Canada imposes sanctions on Israel settlers for ‘extremist violence’ in West Bank

June 28, 2024

Israeli soldiers take security measures on the streets as Jewish settlers organize a provocative tour of the Old City under the protection of Israeli soldiers in the Hebron, West Bank on May 25, 2024. [Wisam Hashlamoun – Anadolu Agency]


Canada today announced new sanctions targeting Israeli settlers for “extremist violence” against Palestinian civilians in the occupied West Bank.

This follows the first-ever sanctions against settlers by Canada last month, coordinated with Britain, France, the European Union and the United States.

The latest round of sanctions includes seven Israeli extremists and five organisations accused of facilitating, supporting, or financially contributing to acts of violence by Israeli extremist settlers against Palestinian civilians and their property.

Foreign Minister, Melanie Joly, said: “We remain deeply concerned by extremist settler violence in the West Bank and condemn such acts, not only for the significant impact they have on Palestinian lives, but also for the corrosive impact they have on prospects for lasting peace.”

“We call on authorities to ensure the protection of civilians and hold perpetrators of such violence accountable.”

Attacks by extremist Israeli settlers – a long-standing source of tension and conflict in the region – undermine the human rights of Palestinians, prospects for a two-state solution and pose significant risks to regional security.

According to the Canadian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the seven Israeli extremists include Ben Zion Gopstein, the founder and leader of the right-wing group Lehava, Elisha Yered, who has justified killing Palestinians on religious grounds, and Shalom Zicherman, who the US State Department this year said had assaulted Israeli activists and their vehicles in the West Bank.

Other radical settler activists listed are Daniella Weiss, who has called for Palestinians to be resettled out of Gaza to make way for Jewish-only settlement, Einan Ben-Nir, Amram Tanjil, Ely Federman and Meir Mordechai Ettinger. The five entities on which the sanctions were also imposed were named as Amana, Hilltop Youth, Lehava, Moshe’s Farm and Zvi’s Farm.

Earlier this year, the UK imposed sanctions on four Israeli nationals saying they were extremist settlers who had violently attacked Palestinians in the Israeli-occupied West Bank. The US has also taken measures against settlers but questions have been asked over the effectiveness after Washington urged banks not to freeze accounts of the sanctioned settlers.

Israel approves plan to legalise West Bank settlement outposts, sanction Palestinian Authority

June 28, 2024 

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu attends the cabinet meeting in Jerusalem on January 29, 2023. [GPO – Anadolu Agency]

The Israeli Cabinet yesterday approved measures proposed by far-right Finance Minister, Bezalel Smotrich, which aim to “legalise” settlement outposts in the West Bank and impose sanctions on the Palestinian Authority (PA).

According to Israel’s Kan public broadcaster, the plan includes legalising five settlement outposts in the West Bank, issuing tenders for thousands of new housing units in settlements, and implementing measures against the PA.

These measures include revoking permits and benefits for Palestinian officials, restricting their movement and preventing senior officials from leaving the country.

Moreover, the plan aims to remove executive powers from the PA in the southern West Bank and enforce laws against unauthorised construction.

Smotrich, in his statement, said the move came “in light of Palestinian Authority action at the International Criminal Court, International Court of Justice, the UN, the pending arrest warrants against the country’s leaders and its push for unilateral recognition of a Palestinian State.” 

Additionally, his proposal addresses the recognition and regularisation of five settlement outposts in response to the official recognition of Palestine as a State by Spain, Norway, Ireland, Slovenia and Armenia, following 7 October.

Smotrich added, “The Security Cabinet authorised one outpost for every country that unilaterally recognised Palestine as a state in the last month.”

Last week, Armenia said it recognised the State of Palestine, the latest country to do so during the war in Gaza, where Israel has killed more than 37,400 Palestinians since the 7 October, 2023 Hamas incursion that claimed 1,200 lives.

However, since then, it has been revealed by Haaretz that helicopters and tanks of the Israeli army had, in fact, killed many of the 1,139 soldiers and civilians claimed by Israel to have been killed by the Palestinian Resistance.

Spain, Norway, Ireland and Slovenia have all recently recognised the Palestinian State.

Under the 1995 Oslo Accords between Israel and the Palestinian Authority, the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, was divided into three portions – Area A, B, and C – with area C under administrative and security control of Israel until a final status agreement is reached with the Palestinians.

Israel is accused of genocide at the International Court of Justice (ICJ). An interim ruling in January ordered Tel Aviv to stop genocidal acts and take measures to guarantee that humanitarian assistance is provided to civilians in Gaza.

Palestinian official rejects Israel Minister's move on West Bank settlements

June 28, 2024 

Bezalel Smotrich Israeli Finance Minister. [AHMAD GHARABLI/AFP/Getty Images]

A senior Palestinian official rejected, on Friday, a move by Israel’s Finance Minister intended to promote new Jewish settlements in the Occupied West Bank, saying it was aimed at pursuing a “war of genocide” against Palestinians, Reuters reports.

Finance Minister, Bezalel Smotrich, said on Thursday the Israeli government would also take punitive steps against the Palestinian Authority in response to Palestinian moves against Israel internationally.

Asked about Smotrich’s statement, which was not confirmed by the government, Wasel Abu Youssef, a member of the Executive Committee of the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO), said the settlements were “illegal colonies that violate all international resolutions”.

“The decisions by the Occupation government aim to pursue the war of genocide against our Palestinian people,” he told Reuters.

He said the PLO and the Palestinian Authority would continue to press for Israel to be taken before international courts and punished for “crimes against our people, and in particular in the Gaza Strip”.

Israel has rejected accusations brought by South Africa at the UN’s top Court that its military operation in Gaza is a state-led genocide campaign against Palestinians.

READ: Report: US officials call for imposing sanctions on Israel minister

Israel launched its Gaza offensive in retaliation for the Hamas-led attack on southern Israel last 7 October, in which about 1,200 people were killed and over 250 taken hostage, according to Israeli tallies. The Gaza Health Ministry says over 37,000 people have been killed in Israel’s offensive.

However, since then, it has been revealed by Haaretz that helicopters and tanks of the Israeli army had, in fact, killed many of the 1,139 soldiers and civilians claimed by Israel to have been killed by the Palestinian Resistance.

Smotrich, who heads a pro-settler party, said the government supported his proposal. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office, which usually announces cabinet-level decisions, issued no statement and could not be reached for immediate comment.

Steps which Smotrich said he was advancing included revoking “various approvals and benefits” for senior officials in the Palestinian Authority, approving new settlements and retroactively sanctioning some Jewish settlements.

The Palestinian Authority exercises limited self-rule under 1990s interim peace deals in the West Bank, which Israel captured in the 1967 Middle East war.

Palestinians and most of the international community regard Jewish settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem as illegal. Israel disputes this, citing the Jewish people’s historical, biblical and political links to the area as well as security considerations.

READ: Israel to promote settlement in the West Bank, Smotrich says

Israelis violently attack orthodox Jews protesting forced army conscription

Israeli violently attacked ultra-Orthodox Jewish men who blocked a major highway in central Israel for two hours yesterday to protest a recent Supreme Court decision ordering young religious men to enlist for military service. Videos circulating on social media show the men and boys being forcibly removed from the road, being kicked as they lay on the ground and having their religious clothing pulled off them and discarded. Military service is compulsory in Israel, but ultra-Orthodox Jews were exempt to allow them to study at a yeshiva (religious school) thus supporting and expanding the Jewish foundation of the Israeli state.

June 28, 2024

Trump: Biden a 'Very Bad, Weak' Palestinian

By Jewish News Syndicate Staff | Friday, 28 June 2024

Israel and Jewish issues played a small but explosive role in the presidential debate between U.S. President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump on Thursday night.

In an exchange about what leverage Biden would use to get Hamas to agree to a cease-fire-for-hostages deal that he announced in May, Trump accused Biden of wanting to let Hamas remain in power.

"Israel is the one, and you should let 'em go and let 'em finish the job," Trump said. "He doesn't want to do it. He's become like a Palestinian. But they don't like him because he's a very bad Palestinian, he's a weak one."

Biden in his preceding answer claimed that he had "saved Israel," but that the Jewish state had "killed a lot of innocent people."

"We're providing Israel with all the weapons they need and when they need them," Biden said, in apparent reference to accusations that he has been slow-walking arms shipments to Israel. "They've been greatly weakened, Hamas, and they should be eliminated. But you've got to be careful when using certain weapons among population centers."

U.S. foreign policy and the Israeli response to the Oct. 7 terrorist attacks occupied only a fraction of the 90-minute debate, which focused largely on domestic issues and the respective records of the two presidents in office.

Biden's at-times halting and difficult-to-understand responses provoked immediate comment from Trump with obvious implications about Biden's age and fitness for a second term.

"I'm going to continue to move until we get the total ban on the total initiative relative to what we can do with more border patrol and more asylum officers," Biden said in response to a question about immigration.

"I really don't know what he said at the end of that sentence," Trump replied. "I don't think he knows what he said either."

The format of the CNN debate at times also seemed to help Trump with Biden cutting off his own answers mid-sentence at the end of the time limit when his microphone was about to be muted, per the rules.

"We finally beat Medicare," Biden said, as part of an unclear answer to a question about the national debt.

"He was right, he did beat Medicare," Trump replied, transitioning to illegal immigration. "Because all of these people are coming in, they're putting them on Medicare, they're putting them on Social Security. They're gonna destroy Social Security. This man is going to single-handedly destroy Social Security."

Trump faced tougher questions from Biden after the first 30 minutes of the debate, when the moderators shifted to discussing Trump's actions on Jan. 6, 2021, and his personal and legal conduct.

"How many billions of dollars do you owe in civil penalties for molesting a woman in public, for doing a whole range of things, for having sex with a porn star on a night while your wife is pregnant?" Biden asked. "What are you talking about? You have the morals of an alley cat."

The weakness of Biden's overall performance nonetheless prompted questions about whether he can remain the Democratic nominee for president.

"Mark my words … Biden will not be the Democrat nominee," former Republican candidate for president Nikki Haley wrote on social media. "Republicans, get your guard up!"

No questions in the debate referred to the explosion of antisemitism on college campuses since Oct. 7, but Trump compared that wave of Jew-hatred to the alt-right, antisemitic demonstration in Charlottesville, Va., in August 2017 that Biden repeatedly alluded to in his closing remarks.

"You talk about Charlottesville, this is 100 times Charlottesville, 1,000 times Charlottesville, the whole country is exploding because of you, because they don't respect you," Trump said. "And they have to respect their president."

Trump says Biden has ‘become like a Palestinian’ in debate exchange

In a presidential debate marked by incoherence and lies, Donald Trump attacked Joe Biden, saying "he’s become like a Palestinian" for supposedly withholding total support for Israel's genocidal assault on Gaza.

BY MICHAEL ARRIA JUNE 28, 2024 

MONDOWEISS

DONALD TRUMP SPEAKING AT THE 2017 CONSERVATIVE POLITICAL ACTION CONFERENCE (CPAC) IN NATIONAL HARBOR, MARYLAND. (PHOTO: GAGE SKIDMORE)


President Joe Biden and presumptive GOP nominee Donald Trump were asked about Israel’s assault on Gaza during Thursday night’s distressing debate.

Biden insisted that Hamas had been “greatly weakened” and said the group should be eliminated, but added that Israel “had to be careful” about dropping large bombs in heavily populated areas.

He also said that parties were nearing a ceasefire as a result of a three-phase plan.



“The first stage is trade the hostages for a cease-fire,” said Biden. “Second phase is a cease-fire with additional conditions. The third phase is for the end of the war. The only one who wants the war to continue is Hamas. They’re the only one still holding out.”

“Israel is the one. And you should let them go and let them go finish the job. He doesn’t want to do it,” responded Trump. “He’s become like a Palestinian, but they don’t like him because he’s a very bad Palestinian. He’s a weak one.”

“I’ve never heard so much foolishness,” said Biden.

“A US president just turned ‘Palestinian’ into a slur to attack another US president,” tweeted Mondoweiss Culture Editor Mohammed El-Kurd. “‘Palestinian’ was used as a slur against the person funding and enabling the genocide of the Palestinian People…. Ok.”

“Trump just throwing around ‘Palestinian’ as a pejorative,” said Zeteo’s Mehdi Hasan. “Brazen anti-Palestinian racism has been normalized in America.”




“Trump just called Biden a Palestinian… ‘a bad one’,” wrote professor and author Marc Lamont Hill. “So many things are wrong and gross and despicable about this statement…”


Trump’s comment occurred amid a series of foreign policy questions, during a debate that was marked by Biden appearing incredibly weak and incoherent and Trump seeming incredibly unhinged.

Biden touted his support for Israel, which has led to the deaths of nearly 40,000 people and the utter destruction of Gaza, while Trump insisted the October 7th attack wouldn’t have happened if he had still been president.

“Israel would have never been invaded in a million years by Hamas,” said Trump. “You know why? Because Iran was broke with me.”

“I wouldn’t let anybody do business with them,” he explained. “They ran out of money. They were broke. They had no money for Hamas. They had no money for anything. No money for terror. That’s why you had no terror at all during my administration. This place, the whole world, is blowing up under him.”

Trump returned to the subject during his closing remarks. “We didn’t stop Israel – it was such a horrible thing, it would have never happened, it should have never happened,” he told viewers. “Iran was broke. Anybody who did business with Iran, including China, couldn’t do business with the United States. They all passed. Iran was broke, they had no money for Hamas or Hezbollah, for terror. No money whatsoever.”

Trump also said that the recent Gaza protests were a thousand times worse than the white supremacist rallies that took place in Charlottesville during 2017.

“We have the Palestinians and everybody else rioting all over the place,” he said. “You talk about Charlottesville – this is a hundred times, a thousand times Charlottesville. The whole country is exploding because of you, because they don’t respect you.”

Trump recently told a group of Jewish donors that he would crack down on the Palestine solidarity movement if elected and even deport students who were involved. “Well, if you get me elected, and you should really be doing this, if you get me reelected, we’re going to set that movement back 25 or 30 years,” he told the participants of a private round-table event.

Outside the debate, protesters rallied on the streets of Atlanta. Among the group was Gabriel Sanchez, a democratic socialist who ousted a Democratic State Representative in last month’s primary.

“I’m a Georgian. I was born and raised here in America, but I’m a human being first,” Sanchez told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. “Everything that’s happening in Gaza and the West Bank is horrific. We have to do everything we can to stop it.”

Trump: 'Let Israel finish the job' in Gaza

In the US presidential debate aired on CNN last night, Donald Trump called incumbent Joe Biden a 'bad Palestinian', adding that he should 'let Israel finish the job' in Gaza. Neither candidate addressed the high Palestinian civilian casualty toll since October 2023, where more than 130,000 Palestinians have been killed or injured in Gaza, or the dire humanitarian needs in the Strip in which Israel has imposed a 'man-made famine'.

June 28, 2024

UN action on gender and climate faces uphill climb as warming hurts women

At June’s Bonn talks, governments made little progress on gender equality while evidence shows women bear a heavy climate burden

By Daisy Clague

Published on 28/06/2024

In poor households without taps, the responsibility for collecting water typically falls on women and girls. As climate change makes water scarcer and they have to travel further and spend more time fetching it, their welfare suffers.

In a new study quantifying how gender shapes people’s experiences of climate change, scientists at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK) found that, by 2050, higher temperatures and changing rainfall patterns could mean women globally spend up to 30% more time collecting water.

PIK guest researcher Robert Carr, the study’s lead author, explained how this results in more physical strain, psychological distress and lost time that could otherwise be spent on education, leisure or employment.

“Even when people talk about gendered climate impacts, there is very little attention on time poverty and how that affects someone’s ability to improve their life,” Carr told Climate Home.

In addition, the cost of lost working time for women affects economies, and is projected to reach tens to hundreds of millions of US dollars per country annually by 2050, the study said.

Is water provision in drought-hit Zambia climate ‘loss and damage’ or adaptation?

Carr noted that the data underpinning PIK’s study only recently became available and is a valuable tool for connecting women’s welfare issues to climate impacts, with more such analysis expected as new datasets emerge.

“But more still needs to be done to act on, and implement, research findings like ours at the local and national levels,” he added.

For that to happen, research like PIK’s has to resonate in government offices and negotiating rooms at UN climate talks, where gender activists see 2024 as a milestone year. Countries are expected to renew key global initiatives for advancing gender-responsive climate action and improving gender balance in official delegations at UN negotiations.

Gendered impacts of climate change

So far progress has been slow. After more than a decade of working towards those aims within the UN climate process, wilder weather and rising seas are still disproportionately affecting women and gender-diverse people, as global warming continues apace.

For example, female-headed rural households experience higher income losses due to extreme weather events like floods and droughts, through impacts on farming and other activities.

Rates of child marriage and violence against women and girls have been shown to increase during and after climate disasters. And studies have identified a positive correlation between drought-induced displacement and hysterectomies among female farm labourers in India.

At the same time, barriers like caring responsibilities, lack of funding, difficulties in obtaining visas and even sexual harassment in UN spaces persist, standing in the way of women’s equal participation in the climate negotiating rooms.

Yet, despite the mounting urgency, governments made little progress in talks on gender issues at the mid-year UN conference in Bonn this month.


Delegates arrive for a workshop on implementing the UNFCCC gender action plan and on future work to be undertaken on gender and climate change, at the Bonn Climate Conference on June 3, 2024. (Photo: IISD/ENB – Kiara Worth)

Advocates had hoped to leave the German city with a new, stronger version of the UN’s flagship gender initiative, known as the Lima Work Programme on Gender (LWP). Instead, discussions were tense and slow, leaving the LWP – which is supposed to be renewed by 2025 – to be finalised in November at the COP29 climate summit in Azerbaijan.

No rise in women negotiators


Claudia Rubio, gender working group lead for the Women and Gender Constituency at the UN, said the LWP has enabled a better understanding of “what is prohibiting women and other genders from being in [UN negotiating] spaces”.

But Mwanahamisi Singano, senior global policy lead at the Women’s Environment and Development Organisation (WEDO), reminded delegates at a workshop in Bonn that “time has not been the magic ingredient in bridging disparities between women and men in participation”, which has “stagnated or even declined when it comes to COPs”.

A Flourish chart


According to data from WEDO, women made up only 34% of COP28 government delegations overall, the same percentage as 10 years ago. Azerbaijan’s initial men-only COP29 organising committee – to which women were hastily added after an international outcry – and its line-up of negotiators at Bonn were a case in point.

The UN’s own analysis of men and women’s relative speaking times at the negotiations shows that women often – though not always – speak less, and that themes such as technology and finance see consistently lower numbers for women’s participation.

Progress has been gradual even with programmes like WEDO’s Women Delegates Fund, which has financed hundreds of women – primarily from least developed countries and small island developing states – to attend UN climate talks. Since 2012, WEDO has also run ‘Night Schools’, training women in technical language and negotiation skills.
Gender in the NDCs

Increasing the gender diversity of decision-makers in UN negotiations is important in its own right, but it does not necessarily translate into more gender-responsive climate policy, experts said. Not all women negotiators are knowledgeable about the gender-climate nexus, they noted.

But having an international framework to boost gender-sensitive climate action has also “catalysed political will” at the country level, according to Rebecca Heuvelmans, advocacy and campaigning officer at Women Engage for a Common Future (WECF).


Delegates listen to discussions on the UNFCCC Gender Action Plan at the Bonn Climate Conference on June 4, 2024. (Photo: IISD/ENB – Kiara Worth)

This is evidenced by an increase in the number of official National Gender and Climate Change Focal Points – up from 38 in 2017 when UN climate talks first adopted a Gender Action Plan, to 140 across 110 countries today. While the precise role of these focal points depends on country needs, advocates say they have been pivotal in spurring action on national gender priorities.

So far, at least 23 countries have national gender and climate change action plans, and references to gender in national climate plans submitted to the UN, known as NDCs, have increased since the earliest commitments in 2016. Around four-fifths now include gender-related information, according to a UN review of the plans.

In practice, this ranges from including gender-diverse people in the development of national climate plans to legislation that specifically addresses the intersection of climate change and gender.

For example, nine countries – including Sierra Leone and Jordan – have committed to addressing rising gender-based violence in the context of climate change. South Sudan acknowledged that heat exposure and malnutrition can increase infant and maternal mortality, while Côte d’Ivoire recognised that climate change hikes risks to pregnant women and those going through menopause.

Nonetheless, only a third of countries include access to sexual, maternal and newborn health services in their climate commitments, according to a 2023 report by the UN Population Fund (UNFPA) and Queen Mary University of London, showing how much work is yet to be done.

Next year, countries are due to submit updated NDCs, which campaigners see as a crucial opportunity to embed gender equality more deeply, including by involving women and girls in their planning and implementation, and collecting data disaggregated by sex and gender that can help shape policy.
Cross-cutting issue

Ahead of COP29, gender advocates are pushing for a stronger work programme with new language around intersectionality – the recognition that gender interacts with other parts of identity like race, class and Indigeneity to create overlapping systems of discrimination.

Angela Baschieri, technical lead on climate action at UNFPA, said gender commitments in the UN climate process must be more ambitious and include actionable targets for countries to address gender inequality.

Five things we learned from the UN’s climate mega-poll

Beyond the gender negotiations themselves, the Women and Gender Constituency wants to boost the integration of gender with other streams of work.

“Whether you’re talking about green hydrogen, climate finance or low-carbon transport, there is always a gender dimension,” said Sascha Gabizon, executive director of WECF International, a network of feminist groups campaigning on environmental issues.

“We have so much evidence now that climate policies just aren’t as efficient if they are not gender-transformative,” she added.

(Reporting by Daisy Clague; editing by Megan Rowling)

UK
Squatters take London's housing crisis into their own hands


28 June 2024 - 

BY SUBAN ABDULLA AND NATALIE THOMAS

Light shines through a window in a bedroom for squatters, in which was once a school and is now occupied by squatter activist group Reclaim Croydon, in Croydon, south London, Britain, May 16, 2024.

Image: REUTERS/Hannah McKay / File photo

In the shopping streets and housing estates of the south London town of Croydon, some once-derelict buildings are slowly coming back to life.

At a former school, peeling walls are getting a fresh coat of paint, and laundry hangs on a line to dry. Over at a disused youth centre, there is laughter in the gymnasium-turned-dormitory, and a vase of purple flowers decorates a scrubbed kitchen counter.

The Reclaim Croydon collective, a squatters group, has taken over disused commercial premises to provide beds for the homeless, saying it is providing a community-based solution to a broken housing market.

“The government is failing homeless people,” said one of the youth centre's new occupants, who goes by the name Leaf.

Leaf, who comes from the city of Reading and is nonbinary, said they had been living on the streets and in squats because rising rents had outstripped government welfare and housing benefits. Leaf argues that many of the country's disused and empty properties could be turned into homes.

“If the people in charge actually gave a damn about anyone who was struggling, they would make those houses habitable,” Leaf said. “Homelessness is a direct political choice.”

Like most of the squatters interviewed by Reuters, Leaf, 28, would only give one name, to avoid drawing the attention of authorities.

Britain has long lacked enough housing, but a 22% jump in private rents in England over the last five years has left growing numbers of people struggling to find anywhere to live. Housing routinely appears in the top five issues that pollsters report as the most important for voters ahead of Thursday's general election.

The high rents and unaffordable house prices have meant people in their 20s or 30s are still living at home with parents or in house shares. At the most acute end, growing numbers are sleeping on the streets and in empty buildings, official figures show.

Public services in areas such as mental health have taken a hit from a decade of tight spending controls and growing demand, adding to the numbers slipping into homelessness, policy analysts and homeless advocates say.

Studies have found that ethnic minorities are disproportionately affected, with a 2022 report published by the Centre for Homelessness Impact charity showing that Black people were more than three times as likely to become homeless as white people in England.

Britain's biggest political parties did not make people available to discuss the housing crisis. However, both Prime Minister Rishi Sunak's Conservatives and the main opposition Labour Party have pledged to tackle the issue by building more homes.


Labour, which is widely expected to win the election by a landslide, has said it would overhaul the country's planning system — often cited as overly complex and tilted against developers — and build 1.5 million homes over the next five years.

The Conservatives struggled to reform the planning system in the face of opposition from rural lawmakers and residents seeking to preserve green spaces and the original character of their neighbourhoods.

VACANT BUILDINGS

Housing campaigners have long argued that local councils should also use some of the roughly 700,000 vacant homes in England as a cheaper and faster solution.

“We're seeing more and more councils saying that temporary accommodation budgets for people that they theoretically have a legal duty to house are literally bankrupting them,” said Chris Bailey, campaign manager for the Action on Empty Homes charity.

London Councils, an umbrella group representing the capital's local authorities, said the number presenting as homeless increased by 14.5% in the year to September 2023, with more than 175,000 homeless and living in temporary accommodation.

The cost of providing temporary housing in hotels, hostels or house shares rose by almost 40% last year to 90 million pounds ($113.54 million) a month, London Councils said.

Since 2018, eight councils — including Birmingham, Europe's largest local authority — have effectively declared themselves bankrupt.

Croydon Council — which declared it was unable to balance its books three times between 2020 and 2022 — spent more than 38.6 million pounds on temporary accommodation in the 2022-2023 financial year, not including any rent it gets back.

The council increased council tax — paid by residents — by 15% last year. It has also raised taxes on empty properties and second homes.

“It is hoped this will help to bring more empty homes back into use,” the council said in a statement to Reuters.

The council wants to sell the occupied youth centre, which closed during the pandemic.

“We are making arrangements to repossess and secure this publicly owned building,” it said.

Croydon — a large, built-up town with high-rise apartment and office blocks — had nearly 4,000 disused properties in October 2023, according to government data.

In the main shopping streets, shuttered businesses and posters advertising closing down sales are tucked among discount stores and a bustling market.

Alex, 28, a Reclaim Croydon organiser, said the group has refurbished around 30 buildings since it was formed last year, providing homes for over 100 people.

The group first ensures the buildings are vacant and have basic necessities like running water and electricity, he said. It then carries out repairs to make them habitable, which can include installing showers and kitchens, fixing leaks and removing mould.

The people who live in the buildings come from diverse backgrounds. Squatters at the youth centre with Leaf include a student and a transport worker who couldn't keep up with London rents.

Some are trying to escape the streets, others the upheaval of living in different temporary accommodations.

“A lot of people in Britain just get stuck in homelessness limbo, and they prefer to stay with us,” Alex said.

They include Oumnia, 35, who said she was offered temporary accommodation in a hostel while she waited for her asylum application to be processed.

“It was a small room, and I have two children. It's not enough for us, and it's not healthy,” said Oumnia, who declined to give further details about herself.

Reclaim Croydon found the family a room in an ornate, red brick building that had once housed a legal firm.

But within months of their arrival, an eviction notice was pasted on the door. Reuters could not reach the owners for comment; no contact details are listed on the land deed.

The half a dozen squatters packed up and moved into a small, sparsely furnished former girl's school that had stood empty since 2020.

Oumnia and her young children now live in an outbuilding with its own small kitchen and bathroom. In the evenings, residents sometimes gather in a former gymnasium to share a plate of chicken stew and bread.

It's unclear how long they can stay, however. The building is owned by Barnardo's, a children's charity.

“We are aware that a Barnardo's-owned property in Croydon is currently being occupied by squatters. We are working with local authorities to safely resolve the situation,” the group said without elaborating.


SQUATTING CULTURE

A squatting culture has existed in Britain for hundreds of years. After World War 2, many soldiers and their families moved into empty military bases. In the 1970s, the movement took on a political edge as anarchists took over buildings in acts of protest.

Since 2012, it has been illegal to squat in residential buildings. But commercial squatting is not a criminal offence, provided no damage is done, and the squatters leave when ordered by a court.

The British Landlords Association estimates squatting in commercial buildings is up by almost 300% since December 2021, a problem its head, Sajjad Ahmad, blames on government policies rather than squatters.

“A lot of these people that you see on the street or squatting in buildings are not drug addicts,” Ahmad said. “You speak to them, and you realise that some of them are qualified individuals who still hold down jobs.”

Britain embarked on a home-building drive after World War 2, with much of its public housing stock built for lower-income families.

But some of that was sold off and not replaced under a policy by former Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher to allow people to buy their homes from local authorities.

In 2017, the government said 300,000 new homes were needed a year in England by the mid-2020s to fix the affordability squeeze. Since then, fewer than 250,000 have been built on average each year. Some owners have also been happy to leave properties empty, benefiting from rising valuations.

Squatters told Reuters that finding a room had been transformational, restoring a sense of dignity even if they were afraid of being thrown out.

“It was the first time I felt like a human being since coming to the UK,” said Youness Elaissaoui, a 49-year-old Moroccan immigrant who spent time at the school and former solicitor's office.

Leaf, who walks with a cane, said finding a community of squatters was life-saving.

“I'm disabled. I wouldn't survive on the streets. Simple as that,” they said.

 

US Protects Alaska Lands Important To Tribes’ Hunting, Fishing

Large areas of federal land in Alaska will be protected from development to conserve fish and wildlife habitats that are important to native communities’ way of life, under two measures announced by the Biden administration on Friday.

The steps by the Interior Department are aligned with President Joe Biden’s goal to conserve 30% of U.S. lands and waters as part of his climate change agenda.

In a statement, Interior said it had finalized its rejection of a 211-mile (340 km) road intended to enable mine development in north central Alaska. The agency first said it would reject the project in April, citing risks to caribou and fish populations that native communities rely on for subsistence.

Interior also signaled that it would not allow development on 28 million acres (11 million hectares) of land in Alaska, reversing an effort by former President Donald Trump’s administration to strip them of protections in the final days of his presidency.

Biden’s Interior put the Trump decision on hold so it could seek public comment and analyze the impact of opening the area to mining or oil and gas development.

The final environmental analysis, published on Friday, found that allowing development would harm subsistence hunting and fishing in up to 117 native communities. A final decision by Interior Secretary Deb Haaland can be made 30 days after the release of the environmental review.

“Today, my Administration is stopping a 211-mile road from carving up a pristine area that Alaska Native communities rely on, in addition to steps we are taking to maintain protections on 28 million acres in Alaska from mining and drilling,” Biden said in a statement. “These natural wonders demand our protection.”

Most of the protected 28 million acres are able to be selected by eligible Alaska veterans of the Vietnam War for 160-acre allotments under a policy the administration unveiled in 2022.

(Reuters)

Indonesia’s Mount Ibu erupts twice, belches tower of ash

Mount Ibu is one of Indonesia’s most active volcanoes, erupting more than 21,000 times in 2023. PHOTO: AFP

JUN 28, 2024

JAKARTA - A volcano in eastern Indonesia erupted twice on June 28, sending a hot cloud of ash as high as 7km into the sky.

The country’s Centre for Volcanology and Geological Hazard Mitigation shared an image of the thick column of grey ash towering among white clouds around Mount Ibu, located on the island of Halmahera in North Maluku province.

No damage or casualties were immediately reported from the two eruptions, which took place within the span of an hour.

The first occurred at 10.45am local time (9.45am Singapore time).

“The eruption is still ongoing at the time of this report,” the volcanology centre said in a statement.

Locals were urged not to go within 5km of Mount Ibu’s crater, the statement added.

Mount Ibu is currently at the second-highest level of alert after the authorities lowered the alert level last week.


Ibu is one of Indonesia’s most active volcanoes, erupting more than 21,000 times in 2023.

More than 700,000 people lived on Halmahera island as at 2022, according to official figures.

Indonesia, a vast archipelago nation, experiences frequent seismic and volcanic activity due to its position on the Pacific “Ring of Fire”.

In May, Mount Ruang in North Sulawesi province erupted more than half a dozen times, forcing thousands of residents of nearby islands to evacuate. 

AFP

The US Supreme Court weakens federal regulators, overturning decades-old Chevron decision

BY MARK SHERMAN
 June 28, 2024

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court on Friday upended a 40-year-old decision that made it easier for the federal government to regulate the environment, public health, workplace safety and consumer protections, delivering a far-reaching and potentially lucrative victory to business interests.

The justices overturned the 1984 decision colloquially known as Chevron, long a target of conservatives.

Billions of dollars are potentially at stake in challenges that could be spawned by the high court’s ruling. The Biden administration’s top Supreme Court lawyer had warned such a move would be an “unwarranted shock to the legal system.” Chief Justice John Roberts qualified that past cases relying on the Chevron are not at issue.

The heart of the Chevron decision says federal agencies should be allowed to fill in the details when laws aren’t crystal clear. Opponents of the decision argued that it gave power that should be wielded by judges to experts who work for the government.

The court ruled in cases brought by Atlantic herring fishermen in New Jersey and Rhode Island who challenged a fee requirement. Lower courts used the Chevron decision to uphold a 2020 National Marine Fisheries Service rule that herring fishermen pay for government-mandated observers who track their fish intake.



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Conservative and business interests strongly backed the fishermen’s appeals, betting that a court that was remade during Republican Donald Trump’s presidency would strike another blow at the regulatory state.

The court’s conservative majority has previously reined in environmental regulations and stopped the Democratic Biden administration’s initiatives on COVID-19 vaccines and student loan forgiveness.

The justices hadn’t invoked Chevron since 2016, but lower courts had continued to do so.

Forty years ago, the Supreme Court ruled 6-0, with three justices recused, that judges should play a limited, deferential role when evaluating the actions of agency experts in a case brought by environmental groups to challenge a Reagan administration effort to ease regulation of power plants and factories.

“Judges are not experts in the field, and are not part of either political branch of government,” Justice John Paul Stevens wrote in 1984, explaining why they should play a limited role.

But the current high court, with a 6-3 conservative majority, has been increasingly skeptical of the powers of federal agencies. Justices Samuel Alito, Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh and Clarence Thomas all had questioned the Chevron decision.

Opponents of the Chevron doctrine argue that judges apply it too often to rubber-stamp decisions made by government bureaucrats. Judges must exercise their own authority and judgment to say what the law is, they argued to the Supreme Court.

Defending the rulings that upheld the fees, President Joe Biden’s administration said that overturning the Chevron decision would produce a “convulsive shock” to the legal system.

Environmental, health advocacy groups, civil rights organizations, organized labor and Democrats on the national and state level had urged the court to leave the Chevron decision in place.

Gun, e-cigarette, farm, timber and home-building groups were among the business groups supporting the fishermen. Conservative interests that also intervened in recent high court cases limiting regulation of air and water pollution backed the fishermen as well.

The fisherman sued to contest the 2020 regulation that would have authorized a fee that could have topped $700 a day, though no one ever had to pay it.

In separate lawsuits in New Jersey and Rhode Island, the fishermen argued that Congress never gave federal regulators authority to require the fisherman to pay for monitors. They lost in the lower courts, which relied on the Chevron decision to sustain the regulation.

The justices heard two cases on the same issue because Justice Kentanji Brown Jackson was recused from the New Jersey case. She took part in it at an earlier stage when she was an appeals court judge. The full court participated in the case from Rhode Island.
___

Democratic Mongolia, squeezed between authoritarian China and Russia, votes for new parliament

By Associated Press AP
Jun. 28, 2024

ULAANBAATAR, Mongolia (AP) — Voters in the relatively young democracy of Mongolia were electing a new parliament on Friday in their landlocked country squeezed between China and Russia, two much larger authoritarian states.

At stake were 126 seats in an expanded parliament, 50 more than in the previous election in 2020. That contest was won by the Mongolian People's Party in a landslide. The governing party still appears to hold the upper hand, but other parties may be able to capitalize on voter discontent to eat into its majority.

About two dozen voters lined up on a staircase heading down to a polling station in the outskirts of Ulaanbaatar early Friday morning, some muttering complaints because it opened 10 minutes late. Some of the older voters, including community leaders, dressed up in formal silk robes sinched with large leather belts for the occasion.

Inside, voters filled out their ballots behind a small screen and then put them into an electronic vote counting machine. Before they left, a purple dot was put on one of their forefingers with a marker to prevent them from trying to vote again.

Mongolia became a democracy in 1990, ending more than six decades of one-party communist rule. While people have welcomed the freedoms that came with the end of the communist system, many have grown cynical of the parliament and its members, seeing them as working mainly to enrich themselves and their business associates.

The Mongolian People's Party has recognized those problems but largely blamed them on other political parties.

The prime minister, Oyun-Erdene Luvsannamsrai, said Friday that democracy and trust in the parliament are weakened when personal interest is put ahead of the national interest. He called for a new page of cooperation between the government and citizens after the first three decades of democracy.

“Today, a completely new 30 years in the history of Mongolia begins,” he told a crush of reporters after casting his ballot. “Let’s all together see how this representative parliament will work and how political parties will perform.”

The polling station in the outskirts of Ulaanbaatar is in a “ger” district, where many people first lived in nomadic tents after moving to the capital. It remains a poorer area, now a cluster of mostly simple homes, some still with tents in their yards.

Many residents of the district, particularly the older generation, support the People's Party, which also ran the country during the communist era and then transformed itself into a center-left party in the democratic era.

Naranchimeg Lamjav, a 69-year-old People’s Party member and leader of the elderly community, was among a half-dozen voters in formal outfits who showed up at the polling station before its scheduled 7 a.m. opening time.

“I support the current government led by Prime Minister Oyun-Erdene, because they are establishing justice and starting the new era of 30 years,” she said, wearing an embroidered blue robe.

But some younger voters expressed disappointment with the People’s Party and said they chose younger candidates who they hoped would bring change.

Enkhmandakh Boldbaatar, 38, said he voted for neither the People’s Party nor the main opposition party, the Democratic Party, saying they also had not performed well. There are 19 parties vying for seats in the parliament.

“I’ve been living here for 38 years, yet the area is the same,” he said. “Only this road and some buildings were constructed. Things would have been different if they worked for the people.”

Corruption scandals have eroded confidence in the government and political parties. Besides the center-right Democratic Party, the HUN Party has emerged in this election as a potential third force.

In addition to corruption, major issues for voters included unemployment and inflation in an economy rocked first by the COVID-19 pandemic and then by the fallout from the war in Ukraine. The country's livestock herders were also hit by a “dzud” this year, a combination of severe weather and drought, that killed 7.1 million animals.

There were 2,198 polling stations spread out across the sparsely populated country, which is large geographically but has a population of only 3.4 million people. The voting stations are to close at 10 p.m. with preliminary results expected early Saturday morning.

Copyright 2024 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.

Moscow’s Rejection of New International Classification of Diseases Hurts Not Only Homosexuals but Russian Veterans and Others as Well, Aronov Says

Moscow’s Rejection of New International Classification of Diseases Hurts Not Only Homosexuals but Russian Veterans and Others as Well, Aronov Says

Paul Goble 

Friday, June 28, 2024

            Staunton, June 28 – Earlier this year, the Kremlin forced the Russian health ministry to reverse its decision to recognize the new International Classification of Diseases because that document asserts that homosexuality is not a disease, a position at odds with Putin’s ideas about traditional values.

            That decision sparked outrage among the gay community and its defenders both in Russia and abroad, with many concluding that this move seriously harmed the rights of homosexuals and further distanced Russia from the West (windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2024/02/moscow-further-distances-itself-from.html).

            But now, Russian journalist Nikita Aronov who specializes on health issues says that it is important to recognize that many other groups of Russians, including most immediately Russian veterans suffering from PTSD, will he hurt as well as a result of this Kremlin move against homosexuals (theins.ru/obshestvo/272478).

            As many as 20 percent of Russian soldiers returning from Ukraine suffer from PTSD, the Russian government has admitted (vedomosti.ru/politics/characters/2024/06/18/1044406-vazhno-chtobi-veterani-voennoi-operatsii-videli-perspektivi-v-mirnoi-zhizni); and their fate depends in large measure on which classification of that illness the authorities will use.

            Under the old ICD, Aronov points out, those suffering from PTSD are “at risk of being misdiagnosed as ‘schizophrenics’ instead of receiving proper treatment,” while under the new ICD that Moscow has rejected, they would be far more likely to be accurately classified and given the treatment they need.

            The same thing is true for those suffering from a variety of other diseases, including ADHD which is not listed in the former ICD manual, he continues; but it is striking that by refusing to recognize the new ICD as authoritative, Moscow has almost certainly guaranteed that none of these people, including those Putin calls “heroes,” will get the help they need.