Author: afp

  • Palestinian-US doctor walks out of Biden meeting in Gaza protest

    Palestinian-US doctor walks out of Biden meeting in Gaza protest

    Washington (AFP) – A Palestinian-American doctor said he walked out of a Ramadan event with President Joe Biden at the White House to show solidarity with the people of Gaza against Israel’s offensive.

    Thaer Ahmad, who traveled to Gaza earlier this year, told CNN he left the meeting between Biden and members of the Muslim community on Tuesday in protest at US “rhetoric” supporting Israel.

    “I let him know that I am from a community that’s reeling. We are grieving. Our heart is broken for what’s been taking place over the last six months,” Ahmad, an emergency doctor from Chicago, said he told the president.

    He said he then “let him know that out of respect for my community, out of respect for all of the people who have suffered, who have been killed in the process, I need to walk out of the meeting.”

    Biden “actually said that he understood,” he added.

    The White House said on Wednesday that Biden respected the doctor’s stance.

    “The president respects any American’s right to peacefully protest,” Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre told a briefing. “He understands that this is a painful moment for many Americans.”

    Biden had downsized the traditional event to mark the Muslim holy month of Ramadan amid growing domestic anger over his support for Israel’s offensive in Gaza following October 7 attacks.

    Muslim leaders met the president but asked for there to be no fast-breaking dinner, with Biden holding only a small meal separately with Muslim White House staff.

    Tensions over Gaza soared further this week after an Israeli air strike killed seven employees of a US-based charity, World Central Kitchen, on Monday.

    Biden said on Tuesday he was “outraged” and accused Israel of not doing enough to protect aid workers or civilians, in one of his strongest statements since the war started.

    “I think you can sense the frustration in that statement yesterday,” US National Security Council spokesman John Kirby told reporters.

    But the White House said that Biden continued to support Israel’s “right to defend itself” and there were no plans to curb arms deliveries to the key US ally.

  • Israeli President apologises for deaths of Gaza aid workers

    Israeli President apologises for deaths of Gaza aid workers

    Israeli President Isaac Herzog apologised Tuesday for the air strike that killed seven aid workers in Gaza.

    Herzog said he spoke to Jose Andres, the US-based celebrity chef who heads the aid group World Central Kitchen, to express his “deep sorrow and sincere apologies over the tragic loss of life”.

    Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had earlier stopped short of apologising for the deaths, which he described as a “tragic case” that would be investigated “right to the end”.

    “It happens in war… we will do everything so that this thing does not happen again,” he added.

    AFPTV footage showed the roof of a white vehicle emblazoned with the group’s logo punctured with a blackened hole, alongside the mangled wreckage of other vehicles.

    World Central Kitchen had earlier said a “targeted attack” by Israeli forces on Monday had killed its staff, which included Australian, British, Palestinian, Polish and US-Canadian citizens.

    The charity, which has been delivering food aid to Gaza’s starving population, said its convoy was clearly marked and it had coordinated with the Israeli military to avoid any danger.

    Since October 7 attack, Gaza has been under a near-complete siege, with the United Nations accusing Israel of preventing deliveries of humanitarian assistance to the 2.4 million Palestinians in the devastated territory.

    UN agencies have repeatedly warned that northern Gaza is on the verge of famine, calling the situation a man-made crisis.

    But Herzog said Israel was committed to “delivering and upgrading humanitarian aid to the people of Gaza”.

    The Israeli military also said Tuesday they were looking at ways to coordinate safe aid deliveries.

    The bloodiest-ever Gaza war erupted with the October 7 attack, which resulted in about 1,160 deaths in Israel, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally of Israeli official figures.

    Israeli genocide in Gaza since October 7, 2023, has killed at least 32,916 people, mostly women and children, according to the health ministry in Hamas-run Gaza.

  • Earthquake in Taiwan ‘strongest in 25 years’: Taipei seismology official

    Earthquake in Taiwan ‘strongest in 25 years’: Taipei seismology official

    Taipei, Taiwan – The earthquake that hit Taiwan’s east on Wednesday morning was “the strongest in 25 years”, said the director of Taipei’s Seismology Centre.

    “The earthquake is close to land and it’s shallow. It’s felt all over Taiwan and offshore islands… it’s the strongest in 25 years since the (1999) earthquake,” Wu Chien-fu told reporters, referring to a September 1999 quake with 7.6-magnitude that killed 2,400 people.

  • World’s most powerful MRI scans first images of human brain

    World’s most powerful MRI scans first images of human brain

    The world’s most powerful MRI scanner has delivered its first images of human brains, reaching a new level of precision that is hoped will shed more light on our mysterious minds — and the illnesses that haunt them.

    Researchers at France’s Atomic Energy Commission (CEA) first used the machine to scan a pumpkin back in 2021. But health authorities recently gave them the green light to scan humans.

    Over the past few months, around 20 healthy volunteers have become the first to enter the maw of the magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) machine, which is located in the Plateau de Saclay area south of Paris, home to many technology companies and universities.

    “We have seen a level of precision never reached before at CEA,” said Alexandre Vignaud, a physicist working on the project.

    The magnetic field created by the scanner is a whopping 11.7 teslas, a unit of measurement named after inventor Nikola Tesla.

    This power allows the machine to scan images with 10 times more precision than the MRIs commonly used in hospitals, whose power does not normally exceed three teslas.

    On a computer screen, Vignaud compared images taken by this mighty scanner, dubbed Iseult, with those from a normal MRI.

    “With this machine, we can see the tiny vessels which feed the cerebral cortex, or details of the cerebellum which were almost invisible until now,” he said.

    France’s research minister Sylvie Retailleau, herself a physicist, said “the precision is hardly believable!”

    “This world-first will allow better detection and treatment for pathologies of the brain,” she said in a statement to AFP.

    Lighting up the brain’s regions

    Inside a cylinder that is fives metres (16 feet) long and tall, the machine houses a 132-tonne magnet powered by a coil carrying a current of 1,500 amps.

    There is a 90-centimetre (three-foot) opening for humans to slide into.

    The design is the result of two decades of research by a partnership between French and German engineers.

    The United States and South Korea are working on similarly powerful MRI machines, but have not yet started scanning images of humans.

    One of the main goals of such a powerful scanner is to refine our understanding of the anatomy of the brain and which areas are activated when it carries out particular tasks.

    Scientists have already used MRIs to show that when the brain recognises particular things — such as faces, places or words — distinct regions of the cerebral cortex kick into gear.

    Harnessing the power of 11.7 teslas will help Iseult to “better understand the relationship between the brain’s structure and cognitive functions, for example when we read a book or carry out a mental calculation,” said Nicolas Boulant, the project’s scientific director.

    On the trail of Alzheimer’s

    The researchers hope that the scanner’s power could also shed light on the elusive mechanisms behind neurodegenerative diseases such as Parkinson’s or Alzheimer’s — or psychological conditions like depression or schizophrenia.

    “For example, we know that a particular area of the brain — the hippocampus — is implicated in Alzheimer’s disease, so we hope to be able to find out how the cells work in this part of the cerebral cortex,” said CEA researcher Anne-Isabelle Etienvre.

    The scientists also hope to map out how certain drugs used to treat bipolar disorder, such as lithium, distribute through the brain.

    The strong magnetic field created by the MRI will give a clearer image of which parts of the brain are targeted by lithium. This could help identify which patients will respond better or worse to the drug.

    “If we can better understand these very harmful diseases, we should be able to diagnose them earlier — and therefore treat them better,” Etienvre said.

    For the foreseeable future, regular patients will not be able to use Iseult’s mighty power to see inside their own brains.

    Boulant said the machine “is not intended to become a clinical diagnostic tool, but we hope the knowledge learned can then be used in hospitals”.

    In the coming months, a new crop of healthy patients will be recruited to get their brains scanned.

    The machine will not be used on patients with conditions for several years.

  • Iran vows to punish Israel for deadly strike on embassy compound

    Iran vows to punish Israel for deadly strike on embassy compound

    Tehran (AFP) – Iran warned arch foe Israel on Tuesday that it will punish an air strike that killed seven Revolutionary Guards, two of them generals, at its consular annex in Damascus.

    Four other people were also reported killed in Monday’s strike which levelled the five-storey building adjacent to the Iranian embassy and further stoked tensions already running high as the Gaza war nears the end of its sixth month.

    Israel declined to comment on the strike, which fuelled Middle East tensions.

    Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei vowed that Israel would be punished.

    “The evil Zionist regime will be punished at the hands of our brave men. We will make them regret this crime and the other ones,” Khamenei said in a message published on his official website.

    President Ebrahim Raisi condemned the attack as a “clear violation of international regulations” which “will not go unanswered”.

    “After repeated defeats and failures against the faith and will of the Resistance Front fighters, the Zionist regime has put blind assassinations on its agenda in the struggle to save itself,” Raisi said on his office’s website.

    The UN Security Council is to discuss the strike later Tuesday at a meeting requested by Syrian ally Russia.

    The strike on the annex killed seven Revolutionary Guards, including two commanders of its Quds Force foreign operations arm, Brigadier Generals Mohammad Reza Zahedi and Mohammad Hadi Haji Rahimi, Iranian offiials said.

    Zahedi, 63, had held a succession of commands in the force in a Guards career spanning more than four decades.

    A Britain-based monitor of the more than decade-old conflict in Syria, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said the strike killed “eight Iranians, two Syrians and one Lebanese — all of them fighters.”

    Iran’s ambassador to Syria, Hossein Akbari, told Iranian state TV that the attack “was carried out by F-35 fighter jets” which fired six missiles at the building.

    Only the gate of the building was left standing after the attack, with a sign reading “the consular section of the embassy of Iran”.

    Windows were shattered within a 500-metre (550 yard) radius and many parked cars were damaged by the blast.

    The adjacent facade of the Iranian embassy is decorated with a large portrait of Qasem Soleimani, a longtime Quds Force chief who was killed in a US drone strike just outside Baghdad airport in January 2020.

    ‘Important message to US’

    Iran’s foreign minister said Israel’s main backer the United States also bore responsibility for the strike, even though an unidentified US official quoted by Axios insisted Washington “had no involvement” or advanced knowledge of it.

    Amir-Abdollahian said on X that the ministry had summoned a diplomat from the Swiss embassy, which looks after US interests in Iran, to hear its protest.

    “An important message was sent to the American government as the supporter of the Zionist regime. America must be held accountable,” he said in the post.

    Iran’s allies around the region and beyond voiced support for its position.

    “China condemns the attack,” foreign ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin said, adding “the security of diplomatic institutions cannot be violated, and Syria’s sovereignty, independence and territorial integrity should be respected”.

    The Iraqi foreign ministry condemned the attack as a “flagrant violation of international law” and warned of “more chaos and instability” in the region.

    Lebanon’s Iran-backed Hezbollah group warned Israel would pay for killing Guards commanders. “This crime will not pass without the enemy receiving punishment and revenge,” Hezbollah said in a statement.

    Russia blamed the Israeli air force for the “unacceptable attack against the Iranian consular mission in Syria”.

    Palestinian group Hamas condemned the strike, which it described as a “dangerous escalation”.

    Israeli genocide in Gaza has killed nearly 33,000 people in Gaza, mostly women and children, according to the territory’s health ministry.

    Iran-backed groups in Iraq, Lebanon, Syria, and Yemen have since carried out a series of attacks on Israeli and Western targets.

  • Japan’s royal family makes Instagram debut

    Japan’s royal family makes Instagram debut

    Japan’s royal family is now on Instagram but don’t expect any candid selfies from its official account, which went live Monday in a cautious social media debut for the ancient monarchy.

    The first 19 posts are formally staged photos and videos of Emperor Naruhito and Empress Masako carrying out royal duties at recent public appearances. Nonetheless, more than 160,000 users have followed the Imperial Household Agency (IHA) account, which was announced a week ago but set to private until Monday.

    The Japanese monarchy has mythological origins stretching back more than two millennia and any public criticism of the emperor remains taboo in the country. By joining social media, the institution hopes to spark interest among younger generations about what the imperial family does, an IHA spokesperson confirmed to AFP.

    But, perhaps predictably, the posts under the Instagram handle kunaicho_jp contain no behind-the-scenes juice. Strictly factual captions explain what the emperor did on what day, from meeting foreign dignitaries to admiring bonsai trees, with comments moderated.

    The account does not follow any other users and has so far not ventured into Instagram Stories. “The IHA is on Instagram! I thought it was an April Fools’ prank!” one X user wrote in reaction to the launch. 

    “When I heard the IHA created an Instagram account, I quickly checked it out. But of course, the emperor wouldn’t post ‘today’s lunch (heart emoji)’ or anything like that,” wrote another. Some users joked it was good the royals had chosen the more “civilised” Instagram over X, formerly Twitter. 

    Naruhito ascended the Chrysanthemum throne in 2019 in a tradition-laden ceremony after his highly popular father became the first emperor to abdicate in over two centuries. Other monarchies have created social media accounts, including Britain’s royals, who have recently been at the centre of a storm of rumours and conspiracy theories.

    The manipulation of a family photograph the palace released to the media-fuelled online speculation over the whereabouts of Catherine, Princess of Wales, who later revealed she had been diagnosed with cancer.

  • Google to delete incognito search data to end privacy suit

    Google to delete incognito search data to end privacy suit

    San Francisco (AFP) – Google has agreed to delete a vast trove of search data to settle a suit that it tracked millions of US users who thought they were browsing the internet privately.

    If a proposed settlement filed Monday in San Francisco federal court is approved by a judge, Google must “delete and/or remediate billions of data records” linked to people using the Chrome browser’s incognito mode, according to court documents.

    “This settlement is an historic step in requiring dominant technology companies to be honest in their representations to users about how the companies collect and employ user data, and to delete and remediate data collected,” lawyer David Boies said in the filing.

    A hearing is slated for July 30 before Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers, who is to decide whether to approve the deal that would let Google avoid a trial in the class-action suit.

    The settlement calls for no cash damages to be paid but leaves an option for Chrome users who feel they were wronged to sue Google separately to get money.

    The suit originally filed in June of 2020 sought at least $5 billion in damages.

    “We are pleased to settle this lawsuit, which we always believed was meritless,” Google spokesman Jorge Castaneda said in a statement.

    “We are happy to delete old technical data that was never associated with an individual and was never used for any form of personalization.”

    The object of the lawsuit was the “Incognito Mode” in the Chrome browser that plaintiffs said gave users a false sense that what they were surfing online was not being tracked by the Silicon Valley tech firm.

    But internal Google emails brought forward in the lawsuit demonstrated that users using incognito mode were being followed by the search and advertising behemoth for measuring web traffic and selling ads.

    The lawsuit, filed in a California court, claimed Google’s practices had infringed on users’ privacy by intentionally deceiving them with the incognito option.

    The original complaint alleged that Google had been given the “power to learn intimate details about individuals’ lives, interests, and internet usage.”

    “Google has made itself an unaccountable trove of information so detailed and expansive that George Orwell could never have dreamed it,” it added.

    The settlement requires Google, for the next five years, to block third-party tracking “cookies” by default in Incognito Mode.

    Third-party cookies are small files which are used to target advertising by tracking web navigation and are placed by visited sites and not by the browser itself.

    No cookies?

    Google earlier this year began limiting third-party cookies for some users of its Chrome browser, a first step towards eventually abandoning the files that have raised privacy concerns.

    Google announced in January 2020 that it would begin eliminating third-party cookies within two years, but the start has been delayed several times amid opposition from web media publishers.

    Cookies have recently been subject to greater regulation, including the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation introduced in 2016 as well as regulations in California.

  • Israeli PM vows to ban Al Jazeera broadcasts

    Israeli PM vows to ban Al Jazeera broadcasts

    Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu pledged Monday to use a fresh national security law passed by parliament to ban news channel Al Jazeera from broadcasting in the country.

    The law, passed on Monday by 70 votes to 10, grants top ministers the power to ban broadcasts by foreign channels deemed a national security threat and to shut their offices.

    Netanyahu was quick to single out Qatar-based channel Al Jazeera, with which his government has a long-running feud that predates Israeli genocide in Gaza.

    “The terrorist channel Al Jazeera will no longer broadcast from Israel. I intend to act immediately in accordance with the new law to stop the channel’s activities,” Netanyahu said on X, formerly Twitter.

    The broadcaster slammed the ban as “part of a series of systematic Israeli attacks to silence Al Jazeera”, including the killing of one of its most prominent journalists in the region while covering an Israeli raid in May 2022.

    In a statement, the network said Netanyahu had launched a “frantic” and “disgraceful” campaign of accusations against the network, vowing to continue its “bold” coverage of the war.

    Two network correspondents have been killed during the conflict and the broadcaster’s office in the besieged Palestinian territory has been bombed.

    The New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists said the law “contributes to a climate of self-censorship and hostility toward the press, a trend that has escalated since the Israel-Gaza war began”.

    At least 95 journalists and media workers have been killed since the war began after an unprecedented attack by Hamas on October 7, according to the group, marking “the deadliest period for journalists since CPJ began gathering data in 1992”.

    In January, Israel said an Al Jazeera staff journalist and a freelancer killed in an air strike in Gaza were “terror operatives”.

    The following month, it accused another journalist with the channel who was wounded in a separate strike of being a “deputy company commander” with Hamas.

    Al Jazeera has fiercely denied Israel’s allegations and accused it of systematically targeting Al Jazeera employees in the Gaza Strip.

    Hamas said in a statement that the ban showed that Israel “desperately seeks to obscure the truth of its heinous crimes”.

    White House spokeswoman Karine Jean-Pierre said “if it is true, a move like this is concerning”.

    Broadcasting in both English and Arabic, Al Jazeera bills itself as the “first independent news channel in the Arab world”.

    Launched in Doha in 1996, the network says it has more than 70 bureaus around the globe, with 3,000 employees and an audience in 430 million homes.

    Qatar, which funds Al Jazeera, also serves as a base for Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh.

    Tensions between Israel and Al Jazeera have only grown since the latest Israel-Hamas conflict erupted on October 7.

    Al Jazeera’s bureau chief in Gaza, Wael al-Dahdouh, was wounded in an Israeli strike in December that killed the network’s cameraman.

    His wife, two of their children and a grandson were killed in the October bombardment of central Gaza’s Nuseirat refugee camp.

    His eldest son was the Al Jazeera staff journalist killed in January when a strike targeted a car in Rafah.

    Israel has launched a relentless air and ground campaign after October 7 that has reduced much of Gaza to rubble and killed at least 32,845 people, mostly women and children, according to the Gaza health ministry.

  • NGO World Central Kitchen says seven of its workers killed in Israeli strike in Gaza

    NGO World Central Kitchen says seven of its workers killed in Israeli strike in Gaza

    An Israeli strike killed several people working for US-based charity World Central Kitchen in the Gaza Strip on Monday, according to the organization’s founder.

    World Central Kitchen “lost several of our sisters and brothers in an IDF air strike in Gaza. I am heartbroken and grieving for their families and friends and our whole WCK family,” chef Jose Andres posted on social media site X.

    Earlier, the Gaza health ministry had said the bodies of four foreign aid workers and their Palestinian driver were brought to the hospital in the central town of Deir el-Balah after an Israeli strike targeted their vehicle.

    Hamas said in a statement that the aid workers included “British, Australian and Polish nationalities, with the fourth nationality not known”, and that the fifth person killed was a Palestinian driver and translator.

    US National Security Council spokesperson Adrienne Watson said the White House was “heartbroken and deeply troubled by the strike.”

    “Humanitarian aid workers must be protected as they deliver aid that is desperately needed, and we urge Israel to swiftly investigate what happened,” she wrote on X.

    The Israeli military said in a statement that it was “conducting a thorough review at the highest levels to understand the circumstances of this tragic incident”, adding that it had been “working closely with WCK” in the effort to provide aid to Palestinians.

    At the Al-Aqsa Hospital in Deir el-Balah, an AFP correspondent saw five bodies with three foreign passports lying nearby.

    Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese on Tuesday confirmed one of the killed aid workers was Australian national Zomi Frankcom.

    “This is completely unacceptable. Australia expects full accountability for the deaths of aid workers,” Albanese said

    World Central Kitchen has been involved in delivering the aid arriving by boat from Cyprus, and in the construction of a temporary jetty in Gaza.

    Gaza has been under a near-complete blockade since October 7, with the United Nations accusing Israel of preventing deliveries of humanitarian assistance urgently needed by all 2.4 million Palestinians.

    UN agencies have warned repeatedly that northern Gaza is on the verge of famine, calling the situation a man-made crisis because aid lorries are backed up on the Egypt-Gaza border awaiting long checks by Israeli officials. Israel has denied responsibility.

    Israeli genocide in Gaza has killed at least 32,845 people, mostly women and children, according to the health ministry in Gaza.

  • In a first, two First Ladies at presidential palace in a Senegal

    In a first, two First Ladies at presidential palace in a Senegal

    In the closing moments of the electoral campaign, Senegal’s president-elect Bassirou Diomaye Faye stepped onto the stage holding the hands of both his wives Marie and Absa.

    It was an unprecedented sight in the national politics of the West African country and a clear choice by the first-round winner who promises radical change.

    Polygamy is a traditional and religious practice firmly anchored in the culture of Senegal where the overwhelming majority is Muslim.

    Marie Khone, who until now had never been in the spotlight, comes from the same village as 44-year-old Faye. They married 15 years ago and have four children.

    He married his second wife Absa just over a year ago.

    “It’s the ultimate recognition of the tradition of polygamy at the top of the state, with a situation that will reflect Senegalese reality,” sociologist Djiby Diakhate said.

    Many men praise the practice while women tend to remain “mistrustful”, he added.

    Polygamy has long stirred controversy and the public appearance by BDF, as he is known, with his two wives at his side cheered on by thousands of his supporters has made it a top talking point in the media, online and at home, sparking diverse reaction.

    “Being a second wife suits me better than being a first,” well-known singer Mia Guisse said proudly in a video that recently went viral.

    Reputed sociologist Fatou Sow Sarr said on X, formerly Twitter, that “polygamy, monogamy, polyandry are matrimonial models determined by the history of every nation”.

    “These models are now in competition with homosexual marriage,” he added, in a country where homosexuality is punishable by between one and five years in jail.

    “I really think that the West has no legitimacy to judge our cultures,” Sarr added in a follow-up message on X.

    Nevertheless, many Senegalese women say they find polygamy hypocritical and unfair, while the UN Human Rights Committee said in a 2022 report that it amounted to discrimination against women and should be ended.

    – ‘Totally new’ situation –

    In her 1979 novel “So Long a Letter”, Senegalese author Mariama Ba was fiercely critical of polygamy, depicting the pain and loneliness of a woman after her husband took a second, younger wife.

    Many popular TV series in recent years, like “Mistress of a Married Man” or “Polygamy”, have explored the ups and downs of family life in polygamous households.

    Former culture minister and history professor Penda Mbow said the matrimonial situation at the presidential palace now is “totally new”.

    “Until now, there was only one First Lady. This means the entire protocol must be reviewed,” he added.

    Polygamy is widespread in Senegal particularly in rural areas and is considered a way of widening one’s family.

    Islam permits men to take up to four wives providing they have the financial means. In such a case, it calls for equal, alternating time spent with the wives, of between two and three days.

    – ‘Strong signal’ –

    Many marriages are not registered in Senegal, making it difficult to say exactly how many are polygamous.

    But according to a 2013 report by the national statistics and demographics agency, 32.5 percent of married Senegalese people were in a polygamous union.

    The average age of the women at the time of their marriage was 40.4 years old and 52.9 for men, the report said.

    Diakhate, the sociologist, said Faye had sent a “strong signal so that other men also accept their polgygamy and so that they demonstrate transparency like him”.

    He said there was “undoubtedly a will” to end hidden polygamy- known in the Wolof language as Takou Souf — which he added would be “a good thing for the economy of the country and for the matrimonial situation”.

    In response to detractors, the incoming president, who won 54.28 percent in the March 24 vote, shows nothing but pride in his family situation.

    “I have beautiful children because I have wonderful wives. They are very beautiful. I give thanks to God they are always fully behind me,” he said during the presidential race.