life sentence.
Hawaiians respond to a threat of nuclear attack and a survivor tells of coping with the Hiroshima bombing.
It is 41 minutes and 40 seconds to midnight in Honolulu. Heat rises from the asphalt in Hawaii’s capital. It is a beautiful day and people are out for strolls and running errands. Suddenly, sounds of sirens cut through the air. TV broadcasts, radio shows, and mobile phones are flooded with the following message: “Ballistic missile threat inbound to Hawaii. Seek immediate shelter. This is not a drill.” Panic descends throughout the island. Thousands of goodbye messages to loved ones are sent – even ones containing dramatic declarations or confessions. It took authorities almost one hour to let people know this was an error. We hear from people who tell us how they coped with the frightening events of this day in 2018.
We also hear of the harrowing experience of surviving an actual nuclear attack. Toshiko Tanaka was six years old when the United States dropped an atomic bomb on her city of Hiroshima. “I remember the horror of that day: blinding light like thousands of strobe lights, my body thrown to the ground.” The atomic bombings of the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945 were the only time nuclear weapons have been used. Today, about 120,000 Hibakusha – survivors of the bombings – are still alive. Tanaka tells us of her life as one of these survivors, and of the work those bombings inspired her to do. She is 84 years old now and has dedicated her life to fighting against nuclear proliferation.
And they let United States President Joe Biden know it when they shunned his campaign manager as she visited Michigan to reach out to their communities this week.
Many elected Arab-American officials, including municipal leaders and state legislators, declined to meet with Julie Chavez Rodriguez, arguing that as long as there are mass killings in Gaza, they will not discuss the elections.
“It’s unfathomable at this point in time that we’re trying to talk about electoral politics with a genocide unfolding,” said Abdullah Hammoud, the mayor of Dearborn, a Detroit suburb.
“This is not a time to talk about politics. This is a time for our humanity to be recognised, and for us to be sitting down with decision-makers and policymakers to talk about a change of course of what’s unfolding overseas. And it does not happen with campaign staff.”
Arab-American local officials in Southeast Michigan told Al Jazeera that their constituents are furious and frustrated with Biden’s policies in Gaza – anger that could prove detrimental to the president’s reelection chances.
Dearborn – home to large Palestinian, Lebanese, Yemeni and Iraqi communities – is known as the capital of Arab America. Hammoud noted that all four countries are being bombed by the US and its Israeli allies.
The mayor added that Arab Americans and the broader community in Dearborn feel “betrayed” by Biden’s unwavering support for Israel.
“I have residents who have had to dig their grandmothers up from under the rubble after Israeli fighter jets bombed their homes,” Hammoud told Al Jazeera.
“We have residents who hail from Sheikh Jarrah in Jerusalem, which is being ethnically cleansed. What do I tell them? What is the message to them?”
Abdullah Hammoud became Dearborn’s first Arab-American mayor in 2022 [Paul Sancya/AP]
Michigan’s importance
The meeting that was being organised between Arab-American leaders and Chavez Rodriguez was subsequently cancelled after pushback from the community, several officials told Al Jazeera.
Arab Americans in Dearborn and other Michigan cities could play an outsized role in the US presidential elections, where the system is based on winning individual states.
Michigan, home to more than 10 million people, is a key “swing state” – not guaranteed to vote Republican or Democrat – and it is often won by fine margins.
In 2016, former President Donald Trump beat his Democratic opponent Hillary Clinton in the Midwestern state by fewer than 11,000 votes. So the estimated hundreds of thousands of Arab Americans in Michigan could sway the outcome of the election.
In recent election cycles, presidential candidates, particularly Democrats, started acknowledging the importance of the Arab vote: running ads in Arabic, meeting with community advocates and addressing Arab Americans’ specific concerns.
In 2020, Biden released a platform for Arab-American communities, promising to recognise the equality of Palestinians and Israelis and protect civil rights at home. He also sent his wife Jill Biden and running mate Kamala Harris to Dearborn to reach out to the Arab community there.
Despite grievances with his staunch support for Israel, Arab voters appeared to back Biden overwhelmingly. For example, in predominantly Arab polling locations in Dearborn, Biden won more than 80 percent of the votes, city data shows. That support helped him reclaim Michigan for the Democrats.
But as we head to the 2024 elections in November, which will likely be a rematch between Biden and Trump, Biden’s popularity among Arab Americans is tanking.
An Arab American Institute poll in October showed Arab American support for Biden plummeted to 17 percent after the war and some activists suspect that it may have sunken even further since then.
While Arab-American advocates stress their communities are not driven by a single issue, they say the scale of the carnage in Gaza and Biden’s uncompromising role in it makes it difficult – if not impossible – to support the 81-year-old president again.
“Arab Americans will not vote for Joe Biden, no matter what. That’s it. They’re done with Biden,” Sam Baydoun, a Wayne County commissioner who also declined to meet with Chavez Rodriguez, told Al Jazeera.
“That’s the bottom line. Joe Biden is not going to be able to regain the trust of the Arab-American community.”
Biden’s support for Israel
Biden has provided unconditional political and financial support to Israel since it started its war on Gaza on October 7. The president is requesting more than $14bn in additional aid for the US ally and the White House is still working with Congress to secure the funds.
Moreover, Palestinian rights advocates have accused him of contributing to the dehumanisation of Palestinians. In October, Biden described the thousands of civilian deaths in Gaza as “the price of waging war”.
In a statement marking the 100th day of the conflict earlier this month, the US president focused on Israeli captives in Gaza, failing to mention Palestinians altogether.
The Biden administration has also vetoed two United Nations Security Council resolutions calling for de-escalation in Gaza where more than 26,000 Palestinians have been killed.
This week, the Biden administration also suspended funding for the UN agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA) based on unconfirmed Israeli allegations that some UNRWA workers participated in Hamas’s October 7 attack against Israel.
At the same time, Washington has categorically ruled out halting or conditioning aid to Israel, even after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu openly defied Biden in rejecting the two-state solution.
Still, the Biden administration argues that it is pushing Israel to minimise civilian casualties and trying to increase the flow of humanitarian aid into Gaza where the population is on the verge of famine according to rights groups.
Abraham Aiyash, the majority leader of the Michigan House of Representatives, dismissed Washington’s claims that it is trying to help the people of Gaza.
“‘Trying’ has led to nearly 30,000 dead, massive destruction of civilian infrastructure and a more emboldened far-right, fascist government in Israel. So if the United States is ‘trying’, I would be afraid of what it would look like if the US wasn’t trying,” Aiyash, who is of Yemeni descent, told Al Jazeera.
The Biden campaign did not return Al Jazeera’s request for comment by the time of publication.
‘War criminal’
Osama Siblani, the publisher of the Dearborn-based Arab American News, did meet with Chavez Rodriguez this week to deliver a scathing message to her face, he said.
“Biden is telling Israel, ‘Here is the money; here’s ammunition; here’s the political power; here’s whatever you need, go and kill.’ That is a war criminal. That’s how we see it,” Siblani said he told the campaign manager.
He added that he had received dozens of phone calls urging him to cancel the meeting but that he felt it was necessary to confront the Biden campaign.
“I told her I wanted to meet with you, but I wanted to relay a very strong message: If this man wants our vote, he has to do more than Jesus Christ – bring a lot more dead back to life. Thousands of people’s blood is on his hands,” Siblani told Al Jazeera.
Beyond the crisis in Gaza, Siblani said Biden has not lived up to his broader promises to the Arab community.
In his 2020 platform, the US president said he would reopen a consulate for Palestinians in Jerusalem. That has not happened.
He also promised to protect free speech despite his opposition to the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement. But his administration has done little to address the state-level crackdown on supporters of Palestinian rights.
Siblani said Arab Americans were also promised a seat at the table but they have been largely sidelined by the administration. “This is exactly why people are angry. They’re angry because he did not respect our vote. He didn’t even care. He still doesn’t care.”
Aiyash, who is one of the highest-ranking Arab and Muslim officials in the country, said neither the White House nor the Democratic Party has reached out to him for input since the war began.
The lawmaker said the White House’s disregard for those calling for a ceasefire in Gaza is “ill-advised” and “disrespectful”.
“It’s just shocking to me – given how significant Michigan is, and how much work the Arab and Muslim communities put in in 2020, to guarantee President Biden’s victory,” Aiyash told Al Jazeera.
What about Trump?
When asked about the Arab and Muslim vote, Biden and his aides have waved the prospect of Trump’s return to the White House, suggesting that the US president remains a far better option than his predecessor, who imposed a travel ban on several Arab and Muslim-majority countries. They have also argued that by November, Gaza may not be a leading issue.
Biden outlined that rationale earlier this month, saying, “The former president wants to put a ban on Arabs coming into the country. We’ll make sure we understand who cares about the Arab population, number one. Number two, we got a long way to go in terms of settling the situation in Gaza.”
Baydoun, the county commissioner, rejected both arguments. “We will not forget. This is a genocide,” he said. “We can no longer accept the lesser of two evils.”
Mainstream Democrats, including liberal commentators, Congress members and governors, have been emphasising the need to vote for Biden to stop Trump, whom they argue is a threat to democracy.
“Donald Trump is a threat to democracy,” Minnesota Governor Tim Walz told CNN earlier this month. “That’s why we need to re-elect Joe Biden, and that’s exactly what we’re going to do,” he added.
However, Mayor Hammoud said the question about preserving democracy against Trump should be posed to the White House, not those who oppose the war on Gaza.
“Some folks are asking, ‘How could the Arabs not vote for Biden? Trump is on the ticket’,” Hammoud said. “But my question is: If American democracy is under threat by the re-election of Trump, why is the US alignment with Benjamin Netanyahu worth threatening American democracy?”
Aiyash echoed that argument, stressing that large segments of the Democratic base, including young voters and people who care about human rights – not just Arabs and Muslims – are frustrated with Biden’s position on Gaza.
“If democracy is so important – and I believe it is – why is this administration allowing Benjamin Netanyahu and Israel’s extremist ideologies and genocidal military to take precedence over protecting democracy, over preserving the Republic?”
Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi and US National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan met to discuss competition and cooperation between the two countries.
Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi and United States National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan have held talks aimed at keeping in contact, both sides said, with Wang stressing that “Taiwan independence” posed the biggest risk to Sino-US ties.
Wang and Sullivan met in Bangkok, Thailand, on Saturday, just more than two months after US President Joe Biden and Chinese President Xi Jinping met on the sidelines of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in San Francisco.
The two “had candid, substantive and fruitful strategic communication on implementing the consensus reach at the San Francisco meeting … and on properly handling important and sensitive issues in China-US relations,” China’s foreign ministry said in a statement.
The White House said that the meeting between the officials was “part of the effort to maintain open lines of communication” between the two countries.
It added that “Sullivan stressed that although the United States and China are in competition, both countries need to prevent it from veering into conflict or confrontation”.
Beijing and Washington have previously clashed on issues related to technology, trade, human rights, and Taiwan, which China claims as its territory.
Taiwan
The recent Taiwanese election saw the Democratic Progressive Party (DDP) secure a third term. The DPP is resistant to China’s claim over Taiwan.
This week, two US lawmakers met Taiwan’s new leader, Lai Ching-te, to reaffirm Washington’s support for the self-governing island.
This was the second group to arrive in Taiwan since the election after Biden sent an unofficial delegation to congratulate Lai two days after the vote.
But, according to China’s foreign ministry, Wang stressed in the meeting with Sullivan that Taiwan was “China’s internal affair, and the regional election in Taiwan cannot change the basic reality that Taiwan is part of China”.
“The biggest risk to peace and stability across the Taiwan Strait is the so-called ‘Taiwan independence’ movement. The biggest challenge to China-US relations is also the ‘Taiwan independence’ movement,” it added.
Before the meeting, Taiwan’s defence ministry said China sent 33 aircraft, including SU-30 fighters and six navy vessels, around Taiwan between 6am Friday to 6am Saturday (22:00 Thursday – 22:00 Friday GMT). Among those sent, 13 warplanes crossed the Taiwan Strait, an unofficial boundary between Taiwan and China.
The White House said Sullivan “underscored the importance of maintaining peace and stability across the Taiwan Strait” without elaborating.
High-level diplomacy
Apart from cross-strait issues, the officials also touched on other issues, including Russia’s war against Ukraine, Iran and the Middle East, North Korea, the South China Sea, and Myanmar, the White House said.
Both sides agreed that the two presidents would keep regular contact, provide strategic guidance on bilateral relations and promote exchanges between the US and China in different areas and levels, the Chinese ministry said.
The two sides will set up a call between President Xi and President Biden, the White House said in a statement, as part of “high-level diplomacy” efforts.
They also agreed to launch a joint working group on anti-drug cooperation and set up an intergovernmental dialogue on artificial intelligence.
Sullivan and Wang “recognised recent progress in resuming military-to-military communication and noted the importance of maintaining these channels”, the White House added.
Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich was arrested on espionage charges, which he denies.
A court in Moscow has extended the pretrial detention of Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich, arrested on espionage charges, until the end of March, meaning the journalist will spend at least a year behind bars in Russia.
United States Consul General Stuart Wilson attended Friday’s hearing at the Lefortovo District Court, which took place behind closed doors because authorities say details of the criminal case against the journalist are classified.
In video shared by the state news agency Ria Novosti, Gershkovich was shown listening to the ruling, standing in a court cage wearing a hooded top and light blue jeans. He was pictured a short time later walking towards a prison van as he left the court.
Gershkovich, 32, was detained in March while on a reporting trip to the Russian city of Yekaterinburg, about 2,000km (1,200 miles) east of Moscow.
Russia’s Federal Security Service alleged that the reporter, “acting on the instructions of the American side, collected information constituting a state secret about the activities of one of the enterprises of the Russian military-industrial complex”.
Gershkovich and the US newspaper he works for deny the allegations, and the US government has said he has been wrongfully detained. Russian authorities have not detailed any evidence to support the espionage charges as his detention has been extended multiple times.
‘It is not easy’
During his annual news conference in December, Russian President Vladimir Putin said Moscow is in talks with Washington on sending home both Gershkovich and jailed American Paul Whelan and the Kremlin hopes to “find a solution” even though “it is not easy”.
Whelan, a former US marine and security executive, was arrested in Russia in 2018 and convicted of spying in 2020.
Putin was replying to a question about an offer that the administration of US President Joe Biden made to secure the two men’s release. The US Department of State referenced the offer in December, without providing details, and said Russia rejected it.
“We have contacts on this matter with our American partners. There’s a dialogue on this issue. It’s not easy, I won’t go into details right now, but in general, it seems to me that we’re speaking a language each of us understands,” Putin said.
“I hope we will find a solution,” he continued. “But, I repeat, the American side must hear us and make a decision that will satisfy the Russian side as well.”
The Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs has said it will consider a swap for Gershkovich only after a verdict in his trial. In Russia, espionage trials can last for more than a year.
Gershkovich is the first US reporter to be charged with espionage in Russia since 1986 when Nicholas Daniloff, a Moscow correspondent for US News and World Report, was arrested by the KGB. Gershkovich is being held at Moscow’s Lefortovo prison, notorious for its harsh conditions.
The trial will be postponed for at least a day, but Trump’s lawyers have asked for it to resume on Wednesday, after the New Hampshire Republican primary.
Writer E Jean Carroll’s civil defamation case against former US President Donald Trump, who was expected to testify, has been postponed after one of the jurors was sent home sick.
US District Judge Lewis Kaplan said on Monday that one of the nine jurors reported feeling “nauseous and hot” and so was sent home.
Trump’s lawyer, Alina Habba, also reported that at least one of her parents has COVID-19, and she exhibited symptoms of a fever in the last two days after having dinner with them several days ago.
Habba and her co-counsel, Michael Madaio, tested negative for COVID-19 on Monday.
After Kaplan announced that the trial would be postponed for at least a day, Habba asked the judge if Trump’s testimony could be delayed until Wednesday due to the New Hampshire Republican primary on Tuesday.
Kaplan did not immediately rule on a decision on the timing of Trump’s testimony.
Last week, Trump sat at the defence table as writer E Jean Carroll testified that he had defamed her after she accused him of rape in the 1990s.
E Jean Carroll steps out of the car as she arrives at Manhattan Federal Court, in New York City, the US [Shannon Stapleton/Reuters]
The jurors are sitting to determine how much Trump should pay Carroll in damages for defaming her in June 2019 after he denied sexually assaulting her.
Trump has consistently denied the allegations and last week complained to his lawyers about a “witch hunt” and a “con job” loudly enough that the judge threatened to remove him from the courtroom if he continued.
But he held a press conference afterwards and told reporters, “It’s a disgrace, frankly, what’s happening”, and repeated that it was “a made-up, fabricated story”.
Carroll’s lawyers have asked Kaplan to make Trump swear, before any testimony, that he understands and accepts the court’s restrictions on what he can say.
“There are any number of reasons why Mr. Trump might perceive a personal or political benefit from intentionally turning this trial into a circus,” attorney Roberta Kaplan wrote in a letter to the judge, who is unrelated.
Trump has been juggling court and campaign appearances and using both to argue that he is being persecuted by Democrats who fear his return to office.
Danny Jia was walking down a street outside Taiwan’s Taoyuan city in late December when he suddenly heard automatic gunfire.
Not far from Jia’s location that morning, the 249th mechanised infantry brigade of the Taiwanese armed forces was conducting military drills at Guanyin beach on the island’s northwest coast.
“I was so startled that I almost dropped my phone,” the 46-year-old civil servant told Al Jazeera.
“The exercises are also a scary reminder that a war might actually come to Taiwan in the future,” Jia said.
Guanyin beach is one of Taiwan’s so-called “red beaches” – stretches of the coastline that in the event of a Chinese invasion, offer the most favourable conditions for amphibious landing assaults.
For China’s military planners, Guanyin beach would be particularly suitable as it lies less than 18 kilometres (11 miles) from Taiwan’s primary international airport, and only about 50 kilometres (31 miles) from the outskirts of the Taiwanese capital, Taipei.
Democratic and self-ruled Taiwan has never been part of the People’s Republic of China (PRC), but Beijing considers Taiwan to be part of its territory and has not ruled out using force to bring the island under its control.
In his new year speech, Chinese President Xi Jinping called Taiwan’s unification with mainland China “inevitable”.
With the ever-present threat of China’s troops spilling onto Taiwan’s shores one day, Jia believes that the military drills on red beaches serve an important purpose in preparing the Taiwanese military for the worst.
Recently, however, Jia has found himself convinced that such a scenario is far from certain due to events in China’s own military ranks.
At the end of December, nine high-ranking military officers were removed from their positions.
Several of those axed were from the Chinese military’s elite “rocket force”, which oversees China’s tactical and nuclear missiles.
Earlier, in August, two leading figures in the rocket force were likewise removed.
That same month, the then-Chinese defence minister, Li Shuangfu, went missing.
Li has since been dismissed and replaced by Dong Jun.
With so many changes among the top brass, Jia said he failed to see how the Chinese armed forces could be prepared for the complex planning involved in a large-scale assault on Taiwan in the near future.
“I think there is too much chaos in China’s military for that,” he said.
A limited Taiwanese respite
People in Taiwan have reasons to feel more secure, according to Christina Chen, a research fellow at Taiwan’s Institute for National Defense and Security Research (INDSR) think tank.
“The removal of senior officers demonstrates that Xi Jinping is clearly not confident in the military, and that reduces the likelihood of a Chinese attack on Taiwan in the near term,” Chen told Al Jazeera.
The relatively large number of Chinese officers expelled in such a short time can also affect the armed forces’ fighting spirit as uncertainty spreads as to who will be targeted next.
“More removals might follow and that could further weaken the morale of the military and its ability to fight,” Chen said.
While the risk of an imminent conflict in the Taiwan Strait may have been reduced, Chen sees Beijing’s long-term goal of taking over Taiwan staying firmly in place.
China’s new defence minister, Dong Jun, has experience with military matters regarding Taiwan from his previous roles as commander of the Chinese navy, deputy commander of the Southern Theatre Command and deputy commander of China’s East Sea Fleet.
Although a defence minister serves mostly a diplomatic and public role in China, the appointment of the highly experienced Dong Jun was not arbitrary, according to Chen.
It reflects Beijing’s overall ambition of turning China into a maritime power that can rival the United States and eventually annex Taiwan, she said.
Beijing has in recent years increasingly projected its growing maritime and air power in Taiwan’s direction.
Sabre-rattling rhetoric and large-scale military drills in the waters close to Taiwan have also accompanied times of particular tension.
This was the case in the aftermath of then-US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Taipei in 2022 and after Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen’s stopover in San Francisco last year where she met with Pelosi’s successor, Kevin McCarthy.
Some observers expect a similarly assertive Chinese reaction leading up to President-elect William Lai Ching-te taking office in May following his victory in the Taiwanese presidential election on January 13.
Beijing has branded Lai a separatist and declared that the election result would not change the Chinese government’s stance on Taiwan’s unification with the mainland.
Chen sees Beijing’s pressure campaign directed at Taiwan continuing despite the dismissals in the Chinese military ranks.
“That will not change no matter how many military officers are removed,” she said.
The biggest purge
According to Associate Professor Alfred Wu, a scholar specialising in corruption and governance in China at the National University of Singapore, the removal of Chinese military officials is more than a simple shake-up.
“In addition to the anticorruption effort, it is a purge,” Wu told Al Jazeera.
“Xi Jinping is strengthening his hold over the military and sending a signal to all those that are not completely aligned with him that they might be next and therefore should be afraid,” he said.
Wu described the use of fear as a tool employed to try to secure loyalty in China’s authoritarian state structure where a lack of oversight and transparency can easily result in corruption and poor governance.
Since Xi came to power in 2012, several anticorruption campaigns have resulted in purges throughout the Chinese state apparatus.
The Chinese military has long had a reputation for corruption, but the fact that the army’s elite rocket force has been targeted is unprecedented.
The scale of the crackdown has left observers describing it as one of the biggest in Chinese military history.
Under the rule of Xi, who has called for the military’s absolute loyalty, purges are, in Wu’s words, “a continuous process”.
Purges might even grow in frequency and magnitude, according to Wu, as the legitimacy that the Chinese government enjoyed during the country’s economic boom years comes under strain at a time when the Chinese economy is showing signs of weakness.
“The economic situation might cause insecurity to grow within the Chinese government leading them to take more hawkish steps to secure loyalty within the state and in the military,” he said.
However, continuing purges within the Chinese military may have a lingering impact on its capabilities.
“It’s difficult to fight a war if many of your generals are in jail,” Wu said.
Back on the outskirts of Taoyuan city near one of Taiwan’s “red beaches”, Jia, the civil servant who was startled by the military exercises in December, said that he doesn’t wish ill on anyone.
But he also hopes the purges continue if they protect peace.
“I hope that more Chinese officers will lose their jobs if it means we won’t get a war.”
The additional inspections come after the US Federal Aviation Administration said the 737 MAX should remain grounded.
Boeing has said it will add further quality inspections for the 737 MAX planes after a mid-air blowout of a cabin panel in an Alaska Airlines MAX 9 earlier this month, the head of its commercial planes division said.
In a letter to the global planemaker’s employees on Monday, Stan Deal, president of Boeing Commercial Airplanes, said the company will also deploy a team to supplier Spirit AeroSystems – which makes and installs the plug door involved in the incident – to check and approve Spirit’s work on the plugs before fuselages are sent to Boeing’s production facilities in Washington state in the US.
Boeing’s quality inspections announcement comes after the US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) said on Friday that all 737 MAX 9 planes should remain grounded until Boeing provides further data following the near-catastrophic Alaska Airlines incident.
“For the safety of American travellers the FAA will keep the Boeing 737-9 MAX grounded until extensive inspection and maintenance is conducted and data from inspections is reviewed,” the FAA said in a statement.
Only after 40 planes are inspected will the agency review the results and determine whether safety is adequate to allow the MAX 9s to resume flying, the FAA said.
Alaska Airlines also said it was grounding its fleet of 737-9 aircraft for the same reasons.
Deal highlighted that the actions laid out in his letter are separate from the FAA’s ongoing investigation, but said that he planned to increase oversight of MAX production.
He said that in addition to the door plug inspections, Boeing teams will also conduct checks at 50 other points in Spirit AeroSystems’ production process.
Both Boeing and Spirit AeroSystems will also open their 737 production facilities to airline customers for carriers to provide their own inspections.
Boeing will hold sessions for employees on quality management, and bring in an outside party to conduct an independent assessment of its production process, Deal said.
“Everything we do must conform to the requirements in our QMS (quality management system),” Deal said.
“Anything less is unacceptable. It is through this standard that we must operate to provide our customers and their passengers complete confidence in Boeing airplanes.”
Boeing 737 MAX jets have been grounded worldwide in the past. In October 2018 they were grounded for almost two years after a crash in Indonesia killed 189 people, and another in Ethiopia five months later, which killed 157 people.
The aircraft was cleared to fly again after Boeing revamped its automated flight-control system that had activated erroneously in both crashes.
