Tag: World News

STILFONTEIN, (TIP): The death toll in a monthslong standoff between police and miners trapped while working illegally in an abandoned gold mine in South Africa has risen to at least 87, police said Thursday as they wound down a rescue operation that has pulled more than 240 survivors out from deep underground.
National police spokesperson Athlenda Mathe said that 78 bodies were retrieved from the mine in an official rescue operation that began Monday, while another nine had been recovered previously. She did not give details on how those other bodies were retrieved.
Community groups have said they launched their own rescue attempts when authorities said last year they would not help the hundreds of miners because they were “criminals.” The miners are suspected to have died of starvation and dehydration, although no causes of death have been released. South African authorities have been criticized for their approach, having cut off food and supplies to the miners for a period of time last year in an attempt, as one Cabinet minister said, to “smoke them out” of the Buffelsfontein Gold Mine. That tactic has been called “horrific” by one of South Africa’s biggest trade unions.
Police and the mine owners are also accused by community members and civic groups of taking away ropes and dismantling a pulley system the miners used to enter the mine through one shaft and send supplies down from the surface.
A court ordered authorities last year to allow food and water to be sent down to the miners, while another court ruling last week forced the government to launch a rescue operation.
Many say the unfolding disaster underground was clear weeks ago, when community members sporadically pulled decomposing bodies out of the mine, some with notes attached pleading for food to be sent down.
“If the police had acted earlier, we would not be in this situation, with bodies piling up,” said Johannes Qankase, a local community leader. “It is a disgrace for a constitutional democracy like ours. Somebody needs to account for what has happened here.”
He said he was saddened “seeing so many pathology vans coming to get bodies of dead people.”
South Africa’s second biggest political party, which is part of a government coalition, called for President Cyril Ramaphosa to establish an independent inquiry to find out “why the situation was allowed to get so badly out of hand.”
“The scale of the disaster underground at Buffelsfontein is rapidly proving to be as bad as feared,” the Democratic Alliance party said. (AP)
South Korea plane crash investigators find feathers in engines
SEOUL (TIP): Investigators probing the Jeju Air crash that killed 179 people last month have found feathers in both engines, according to South Korean media reports, with a bird strike being examined as one possible cause.
The Boeing 737-800 was flying from Thailand to Muan, South Korea, on December 29 carrying 181 passengers and crew when it belly-landed at Muan airport and exploded in a fireball after slamming into a concrete barrier. It was the worst aviation disaster on South Korean soil. “Feathers were found in both engines,” the government-linked National Institute of Biological Resources told South Korean broadcaster MBN, without specifying who gave them the information. “We have completed the analysis of a total of 17 samples, including feathers and blood,” it said. The Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport declined to confirm the report when asked by AFP.

Seoul (TIP): Impeached South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol arrived at court for the first time Saturday to attend a hearing that will decide whether to extend his detention as investigators probe his failed martial law bid.
Yoon, who has claimed his arrest is illegal, threw the nation into chaos on December 3 when he attempted to suspend civilian rule, citing the need to combat threats from “anti-state elements”.
Yoon’s die-hard supporters gathered outside the court building Saturday, even trying to surround the blue van carrying the suspended leader, AFP reporters saw.
Yoon’s martial law bid lasted just six hours, with lawmakers voting it down despite the president ordering soldiers to storm parliament to stop them.
Yoon was subsequently impeached by parliament and resisted arrest for weeks, holed up in his guarded residence until he was finally detained Wednesday in a dawn raid.
South Korea’s first sitting president to be detained, Yoon has refused to cooperate during the initial 48 hours detectives were allowed to hold him.
But the disgraced president remains in custody after investigators requested a new warrant Friday to extend his detention.
A judge at Seoul Western District Court was set to review the request at a 2:00 pm (0500 GMT) hearing, with her decision expected Saturday night or early Sunday.
Before the hearing, Yoon’s lawyer Yoon Kab-keun told AFP the president would attend “with the intention of restoring his honour”.
If approved, the new warrant would likely extend Yoon’s detention by 20 days, giving prosecutors time to formalise an indictment.
The Corruption Investigation Office (CIO) is probing Yoon for insurrection, a charge that could see him jailed for life or executed if found guilty.
– Detention silence –
Yoon said Wednesday he had agreed to leave his compound to avoid “bloodshed”, but that he did not accept the legality of the investigation.
His supporters have gathered in front of the court since Friday, holding South Korean and American flags and demanding judges dismiss the request to extend the president’s detention.
The court closed its entrance to the public Friday evening, citing safety concerns.
Yoon has refused to answer investigators’ questions, with his legal team saying the president explained his position when detained on Wednesday.
The president has also been absent from a parallel probe at the Constitutional Court, which is mulling whether to uphold his impeachment.
If the court rules against Yoon, he will lose the presidency and elections will be called within 60 days.
He did not attend the first two hearings this week, but the trial, which could last months, will continue in his absence.
Although Yoon won the presidential election in 2022, the opposition Democratic Party has a majority in parliament after winning legislative polls last year.
The Democratic Party has celebrated the president’s arrest, with a top official calling it “the first step” to restoring constitutional and legal order.
As challenges against the embattled leader mount, parliament passed a bill late Friday to launch a special counsel probe into Yoon over his failed martial law bid. (AFP)

Deir al-Balah (TIP): A 20-day-old infant froze to death in Gaza on December 29 amid Israel’s continuous blockade of humanitarian aid including food, medicines and winter essentials. Jomaa al-Batran was the fifth infant to die of hypothermia in Gaza’s tents where hundreds of Palestinians, displaced multiple times due to Israel’s 15-month-long genocidal war have sought shelter amid rains and extreme cold.
According to his father Yehia, Jomaa al-Batranwas was found with his head as “cold as ice” when his parents woke up on Sunday. The baby’s twin brother, Ali, was moved to the intensive care unit of Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital.
Their father said the twins were born one month premature and spent just a day in the nursery at the hospital, which like other health centers in Gaza has been overwhelmed and is only partially functioning.
He said medics told their mother to keep the newborns warm, but it was impossible because they live in a tent and temperatures regularly drop below 10 degrees Celsius (50 degrees Fahrenheit) at night.
“We are eight people, and we only have four blankets,” al-Batran said as he cradled his son’s pale body. He described drops of dew seeping through the tent cover overnight. “Look at his color because (of) the cold. Do you see how frozen he is?”
Children, some of them barefoot, stood outdoors and watched him mourn. The shrouded infant was laid at the feet of an imam, barely larger than his shoes. After prayers, the imam took off his ankle-length coat and wrapped it around the father.
“Feel warm, my brother,” he said. At least four other babies have died from the cold in recent weeks, according to local health officials. Three of the five Palestinian babies who froze to death in less than a week lived in the “humanitarian zone” in al-Mawasi. According to Israel’s weather service, temperatures in Gaza in recent days were as low as eight degrees Celsius (46 Fahrenheit) at night.
Hundreds of thousands of Palestinians, displaced multiple times amid relentless attacks by the Israeli army, crammed into often ramshackle tents as the cold, wet winter sets in. Aid groups have struggled to deliver food and supplies and say there are shortages of blankets, warm clothing and firewood.
According to multiple reports, Israel has been deliberately preventing food, water, medicine and other essentials from entering into Gaza. It has also repeatedly attacked aid convoys and civilians gathered to collect whatever aid that manages to pass through the borders.
The U.N. has declared a famine in parts of Gaza. An independent panel of aid experts found that nearly half of the Palestinians in the enclave are struggling with hunger. Many go days without eating. Palestinian authorities say dozens of children have starved to death. (Agencies)

BERLIN (TIP): German security and intelligence chiefs are due on December 30 to face questioning about the car-ramming attack that killed five people and wounded more than 200 at a Christmas market 10 days ago.
They will be quizzed about possible missed clues and security failures before the December 20 attack in the eastern city of Magdeburg, where police arrested the 50-year-old Saudi psychiatrist Taleb al-Abdulmohsen at the scene.
Interior Minister Nancy Faeser, Saxony-Anhalt state officials, and the heads of Germany’s domestic and foreign intelligence services are expected to face a closed-door committee hearing in parliament from 1200 GMT.
Abdulmohsen is the only suspect in the attack in which a rented BMW sport utility vehicle ploughed through the crowd of revellers at high speed, leaving a trail of bloody carnage.
Investigators have yet to declare a suspected motive in the assault that used a motor vehicle as a weapon, which recalled past jihadist attacks, including in Berlin and in the French city of Nice in 2016.
Abdulmohsen, by contrast, has voiced strongly anti-Islam views, sympathies with the far right, and anger at Germany for allowing in too many Muslim war refugees and other asylum-seekers.
According to unconfirmed media reports citing unnamed German security sources, he has in the past been treated for mental illness and tested positive for drug use on the night of his arrest.
The Saudi suspect has been remanded in custody in a top-security facility on five counts of murder and 205 counts of attempted murder, prosecutors said, but not so far on terrorism-related charges.
Chancellor Olaf Scholz, who faces elections in February, has declared that Germany needs to “investigate whether this terrible act could have been prevented”.
“No stone must be left unturned,” he told news portal t-online on Friday, echoing similar comments by Faeser.
Scholz said that “over the years, there have been repeated clues” about the suspect, adding that “we must examine very carefully whether there were any failings on the part of the authorities in Saxony-Anhalt or at the national level”.
German media digging through Abdulmohsen’s past and his countless social media postings have found expressions of anger and frustration, and threats of violence against German citizens and politicians.
Saudi Arabia said it had repeatedly warned Germany about Abdulmohsen, who came to Germany in 2006 and was granted refugee status 10 years later.
A source close to the Saudi government told AFP that the kingdom had in the past sought his extradition.
Germany has not officially commented on this claim, but would usually deny requests to send people granted asylum back to the country they fled. (AFP)

Kazakhstan (TIP): Azerbaijan’s President Ilham Aliyev said December 29 that the Azerbaijani airliner that crashed last week was shot down by Russia, albeit unintentionally, and criticized Moscow for trying to “hush up” the issue for days. “We can say with complete clarity that the plane was shot down by Russia. (…) We are not saying that it was done intentionally, but it was done,” he told Azerbaijani state television.
Aliyev said that the airliner, which crashed Wednesday in Kazakhstan, was hit by fire from the ground over Russia and “rendered uncontrollable by electronic warfare.” Aliyev accused Russia of trying to “hush up” the issue for several days, saying he was “upset and surprised” by versions of events put forward by Russian officials.
“Unfortunately, for the first three days we heard nothing from Russia except delirious versions,” he said.
The crash killed 38 of 67 people on board. The Kremlin said that air defense systems were firing near Grozny, the regional capital of the Russian republic of Chechnya, where the plane attempted to land, to deflect a Ukrainian drone strike.
Aliyev said Azerbaijan made three demands to Russia in connection with the crash.
“First, the Russian side must apologize to Azerbaijan. Second, it must admit its guilt. Third, punish the guilty, bring them to criminal responsibility and pay compensation to the Azerbaijani state, the injured passengers and crew members,” he said.
Aliyev noted that the first demand was “already fulfilled” when Russian President Vladimir Putin apologized to him on Saturday. Putin called the crash a “tragic incident” though stopped short of acknowledging Moscow’s responsibility.
He said that an investigation into the crash was ongoing, and that “the final version (of events) will be known after the black boxes are opened.”
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told Russian state media on Sunday that Putin had spoken to Aliyev over the phone again, but did not provide details of the conversation.
The Kremlin also said a joint investigation by Russia, Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan was underway at the crash site near the city of Aktau in Kazakhstan. The plane was flying from Azerbaijan’s capital, Baku, to Grozny when it turned toward Kazakhstan, hundreds of kilometers (miles) across the Caspian Sea from its intended destination, and crashed while making an attempt to land.
Passengers and crew who survived the crash told Azerbaijani media that they heard loud noises on the aircraft as it was circling over Grozny.
Dmitry Yadrov, head of Russia’s civil aviation authority Rosaviatsia, said Friday that as the plane was preparing to land in Grozny in deep fog, Ukrainian drones were targeting the city, prompting authorities to close the area to air traffic. (AP)

MUAN (TIP): Flags flew at half-mast on December 30 as South Korea mourned 179 people killed in the worst plane crash on its soil, as investigators probe why the Jeju Air plane crash-landed and burst into flames.
The country has started seven days of national mourning, with the acting president flying to the crash site in southwestern Muan for a memorial as teams of US and South Korean investigators raced to establish what caused Sunday’s disaster.
The Boeing 737-800 was carrying 181 people from Thailand to South Korea when it made a mayday call and belly-landing before crashing into a barrier and bursting into flames.
Everyone on board Jeju Air Flight 2216 was killed, save two flight attendants pulled from the wreckage.
Officials initially cited a bird strike as a likely cause of the crash, which flung passengers from the plane and left it “almost completely destroyed”, according to fire officials.
However, Seoul said on Monday it would conduct a special inspection of all 101 Boeing 737-800s in operation in the country, with US investigators, possibly including from the beleaguered plane manufacturer Boeing, joining the probe into the crash.
“We are reviewing plans to conduct a special inspection on B737-800 aircraft,” said Joo Jong-wan, head of the aviation policy bureau at South Korea’s transport ministry.
South Korea has a solid air safety record and both black boxes from Flight 2216 — the flight data recorder and the cockpit voice recorder — have been found.
South Korean investigators said Monday that 141 of the 179 victims had now been identified using DNA analysis or fingerprint collection, according to a statement from South Korea’s ministry of land.
Victims’ families camped out at the airport overnight in special tents set up in the airport lounge after a long, painful day waiting for news of their loved ones.
“I had a son on board that plane,” said an elderly man waiting in the airport lounge, who asked not to be named, saying that his son’s body had not yet been identified.
At the crash site early Monday, a middle-aged man and woman kept their gaze fixed through the fence, where remnants of the plane — seats, gates, and twisted metal parts — were still scattered across the field near the charred tail.
The smell of blood was still in the air.
Soldiers carefully combed through a field of reeds next to the runway, engaged in what appeared to be a search for body parts.
South Korea’s acting president, Choi Sang-mok, who has only been in office since Friday, said the government was making “every effort” to identify victims and support bereaved families. (AFP)

AVIGNON, France (TIP): A court in France on December 19 sentenced the ex-husband of Gisèle Pelicot to a maximum 20 years of imprisonment for drugging and raping her and allowing other men to rape her while she was knocked out, in abuse that lasted nearly a decade.
The sentence against Dominique Pelicot was declared after he was found guilty of all charges against him. At age 72, it could mean that he spends the rest of his life in prison.
The verdict was read by the lead judge of the court in Avignon, Roger Arata.
Arata read out verdicts one after the other against Pelicot and 50 other men, declaring “you are therefore declared guilty of aggravated rape on the person of Mme. Gisèle Pelicot” as he worked his way through the first names on the list.
Gisèle Pelicot was seated on one side of the courtroom, facing the defendants as Arata announced one guilty verdict after another.
The historic case has profoundly shaken France over the past several months.
Dominique Pelicot admitted that for years he knocked his then wife of 50 years out with drugs so that he and strangers he recruited online could abuse her while he filmed the assaults.
The appalling ordeal inflicted over nearly a decade on Gisèle Pelicot, now a 72-year-old grandmother, in what she thought was a loving marriage and her courage during the bruising and stunning trial have transformed the retired power company worker into a feminist hero of the nation. Stretching over more than three months, the trial galvanized campaigners against sexual violence and spurred calls for tougher measures to stamp out rape culture.
Dominique Pelicot and 49 other men were tried in the southern French city of Avignon for aggravated rape and attempted rape and face up to 20 years imprisonment if convicted.
Prosecutors asked that he get the maximum penalty and for sentences of 10 to 18 years for the others. They also requested a four-year prison term for another defendant who was tried for aggravated sexual assault. Of the 50 men accused of rape, just one was acquitted but was found guilty of aggravated sexual assault. The defendants were all accused of having taken part in Dominique Pelicot’s sordid rape and abuse fantasies that were acted out in the couple’s retirement home in the small Provence town of Mazan and elsewhere. Dominique Pelicot testified that he hid tranquilizers in food and drink that he gave his then wife, knocking her out so profoundly that he could do what he wanted to her for hours.
One of the men was on trial not for assaulting Gisèle Pelicot but for drugging and raping his own wife — with the help and drugs from Dominique Pelicot, who was also tried for raping the other man’s wife. (AP)

Rafah (TIP): A new report by Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) on December 19 noted that “repeated Israeli military attacks on Palestinian civilians over the last 14 months, the dismantling of the health care system and other essential infrastructure, the suffocating siege, and the systematic denial of humanitarian assistance are destroying the conditions of life in Gaza, Palestine.” “People in Gaza are struggling to survive apocalyptic conditions, but nowhere is safe, no one is spared, and there is no exit from this shattered enclave,” said Christopher Lockyear, MSF secretary general, who visited Gaza earlier this year.
The MSF reiterated its call for an immediate and sustained ceasefire.
The report, “Gaza: Life in a death trap,”urgently called on all parties, once again, for an immediate ceasefire to save lives and enable the flow of humanitarian aid. Israel must stop its targeted and indiscriminate attacks against civilians, and its allies must act without delay to protect the lives of Palestinians and uphold the rules of war.
“The total destruction of Palestinian life in Gaza must stop,” MSF said.
It also called for immediate and safe access to northern Gaza, to allow the delivery of humanitarian aid and medical supplies to hospitals.
“While MSF continues to provide lifesaving care in central and southern Gaza, we call on Israel to end its siege on the territory and open vital land borders, including the Rafah crossing, to enable a massive scale-up of humanitarian and medical aid,” the report noted.
The Human Rights Watch in a 179-page report on Thursday revealed that Israeli authorities have intentionally deprived Palestinians in Gaza of access to safe water for drinking and sanitation needed for basic human survival.
“Water is essential for human life, yet for over a year the Israeli government has deliberately denied Palestinians in Gaza the bare minimum they need to survive,” said Tirana Hassan, executive director at Human Rights Watch (HRW) as the organisation described this as “nothing short of crime against humanity of extermination, and an act of genocide, ” HRW noted. (AP)