South Korea latest to level charges against Israeli officials for alleged war crimes in Gaza


A Palestinian man walks through the rubble of destroyed buildings following an operation by Israeli Special Forces in the Nuseirat camp, in the central Gaza Strip, earlier this month. South Korean government officials and other organizations on Monday filed a series of charges leveled against top Israeli government officials, including Israel's president and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, for genocide and other alleged crimes against humanity in the war in Gaza. 

Photo by Hatem Al-Rawag/UPI | License Photo

June 24 (UPI) -- South Korean government officials and other organizations on Monday filed a series of charges leveled against top Israeli government officials, including Israel's president and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, for genocide and other alleged crimes against humanity.

The South Korean lawsuit cites seven high-ranking Israeli officials, such as the country's President Isaac Herzog along with Netanyahu, Israeli Defense Forces Chief of Staff Herzi Halevi, Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, Foreign Minister Israel Katz, Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich and National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir.

The charges were brought on by the People's Solidarity for Participatory Democracy, Asian Dignity Initiatives and more than 5,000 individuals, including two members of the country's National Assembly who contend Israel has committed multiple crimes since the October 7 war with Hamas began.

The "key allegations" against Israeli government officials point to, specifically: genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes against humanitarian activities, and war crimes using forbidden weapons and means.

"The indictment signifies that some 5,000 co-accusers have acknowledged that a genocide occurred in Gaza. They are not only mourning but also insisting that the perpetrators be harshly punished according to South Korean law," Lee Dong-hwa, an ADI team manager, said in a written statement.

The group filed the charges under the 2007 Act on Punishment of Crimes under Jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court.

"Common sense dictates that even when war crimes are committed outside of South Korea, they should be investigated according to the law and principles, and the perpetrators should be punished according to the severity of the crime," Dong wrote.

This is the most recent effort since the United Nations Security Council recently passed a U.S.-drafted resolution calling for a Gaza cease-fire, and the immediate release of all hostages held by Hamas in the Gaza Strip, to try and hold Israeli officials accountable for the allegedly over 34,000 dead in Gaza.

Brazil's president in February compared what he called the genocide of Palestinian people to the Holocaust

"What's happening in the Gaza Strip isn't a war, it's a genocide," Brazilian President Lula da Silva said in remarks at the time while in Ethiopia for the African Union summit. "It's not a war of soldiers against soldiers. It's a war between a highly prepared army and women and children."

This latest effort by South Korea is now another in series of other formal complaints lodged against Israel.

The United Nations Human Rights Council in April adopted a resolution calling for Israel to be held accountable for what it called war crimes in Gaza, urging an immediate cease-fire. The 28 to 6 yes vote had 13 abstentions with the United States voting no.

South Africa last December filed a case in the U.N.'s International Justice Court accusing Israel of acts of "genocidal in nature" in its occupation of Gaza, followed by Egypt last month in May and the Arab League.

That was followed in January by the International Court of Justice in the Hague, the Netherlands, that ordered Israel to take immediate steps to end atrocities in Gaza in its war with Hamas, which Israel and the United States blasted at the time as baseless.

Court trustee shutting down Alex Jones' Infowars conspiracy operation

Alex Jones protests in Dallas on February 28, 2014. On Sunday, a bankruptcy trustee disclosed plans to shut down Jones' Infowars to pay some of the nearly $1.5 billion he owes Sandy Hook school shooting victims' families following a defamation lawsuit. 

File Photo by Sean P. Anderson/Wikimedia Commons

 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/legalcode

June 24 (UPI) -- Conspiracy theorist Alex Jones' Infowars media empire is coming to an end.

On Sunday, a bankruptcy court-appointed trustee said the company will be shut down and sold off, according to an emergency court filing. A timetable was not listed.

Trustee Christopher Murray wrote Sunday that since being appointed, he "began planning to wind-up operations and liquidate its inventory." Jones' media company is Free Speech Systems in Austin, Texas.

Murray wrote he "seeks this Court's intervention to prevent a value-destructive money grab and allow an orderly process to take its course."

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The far-right outlet had been accused of spreading dangerous misinformation, prompting a defamation suit filed by the families of victims of the mass shooting of the Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newton, Conn. In 2012, a gunman shot and killed 26 people at the school, including 20 children and six adult staff members.

Jones, 50, had said the school shooting was a so-called false flag attack and that the victims were actors. He was sued by family members and eventually found liable in separate lawsuits in Texas and Connecticut for spreading false stories on his radio and online show. He admitted in court his claims were not true. The families were awarded $1.44 billion.

One of the Sandy Hook victim's parents filed a motion in a Texas District Court to be granted custody of all of Free Speech Systems' assets, including Infowars. Some families say this would have delayed the process.

Christopher Mattei, an attorney for Sandy Hook families from Connecticut in favor of liquidating the company, said "this is precisely the unfortunate situation that the Connecticut families hoped to avoid when we argued that the Free Speech Systems/InfoWars case should have remained with the bankruptcy court rather than being dismissed."

In December 2022, Jones filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of Texas.

A bankruptcy judge in Texas earlier this month gave permission to Jones to start liquidating personal assets to pay off what he owed.

Lawyers told bankruptcy judge Christopher Lopez those personal assets include Jones' $2.8 million Texas ranch. Some personal assets, including a home in Austin, are exempted.

He then was allowed to move from a Chapter 11 bankruptcy into a Chapter 7 liquidation of his assets.

Jones last year told the court he had about $9 million in assets. At the time, a judge ruled he could not avoid paying the legal judgments by declaring bankruptcy.

Jones has acknowledged Infowars would likely only continue broadcasting for a few more months.

Jimmy Carter's long stay in hospice dispels myths about end-of-life care

By Brian Dunleavy


Former President Jimmy Carter departs after the funeral service for former first lady Rosalynn Carter at Maranatha Baptist Church on November. 29, 2023, in Plains, Ga. The former first lady was 96. 

Pool Photo by Alex Brandon/UPI | License Photo

NEW YORK, June 24 (UPI) -- Former President Jimmy Carter's being in hospice for 16 months makes him an "outlier," but it also highlights the multifaceted nature of end-of-life care and dispels myths about that care, experts told UPI.

Carter, who is to turn 100 in October, entered hospice in February 2023 after deciding to discontinue aggressive treatment for metastatic melanoma.

Despite his decision, his surviving with the disease for more than 5 years, at his advanced age, should be considered a success, said Dr. Joan Teno, a former hospice provider and an expert in geriatric care.

"President Carter is an outlier in that only a small percentage of hospice patients survive more than 15 months," she told UPI in an email. "The fact that he has lived so long on hospice is testament to his excellent medical care at home and, if I had to guess, his will to live."

It also illustrates the core focus of hospice, which is typically geared toward people with an anticipated life expectancy of 6 months or less, for whom curing their underlying illness isn't an option, Teno added.

The approach emphasizes symptom management -- most notably for pain -- and quality of life, according to the Hospice Foundation of America.

"While Hospice Foundation of America has worked for more than 40 years to educate people about the many benefits of hospice care, most Americans don't engage in advance care planning and know little about care options at the end of life," Angela Novas, the organization's senior medical officer, told UPI via email.

"Because of that, there is a lot of confusion and misunderstanding about what hospice is, the care it provides, who qualifies and how to access care," she said.

Defying the odds

More than 90% of patients who enter hospice care die within the first six months, and nearly 40% die within the first week, according to the National Institutes of Health.

Since entering hospice, though, Carter has celebrated his 99th birthday and grieved the death of his wife of 77 years, former first lady Rosalynn Carter, and was even able, with assistance, to attend her funeral.

"I suspect that President Carter is following the disease trajectory of [metastatic melanoma, which leads to] progressive fragility, where he needs help in his everyday functions and uses a wheelchair," said Teno, who has no direct knowledge of his health status.

Citing recent interviews with family members, the former president is likely spending most of his days sleeping, she said.

In general, hospice patients who are "not alert and sleeping more" are close to dying, said Teno, who is also an adjunct professor of health services, policy and practice at the Brown University School of Public Health.

"About two-thirds of [these patients] drift peacefully to sleep [as they die] -- I suspect that is what is happening," she added.

What end-of-life care entails

The nuts and bolts of hospice vary by patient, but most providers adhere to Medicare guidelines and engage a multi-disciplinary team of health professionals trained to address the physical, psychosocial and spiritual needs of patients with terminal illnesses.

They also provide support to family members and other "intimate, unpaid" caregivers, according to the Hospice Foundation of America.

Teams typically include a hospice physician, nurse, medical social worker, home health aide and, if applicable, chaplain and/or spiritual adviser, the foundation says.

Services include medication for symptom control, including pain relief, medical equipment, such as a hospital bed, wheelchairs or walkers, and supplies, such as oxygen, bandages and catheters, as needed.

Many hospice patients receive physical and occupational therapy to maintain strength and mobility, as well as speech-language pathology services so that they can continue to communicate.

They also receive dietary counseling, which debunks "one of the most unhelpful myths" about hospice care that providers "limit nutrition and fluids or refuse to treat illnesses, such as an infection, that may occur while in hospice care to speed the dying process," the foundation's Novas said.

"This is simply not true," she said.

In some cases, "as part of the natural dying process, appetite diminishes significantly and patients frequently either refuse food and fluids or can no longer swallow safely without coughing and choking or aspirating food and fluids into their lungs, resulting in pneumonia," Novas said.

However, for as long as patients like Carter can tolerate food and fluids and find eating pleasurable, they are typically offered small portions of their favorite meals when they ask, she added.

"At end-of-life, hospice and family caregivers typically go with the flow of the day, which is dictated by how the hospice patient is doing," Novas said.

"It is likely that Mr. Carter has good days and bad days with waxing and waning of symptoms and abilities," she added.

Although she doesn't know specifics on the former president's daily regimen, on bad days, he may sleep for most of the day with little interaction with family or caregivers and a poor appetite, On good days, he may be alert, asking for food and be able to be out of bed and be engaged in life, Novas said,

"We have seen many photos of him during the time he has received hospice doing just that, and the hospice providing his care is highly focused on helping those opportunities happen," she said.

"Many hospice patients enjoy these good days or hours reminiscing with family and friends, reading, watching their favorite films or TV shows, or enjoying music," she added.

Hospice means home

Being in hospice means that Carter, and others like him facing terminal illnesses, are able to stay at home, in comfort, surrounded by loved ones, according to the Hospice Foundation of America.

The service is provided primarily in the patient's home, whether that is a private residence, nursing home or community living arrangement, it says.

Hospice practitioners believe that being at home is best for people at end-of-life, both for reasons of comfort, as well as the reduced risk for hospital-acquired infections, which can add to suffering and reduce life expectancy, Novas said.

Still, hospice providers are available 24 hours a day, seven days a week to respond if the patient needs care.

Most hospice patients are eligible for Medicare, which covers all aspects of end-of-life care, and Medicaid offers similar coverage, according to the Hospice Foundation of America.

In addition, many commercial health insurance plans offer a hospice benefit, but the extent to which they cover care and services may vary.

"Certainly, Mr. Carter's choice to elect hospice care versus futile treatment has shone a spotlight on the value of hospice and palliative care and the important role it has in our healthcare system," Novas said.

"By outliving his initial prognosis and by receiving hospice care for over a year now, he has done much to dispel the myth that hospice is only for people who are bedbound and actively dying."

Human trafficking report reveals 'growing role of digital technology'

South Korea returns to list of top nations trying to eliminate problem

By Sheri Walsh
UPI

JUNE 24, 2024 

Secretary of State Antony Blinken releases the 2024 Trafficking in Human Persons Report, which assesses worldwide trafficking trends, on Monday in Washington, D.C. Blinken also honored 10 TIP heroes, who are "working to combat human trafficking around the globe." 

Photo courtesy of U.S. State Department

June 24 (UPI) -- The U.S. State Department's annual Trafficking in Human Persons Report, which assesses worldwide trafficking trends and was released Monday in Washington, D.C., has revealed this year's "growing role of digital technology" as networks target and recruit victims online.

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken called the 2024 report an "objective assessment of the state of anti-trafficking efforts across 188 countries and territories, including the United States."

In the report, the State Department returned South Korea to the top-tier list of 33 countries and territories that are working to eliminate human trafficking, which also includes the United States, Britain, Taiwan, France, Germany, Australia, Singapore, Poland and Sweden.

Malaysia was upgraded to Tier 2 in this year's report for the first time since 2017. Countries in Tier 2 are defined as not fully meeting the minimum standards to eliminate human trafficking, but making "significant efforts."

"Malaysia's systemic inability to meaningfully combat labor trafficking, ensure remediation of victims and accountability of perpetrators does not deserve an upgrade," said migrant rights activist Andy Hall in response to the country's upgraded standing.

Bangladesh was also cited as making "significant efforts" as it remained in the Tier 2 category, but failed to "meet the minimum standards in several key areas."

"Although the government increased local law enforcement efforts it did not take adequate steps to address internal trafficking crimes -- including sex trafficking and forced child labor," the U.S. State Department wrote in the report.

Egypt, Indonesia, India, Japan, Italy, Kenya, Mexico, New Zealand, Norway, Portugal, Sri Lanka, Thailand and Vietnam were all designated as Tier 2, according to the report.

North Korea remained in the lowest third for the 22nd straight year, according to the report, which also placed the Government of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region at the bottom.

"We vehemently oppose and firmly reject the unfounded and false remarks in the report against the situation in Hong Kong," said a spokesman for the HKSAR government.

"Trafficking in persons is never a prevalent problem in Hong Kong. There has never been any sign that Hong Kong is being actively used by syndicates as a destination or transit point for TIP," the spokesman said, adding that the findings in the report "are groundless."

"The rating of Hong Kong at Tier 2 (Watch List) is utterly unfair, misconceived and not substantiated by facts," he added.

Afghanistan, China, Cuba, Belarus, Russia and Iran were also among those countries in the lowest tier.

Blinken said this year's annual human trafficking report reveals the growing role digital technology has played for traffickers.

"Around the world, trafficking networks target and recruit victims online -- through social media, through dating apps, through gaming platforms," Blinken said.

"Perpetrators conduct financial transactions in opaque cryptocurrencies. They use encryption to make it harder to detect their activities or ascertain the countries where they're operating. And increasingly, traffickers coerce their victims into participating in online scams."

While the report focuses on how trafficking networks are using technology to target victims, it also reveals how those same technologies are being used to uncover and disrupt traffickers.

"Civil society and the private sector are collaborating to create and apply AI-enabled tools that detect trafficking operations," Blinken said, while introducing this year's 10 TIP Heroes who are "survivors, government leaders, law enforcement officials, lawyers, social workers."

"Today we honor ten people working to combat human trafficking around the globe. They are courageous individuals who are driving change in the face of daunting obstacles, often at great personal risk," Blinken wrote Monday in a post on X.

Berlin museum pokes fun at German bureaucracy

Julie Gregson Berlin

DW

TODAY

For two months, a Bureaucracy Museum in Berlin has taken a wry look at one of Germany's most serious challenges. So why does the country have such a problem with red tape? And how can it set itself free?

In Germany, citizens spend hours waiting in public offices

Image: Julie Gregson


Germany is notorious for its bureaucracy. One of the central pledges of the center-left government was to slash through the thicket of laws and rules. But many feel the new legislation due to be agreed by parliament at the end of June falls far short of what is necessary.

Now, the Initiative for a New Social Market Economy (INSM), a market-liberal lobbying organization, has created a pop-up museum designed to turn up the heat on the German government — complete with a marketeer's take on an S&M bondage-style dark room.

"There is bureaucracy in all countries, but this has become the No. 1 disadvantage for Germany as a business location — ahead of taxes and energy prices," said Thorsten Alsleben, managing director of the INSM, which is financed by the employers' associations of the metal, electrical and automotive industries.

Alsleben said that was reason enough for 58% of companies to decide against investing in Germany, accusing German politics and bureaucracy of killing innovation and entrepreneurial spirit.

A hollowed tree symbolizes the 52 trees felled daily for paper to feed German bureaucracyI

mage: Julie Gregson

A waiting game

German bureaucracy is time-consuming — for companies and for individuals. Many services, such as applying for a driver's license or an identity card, involve in-person appointments, and just getting a slot can be difficult.

According to the Bureaucracy Museum, visits such as these take 2 hours and 21 minutes on average. And overall, small and medium-sized businesses devote on average 13 hours a week to their paperwork.

The word paperwork is well-chosen here. Museum visitors enter through a display resembling a hollowed-out tree, to symbolize the 52 trees felled each day for the paper to feed the central government's administrative machine.

Delays and dizzying digital diversity

Germany is a laggard in terms of digitalization compared to other European nations, and e-government is one of its worst-performing areas. The continued prevalence of fax machines in government offices has become a symbol of this failure.

In response to an EU ruling, a law was introduced in 2017 obliging authorities to make some 580 services digitally accessible by the end of 2022. But only 81 were fully up and running at the start of 2024, with 96 partially up. Why so little, so late?

Blaming federalism is too easy, Corinna Funke, from the agency GFA Public, told DW. Canada and other federal nations are outperforming Germany in the digital competitiveness rankings.

Germany's approach, she said, remains too decentralized, spawning a dizzying variety of software and hardware for similar services in different places and rival platforms.

Fax machines are still widely used in Germany

Image: Julie Gregson

"In the digital space, quality depends heavily on having a single platform everyone knows, with the same templates, design, one-stop shops and common standards," Funke said.

She also blames the slow pace of digitalization on a lack of public service culture, adding that this had historical roots. While the rule of law and efficient administration processes were established under Prussian rule, in Anglophone countries, the Nordic states and the Netherlands, democracy came first.

"This is where these different self images come from — of public servants on the one hand and bureaucrats, or state servants, on the other," Funke said. "The most important values and norms in the administrations of bureaucratic countries are not so much efficiency or being citizen-friendly or saving taxpayers money. It is very often about implementing the law."

An application to build a wind turbine fills some 60 ring bindersI

 Bernd Weißbrod/dpa/picture alliance

Number of laws out of control

Sometimes there are bewildering contradictions, said Alsleben. "The work health and safety office might tell a bakery that they need to install tiles with non-slip ridges, then the health office says smooth ones are needed for the sake of hygiene," he added.

And the number of laws and regulations has spiraled out of hand, he added. At the Bureaucracy Museum visitors can pick out their least favorite ones and have them put through the paper shredder.

Alsleben said risk aversion and distrust of businesspeople were to blame. "That leads to the attempt to try to cover every single possible case in regulation," he said. Alsleben believes there are too many lawyers and legal experts in parliament and the administrative apparatus and not enough people with business experience.

The INSM is calling for workshops in which policymakers and small and medium-sized enterprises test the practicability of planned legislation.
Lobby groups and creative bureaucrats

Ines Mergel, professor of public administration at the University of Konstanz, said the private sector was partly responsible for so many laws itself.

"Lots of lobbying goes into policymaking," she said. "Often, civil servants and policymakers have created a rather broad policy and then every time something goes wrong we also need an addition to that policy — to also capture all the exceptions. Lots of laws have evolved over time, and it was never the intent to regulate as much as possible, but it is a societal process that happens between all these different actors."

Is bureaucracy stalling the energy transition?  03:26

Better communication and less top-down government would also help the functioning of the public sector, Mergel said. "I would like more conversation and cooperation across the levels of government."

German bureaucracy can drive people mad but perhaps it's just a bit too easy to make civil servants into the nation's whipping girls and boys. Johanna Sieben, the head of the Creative Bureaucracy Festival, said that, at the local level in particular, underfunding and staff shortages are also obstacles to change.

The festival is an international event held in Berlin that was set up to encourage change from within the government. It showcases good practice examples.

The wheels of German bureaucracy may move slowly, but the pop-up museum will not be around for long. It will be consigned to history on June 25 and hopes to take a large chunk of red tape with it. Only time will tell if that €500,000 investment was well spent.

Edited by: Rina Goldenberg

Would another earthquake reroute the Ganges River?

Fred Schwaller

DW

June 24, 2024

2,500 years ago, an earthquake changed the course of one of Earth's largest rivers, totally altering the landscape. Could it happen again?

The Ganges River was rerouted by a high-magnitude earthquake 2,500 years ago, and experts say it could happen again

Image: Payel Samanta/DW

A study has found a major earthquake 2,500 years ago caused one of the largest rivers on Earth to suddenly change course.

The high-magnitude earthquake completely rerouted the main channel of the Ganges River in what is now densely populated Bangladesh, and completely changed the surrounding landscape.

While it is "normal for river channels to move with time, this was an absolutely extreme event. The river moved to an entirely new area," said lead author Elizabeth Chamberlain of Wageningen University in the Netherlands.

The study, published in the journal Nature Communications, is the first evidence of a large river delta being completely relocated by an earthquake.

The study authors warn that Bangladesh is vulnerable to big quakes and that it is possible for the Ganges River to relocate again if another high-magnitude earthquake hit the region.

"Although infrequent, the risk of such an event could be huge, especially because Bangladesh hosts one of the most densely populated landscapes on the planet," said Chamberlain.

How an earthquake rerouted the Ganges River

The Ganges begins as streams in the Himalayas and flows for 2,500 kilometers (1,600 miles), eventually combining with other major rivers, including the Brahmaputra and the Meghna.

It's a huge delta river system that empties into a wide stretch of the Bay of Bengal, spanning Bangladesh and India.

As with other rivers, the Ganges periodically changes course due to the natural erosion of its riverbanks.

This process takes decades to occur, but "the Ganges-Brahmaputra river system has moved several times over the past 6,000 years," said Christoph von Hagke of the University of Salzburg, Austria, who also took part in the study.

The researchers used satellite imagery to spot the former main channel of the river around 100 kilometers south of the Bangladeshi capital, Dhaka.

The team had been exploring the area when they found signs of historical earthquakes — such as vertical dikes of light-colored sand cutting up through horizontal layers of darker mud.

Chemical analysis of the sand and mud showed several eruptions happened at the same time, about 2,500 years ago. The eruptions were estimated to be magnitude 7 to 8 — about the same as the earthquake which hit Turkey and Syria in 2023.

The team, led by Elizabeth Chamberlain (center), collected mud from the ancient Ganges River channel and used optically stimulated luminescence dating to analyze it

Image: Mahfuzur Rahman

The vast Ganges-Brahmaputra river system is located close to an active plate boundary and is a tectonically active region.

"This proximity brings frequent major earthquakes," said Till Hanebuth, a specialist in geosciences at Coastal Carolina University in the US. Hanebuth was not part of the study.

Bangladesh is particularly susceptible to catastrophic earthquake events due to its proximity to seismic zones.

While the region is not currently thought to be at risk, the researchers said it was possible for an earthquake to be strong enough to reroute the Ganges in the next few hundred to 1,000 years.

Ganges rerouting would be 'catastrophic for the region'

The researchers said their study showed it was entirely possible for delta rivers to be dramatically rerouted if they are hit by high-magnitude earthquakes.

"It was indeed a very extreme event — in fact two extreme events occurred. An earthquake of magnitude 7 to 8 is already extreme, but it caused redirection [known as avulsion] of the main channel of the Ganges," said von Hagke.

Von Hagke said a new event of the same size would be catastrophic for the region because it would hit "a super densely populated region."

River breaching and relocation does not only depend on earthquakes — they can also be caused by extreme weather, said Hanebuth.

"Abrupt river avulsions could be caused by a major monsoon or cyclone flooding event, or the collapse of a major river dam," Hanebuth said, adding that while such could be caused by natural events, they were also "largely human-made."

Experts say a huge earthquake could reroute the Ganges in the future and that the effect on local communities would be 'catastrophic'

Image: Sanjay Kanojia/AFP/Getty Images

Can earthquakes be predicted?

Von Hagke said researchers needed to know more about the likelihood of large-scale river avulsion events in the future, particularly those from earthquakes.

The hard part, he said, was that scientists cannot predict when earthquakes will occur, or how big they will be when they do hit.

"For different earthquake scenarios, one could estimate landscape changes and then possible effects on rivers and water masses. But we cannot pinpoint the timing of an event that only happens every few hundred to a few thousand years," said von Hagke.

Chamberlain said, however, that knowing it was possible for earthquakes to completely reroute rivers, and the Ganges in Bangladesh in particular, meant that researchers could now begin to understand and predict how seismic events occur.

"We hope this knowledge can be helpful for hazard planning and mitigation before a modern event," she said.

The Ganges isn't the only river facing earthquake-related hazards. Others include China's Yellow River, Myanmar's Irrawaddy, the Klamath, San Joaquin and Santa Clara rivers on the US West Coast, and the Jordan River, which spans the borders of Syria, Jordan, the Palestinian West Bank and Israel.

Edited by: Zulfikar Abbany

Primary source:Cascading hazards of a major Bengal basin earthquake and abrupt avulsion of the Ganges River. Published in the journals Nature Communications by E.L. Chamberlain, S.L. Goodbred, M.S. Steckler, et al. 2024 (www.nature.com/articles/s41467-024-47786-4)

Are Saudi Arabia's plans for a non-oil future too grand?

Cathrin Schaer

DW

TODAY

Ski slopes in the desert and a city of mirrored skyscrapers: Saudi Arabia's Vision 2030 was always going to be expensive. But is it too expensive? Recent events seem to suggest the oil-rich nation can't afford it all.

The skyscraper city, known as The Line, was supposed to accommodate 1.5 million people; now it will only have space for 300,000

Image: Balkis Press/ABACA/picture alliance

When the plans were announced, many onlookers marveled at their scale and grandeur. Saudi Arabia's Vision 2030 — the country's plan to diversify away from its dependence on oil revenue — included everything from a ski slope in the desert, to a whole city just for sports and entertainment, to a car-less, carbon-neutral mega-city, Neom, in the middle of the desert.

Vision 2030 was also about changing perceptions of Saudi Arabia on the international stage. The various projects being cast as a sign of modernization in the religiously conservative country, which is ruled by an authoritarian royal family that brooks little political or social dissent.

However since the ambitious plan was announced in 2015, things have changed a lot. Over the past few months, ministers in the Saudi government have explained how Vision 2030 is being reduced in scope.

Last December the country's Finance Minister Mohammed al-Jadaan said some Vision 2030 projects would be delayed. In April, at a Riyadh meeting of the World Economic Forum, al-Jadaan said Saudi Arabia was adapting to current circumstances.

Saudi Arabia's finance minister: "There are challenges. We’ll change course, we’ll adjust, we’ll extend some of the projects, we’ll downscale some projects"

Image: Tu Yifan/Xinhua/picture alliance

For example, a gigantic, shiny line of mirrored skyscrapers in the desert called The Line — one of Neom's most important sub-projects — is being reduced from the original 170 kilometer-long arc to just over 2 kilometers.

This isn't the first adjustment to Neom either. The project was supposed to be finished by 2030 but now looks likely to take a further 20 years. It was supposed to cost around $500 billion (€468 billion) but Neom's budget may go as high as $2 trillion, observers said.

Delays and budget overruns

Other aspects of Vision 2030 haven't gone as planned either. Some of the more ambitious projects were meant to attract foreign investors to Saudi Arabiabut the desert kingdom is having a hard time doing that and levels of foreign direct investment have remained lower than forecast. Analysts say that regional instability — such as the conflict in Gaza — and a lack of Saudi regulatory transparency is keeping investors hesitant.

Although Saudi Arabia always expected to foot much of the bill for Vision 2030, it is now being forced to pay for almost all of it.

For 2023, the Saudi government forecast foreign direct investment at $22 billion (around €21 billion) but it only reached $19 billion

Image: Coust Laurent/ABACA/picture alliance

Much of that funding comes via the Public Investment Fund, or PIF, one of the world's largest sovereign wealth funds, fueled by Saudi oil revenues.

In March, the Saudi government transferred 8% of shares in state-owned oil company, Aramco, to the PIF. This means the PIF now holds 16% of Aramco, valued at $2 trillion, making it the fourth most valuable company in the world. Critics have also pointed to the fact that, even though the PIF manages a portfolio of assets worth $940 billion, it only has about $15 billion in funds.

Analysts say this reliance on oil prices is what makes the Vision 2030 projects vulnerable. The International Monetary Fund says the Saudis need oil prices around $96 a barrel in order to achieve Vision 2030. So far this year, the price of a barrel of crude, often used as an indicator for the oil market, has gone from around $70 in January to around $81 this month.

This week, business media outlet Bloomberg also reported that Saudi Arabia had become the biggest issuer of bonds among emerging markets, beating out China for the first time in over a decade.

Government bonds are issued to finance public spending; they're a form of loan on which the issuing government pays interest to bond holders. The Saudis are taking out more of these kinds of loans than ever in order to cover the lack of foreign direct investment, Bloomberg reported. Bankers also told the outlet that Saudi Arabia won't be able to continue issuing bonds at the current pace for too long because the cost of financing them — that is, paying the interest — will become too great.

In mid-June there were reports that Saudi-state funded companies were being asked to make budget cuts

Image: Asmaa ElTouny/TheMiddleFrame/picture alliance

Is Vision 2030 in real trouble?

"With the combination of factors, it's hard not to come to the conclusion that there is a certain degree of economic policy juggling going on [in Saudi Arabia] right now," says Robert Mogielnicki, a senior resident scholar at the Arab Gulf States Institute in Washington, DC.

Some of the recent statements from Saudi officials, stating that timelines may need to be reassessed on certain projects, could even be considered comparatively unusual, he said. "It's something we haven't really heard since the launch of Vision 2030."

However, Mogielnicki argued, "the status of Vision 2030 is not as spectacular, nor as disastrous as a lot of people make out. The reality is that it's somewhere in the middle."

Some aspects of Vision 2030 are working out well. A February "half-time" report by US investment bank Citigroup found that things like female participation in the workforce, locals' home ownership levels and revenues from non-oil related sectors had all seen "significant progress."

Vision 2030 is under construction: Thanks to the plan, Saudi women made up 34% of the labor market in 2023

Image: Taidgh Barron/ZUMAPRESS/picture alliance

In a June statement, after a mission to Saudi Arabia, researchers at the International Monetary Fund concluded that the country's "unprecedented economic transformation is progressing well." They also welcomed "spending reprioritization" around Vision 2030.

Ever since Saudi Arabia launched Vision 2030 launched, the various projects within it have evolved, Mogielnicki explained.

The program was hugely varied and predicated on speedy development. Add the costs of some of the more expensive Vision 2030 projects to the everyday funding required to keep Saudi Arabia running and you can see why there's a need for reassessment happening now, he noted. Some projects, such as the development of green hydrogen, are now seen as more worthwhile, others will be given a longer timeline.

None of this is likely to dent the Saudi ruling family's hold on power either, he noted.

"The Saudis definitely still have a lot of cards to play with, but it's also true that right now they're not operating with the strongest possible hand," Mogielnicki concluded. "It [Vision 2030] has initiated a major and fundamental shift in Saudi Arabia's economic and social trajectories. But there is still a great deal of work ahead."

Cathrin Schaer Author for the Middle East desk.

German center-right gets tough on Ukrainian refugees

Ben Knight

DW

TODAY

Germany's center-right parties are coming up with new ideas to clamp down on Ukrainian refugees. But critics argue the proposals are counterproductive for the country's job market.

Around 1.3 million people with Ukrainian citizenship are living in Germany, most of whom were women and children

mage: Carsten Koall/dpa/picture alliance


Germany's center-right opposition parties — who are leading in the polls — are toughening their attitude toward Ukrainian refugees, with a leading member of Bavaria's conservative Christian Social Union (CSU) now calling for them to be sent back to Ukraine if they don't find a job.

"More than two years after the start of the war, the principle must now apply: Take work in Germany or return to safe areas of western Ukraine," the CSU's parliamentary leader Alexander Dobrindt told the tabloid Bild am Sonntag newspaper at the weekend.

Though the claim has been frequently debunked by migration researchers, Dobrindt repeated the argument that unemployment benefits — known as Bürgergeld, or citizens' income — were keeping Ukrainians from finding work. "We need stronger obligations to cooperate for asylum-seekers when it comes to taking up work," Dobrindt said.

The German Foreign Ministry responded in a regular government press conference on Monday, saying that there were no safe areas in Ukraine.

The argument for restricting the benefits of Ukrainian refugees in Germany was previously made by the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) — the CSU's non-Bavarian big sister in German politics — and last week by the smallest party in the Chancellor Olaf Scholz' center-left coalition, the neoliberal Free Democratic Party (FDP).

"Newly arrived war refugees from Ukraine should no longer receive a citizen's income, but should fall under the Asylum Seekers Benefits Act," FDP General Secretary Bijan Djir-Sarai told Bild last Monday. This, he suggested, would force more Ukrainians to find a job.

"We have a shortage of labor everywhere — in the restaurant and construction industries, for example, or in the care sector," Djir-Sarai added. "We should no longer be using taxpayers' money to finance unemployment, but instead we need to ensure that people get jobs."

Both Scholz's center-left Social Democrats (SPD) and his other coalition partner, the Green Party, have rejected the idea.

The CSU's Alexander Dobrindt has stepped up the rhetoric against Ukrainian refugees

Image: dts Nachrichtenagentur/picture alliance

Cutting refugees' benefits is 'naked populism'

Around 1.3 million people with Ukrainian citizenship are living in Germany, according to government figures for March 2024, most of whom are women and children. According to the Federal Interior Ministry, around 260,000 of them are Ukrainian men between the ages of 18 and 60.

"It doesn't make sense to talk about supporting Ukraine in the best way we can and at the same time to pay for Ukrainians who have abandoned their country," Brandenburg's CDU Interior Minister Michael Stübgen told the newspaper network RND.

But the respected German economist Marcel Fratzscher dismissed the FDP's demand as "naked populism." "No one will be better off, no one will have a single euro more, if Germany treats refugees worse and cuts their benefits," Fratzscher, the president of the German Institute for Economic Research (DIW), told RND on Tuesday.

The government's spokespeople swiftly clarified that the FDP's stance did not reflect that of Olaf Scholz, telling reporters at a press conference last week that there were no plans to change the help offered to Ukrainian refugees. In fact, as they pointed out, EU interior ministers agreed earlier this month to extend Ukrainian refugees' special protection status until 2026.

This status prevents Ukrainians from having to go through a lengthy asylum procedure upon arrival, allows them to freely choose their place of residence, and gives them the immediate right to social benefits, education, and a work permit.

Ukrainian refugees are only entitled to social benefits if their income (and, if applicable, their assets) is not sufficient to cover the cost of living.

How some Ukrainians are dodging conscription  07:36

Access to the labor market

Alexander (name changed), a 37-year-old Ukrainian who spent about a year living on the citizen's income in Berlin, said he could understand the sentiment behind the FDP and CDU's calls, but that the Bürgergeld had been vital to helping him find his feet in a very dark period of his life.

"When I came here I was totally lost, I was mentally lost," he told DW. "Then we went to the job center, and we had the payments, we had the support from them. In my case everything went pretty smoothly."

Receiving Bürgergeld — currently €563 ($603) a month for single people — also meant Alexander, a music producer and sound designer who had a successful business in Ukraine, had access to job counselling and help finding a German language course, all of which ultimately allowed him to get off state support within a year. Under the Asylum Seekers Benefits Act, he would have received just €354 a month, and no help from the job center.

Alexander's story is not unique, according to research done by Kseniia Gatskova, of the Institute for Employment Research (IAB), who coordinated a long-term survey on Ukrainian war refugees in Germany.

"Of course, the citizen's income is important — it allows people to cope with everyday life," she told DW. "But integration means much more — refugees need extensive integration measures, for example language courses and advice in job centers."

According to the Federal Employment Agency in March 2024, more than 700,000 Ukrainians were receiving the basic benefits for jobseekers. This included 501,000 people who were classified as fit to work and 217,000 who were not — these were mostly children.

Some 185,000 Ukrainian refugees are employed and paying social security contributions. In October 2023, a study by the Friedrich Ebert Foundation revealed that integration of Ukrainian war refugees into the German labor market was lagging behind that of other EU countries: While just 18% of Ukrainian refugees had found a job in Germany, in Poland, the Czech Republic and Denmark the figure was two thirds or more.

Gatskova stressed that the last two years had shown that the rate of Ukrainians who had found work had grown.

"They are very keen to integrate into the labor market— over 90% of refugees from Ukraine want to work in Germany," she said. "How are people supposed to finance themselves during the period when they have not yet learned the German language, have not had their qualifications recognized and have not yet found a job?"

Not every Ukrainian wants to fight

Germany's aging population means the country is becoming increasingly dependent on foreign labor in several sectors. But what troubles many critics is that many of the Ukrainian refugees are, like Alexander, men of fighting age — though the uncomfortable truth is that many Ukrainian men don't want to fight.

"How people perceive war here, and how a guy from a country where there is war perceives it is very different," said Alexander. "I think if a country promises help, and people need help, that country still needs to help people. In my case, I feel indebted to Germany, and I'm really thankful for that, and I'm going to be paying it back with my taxes."

"I think supporting people when they come to a country for a year or two is pretty good — it's an investment in future labor power," he added. "That will help your country to grow. Another question is: How long should you support these people? For, me it should be one, two, three years maximum."

Researchers like Gatskova believe that, in general, the system needs to be reformed to help more refugees find work, whether they're Ukrainian or not.

"We are calling for the removal of institutional barriers to labor market integration," she said. "The longer asylum procedures, work bans, and mobility restrictions have a negative impact on labor market integration."

Edited by: Rina Goldenberg

This article was first published on June 16, 2024 and later updated and republished to reflect news developments.

Is the EU doing enough to prepare for wildfires?

Holly Young

DW

TODAY

Climate change is fueling ever more frequent and intense fires across Europe. What is being done to help the continent navigate a fire-risk future?

In recent years, Portugal has been devastated by forest fires

Image: Joao Henriques/AP Photo/picture alliance

Last summer, flames devoured homes and olive groves as they raged uncontrollably for days in Greece, engulfing an area bigger than New York City and leaving white ash and mourning in their wake.

It was the biggest fire ever recorded in Europe.

While wildfires are a natural annual occurrence, rising temperatures and intensified drought periods are creating drier, fire-prone weather that makes them burn faster, longer and more ferociously.

In Europe, as around the globe, they are becoming more frequent, intense and widespread. In 2023 alone, they scorched an area around twice the size of Luxembourg, causing more than €4 billion ($4.3 billion) in damages and releasing 20 megatons of climate-heating CO2 emissions into the air — equivalent to nearly a third of all annual emissions from international aviation in the EU.

But with rising temperatures expected to increase the risk of wildfires across Europe, is the continent prepared?

Europe is expanding fire response

"Forest fires are getting more and more significant," said Balazs Ujvari, a spokesperson for the European Commission. "More and more we find situations where member states are not able to cope."


The focus of the EU's fire response so far has been the expansion of firefighting capabilities through the EU Civil Protection Mechanism and RescEU program, which lend support to countries dealing with extreme wildfires.

Last year, its fleet of planes, helicopters and firefighters doubled in size, with the fire in Greece mobilizing the biggest EU aerial response operation to date.

Ahead of this year's fire season Ujvari said they have 28 planes, four helicopters and 556 firefighters stationed across four fire-prone countries. A further €600 million has been allocated to further expanding the fleet by the end of the decade.

Ujvari added that the EU can also provide images of affected areas from its Copernicus satellite system to help local authorities monitor and tackle blazes.

Central and northern European countries have experienced more wildfires in recent years

Image: Patricia de Melo Moreira/AFP

Firefighting alone isn't enough

Yet some scientists and policy experts argue the EU could do more to prevent fires starting in the first place.

Around 90% of EU funding for tackling wildfires goes into response, and only 10% into prevention, according to one estimate from German EU lawmaker Anna Deparnay-Grunenberg.

The occurrence of fires that are extremely difficult to bring under control — such as those during Portugal's 2017 wildfire season that burned a total of 500,000 hectares and claimed over 100 lives — highlight the limits of prioritizing fire response, said Alexander Held, senior expert at the European Forest Institute.


"Science and experience tell us that to prevent these disaster fires, it's no use investing in fire suppression because they can't be suppressed. The only thing you can do is avoid them happening or ensure that they don't burn with intensities beyond the threshold of control," said Held.

To do this, the EU needs to push more land-based fire prevention and nature-based solutions, he said. "The more climate change we observe, the more we should actually invest in making the landscape less burnable."
Forest management needs to be ramped up

There are many methods available to establish more sustainable land management and increase the resilience of forests, explained Julia Bognar, head of the land use and climate program at the sustainability think tank Institute for European Environmental Policy.

This includes thinning and spacing trees properly, and reducing floor vegetation through prescribed burning or introducing more grazing animals like cattle and goats that eat the dry shrubs, which act as fuel and help a fire to spread.

Forest fires can spread quickly across monocultures, such as eucalyptus plantations

Image: Laurent Guerinaud/UIG/IMAGO

Shifting away from monocultures, such as the eucalyptus plantations that ignited during Portugal's severe 2017 fires, would also make forests more resilient.

"With more diversity of trees and older growth trees, they have a better capacity for storing water and preventing drought," said Bognar.

Approaches need to be tailored to the climates of individual countries, said Held, explaining in hotter places like southern Spain it would involve prescribed burning while the weather is mild and establishing a mosaic of different land use, including grazed land that keeps the biomass — which turns into fuel when it is dry and hot — at a low level.

"Here [in Central Europe] resilience means promoting broad-leaved forest, mixed forest, shady and wet forests," said Held, adding that technical measures like fire breaks or fuel buffer zones with reduced fuel out along routes in the forest would also help. He added encouraging more people back into rural areas to manage the land — to engage in practices such as organic farming or continuous cover forestry — is also key.

More coordination and long-term solutions needed

There is an increasing amount of fire prevention best practice being shared in Europe, said Bognar. This includes guidelines for sustainable forest management published by the European Commission in 2023. "But there's not necessarily a concerted effort at the EU level to be pressing for these types of changes… so it's really inconsistent across the EU," she said.

Bognar said rethinking the EU approach to rising wildfire threats needs to include more long-term solutions, such as pushing through the proposed Forest Monitoring Framework — which would give a clearer picture of Europe's forests — and implementing the Nature Restoration Law which, despite being watered down and facing resistance from some member states, aims to support fire resilience by increasing forest biodiversity.

Increasing forest resilience could help prevent intense wildfires

 Alexandros Avramidis/REUTERS

While wildfire experts have long lamented how much more financial support there is for firefighting, there are some funds that can be used for prevention, said Held. But he explained there is too little understanding and coordination in how to access this support, and a lack of solid wildfire prevention strategy at the national level.

One notable exception to this, he said, is Portugal.

Since its devastating 2017 fires, the country has shifted its approach to emphasize forest management, including promoting the plantation of native fire-adapted species as well as fuel breaks — artificial areas with less vegetation that act as barriers to stop or slow down fires — and buffer zones around new and existing buildings in risk areas. France has also made changes, introducing legislation last year cracking down on landowners that fail to clear their forests of undergrowth.

But Jesus San-Miguel, senior researcher at the European Commission Joint Research Centre, said a key barrier on the continent is that the European Commission can only give advice and support. Ultimately, it's member states that are responsible for forest management and fire prevention.

"Prevention is a slow process, it is less visible than firefighting," said San-Miguel. "So, when you have many planes fighting, they seem to be really doing a lot but prevention should be prioritized. Because it is so much cheaper."

Edited by: Tamsin Walker

ARTICLE CHARTS/INFOGRAPHICS

Sources:

https://joint-research-centre.ec.europa.eu/jrc-news-and-updates/wildfires-2023-among-worst-eu-century-2024-04-10_en
EU Joint Research Centre information on 2023 wildfires

https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/ip_23_2943
European Commission information on rescEU

https://www.oecd.org/climate-change/wildfires/policy-highlights-taming-wildfires-in-the-context-of-climate-change.pdf
Taming Wildfires in the Context of Climate Change, OECD report

DIVORCE

Gender gap fuels disputes as Japan gets joint custody

Tokyo (AFP) – Masaki Kubota's delight at reuniting with his two sons gave way to heartbreak when the younger, two years old, stared at him uncomprehendingly as if to say: "Who are you?"

Issued on: 25/06/2024 - 04:41

A divorced woman sits on a children's swing set during an interview with AFP at a location in central Japan

 © Yuichi YAMAZAKI / AFP

It was their first encounter since his wife left with the boys a year earlier -- the kind of painful separation that Japan's new parental custody rules aim to prevent.

The country enacted laws last month allowing joint custody after divorce, replacing a decades-old system where it was granted to only one side, and almost always to the mother.

But the change has proved polarising in a country where campaigners say sole custody acts as a bulwark against forms of domestic abuse courts may fail to recognise.

Rights groups argue that mothers who have escaped economic or psychological violence -- exacerbated by financial inequalities -- risk being dragged back into abusive relationships under joint custody.

Pressure had long been building on lawmakers, including from the United Nations, which recommended in 2019 that Japan allow joint custody "when it is in the child's best interests".

A French father's high-profile hunger strike during the Tokyo Olympics also drew global attention to the issue.

"It's painful -- I'm sorry I cannot be part of their lives and watch them grow," the 43-year-old told AFP.

He says his wife, who left him in 2022, felt she had been disproportionately saddled with domestic duties, but he argues that he contributed where he could.

Having sought access to his sons through the courts, Kubota sewed train and cartoon patches onto his jacket to make them smile at their reunion.

But he was devastated by his son's reaction.

"I felt like I was being erased from his memory," he said.

'Like a slave'

Under the new rules, due to take effect by 2026, sole custody can be maintained in court-identified cases of domestic violence and child abuse.

Divorcing couples decide the terms of their custody under the new rules, which have critics on both sides.

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Single mother Shiho Tanaka, who heads a support group, told AFP her husband pressured her into quitting her job, then used his financial power to treat her 'like a slave' 

© Yuichi YAMAZAKI / AFP

Some pro-joint custody campaigners say they want clearer frameworks and for Japan to stop tolerating alleged child abductions.

On the other hand, those against it say that in Japan, whose gender wage gap of 21 percent is the worst in the G7 -- almost double that of France -- spousal abuse of less tangible forms is more widespread than commonly thought.

"Being denied money for a living" was the second-biggest divorce trigger for Japanese women in 2023, followed by "mental abuse", judicial data show.

"It was an escape," she said of her decision to leave with her two toddlers, denying it constituted an abduction.

Unless Japan's deep gender imbalances are rectified, "we're nowhere near ready to even discuss joint custody," said Tanaka, now head of a group supporting single mothers.

"Mothers and children who have escaped violence might be dragged back to that abusive relationship under joint custody, because power dynamics don't easily change, even after divorce."

A group of people rally outside Tokyo's National Diet Building against a government plan to allow joint custody after divorce 

© Yuichi YAMAZAKI / AFP

Another 50-year-old divorcee, who took flight with her newborn baby in 2010, said she surrendered her career after two traumatising miscarriages, only to find herself "suddenly poor" with no income of her own.

"The free will I had always had, along with my ability to make my own choices, was no longer respected," she said.

"I felt like I had become a very weak person."

'Feeble' welfare provision

Driving the inequality in part, critics say, is a long-standing tax policy disincentivising dependent spouses, usually wives, from full-time work.

Japanese husbands spend notoriously few hours on household tasks -- just 47 minutes versus 247 minutes for wives on a weekday -- preventing women from re-entering the workforce.

"The majority of women work non-regular jobs," especially after marriage and children, said Yuki Senda, a sociology professor at Musashi University.

"It's extremely difficult for them to be financially independent."

Measures to enforce child support payments such as through penalties are scarce in Japan, and most divorces are finalised without court involvement.

Left-behind father Kubota argues that if parents like him "keep being denied chances to see their children", they lose a sense of duty, such as to pay enough child support.

"Parents feel less responsible when stripped of their authority as parents."

© 2024 AFP

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