Pope warns of potential ‘nuclear disaster’ at Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia plant
VATICAN CITY — Pope Francis on Wednesday called for “concrete steps” to end the war in Ukraine and avert the risk of a “nuclear disaster” at the Zaporizhzhia plant.
Speaking at his weekly general audience, Francis went off script to condemn wars as “madness” and, referring to Darya Dugina, said the woman killed by a car bomb near Moscow was among “innocents” killed because of war.
He also said arms merchants who profit from war are “delinquents who kill humanity.” — Reuters
Taliban impose ‘harsh’ limits on Afghans’ religious freedom
WASHINGTON — Conditions for religious freedom in Afghanistan have “drastically deteriorated” since the Taliban seized power last year as the last US-led foreign troops pulled out after 20 years of war, a bipartisan US commission said on Tuesday.
The Sunni Muslim extremists’ “harsh enforcement” of their hard-line version of Islam “violates the freedom of religion or belief” of a wide range of Afghans, said the US Commission on International Religious Freedom.
The congressionally created panel issued its report nine days after the Taliban marked a year since they overran Kabul, returning to power almost two decades after their ouster by the 2001 US-led invasion.
The report noted that the Taliban pledged to protect all ethnic and religious groups.
Yet, it said, “Religious freedom conditions in Afghanistan have drastically deteriorated,” with the militants reintroducing “harsh restrictions on all Afghans” based on their hard-line interpretation of Islam.
Those negatively affected include religious minorities, Afghans “with differing interpretations of Islam,” women, the LGBTQ community and those who follow no faith, the report said.
The Taliban, the report said, are responsible for the deaths of dozens of Hazaras, an ethnic minority that follows Shiite Islam, and failed to protect them from attacks by the regional branch of Islamic State, a Taliban rival.
They re-established a ministry that includes morality police who have targeted women by enforcing a strict code of dress and behavior, including covering their faces, and limited their movement, education, participation in sports and right to work, it said.
The Taliban and Islamic State have both targeted sufis, practitioners of mystical Islam, it said.
“The Taliban’s seizure of Afghanistan has led to a rapid decline and near extinction of the already small Afghan Hindu and Sikh communities” and the militants deny “the existence of a Christian community,” which must worship in hiding, the report added. — Reuters
Nicaraguan government takes over opposition newspaper headquarters
The Nicaraguan government took over the facilities of a long-standing newspaper critical of President Daniel Ortega to turn the space into a “cultural center,” the newspaper said on Tuesday.
The paper “La Prensa,” one of the oldest in the Western hemisphere, was occupied by Nicaraguan police forces last year and several of its executives detained. Since then, a team of reporters in exile have kept the site online from abroad.
“For several days, (the regime) has been carrying out construction and moving some of (La Prensa’s) machinery and equipment,” the paper said on its website.
“With these actions, the Ortega-Murillo regime completes the de facto confiscation of the assets of the industrial plant of Editorial La Prensa,” it said.
Nicaraguan Vice President Rosario Murillo announced that the space would be used to create a cultural and polytechnic center named after one of the country’s most important poets, Jose Coronel Urtecho.
The center will offer hundreds of courses and workshops, Murillo said through a state-run media outlet.
The manager of La Prensa, Juan Lorenzo Hollman, was accused of money laundering last year in a trial considered politically motivated by human rights organizations.
The Ortega administration has also confiscated the spaces of digital newspaper “Confidencial” and the television channel “100% Noticias.”
La Prensa’s journalists went into exile and report for the online edition from Costa Rica, the United States and Mexico.
According to the organization Independent Journalists and Communicators of Nicaragua (PCIN), 120 journalists have gone into exile since the political crisis began in the Central American country in 2018.
In Nicaragua, no newspaper is currently in print, and the few media outlets that still operate online do so clandestinely, PCIN has said. — Reuters
Turkey says Palestinians welcome normalization of ties with Israel
ANKARA — Turkey said on Tuesday that Palestinian authorities, including different political factions, welcome the normalization of ties between Turkey and Israel and that they want the dialogue to continue.
Last week, Turkey and Israel said they would re-appoint ambassadors, four years after they were expelled over the killing of 60 Palestinians by Israeli forces during protests.
Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan said rapprochement in Ankara’s relations with Israel would not diminish Turkey’s support for the Palestinian cause.
“On the contrary, our Palestinian brothers also express that these steps will contribute to the solution of the Palestinian issue and the improvement of the situation of the Palestinian people,” Erdogan said following a bilateral meeting with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas in Ankara.
Abbas thanked Turkey for its support for Palestinians.
Separately, in a televised interview with broadcaster Haber Global on Tuesday, Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said an ambassador candidate for Israel will be presented to President Tayyip Erdogan in the “coming days.”
Gentle dugongs functionally extinct in Chinese waters, says study
HONG KONG — The dugong, a gentle marine mammal that has frequented China’s southern waters for hundreds of years, has become functionally extinct in the country, a new study said on Wednesday.
Research by the Zoological Society of London (ZSL) and the Chinese Academy of Sciences said fishing, ship strikes and human-caused habitat loss have seen the number of dugongs in Chinese waters decrease rapidly from the 1970s onwards.
With no evidence of their presence in China since 2008, the research shows that “this is the first functional extinction of a large mammal in China’s coastal waters,” the report said.
The dugong, whose diet is highly dependent on sea grass, has been classified as a Grade 1 National Key Protected Animal since 1988 by China’s Sate Council.
Their marine habitats have been rapidly degraded by humans and although restoration and recovery efforts are a key priority in China, “restoration takes time that dugongs may no longer have,” the report said.
Found in coastal waters from East Africa to Vanuatu, and as far north as Japan, they are listed as vulnerable by the International Union for Conservation of Nature.
Professor Samuel Turvey of ZSL’s Institute of Zoology, a co-author of the study, said the likely disappearance of dugongs in China was a devastating loss.
“Their absence will not only have a knock-on effect on ecosystem function, but also serves as a wake-up call – a sobering reminder that extinctions can occur before effective conservation actions are developed.”
The study was done by a team of international scientists who conducted interviews in 66 fishing communities across four Chinese provinces along the coastal region of the South China Sea.
The authors said they would welcome any evidence that dugongs might still exist in China. They recommended that the species regional status be reassessed as Critically Endangered (Possibly Extinct).