Source: People’s Republic of China in Russian – People’s Republic of China in Russian –
Source: People’s Republic of China – State Council News
BEIJING, May 10 (Xinhua) — Chinese President Xi Jinping’s visit to Russia has further strengthened the China-Russia comprehensive strategic partnership of coordination in the new era, set a benchmark for the world’s joint efforts to safeguard the post-war international order, and promoted the transition to a multipolar world and the reconstruction of the international political architecture, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi said on Saturday.
At the invitation of Russian President Vladimir Putin, Chinese President Xi Jinping paid a state visit to Russia from May 7 to 10 and took part in celebrations marking the 80th anniversary of the Soviet Union’s victory in the Great Patriotic War.
As Wang Yi, who is also a member of the Politburo of the CPC Central Committee, noted during a briefing for journalists, Xi Jinping’s visit is of great historical significance.
The head of the Chinese Foreign Ministry pointed out that during the visit, Xi Jinping and V. Putin spent almost 10 hours in-depth communication on issues of mutual interest. The most important political outcome of the visit was the signing by the heads of the two states of a joint statement on further deepening Chinese-Russian relations of comprehensive partnership and strategic interaction in the new era, Wang Yi stated.
The parties agreed to continue to expand cooperation and strengthen the foundation of trade, economic and energy cooperation, Wang Yi continued, adding that the parties signed an updated version of the investment protection agreement, thereby giving a powerful response to the regressive trend of protectionism.
Speaking about the crisis in Ukraine, Xi Jinping noted that China welcomes all efforts to promote peace and considers it necessary to take into account the legitimate security interests of all countries and eliminate the root causes of the crisis.
Xi Jinping’s presence at the Victory Day celebration on May 9 once again demonstrated China’s desire to work with other countries to promote a correct view of the history of World War II and jointly uphold the post-war international order, the head of the Chinese Foreign Ministry noted.
Xi Jinping said that in the face of a volatile and turbulent international situation, China and Russia should firmly uphold the international system with the UN at its core and the international order based on international law.
Wang Yi noted that the return of Taiwan to China is the result of the victory in World War II and an important integral part of the post-war international order.
No matter how the situation on Taiwan develops and no matter what problems external forces create, the historical trend of China’s inevitable and inevitable reunification is unstoppable, Xi Jinping pointed out.
During his visit, the Chinese leader also held extensive contacts with politicians from various countries who attended the celebrations, as well as bilateral meetings with a number of national leaders from three continents, reaching broad consensus on firm mutual support, upholding multilateralism and opposing power politics and bullying.
During his meeting with Myanmar leader Min Aung Hlaing, Xi Jinping stressed that China supports Myanmar in following a development path suited to its national conditions, safeguarding its sovereignty, independence, territorial integrity and national stability, and confidently advancing its domestic political agenda.
During separate meetings with Cuban President Miguel Diaz-Canel and Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, Xi Jinping noted that Latin American and Caribbean states are sovereign and independent nations, not someone’s “backyard.”
M. Diaz-Canel and N. Maduro praised Xi Jinping’s vision of building a community with a shared future for humanity, as well as the Global Development Initiative, the Global Security Initiative and the Global Civilization Initiative. They expressed their readiness to work with China to counter unilateralism and protectionism.
During meetings with Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic and Slovakian Prime Minister Robert Fico, Xi Jinping stressed that China and the EU should firmly adhere to multilateralism, jointly oppose unilateral bullying, safeguard the achievements of economic globalization, and uphold the global free trade system and the international economic and trade order. –0–
India and Pakistan have seen the scenario play out before: a terror attack in which Indians are killed leads to a succession of escalatory tit-fot-tat measures that put South Asia on the brink of all-out war. And then there is a de-escalation.
The broad contours of that pattern have played out in the most recent crisis, with the latest step being the announcement of a ceasefire on May 10, 2025.
But in another important way, the flare-up – which began on April 22 with a deadly attack in Indian-controlled Kashmir, in which 26 people were killed – represents significant departures from the past. It involved direct missile exchanges targeting sites inside both territories and the use of advanced missile systems and drones by the two nuclear rivals for the first time.
These changes have coincided with domestic political shifts in both countries. The pro-Hindu nationalism of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government has heightened communal tensions in the country. Meanwhile Pakistan’s powerful army chief, Gen. Syed Asim Munir, has embraced the “two-nation theory,” which holds that Pakistan is a homeland for the subcontinent’s Muslims and India for Hindus.
This religious framing was even seen in the naming of the two countries’ military operations. For India, it is “Operation Sindoor” – a reference to the red vermilion used by married Hindu women, and a provocative nod to the widows of the Kashmir attack. Pakistan called its counter-operation “Bunyan-un-Marsoos” – an Arabic phrase from the Quran meaning “a solid structure.”
The role of Washington
The India-Pakistan rivalry has cost tens of thousands of lives across multiple wars in 1947-48, 1965 and 1971. But since the late 1990s, whenever India and Pakistan approached the brink of war, a familiar de-escalation playbook unfolded: intense diplomacy, often led by the United States, would help defuse tensions.
In 1999, President Bill Clinton’s direct mediation ended the Kargil conflict – a limited war triggered by Pakistani forces crossing the Line of Control into Indian-administered Kashmir – by pressing Pakistan for a withdrawal.
Similarly, after the 2001 attack inside the Indian Parliament by terrorists allegedly linked to Pakistan-based groups Lashkar-e-Taiba and Jaish-e-Mohammed, U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage engaged in intense shuttle diplomacy between Islamabad and New Delhi, averting war.
And after the 2008 Mumbai attacks, which saw 166 people killed by terrorists linked to Lashkar-e-Taiba, rapid and high-level American diplomatic involvement helped restrain India’s response and reduced the risk of an escalating conflict.
As recently as 2019, during the Balakot crisis – which followed a suicide bombing in Pulwama, Kashmir, that killed 40 Indian security personnel – it was American diplomatic pressure that helped contain hostilities. Former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo later wrote in his memoirs, “I do not think the world properly knows just how close the India-Pakistan rivalry came to spilling over into a nuclear conflagration in February 2019.”
A diplomatic void?
Washington as peacemaker made sense: It had influence and a vested interest.
During the Cold War, the U.S. formed a close alliance with Pakistan to counter India’s links with the Soviet Union. And after the 9/11 terror attacks, the U.S. poured tens of billions of dollars in military assistance into Pakistan as a frontline partner in the “war on terror.”
Simultaneously, beginning in the early 2000s, the U.S. began cultivating India as a strategic partner.
A stable Pakistan was a crucial partner in the U.S. war in Afghanistan; a friendly India was a strategic counterbalance to China. And this gave the U.S. both the motivation and credibility to act as an effective mediator during moments of India-Pakistan crisis.
Today, however, America’s diplomatic attention has shifted significantly away from South Asia. The process began with the end of the Cold War, but accelerated dramatically after the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021. More recently, the wars in Ukraine and the Middle East have consumed Washington’s diplomatic efforts.
Since President Donald Trump took office in January 2025, the U.S. has not appointed an ambassador in New Delhi or Islamabad, nor confirmed an assistant secretary of state for South and Central Asian Affairs – factors that must have hampered any mediating role for the United States.
And while Trump said the May 10 ceasefire followed a “long night of talks mediated by the United States,” statements from India and Pakistan appeared to downplay U.S. involvement, focusing instead on the direct bilateral nature of negotiations.
Should it transpire that Washington’s role as a mediator between Pakistan and India has been diminished, it is not immediately obvious who, if anyone, will fill the void. China, which has been trying to cultivate a role of mediator elsewhere, is not seen as a neutral mediator due to its close alliance with Pakistan and past border conflicts with India. Other regional powers like Iran and Saudi Arabia tried to step in during the latest crisis, but both lack the power clout of the U.S. or China.
This absence of external mediation is not, of course, a problem in itself. Historically, foreign interference – particularly U.S. support for Pakistan during the Cold War – often complicated dynamics in South Asia by creating military imbalances and reinforcing hardline positions. But the past has shown external pressure – especially from Washington – can be effective.
Breaking the norms
The recent escalation unfolded against the backdrop of another dynamic: the erosion of international norms since the end of the Cold War and accelerating after 2001.
More recently, Israel’s operations in Gaza, Lebanon and Syria have drawn widespread criticism for violations of international humanitarian law – but have resulted in limited consequences.
In short, geopolitical norms have been ebbed away and military actions that were once deemed red lines are crossed with little accountability.
For India and Pakistan, this environment creates both opportunity and risk. Both can point to behaviors elsewhere to justify assertive actions that they have undertaken that, in previous years, would have been deemed a step too far – such as attacks on places of worship and sovereignty violations.
Multi-domain warfare
But what truly distinguished the latest crisis from those of the past is, I believe, its multi-domain nature. The conflict is no longer confined to conventional military exchanges along the line of control – as it was for the first five decades of the Kashmir question.
Both countries largely respected the line of control as a de facto boundary for military operations until the 2019 crisis. Since then, there has been a dangerous progression: first to cross-border airstrikes into each other’s territories, and now to a conflict that spans conventional military, cyber and information spheres simultaneously.
Reports indicate Chinese-made Pakistani J-10 fighter jets shot down multiple Indian aircraft, including advanced French Rafale jets. This confrontation between Chinese and Western weapons represents not just a bilateral conflict but a proxy test of rival global military technologies – adding another layer of great-power competition to the crisis.
In addition, the use of loitering drones designed to attack radar systems represents a significant escalation in the technological sophistication of cross-border attacks compared to years past.
The conflict has also expanded dramatically into the cyber domain. Pakistani hackers, claiming to be the “Pakistan Cyber Force,” report breaching several Indian defense institutions, potentially compromising personnel data and login credentials.
Simultaneously, social media and a new right-wing media in India have become a critical battlefront. Ultranationalist voices in India incited violence against Muslims and Kashmiris; in Pakistan, anti-India rhetoric similarly intensified online.
Cooler voices prevailing … for now
These shifts have created multiple escalation pathways that traditional crisis management approaches weren’t designed to address.
Particularly concerning is the nuclear dimension. Pakistan’s nuclear doctrine is that it will use nuclear weapons if its existence is threatened, and it has developed short-range tactical nuclear weapons intended to counter Indian conventional advantages. Meanwhile, India has informally dialed back its historic no-first-use stance, creating ambiguity about its operational doctrine.
Thankfully, as the ceasefire announcement indicates, mediating voices appear to have prevailed this time around. But eroding norms, diminished great power diplomacy and the advent of multi-domain warfare, I argue, made this latest flare-up a dangerous turning point.
What happens next will tell us much about how nuclear rivals manage, or fail to manage, the spiral of conflict in this dangerous new landscape.
Farah N. Jan does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
Source: Africa Press Organisation – English (2) – Report:
ABIDJAN, Ivory Coast, May 10, 2025/APO Group/ —
The kilns are firing again—and with them, the economic hopes of a community. In the quiet town of Lobatse, southern Botswana, a decades-old industrial landmark is undergoing a remarkable renaissance. Lobatse Clay Works (LCW), a brick manufacturer that was once the cornerstone of Botswana’s construction industry, has been resurrected owing to a strategic investment from the African Development Bank Group (www.AfDB.org). The financing has transformed not only the company but an entire community.
“The buildings that shaped modern Botswana will rise again from our clay,” declares Anthony Moepeng, Acting Chief Executive Officer of Lobatse Clay Works.
Founded in 1992 as a joint venture between Botswana Development Corporation (BDC) and American firm Inter-Kiln, Lobatse Clay Works quickly established itself as the nation’s premier maker of bricks. For decades, its distinctive reddish-brown bricks were synonymous with Botswana’s construction boom, during which schools, hospitals, and government buildings all showcased the company’s craftsmanship.
But in 2017 the company faced a perfect storm of challenges. Aging equipment, production inefficiencies, and rising fuel costs forced the shuttering of the once-thriving operation, leaving the factory idled — stripping the community of both jobs and identity.
African Development Bank’s Catalytic Investment Powers Revival
Recognizing Lobatse Clay Works’ potential, the African Development Bank provided a loan facility, in partnership with the Botswana Development Corporation to turn around the company’s fortunes, focusing on technological modernization and operational efficiency.
The Bank’s investment enabled Lobatse Clay Works to acquire state-of-the-art manufacturing equipment that dramatically improved energy efficiency. A new hybrid fuel system slashed production costs, while enhanced kiln technology boosted output capacity and product quality.
In 2023, the company, facing supply chain challenges and rising costs, secured an additional 48 million Pula (around $3.5 million) from the African Development Bank — bringing the total financing to 138 million Pula— to keep growth on track.
This substantial investment enabled the plant to reopen in 2024.
Beyond Bricks: Building Communities and Futures
The revitalized facility has already created 148 direct jobs with hundreds more expected in supporting industries from transportation to services.
The plant’s output of three million bricks per month is high enough to meet domestic construction demand and serve lucrative export markets in South Africa, Zimbabwe and Namibia, generating valuable foreign exchange for Botswana’s economy.
African Development Bank’s Deputy Director General for Southern Africa, Moono Mupotola, stressed the broader significance of the investment. “This speaks directly to what we do at the African Development Bank. Lobatse is a small town, but almost one hundred percent of the factory workers are from the town. This project delivers on our High 5 development priority of improving the quality of life for Africans.”
Most significantly, Lobatse Clay Works’s revival aligns perfectly with Botswana’s industrial diversification goal to reduce dependence on diamond revenues by strengthening manufacturing capability.
“Through the African Development Bank funding, we have been able to commit BWP 4 million towards the refurbishment of the plant,” explains Benedicta Abosi, Acting Managing Director at BDC. “This has enabled us to restart operations and produce enough bricks for expansion opportunities into the region.”
The company plans to expand from brick manufacturing to include tiles, further cementing its role in Botswana’s construction renaissance and economic diversification efforts.
On this day 250 years ago, a mighty assembly of statesmen, thinkers, lawyers, and patriots gathered at Independence Hall in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, to formally convene a revolutionary body to guide America to its independence. On May 10, 1775, our Nation’s forefathers convened the Second Continental Congress—a historic body that would go on to adopt the Declaration of Independence, the grandest and most important political document ever put to pen.
Following the famous “shot heard ‘round the world” at the Battles of Lexington and Concord on April 19, 1775—the first major armed hostilities of the Revolutionary War, in which the British Army attempted to seize American military supplies and arrest American leaders—it became clear to the patriots that their conflict with the British Crown had escalated beyond mere disagreement. Despite the colonists’ tireless efforts on behalf of peace, war was all but certain. In the wake of the Boston Massacre, the imposition of the Intolerable Acts, and the lasting injustice of taxation without representation, Americans had formed the First Continental Congress in the fall of 1774 to seek redress for their grievances. By the spring of 1775, following the lives taken at Lexington and Concord, a new Congress was convened—and America’s righteous crusade for independence was formally underway.
Comprised of true American titans like John and Samuel Adams, Thomas Jefferson, Roger Sherman, Benjamin Franklin, John Hancock, James Madison, John Jay, and George Washington—whom Congress later appointed as the Commander in Chief of the Continental Army—the Second Continental Congress was made up of some of the boldest, fiercest, and most visionary men ever to walk the face of the Earth. This remarkable body would go on to preside over the Revolutionary War, establish critical international alliances, and maintain unity among the 13 Colonies as America secured its independence and ultimately emerged as a new Nation.
The Second Continental Congress set in motion our independence, our venerated political traditions, and the birth of the greatest Republic ever created. As we commemorate 250 years since its first convening, we recommit to the ideals of our Nation’s founding. We summon the courage of our Founding Fathers. Above all, as we approach 250 years of glorious independence, we proudly invoke the spirit of 1776 to build a proud, hopeful, and radiant future.
NEWARK, N.J. – An Essex County man who claimed to be a pastor of a church in Orange, New Jersey was indicted on April 25, 2025, for sex trafficking, forced labor, and, along with his wife, conspiring to commit forced labor, U.S. Attorney Alina Habba and Assistant Attorney General Harmeet K. Dhillon of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division announced today.
The indictment, which was unsealed on May 7, 2025, charges Treva Edwards, 60, and Christine Edwards, 63, with conspiracy to commit forced labor. It also charges Treva Edwards with sex trafficking by force, fraud, or coercion and forced labor. Both defendants were arrested on May 7, 2025 and made their initial appearances on May 8, 2025 and were arraigned before U.S. Magistrate Judge André M. Espinosa and were detained.
“These charges are an example of my office’s tireless commitment to combatting human trafficking in our community. If you engage in human trafficking, we will find you, and we will prosecute you. We are committed to working alongside our partners to ensure that those who target the most vulnerable are brought to justice.”
– U.S. Attorney Alina Habba
“The Department of Justice will not tolerate the exploitation of vulnerable individuals under the guise of faith or community,” said Assistant Attorney General Harmeet K. Dhillon of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division. “This Civil Rights Division is committed to holding accountable those who abuse positions of trust to manipulate and control others for personal gain. These charges reflect our unwavering focus on protecting victims and prosecuting those who commit forced labor and sex trafficking.”
“Treva and Christine Edwards turned a source of hope into a tool of fear by allegedly exploiting religious faith to manipulate victims and expose them to sexual violence and forced labor conditions,” said Special Agent in Charge Ricky J. Patel of HSI Newark Division. “Seeking justice for human trafficking victims in cases like this is of utmost importance to HSI Newark. Anyone who may believe they are a victim of trafficking can be assured our investigations are victim-centered and that we will continue to relentlessly pursue justice for anyone’s freedom that has been held ransom.”
“An important part of the mission of the U.S. Department of Labor, Office of Inspector General is to investigate allegations of labor trafficking involving the use of coercion or force,” said Special Agent in Charge Jonathan Mellone of the U.S. Department of Labor, Office of Inspector General, Northeast Region. “We will continue to work with our law enforcement partners to investigate these types of allegations.”
According to the indictment and statements made in court:
Defendants Treva Edwards and Christine Edwards were the founders and pastors of a church they named “Jesus is Lord by the Holy Ghost,” which they operated out of a multi-unit apartment building in Orange, New Jersey, and where they conspired to coax and coerce vulnerable victims to work with no pay.
Between 2011 and 2020, the defendants identified and recruited victims who were facing struggles in their personal lives, including financial and familial struggles, to join the church and live and worship at the church building. Treva Edwards told the victims that he was a prophet who could communicate directly with God and that disobeying him would result in spiritual retribution from God, as well as physical, emotional, and financial harm.
The defendants preached to the victims that it was God’s will for them to work, and that members had to perform labor to serve God. The defendants secured labor contracts to provide manual labor in and around Orange, New Jersey, and the defendants dispatched the victims to perform the contracted labor. The defendants did not pay wages to the victims for their work and kept the money earned from their labor.
The defendants convinced the victims that they would lose favor with God if they did not perform labor. Treva Edwards spread fear among the victims through verbal and emotional abuse and threats of reputational harm, homelessness, hunger, spiritual retribution, punishments, and more hard labor to gain their obedience and compel them to perform unpaid labor. The defendants instituted and enforced strict rules about when and whether the victims could eat or sleep, when and for how long they were to pray and work, and whether they could speak to non-members or leave the church building. The defendants isolated the victims, monitored their communications and whereabouts, and by convincing them that non-members were evil or possessed by the devil. The defendants deprived the victims of sleep, typically fed them only once a day after they completed their work.
According to the allegations in the indictment, Treva Edwards controlled and subjected one victim to repeated physical and sexual assaults, impregnated her, and instructed her to get an abortion.
The charge of sex trafficking by force, fraud, or coercion against Treva Edwards carries a mandatory minimum sentence of 15 years in prison and a maximum penalty of life imprisonment. The forced labor charge against Treva Edwards carries a maximum sentence of twenty years or life imprisonment if the government proves at trial that the violation included aggravated sexual abuse. The conspiracy to commit forced labor charge against both defendants carries a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison.
U.S. Attorney Alina Habba and Assistant Attorney General Harmeet K. Dhillon of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division credited special agents of Homeland Security Investigations Newark, under the direction of Special Agent in Charge Ricky J. Patel and special agents of the U.S. Department of Labor, Office of Inspector General, Northeast Region, under the direction of Special Agent in Charge Jonathan Mellone, with the investigation leading to this indictment.
This investigation was conducted as part of the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of New Jersey’s Human Trafficking Task Force, which was formed in 2025. The Task Force brings together federal and state agencies to collaborate and dedicate resources to combat human trafficking and prosecute human trafficking offenders who endanger the safety of the community. The Human Trafficking Task Force is composed of the U.S. Attorney’s Office, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, U.S. Department of Homeland Security, Homeland Security Investigations, U.S. Department of Labor, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Office of Inspector General, and the Internal Revenue Service.
The government is represented by Assistant U.S. Attorneys Trevor Chenoweth and Susan Millenky, and Trial Attorney Francisco Zornosa of the Civil Rights Division’s Human Trafficking Prosecution Unit.
HSI is asking anyone with information about the defendants to contact the HSI Human Trafficking Hotline at (866) 347-2423 (option 2), and reference Edwards or Jesus is Lord Church, or to email hsinewarkhumantrafficking@hsi.dhs.gov. If you or someone you know is a victim of human trafficking, please call the National Human Trafficking Hotline at (888) 373-7888.
The charges and allegations contained in the indictment are merely accusations, and the defendants are presumed innocent unless and until proven guilty.
####
Defense counsel:
Treva Edwards: Michael Thomas, Esq., AFPD
Christine Edwards: F.R. “Chip” Dunne, III, Esq., Hoboken, NJ
Source: United Kingdom – Executive Government & Departments
Press release
PM remarks at press conference in Kyiv: 10 May 2025
The Prime Minister’s remarks at today’s press conference in Kyiv.
Volodymyr, friends, it is a real pleasure to be here in Kyiv with you all. With Emmanuel, with Friedrich, and with Donald.
This is Europe, stepping up, showing our solidarity with Ukraine, and also showing during this week when we mark the 80th anniversary of VE Day that we understand the lessons of history.
The lesson that any veteran of Normandy, of North Africa or any other campaign will tell you but that Putin has not yet grasped:
There is no glory in aggression and conquest – glory comes from fighting for your country, defending your people, and winning the peace.
And that is the message of this moment.
Volodymyr, we stand with you to secure the just and lasting peace that Ukraine deserves.
It’s almost two months now since you agreed to an immediate 30-day ceasefire. In that time Russia has launched some of the most deadly attacks on civilians of the entire war. Including here in Kyiv.
Normal lives, homes, families destroyed.
This is what Russia offers in place of peace along with delays and smokescreens – like the current 72 hour ceasefire.
And so all of us here – together with the US – are calling Putin out.
If he’s serious about peace then he has a chance to show it now – by extending the VE Day pause into a full, unconditional 30-day ceasefire with negotiations to follow immediately, once a ceasefire is agreed.
No more ifs and buts. No more conditions and delays. Putin didn’t need conditions when he wanted a ceasefire to have a parade. And he doesn’t need them now.
Ukraine has shown their willingness to engage again and again. But again and again Putin has refused.
So we are clear – all five leaders here, all the leaders of the meeting we just had with the Coalition of the Willing – an unconditional ceasefire rejecting Putin’s conditions. And clear that if he turns his back on peace, we will respond.
Working with President Trump, with all our partners, we will ramp up sanctions and increase our military aid for Ukraine’s defence to pressure Russia back to the table.
And that’s what we have been discussing today – as well as securing Ukraine’s future for the longer term.
Convening the latest meeting of the Coalition of the Willing with partners joining virtually from around Europe and across the world – lining up to support Ukraine’s future strength and security, discussing operational plans and making concrete commitments of support across land, air and sea.
We want to help Ukraine look to the future with confidence – so we’re working to boost Ukraine’s economy.
And as a vital step, I’m pleased that UK experts have been on the ground leading work to support the resumption of flights into Ukraine, once a ceasefire is achieved.
It will take time – but this will be a huge moment in reconnecting Ukraine’s economy, boosting investor confidence, and helping to reunite families separated by this war.
Ukraine secure and thriving – that is what we all want to see.
With our 100-year partnership, the Critical Minerals deal with the US, and our Coalition of the Willing, we are building the framework for peace in Ukraine to support a better future for the Ukrainian people.
And to pledge once again, in our all interests, and on this anniversary, that aggression will never prevail on our continent.
NERMEEN SHAIKH:We begin today’s show looking at Israel’s ongoing targeting of Palestinian journalists. A recent report by the Costs of War Project at Brown University described the war in Gaza as the “worst ever conflict for reporters” in history.
By one count, Israel has killed 214 Palestinian journalists in Gaza over the past 18 months, including two journalists killed on Wednesday — Yahya Subaih and Nour El-Din Abdo. Yahya Subaih died just hours after his wife gave birth to their first child.
Meanwhile, new details have emerged about the killing of Shireen Abu Akleh, the renowned Palestinian American Al Jazeera journalist who was fatally shot by an Israeli soldier three years ago on 11 May 2022.
She was killed while covering an Israeli army assault on the Jenin refugee camp in the West Bank. Shireen and another reporter were against a stone wall, wearing blue helmets and blue flak jackets clearly emblazoned with the word “Press”.
Shireen was shot in the head. She was known throughout the Arab world for her decades of tireless reporting on Palestine.
AMY GOODMAN: Israel initially claimed she had been shot by Palestinian militants, but later acknowledged she was most likely shot by an Israeli soldier. But Israel has never identified the soldier who fired the fatal shot, or allowed the soldier to be questioned by US investigators.
But a new documentary just released by Zeteo has identified and named the Israeli soldier for the first time. Below is the trailer to the documentary Who Killed Shireen?
DION NISSENBAUM: That soldier looked down his scope and could see the blue vest and that it said “press.”
ISRAELI SOLDIER: That’s what I think, yes.
SEN. CHRIS VAN HOLLEN: US personnel have never had access to those who are believed to have committed those shootings.
DION NISSENBAUM: No one has been held to account. Justice has not been served.
FATIMA ABDULKARIM: She is the first American Palestinian journalist who has been killed by Israeli forces.
DION NISSENBAUM: I want to know: Who killed Shireen?
CONOR POWELL: Are we going to find the shooter?
DION NISSENBAUM: He’s got a phone call set up with this Israeli soldier that was there that day.
CONOR POWELL: We just have to go over to Israel.
DION NISSENBAUM: Did you ever talk to the guy who fired those shots?
ISRAELI SOLDIER: Of course. I know him personally. The US should have actually come forward and actually pressed the fact that an American citizen was killed intentionally by IDF.
FATIMA ABDULKARIM: The drones are still ongoing, the explosions going off.
CONOR POWELL: Holy [bleep]! We’ve got a name.
DION NISSENBAUM: But here’s the twist.
Who Shot Shireen Abu Akleh? Video: Zeteo/Democracy Now!
NERMEEN SHAIKH:The trailer for the new Zeteo documentary Who Killed Shireen? The film identifies the Israeli soldier who allegedly killed Shireen Abu Akleh as Alon Scagio, who would later be killed during an Israeli military operation last June in Jenin, the same city where Shireen was fatally shot.
AMY GOODMAN:We’re joined right now by four guests, including two members of Shireen Abu Akleh’s family: her brother Anton, or Tony, and her niece Lina. They’re both in North Bergen, New Jersey. We’re also joined by Mehdi Hasan, the founder and editor-in-chief of Zeteo, and by Dion Nissenbaum, the executive producer of Who Killed Shireen?, the correspondent on the documentary, longtime Wall Street Journal foreign correspondent based in Jerusalem and other cities, a former foreign correspondent. He was twice nominated for a Pulitzer Prize.
We welcome you all toDemocracy Now!Dion, we’re going to begin with you. This is the third anniversary, May 11th exactly, of the death of Shireen Abu Akleh. Talk about your revelation, what you exposed in this documentary.
DION NISSENBAUM: Well, there were two things that were very important for the documentary. The first thing was we wanted to find the soldier who killed Shireen. It had been one of the most closely guarded secrets in Israel. US officials said that if they wanted to determine if there was a crime here, if there was a human rights violation, they needed to talk to this soldier to find out what he was thinking when he shot her.
And we set out to find him. And we did. We did what the US government never did. And it turned out he had been killed, so we were never able to answer that question — what he was thinking.
But the other revelation that I think is as significant in this documentary is that the initial US assessment of her shooting was that that soldier intentionally shot her and that he could tell that she was wearing a blue flak jacket with “Press” across it.
That assessment was essentially overruled by the Biden administration, which came out and said exactly the opposite. That’s a fairly startling revelation, that the Biden administration and the Israeli government essentially were doing everything they could to cover up what happened that day to Shireen Abu Akleh.
‘Who Killed Shireen?’ Zeteo premiered an explosive investigative documentary that reveals the identity of the soldier who shot Shireen Abu Akleh.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: Well, let’s go to a clip from the documentary Who Killed Shireen?, in which Dion Nissenbaum, our guest, speaks with former State Department official Andrew Miller. He was Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Israeli-Palestinian Affairs in 2022 when Shireen was killed.
ANDREW MILLER: It’s nearly 100 percent certain that an Israeli soldier, likely a sniper, fired the shot that killed or the shots that killed Shireen Abu Akleh. Based on all the information we have, it is not credible to suggest that there were targets either in front of or behind Shireen Abu Akleh.
The fact that the official Israeli position remains that this was a case of crossfire, the entire episode was a mistake, as opposed to potentially a mistaken identification or the deliberate targeting of this individual, points to, I think, a broader policy of seeking to manage the narrative.
DION NISSENBAUM: And did the Israelis ever make the soldier available to the US to talk about it?
ANDREW MILLER: No. And the Israelis were not willing to present the person for even informal questioning.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: That was State Department official — former State Department official Andrew Miller, speaking in the Zeteo documentary Who Killed Shireen? He was Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Israeli-Palestinian Affairs in 2022 when Shireen was killed.
I want to go to Shireen’s family, whom we have as guests, Anton Abu Akleh and Lina, who are joining us from New Jersey. You both watched the film for the first time last night when it premiered here in New York City. Lina, if you could begin by responding to the revelations in the film?
LINA ABU AKLEH: Hi, Amy. Hi. Thank you for having us.
Honestly, we always welcome and we appreciate journalists who try to uncover the killing of Shireen, but also who shed light on her legacy. And the documentary that was released by Zeteo and by Dion, it really revealed findings that we didn’t know before, but we’ve always known that it was an Israeli soldier who killed Shireen. And we know how the US administration failed our family, failed a US citizen and failed a journalist, really.
And that should be a scandal in and of itself.
But most importantly, for us as a family, it’s not just about one soldier. It’s about the entire chain of command. It’s not just the person who pulled the trigger, but who ordered the killing, and the military commanders, the elected officials.
So, really, it’s the entire chain of command that needs to be held to account for the killing of a journalist who was in a clear press vest, press gear, marked as a journalist.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: And, Anton, if you could respond? Shireen, of course, was your younger sister. What was your response watching the documentary last night?
ANTON ABU AKLEH: It’s very painful to look at all these scenes again, but I really extend my appreciation to Zeteo and all those who supported and worked on this documentary, which was very revealing, many things we didn’t know. The cover-up by the Biden administration, this thing was new to us.
He promised. First statements came out from the White House and from the State Department stressed on the importance of holding those responsible accountable. And apparently, in one of the interviews heard in this documentary, he never raised — President Biden never raised this issue with Bennett, at that time the prime minister.
So, that’s shocking to us to know it was a total cover-up, contradictory to what they promised us. And that’s — like Lina just said, it’s a betrayal, not only to the family, not only to Shireen, but the whole American nation.
AMY GOODMAN: Mehdi Hasan, you’ve backed this documentary. It’s the first big documentary Zeteo is putting out. It’s also the first anniversary of the founding of Zeteo. Can you talk about the proof that you feel is here in the documentary that Alon Scagio, this — and explain who he is and the unit he was a part of? Dion, it’s quite something when you go to his grave. But how you can absolutely be sure this is the man?
MEHDI HASAN:So, Amy, Nermeen, thanks for having us here. I’ve been on this show many times. I just want to say, great to be here on set with both of you. Thank you for what you do.
This is actually our second documentary, but it is our biggest so far, because the revelations in this film that Dion and the team put out are huge in many ways — identifying the soldier, as you mentioned, Alon Scagio, identifying the Biden cover-up, which we just heard Tony Abu Akleh point out. People didn’t realise just how big that cover-up was.
Remember, Joe Biden was the man who said, “If you harm an American, we will respond.” And what is very clear in the case of Shireen Abu Akleh, an American citizen who spent a lot of her life in New Jersey, they did not respond.
In terms of the soldier itself, when Dion came to me and said, “We want to make this film. It’ll be almost like a true crime documentary. We’re going to go out and find out who did it” — because we all — everyone followed the story. You guys covered it in 2022. It was a huge story in the world.
But three years later, to not even know the name of the shooter — and I was, “Well, will we be able to find this out? It’s one of Israel’s most closely guarded secrets.” And yet, Dion and his team were able to do the reporting that got inside of Duvdevan, this elite special forces unit in Israel.
It literally means “the cherry on top.” That’s how proud they are of their eliteness. And yet, no matter how elite you are, Israel’s way of fighting wars means you kill innocent people.
And what comes out in the film from interviews, not just with a soldier, an Israeli soldier, who speaks in the film and talks about how, “Hey, if you see a camera, you take the shot,” but also speaking to Chris Van Hollen, United States Senator from Maryland, who’s been one of the few Democratic voices critical of Biden in the Senate, who says there’s been no change in Israel’s rules of engagement over the years.
And therefore, it was so important on multiple levels to do this film, to identify the shooter, because, of course, as you pointed out in your news headlines, Amy, they just killed a hundred Palestinians yesterday.
So this is not some old story from history where this happened in 2022 and we’re going back. Everything that happened since, you could argue, flows from that — the Americans who have been killed, the journalists who have been killed in Gaza, Palestinians, the sense of impunity that Israel has and Israel’s soldiers have.
There are reports that Israeli soldiers are saying to Palestinians, “Hey, Trump has our back. Hey, the US government has our back.” And it wasn’t just Trump. It was Joe Biden, too.
And that was why it was so important to make this film, to identify the shooter, to call out Israel’s practices when it comes to journalists, and to call out the US role.
AMY GOODMAN: I just want to go to Dion, for people who aren’t familiar with the progression of what the Biden administration said, the serious cover-up not only by Israel, but of its main military weapons supplier and supporter of its war on Gaza, and that is Joe Biden, from the beginning.
First Israel said it was a Palestinian militant. At that point, what did President Biden say?
DION NISSENBAUM: So, at the very beginning, they said that they wanted the shooter to be prosecuted. They used that word at the State Department and said, “This person who killed an American journalist should be prosecuted.” But when it started to become clear that it was probably an Israeli soldier, their tone shifted, and it became talking about vague calls for accountability or changes to the rules of engagement, which never actually happened.
So, you got to a point where the Israeli government admitted it was likely them, the US government called for them to change the rules of engagement, and the Israeli government said no. And we have this interview in the film with Senator Chris Van Hollen, who says that, essentially, Israel was giving the middle finger to the US government on this.
And we have seen, since that time, more Americans being killed in the West Bank, dozens and dozens and dozens of journalists being killed, with no accountability. And we would like to see that change.
This is a trajectory that you’re seeing. You know, the blue vest no longer provides any protection for journalists in Israel. The Israeli military itself has said that wearing a blue vest with “Press” on it does not necessarily mean that you are a journalist.
They are saying that terrorists wear blue vests, too. So, if you are a journalist operating in the West Bank now, you have to assume that the Israeli military could target you.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: Well, let’s go to another clip from the film Who Killed Shireen?, which features Ali Samoudi, Shireen Abu Akleh’s producer, who was with Shireen when she was killed, and was himself shot and injured. In the clip, he speaks to the journalist Fatima AbdulKarim.
FATIMA ABDULKARIM: We are set up here now, even though we were supposed to meet at the location where you got injured and Shireen got killed.
ALI SAMOUDI: [translated] We are five minutes from the location in Maidan al-Awdah. But you could lose your soul in the five minutes it would take us to reach it. You could be hit by army bullets. They could arrest you.
So it is essentially impossible to get there. I believe the big disaster which prevented the occupation from being punished and repeating these crimes is the neglect and indifference by many of the institutions, especially American ones, which continue to defend the occupation.
FATIMA ABDULKARIM: [translated] We’re now approaching the third anniversary of Shireen’s death. How did that affect you?
ALI SAMOUDI: [translated] During that period, the occupation was making preparations for a dangerous scenario in the Jenin refugee camp. And for this reason, they didn’t want witnesses.
They opened fire on us in order to terroriSe us enough that we wouldn’t go back to the camp. And in that sense, they partially succeeded.
Since then, we have been overcome by fear. From the moment Shireen was killed, I said and continue to say and will continue to say that this bullet was meant to prevent the Palestinian media from the documentation and exposure of the occupation’s crimes.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: That was Ali Samoudi, Shireen Abu Akleh’s producer, who was with Shireen when she was killed, and was himself shot and injured.
We should note, Ali Samoudi was just detained by Israeli forces in late April. The Palestinian journalist Mariam Barghouti recently wrote, “Ali Samoudi was beaten so bad by Israeli soldiers he was immediately hospitalised. This man has been one of the few journalists that continues reporting on Israeli military abuses north of the West Bank despite the continued risk on his life,” Mariam Barghouti wrote.
The Committee to Protect Journalists spoke to the journalist’s son, Mohammed Al Samoudi, who told CPJ, quote, “My father suffers from several illnesses, including diabetes, high blood pressure, and a stomach ulcer . . . He needs a diabetes injection every two days and a specific diet. It appears he was subjected to assault and medical neglect at the interrogation center . . .
“Our lawyer told us he was transferred to an Israeli hospital after a major setback in his health. We don’t know where he is being held, interrogated, or even the hospital to which he was taken. My father has been forcibly disappeared,” he said.
So, Dion Nissenbaum, if you could give us the latest? You spoke to Ali Samoudi for the documentary, and now he’s been detained.
DION NISSENBAUM: Yeah. His words were prophetic, right? He talks about this was an attempt to silence journalists. And my colleague Fatima says the same thing, that these are ongoing, progressive efforts to silence Palestinian journalists.
And we don’t know where Ali is. He has not actually been charged with anything yet. He is one of the most respected journalists in the West Bank. And we are just seeing this progression going on.
AMY GOODMAN: So, the latest we know is he was supposed to have a hearing, and that hearing has now been delayed to May 13th, Ali Samoudi?
DION NISSENBAUM: That’s right. And he has yet to be charged, so . . .
AMY GOODMAN:I want to go back to Lina Abu Akleh, who’s in New Jersey, where Shireen grew up. Lina, you were listed on Time magazine’s 100 emerging leaders for publicly demanding scrutiny of Israel’s treatment of Palestinians, the horror.
And again, our condolences on the death of your aunt, on the killing of your aunt, and also to Anton, Shireen’s brother. Lina, you’ve also, of course, spoken to Ali Samoudi. This continues now. He’s in detention — his son says, “just disappeared”.
What are you demanding right now? We have a new administration. We’ve moved from the Biden administration to the Trump administration. And are you in touch with them? Are they speaking to you?
LINA ABU AKLEH: Well, our demands haven’t changed. From day one, we’re calling for the US administration to complete its investigation, or for the FBI to continue its investigation, and to finally release — to finally hold someone to account.
And we have enough evidence that could have been — that the administration could have used to expedite this case. But, unfortunately, this new administration, as well, no one has spoken to us. We haven’t been in touch with anyone, and it’s just been radio silence since.
For us, as I said, our demands have never changed. It’s been always to hold the entire system to account, the entire chain of command, the military, for the killing of an American citizen, a journalist, a Palestinian, Palestinian American journalist.
As we’ve been talking, targeting journalists isn’t happening just by shooting at them or killing them. There’s so many different forms of targeting journalists, especially in Gaza and the West Bank and Jerusalem.
So, for us, it’s really important as a family that we don’t see other families experience what we are going through, for this — for impunity, for Israel’s impunity, to end, because, at the end of the day, accountability is the only way to put an end to this impunity.
AMY GOODMAN: I am horrified to ask this question to Shireen’s family members, to Lina, to Tony, Shireen’s brother, but the revelation in the film — we were all there last night at its premiere in New York — that the Israeli soldiers are using a photograph of Shireen’s face for target practice. Tony Abu Akleh, if you could respond?
ANTON ABU AKLEH: You know, there is no words to describe our sorrow and pain hearing this. But, you know, I would just want to know why. Why would they do this thing? What did Shireen do to them for them to use her as a target practice? You know, this is absolutely barbaric act, unjustified. Unjustified.
And we really hope that this US administration will be able to put an end to all this impunity they are enjoying. If they didn’t enjoy all this impunity, they wouldn’t have been doing this. Practising on a journalist? Why? You know, you can practice on anything, but on a journalist?
This shows that this targeting of more journalists, whether in Gaza, in Palestine, it’s systematic. It’s been planned for. And they’ve been targeting and shutting off those voices, those reports, from reaching anywhere in the world.
NERMEEN SHAIKH:And, Anton, if you could say — you know, you mentioned last night, as well, Shireen was, in fact, extremely cautious as a journalist. If you could elaborate on that? What precisely —
ANTON ABU AKLEH: Absolutely. Absolutely. Shireen was very careful. Every time she’s in the field, she would take her time to put on the gear, the required helmet, the vest with “press” written on it, before going there. She also tried to identify herself as a journalist, whether to the Israelis or to the Palestinians, so she’s not attacked.
And she always went by the book, followed the rules, how to act, how to be careful, how to speak to those people involved, so she can protect herself. But, unfortunately, he was — this soldier, as stated in the documentary, targeted Shireen just because she’s Shireen and she’s a journalist. That’s it. There is no other explanation.
Sixteen bullets were fired on Shireen. Not even her helmet, nor the vest she was wearing, were able to protect her, unfortunately.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: Mehdi Hasan, you wanted to respond.
MEHDI HASAN: So, Tony asks, “Why? Why would you do this? Why would you target not just a journalist in the field, but then use her face for target practice?” — as Dion and his team reveal in the film. And there is, unfortunately, a very simple answer to that question, which is that the Israeli military — and not just the Israeli military, but many people in our world today — have dehumanised Palestinians.
There is the removal of humanity from the people you are oppressing, occupying, subjugating and killing. It doesn’t matter if you’re an American citizen. It doesn’t matter if you have a press jacket on. It only matters that you are Palestinian in the sniper’s sights.
And that is how they have managed to pull of the killing of so many journalists, so many children. The first documentary we commissioned last year was called Israel’s Real Extremism, and it was about the Israeli soldiers who go into Gaza and make TikTok videos wearing Palestinian women’s underwear, playing with Palestinian children’s toys. It is the ultimate form of dehumanisation, the idea that these people don’t count, their lives have no value.
And what’s so tragic and shocking — and the film exposes this — is that Joe Biden — forget the Israeli military — Joe Biden also joined in that dehumanisation. Do you remember at the start of this conflict when he comes out and he says, “Well, I’m not sure I believe the Palestinian death toll numbers,” when he puts out a statement at the hundred days after October 7th and doesn’t mention Palestinian casualties.
And that has been the fundamental problem. This was the great comforter-in-chief. Joe Biden was supposed to be the empath. And yet, as Tony points out, what was so shocking in the film is he didn’t even raise Shireen’s case with Naftali Bennett, the prime minister of Israel at the time.
Again, would he have done that if it was an American journalist in Moscow? We know that’s not the case. We know when American journalists, especially white American journalists, are taken elsewhere in the world, the government gives a damn. And yet, in the case of Shireen, the only explanation is because she was a Palestinian American journalist.
AMY GOODMAN:You know, in the United States, the US government is responsible for American citizens, which Biden pointed out at the beginning, when he thought it was a Palestinian militant who had killed her. But, Lina, you yourself are a journalist. And I’m thinking I want to hear your response to using her face, because, of course, that is not just the face of Shireen, but I think it’s the face of journalism.
And it’s not just American journalism, of course. I mean, in fact, she’s known to hundreds of millions of people around world as the face and voice of Al Jazeera Arabic. She spoke in Arabic. She was known as that to the rest of the world. But to see that and that revealed in this documentary?
LINA ABU AKLEH: Yeah, it was horrifying, actually. And it just goes on to show how the Israeli military is built. It’s barbarism. It’s the character of revenge, of hate. And that is part of the entire system. And as Mehdi and as my father just mentioned, this is all about dehumanizing Palestinians, regardless if they’re journalists, if they’re doctors, they’re officials. For them, they simply don’t care about Palestinian lives.
And for us, Shireen will always be the voice of Palestine. And she continues to be remembered for the legacy that she left behind. And she continues to live through so many, so many journalists, who have picked up the microphone, who have picked up the camera, just because of Shireen.
So, regardless of how the Israeli military continues to dehumanise journalists and how the US fails to protect Palestinian American journalists, we will continue to push forward to continue to highlight the life and the legacy that Shireen left behind.
NERMEEN SHAIKH:Well, let’s turn to Shireen Abu Akleh in her own words. This is an excerpt from the Al Jazeera English documentary The Killing of Shireen Abu Akleh.
SHIREEN ABU AKLEH: [translated] Sometimes the Israeli army doesn’t want you there, so they target you, even if they later say it was an accident. They might say, “We saw some young men around you.” So they target you on purpose, as a way of scaring you off because they don’t want you there.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: So, that was Shireen in her own words in an Al Jazeera documentary. So, Lina, I know you have to go soon, but if you could just tell us: What do you want people to know about Shireen, as an aunt, a sister and a journalist?
LINA ABU AKLEH: Yes, so, we know Shireen as the journalist, but behind the camera, she was one of the most empathetic people. She was very sincere. And something not a lot of people know, but she was a very funny person. She had a very unique sense of humor, that she lit up every room she entered. She cared about everyone and anyone. She enjoyed life.
Shireen, at the end of the day, loved life. She had plans. She had dreams that she still wanted to achieve. But her life was cut short by that small bullet, which would change our lives entirely.
But at the end of the day, Shireen was a professional journalist who always advocated for truth, for justice. And at the end of the day, all she wanted to do was humanise Palestinians and talk about the struggles of living under occupation. But at the same time, she wanted to celebrate their achievements.
She shed light on all the happy moments, all the accomplishments of the Palestinian people. And this is something that really touched millions of Palestinians, of Arabs around the world. She was able to enter the hearts of the people through the small camera lens. And until this day, she continues to be remembered for that.
AMY GOODMAN: Before we go, we’re going to keep you on, Mehdi, to talk about other issues during the Trump administration, but how can people access Who Killed Shireen?
MEHDI HASAN: So, it’s available online at WhoKilledShireen.com, is where you can go to watch it. We are releasing the film right now only to paid subscribers. We hope to change that in the forthcoming days.
People often say to me, “How can you put it behind a paywall?” Journalism — a free press isn’t free, sadly. We have to fund films like this. Dion came to us because a lot of other people didn’t want to fund a topic like this, didn’t want to fund an investigation like this.
So, we’re proud to be able to fund such documentaries, but we also need support from our contributors, our subscribers and the viewers. But it’s an important film, and I hope as many people will watch it as possible, WhoKilledShireen.com.
AMY GOODMAN:We want to thank Lina, the niece of Shireen Abu Akleh, and Anton, Tony, the older brother of Shireen Abu Akleh, for joining us from New Jersey. Together, we saw the documentary last night, Who Killed Shireen? And we want to thank Dion Nissenbaum, who is the filmmaker, the correspondent on this film, formerly a correspondent with The Wall Street Journal. The founder of Zeteo, on this first anniversary of Zeteo, is Mehdi Hasan.
You can also find plenty of places that run workshops and classes. Some of these include:
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The activity is known to improve wellbeing. Crafting of all kinds can promote mindfulness, relieve stress and improve dexterity for people of all ages.
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President Cyril Ramaphosa has offered his congratulations to Cardinal Robert Prevost on his election as Pope Leo XIV, the 267th Pope of the Catholic Church.
In a statement, President Ramaphosa said the election of Pope Leo XIV was a profound moment for the Catholic Church as well as the global community who followed this solemn event with hopeful anticipation.
“May the ceremonial white smoke that signalled the consensus of the Conclave prevail over the dark plumes of military bombardments affecting various regions of the world today.
“Pope Leo XIV’s early emphasis on peace is a call that resonates with most of humanity and is one that honours the legacy of the late Pope Francis.
“South Africa wishes Pope Leo XIV a blessed and transformative papacy that will strengthen faith, unity and social solidarity in the world,” the President said. – SAnews.gov.za
Water and Sanitation Deputy Minister, Sello Seitlholo, has called for decisive and intensified investment in the water sector to secure Southern Africa’s future in the face of climate change and growing water demands.
Addressing the Orange-Senqu River Commission (ORASECOM) Climate Resilient Investment Conference in Maseru, Lesotho, on Thursday, Seitlholo underscored the urgent need for resilient water infrastructure and strengthened cross-border cooperation, describing them as critical to the region’s economic development, environmental sustainability, and long-term water security.
“Water is the foundation upon which our economies, communities, and ecosystems rest. In Southern Africa, it also binds us together across borders. Our shared future demands that we invest boldly and wisely in securing this most precious resource,” Seitlholo said.
Reaffirming South Africa’s role as a founding and committed member of ORASECOM, Seitlholo noted that the country continues to champion regional cooperation for the sustainable and equitable management of shared water resources. These include hosting responsibilities and contributions to basin-wide research and planning.
The Deputy Minister also noted that South Africa is actively undertaking major reforms to create an enabling environment for water investment.
These include legislative amendments to strengthen water governance, reduce inefficiencies, and attract private-sector involvement, through improved regulatory certainty and streamlined project processes.
He pointed to multiple opportunities for investors, ranging from bulk infrastructure and wastewater treatment to innovative technologies in reuse and smart metering.
The Deputy Minister further emphasised the role of public-private partnerships, noting ongoing efforts through the Water Partnership Office in collaboration with the Development Bank of Southern Africa (DBSA, to accelerate investment.
“Investing in water is not just a necessity; it is a generational imperative. Our policy reforms, [including] institutional innovation, and partnerships, demonstrate that we are ready to work with all stakeholders to make water investment a success story,” Seitlholo said.
Seitlholo outlined three strategic pillars of South Africa’s water strategy, which include sustainability, technological advancement, and climate adaptation.
He highlighted the need for robust risk management to address droughts, floods, and pollution, supported by government funding mechanisms, such as the Water Services Infrastructure Grant and the Regional Bulk Infrastructure Grant, made available by the Department of Water and Sanitation.
He stressed that communities must be at the heart of water solutions.
Placing communities at the centre of water governance, Seitlholo emphasized inclusive development, particularly through forums supporting youth, women, and civil society engagement.
He added that collaborations with NGOs, including research institutions, and the private sector, continue to drive innovation and ensure evidence-based planning.
In closing, Seitlholo reaffirmed South Africa’s unwavering commitment to regional leadership and global engagement in the water sector.
Spotlight on water financing
Meanwhile, Seitlholo announced that South Africa will host the Africa Water Investment Summit in August, an initiative aimed at unlocking large-scale investment and fostering multi-sector partnerships for water infrastructure development across the continent.
As South Africa assumed the G20 Presidency, the Deputy Minister confirmed that water financing will be promoted as a key agenda item, positioning water as not merely a development issue, but a central pillar of economic resilience, climate adaptation, and sustainable growth.
“South Africa stands ready to lead by example, mobilising political will, catalysing investment, and fostering cross-border cooperation to build a water-secure future for Africa and beyond.
“Let us seize this moment to mobilise the partnerships, political will, and financing needed to ensure a climate-resilient and water-secure future for our region. What we decide today must shape a legacy of inclusive growth and sustainable prosperity for generations to come,” Seitlholo said. – SAnews.gov.za
Women disproportionately shoulder the heaviest burdens during times of regional conflict and rising geo-political divisions – a stark reality underscored by Minister of International Relations and Cooperation Ronald Lamola.
The Minister was speaking at the Solidarity Conference on Women, Peace and Security, held in Tshwane, on Friday.
Lamola said the world is currently in a rapidly evolving geo-political environment “defined by rising global competition, changing alliances, contested international norms, economic volatility and escalating geo-political tensions”.
“These deepening geo-political divisions are fuelling mistrust and threatening to undo hard-won progress in addressing global challenges such as poverty, armed conflicts, climate change, pandemics, nuclear proliferation and the rights and wellbeing of women and children.
“In the midst of these constantly changing global dynamics, the world currently faces more than 50 ongoing armed conflicts spanning a wide range of regions and scales. In these conflicts, no region is spared. These conflicts have caused millions of deaths and displacement of refugees, human rights violations and infrastructure destruction.
“In all of this, women bear the heaviest burden as caregivers, as survivors, as protectors of families and communities. But some women are also actively fighting in the field, side by side with men,” the Minister said.
According to United Nations Women, more than 600 million women and girls lived within 50km of conflict zones in 2023 – a rise of some 50% in the past decade.
The international body also reports that the proportion of women killed in conflict doubled in 2023 and more than 3 500 cases of conflict-related sexual violence was recorded.
Lamola said despite the circumstances, women are leaders in their own right and called on the international community to “also listen, learn and follow their lead”.
“But women are not only victims. African women are leaders, mediators, healers and architects of peace. From the townships of South Africa to the highlands of Ethiopia and from the marketplace of the DRC to the refugee camps of Sudan, women are doing the daily, often invisible work of conflict resolution, mending broken social fabric, advocating for justice and demanding a seat at decision making processes.
“African women are pioneering local peace processes, creating community resilience programmes, leading truth and reconciliation efforts and holding armed actors accountable,” he said.
The Minister noted that although much has been done to foster women inclusion in security structures in Africa, “women are not easily found in peace negotiation tables”.
“We cannot talk about Africa’s future without talking about the safety and dignity of African women.
“We cannot dream of unity while half the population is still denied a voice in decisions that shape our collective destiny, and we cannot build peace without those who have always been its most consistent guardians – our mothers, sisters, daughters and grandmothers,” Lamola said. – SAnews.gov.za
The South African government has called for a de-escalation in the brewing tensions between India and Pakistan.
This according to Minister of International Relations and Cooperation Ronald Lamola, who delivered remarks at the Solidarity Conference on Women, Peace and Security held in Tshwane, on Friday.
The India-Pakistan tensions – which have seen both sides launching attacks – stems from a terrorist attack, which killed some 26 people in an India-controlled part of Kashmir, last month.
“The South African government expresses concern over the escalating tensions between India and Pakistan. We call for de-escalation and restraint.
“All efforts should be taken to protect civilians and civilian infrastructure while ensuring that there are concerted efforts from both parties to negotiate a peaceful settlement to the rising conflict,” Lamola said.
On the conflict between Russia and Ukraine, Lamola said the war has “become a flashpoint of global tensions”, with economic consequences that reach beyond Europe’s borders.
“This includes disruptions to global food supply chains and energy markets. South Africa has always contended that once a ceasefire is in place, everything must be discussed and that we need to continue to call for a ceasefire… that peace must be found on the negotiation table by both parties with the help of the international communities,” he said.
Turning to the Israel-Hamas conflict currently playing itself out in Gaza, Lamola said the war “poses a grave threat not only to local peace, but also to the broader regional stability”.
“It is a conflict that reverberates across international diplomatic corridors. It’s a conflict that is unfolding in the full glare of the world.
“South Africa’s decision to bring a case against Israel to the International Court of Justice was not taken lightly. It was grounded in the belief that pursuing justice is never without cost, that truth often challenges entrenched power and that moral leadership requires the courage to confront global injustice,” he said.
The Minister reiterated the South African government’s foreign policy grounded in elements including non-alignment, respect for international law, commitment to multilateralism, diplomacy and peaceful negotiations.
“In summary, we are anti-war. We are a peace-loving nation. These values are rooted in our own history of struggle against injustice and reflect our aspirations to contribute to a fairer and more peaceful international order.
“In a polarised world, South Africa has maintained open diplomatic channels. South Africa has long supported the peace process that aligns with its foreign policy principles of promoting peace, stability and development on the continent with a vision to build a better South Africa and better world,” Lamola said. – SAnews.gov.za
Public Works and Infrastructure Minister Dean Macpherson has signed Memoranda of Understanding (MoUs) with three local government municipalities across three provinces to improve infrastructure delivery.
The Minister signed the MoUs with the Metsimaholo Local Municipality in the Free State, uMngeni Local Municipality in KwaZulu-Natal and Govan Mbeki Local Municipality in Mpumalanga, as part of the pilot phase of the Adopt-a-Municipality initiative to improve infrastructure delivery at local government level.
The first-of-its-kind Adopt-a-Municipality initiative – adopted by the Presidential Infrastructure Coordinating Council in November last year – will see Infrastructure South Africa (ISA) work with municipalities to introduce rapid infrastructure interventions.
This will help improve the implementation and delivery of infrastructure projects, ensuring that more projects are completed on time and within budget.
The objective is to address cost overruns, poor workmanship, and inadequate planning – challenges that have frequently plagued municipal infrastructure initiatives.
“The initiative will help us address the often chequered track record of infrastructure delivery at local government level across South Africa, to ensure that infrastructure budgets are properly spent; that projects are properly prepared; that project cost overruns are avoided, and poor workmanship is addressed.
“With this initiative, we are trying to change the narrative surrounding local government infrastructure projects and bring an end to the era of failing municipal infrastructure, as we see in many places across the country,” Macpherson said.
“While we are launching the project in three municipalities, we intend to replicate the model countrywide in the months and years ahead.
“This initiative will play an important role in achieving our goal of turning the country into a construction site with more infrastructure projects successfully executed to stimulate economic investment, grow the economy and, most importantly, create jobs,” the Minister said.
Following the signing of the MoUs, the scope of ISA’s involvement with these three municipalities will include, among others:
• Project preparation and planning,
• Collaboration with municipalities and strategic partners to efficiently package projects and programmes,
• Assisting municipalities in developing robust and bankable business cases to attract funding from both public and private sectors,
• Streamlining approvals, authorisations, licences, and permissions to expedite project implementation and address regulatory bottlenecks that may hinder progress, and
• Implementing effective monitoring mechanisms to track project progress, ensuring accountability and the timely completion of infrastructure developments.
A digital dashboard will also be developed on ISA’s website to enable the respective Mayors, the Minister and government officials to monitor progress on infrastructure projects and address any emerging challenges promptly.
“With the launch of the Adopt-a-Municipality project, we are seeking to deliver tangible results from the policy interventions we have introduced since taking office, in order to meaningfully improve infrastructure delivery.
“It is one of the key initiatives being implemented in the Department of Public Works & Infrastructure to expedite infrastructure development as we work to build a better South Africa for all our people,” the Minister said. – SAnews.gov.za
The “vicious cycle” of crumbling infrastructure and failing service delivery besetting municipalities is now under sharper focus as the second phase of Operation Vulindlela (OV) kicks off.
Operation Vulindlela is a joint initiative of the Presidency and National Treasury to accelerate the implementation of structural reforms and support economic recovery.
It was originally established in October 2020 with the first phase having zeroed in on reforms in five key areas with a high potential impact on growth and jobs: energy, logistics, telecommunications, water, and the visa system.
The second phase of the operation was launched by President Cyril Ramaphosa recently. The launch at the Union Buildings was preceded by a technical briefing conducted by National Treasury.
At the briefing, Presidency Director of Strategy and Delivery, Saul Musker, explained the impact that municipal under performance has on South Africa’s growth prospects. This in a country that has 257 metropolitan, district and local municipalities.
“I think it’s widely understood that the deteriorating performance of local government is a major constraint on growth, and you can solve; say the energy supply problem. But if you still have interruptions, because [of] ailing distribution networks or failures in service delivery that affects businesses, it holds back investment.
“That decline in local government performance is the result of both particular factors in each municipality, as well as structural causes that have their roots in the system. The local government system itself and the reforms that we proposed in OV2 really aim to address those structural challenges,” Musker explained. According to the OV Phase II document, the “deteriorating performance of local government has emerged as a significant constraint on investment and growth.”
Enhancing local government performance is among the three key reforms introduced by the second phase of OV (the other two being tackling the legacy of spatial inequality and accelerating digital transformation).
The document notes that an “increasing number of municipalities is affected by weak or unstable governance, poor revenue collection and funding shortfalls, and an inability to deliver basic services or process regulatory approvals.”
This as Musker added that the “heart of the problem” is a lack of investment in infrastructure and maintenance which impacts service delivery.
The document further adds that the reform of the local government system will be prioritised to prevent it from acting as a binding constraint on growth. Musker revealed a new model for revenue collection and expenditure for some municipalities that is expected to ensure service delivery and sustainability.
“The fact that our electricity and water networks, roads and so on are not being maintained, and the investment is falling behind… creates a vicious cycle. Because as the infrastructure deteriorates, revenue declines and the ability to reinvest in those assets declines as well. We’ve got to break that cycle.
“And so, the first priority that we’ve set out is to shift to [a] utility model for water and electricity services in future, also for waste management what are otherwise termed ‘trading services’ in local government, to ensure financial and operational sustainability,” Musker said.
He further explained that because these trading services are fully integrated into most municipalities, revenue collected “instead of being reinvested first in the infrastructure and the assets, is “just sucked into the pool and used for other functions” like the compensation of employees.
“How do we address that? On the one hand, institutional reforms making sure that these utilities have a single point of management accountability, that they’re actually responsible for the service, and have control of everything that they need to be able to deliver that service with professional and skilled staff.
“The second is financing reforms, separate financial accounts for the utility and a clear relationship between the utility and the municipality, which governs the division of revenue so that billing revenue is controlled by the utility, [and that] enough of that revenue is retained to invest in the assets.
“It does not mean any particular institutional form. So, it doesn’t mean that we need all metros or municipalities to form a corporate sort of business to deliver these services.
“Some may choose to do so through a municipal owned entity. Others might choose to do a concession or some sort of public-private partnership, [or] others would have a business unit within the municipality. There are many models that could be used, but they need to adhere to those principles.”
He added that this will also mean that services are provided more professionally with the addition of a “much stronger licensing and regulatory regime”.
Professionalisation
Musker highlighted that another priority is the standardisation and professionalisation of the appointment of senior officials in local government.
“That means ensuring that all municipal managers and CFOs [chief financial officers] meet minimum competency requirements and extending the mandate of the Public Service Commission [PSC] through the PSC Bill, which is already in Parliament, to local government, to be able to actually enforce that properly.”
This as on 18 March 2025, the National Assembly passed the PSC Bill which aims to regulate the Commission “and enhance its independence by, among others, establishing its secretariat to support its operations.”
At the time, Parliament said the bill will help position the commission to play a significant role in creating an efficient, innovative, and responsive public service.
“A key benefit of the Bill is that it will maintain and restore the PSC’s independence, like the institutions outlined in Chapter 9 of the Constitution while adhering to an agreed public administration mandate. The PSC will be recognised as a constitutional institution that reports to Parliament,” it said.
Enhancing service delivery
Musker added that a review of the institutional structure of the local government system through an updated white paper is also in the works.
“It’s a thorough, comprehensive review of the White Paper on Local Government going back to first principles and really thinking about what a fit for purpose local government system would look like for South Africa.
“[This is] including looking at the two-tier system of district and local municipalities, looking at the appropriate powers and functions for municipalities in different categories, [and] looking at the revenue model.
“Taking a thorough look, given the evidence that we have since the first white paper was introduced, in reality of what municipalities are capable of and then putting forward a new model and that will be completed by this time next year,” he said.
Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs (CoGTA) Minister, Velenkosini Hlabisa officially published the Review of the 1998 White Paper on Local Government on 10 April with the deadline for public comments set for 30 June 2025.
The anticipated benefits of the review according to CoGTA are that it will enhance service delivery, strengthen financial management, build capacity and result in the engagement of communities.
Operation Vulindlela will also look at local government’s funding model, including the “use of conditional grants” and proposing amendments to the Municipal Finance Management Act (MFMA).
The object of the MFMA is to secure sound and sustainable management of the fiscal and financial affairs of municipalities and municipal entities.
“All of those reforms are interrelated [and] need to be done together, again to tackle the root causes, the structural causes of local government underperformance,” Musker said.
While the document states that local government “is in a state of crisis, with 66% of municipalities in financial distress and 64 out of the 257 deemed dysfunctional,” government is cracking the whip to address the issue with the launch of the second phase. President Ramaphosa stated that growth is the is the only way to achieve fiscal sustainability and social progress.
“That is why we will not yield in our efforts to reform this economy, to fundamentally transform it and to remove the constraints on growth. We have established significant momentum,” he said at the launch.
That momentum will aid in propelling the wheels of the economy forward. – SAnews.gov.za
The Deputy Minister in the Presidency responsible for Women, Youth and Persons with Disabilities, Mmapaseka Steve Letsike, has reiterated the urgent need for a multisectoral approach to effectively end Gender Based Violence and Femicide (GBVF).
Speaking at a mini plenary session in the National Assembly, on Friday, Letsike emphasised that addressing GBVF requires coordinated efforts across all sectors of society.
“This [approach] will help in bringing together government departments, civil society organisations, business, traditional leaders, and academic institutions to drive a coordinated efforts to confront GBVF as a national crisis and violation of human rights,” Letsike said.
Letsike led a debate on addressing Gender Based Violence and Femicide as a national crisis, during the National Assembly’s mini plenary session, held in Cape Town, on Friday.
The Deputy Minister, who led the parliamentary debate on “addressing Gender Based Violence and Femicide as a national crisis”, said South Africa continues to face a grim reality of GBV, where violence against women and girls persists at alarming levels, and undermines the nation’s collective vision of a democracy rooted in the principles of inclusivity, or Ubuntu.
“The 2022 GBV Prevalence Study indicates that one in three women, roughly 7.3 million, have faced physical violence during their lives. This means nearly one in ten women report having encountered sexual violence, and over a quarter have suffered abuse from intimate partners,” Letsike said.
During her address, Letsike outlined key priority issues that required collective action towards ending the scourge of Gender Based Violence and Femicide in South Africa.
These include, among others: • The evolution of government plans towards dealing with Gender-Based Violence and Femicide. • The government structures established to deal with GBVF. • Educational and advocacy programmes available for societal consumption. • Progress on the implementation of the GBVF National Strategic Plan towards ending Gender Based Violence and Femicide. • A need for Education for young boys through the adoption of a bottom-up approach to GBVF.
Letsike also highlighted South Africa’s progress in strengthening the legal framework to address GBVF.
Parliament passed key legislative amendments, aimed at improving victim protection, enhancing access to justice, and ensuring stricter accountability for perpetrators.
Among the legislations passed include the Criminal and Related Matters Amendment Act, Criminal Law (Sexual Offences and Related Matters) Amendment Act, and the Domestic Violence Amendment Act, in 2021. – SAnews.gov.za
NERMEEN SHAIKH:We begin today’s show looking at Israel’s ongoing targeting of Palestinian journalists. A recent report by the Costs of War Project at Brown University described the war in Gaza as the “worst ever conflict for reporters” in history.
By one count, Israel has killed 214 Palestinian journalists in Gaza over the past 18 months, including two journalists killed on Wednesday — Yahya Subaih and Nour El-Din Abdo. Yahya Subaih died just hours after his wife gave birth to their first child.
Meanwhile, new details have emerged about the killing of Shireen Abu Akleh, the renowned Palestinian American Al Jazeera journalist who was fatally shot by an Israeli soldier three years ago on 11 May 2022.
She was killed while covering an Israeli army assault on the Jenin refugee camp in the West Bank. Shireen and another reporter were against a stone wall, wearing blue helmets and blue flak jackets clearly emblazoned with the word “Press”.
Shireen was shot in the head. She was known throughout the Arab world for her decades of tireless reporting on Palestine.
AMY GOODMAN: Israel initially claimed she had been shot by Palestinian militants, but later acknowledged she was most likely shot by an Israeli soldier. But Israel has never identified the soldier who fired the fatal shot, or allowed the soldier to be questioned by US investigators.
But a new documentary just released by Zeteo has identified and named the Israeli soldier for the first time. This is the trailer to the documentary Who Killed Shireen?
DION NISSENBAUM: That soldier looked down his scope and could see the blue vest and that it said “press.”
ISRAELI SOLDIER: That’s what I think, yes.
SEN. CHRIS VAN HOLLEN: US personnel have never had access to those who are believed to have committed those shootings.
DION NISSENBAUM: No one has been held to account. Justice has not been served.
FATIMA ABDULKARIM: She is the first American Palestinian journalist who has been killed by Israeli forces.
DION NISSENBAUM: I want to know: Who killed Shireen?
CONOR POWELL: Are we going to find the shooter?
DION NISSENBAUM: He’s got a phone call set up with this Israeli soldier that was there that day.
CONOR POWELL: We just have to go over to Israel.
DION NISSENBAUM: Did you ever talk to the guy who fired those shots?
ISRAELI SOLDIER: Of course. I know him personally. The US should have actually come forward and actually pressed the fact that an American citizen was killed intentionally by IDF.
FATIMA ABDULKARIM: The drones are still ongoing, the explosions going off.
CONOR POWELL: Holy [bleep]! We’ve got a name.
DION NISSENBAUM: But here’s the twist.
NERMEEN SHAIKH:The trailer for the new Zeteo documentary Who Killed Shireen? The film identifies the Israeli soldier who allegedly killed Shireen Abu Akleh as Alon Scagio, who would later be killed during an Israeli military operation last June in Jenin, the same city where Shireen was fatally shot.
AMY GOODMAN:We’re joined right now by four guests, including two members of Shireen Abu Akleh’s family: her brother Anton, or Tony, and her niece Lina. They’re both in North Bergen, New Jersey. We’re also joined by Mehdi Hasan, the founder and editor-in-chief of Zeteo, and by Dion Nissenbaum, the executive producer of Who Killed Shireen?, the correspondent on the documentary, longtime Wall Street Journal foreign correspondent based in Jerusalem and other cities, a former foreign correspondent. He was twice nominated for a Pulitzer Prize.
We welcome you all toDemocracy Now!Dion, we’re going to begin with you. This is the third anniversary, May 11th exactly, of the death of Shireen Abu Akleh. Talk about your revelation, what you exposed in this documentary.
DION NISSENBAUM: Well, there were two things that were very important for the documentary. The first thing was we wanted to find the soldier who killed Shireen. It had been one of the most closely guarded secrets in Israel. US officials said that if they wanted to determine if there was a crime here, if there was a human rights violation, they needed to talk to this soldier to find out what he was thinking when he shot her.
And we set out to find him. And we did. We did what the US government never did. And it turned out he had been killed, so we were never able to answer that question — what he was thinking.
But the other revelation that I think is as significant in this documentary is that the initial US assessment of her shooting was that that soldier intentionally shot her and that he could tell that she was wearing a blue flak jacket with “Press” across it.
That assessment was essentially overruled by the Biden administration, which came out and said exactly the opposite. That’s a fairly startling revelation, that the Biden administration and the Israeli government essentially were doing everything they could to cover up what happened that day to Shireen Abu Akleh.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: Well, let’s go to a clip from the documentary Who Killed Shireen?, in which Dion Nissenbaum, our guest, speaks with former State Department official Andrew Miller. He was Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Israeli-Palestinian Affairs in 2022 when Shireen was killed.
ANDREW MILLER: It’s nearly 100 percent certain that an Israeli soldier, likely a sniper, fired the shot that killed or the shots that killed Shireen Abu Akleh. Based on all the information we have, it is not credible to suggest that there were targets either in front of or behind Shireen Abu Akleh.
The fact that the official Israeli position remains that this was a case of crossfire, the entire episode was a mistake, as opposed to potentially a mistaken identification or the deliberate targeting of this individual, points to, I think, a broader policy of seeking to manage the narrative.
DION NISSENBAUM: And did the Israelis ever make the soldier available to the US to talk about it?
ANDREW MILLER: No. And the Israelis were not willing to present the person for even informal questioning.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: That was State Department official — former State Department official Andrew Miller, speaking in the Zeteo documentary Who Killed Shireen? He was Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Israeli-Palestinian Affairs in 2022 when Shireen was killed.
I want to go to Shireen’s family, whom we have as guests, Anton Abu Akleh and Lina, who are joining us from New Jersey. You both watched the film for the first time last night when it premiered here in New York City. Lina, if you could begin by responding to the revelations in the film?
LINA ABU AKLEH: Hi, Amy. Hi. Thank you for having us.
Honestly, we always welcome and we appreciate journalists who try to uncover the killing of Shireen, but also who shed light on her legacy. And the documentary that was released by Zeteo and by Dion, it really revealed findings that we didn’t know before, but we’ve always known that it was an Israeli soldier who killed Shireen. And we know how the US administration failed our family, failed a US citizen and failed a journalist, really.
And that should be a scandal in and of itself.
But most importantly, for us as a family, it’s not just about one soldier. It’s about the entire chain of command. It’s not just the person who pulled the trigger, but who ordered the killing, and the military commanders, the elected officials.
So, really, it’s the entire chain of command that needs to be held to account for the killing of a journalist who was in a clear press vest, press gear, marked as a journalist.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: And, Anton, if you could respond? Shireen, of course, was your younger sister. What was your response watching the documentary last night?
ANTON ABU AKLEH: It’s very painful to look at all these scenes again, but I really extend my appreciation to Zeteo and all those who supported and worked on this documentary, which was very revealing, many things we didn’t know. The cover-up by the Biden administration, this thing was new to us.
He promised. First statements came out from the White House and from the State Department stressed on the importance of holding those responsible accountable. And apparently, in one of the interviews heard in this documentary, he never raised — President Biden never raised this issue with Bennett, at that time the prime minister.
So, that’s shocking to us to know it was a total cover-up, contradictory to what they promised us. And that’s — like Lina just said, it’s a betrayal, not only to the family, not only to Shireen, but the whole American nation.
AMY GOODMAN: Mehdi Hasan, you’ve backed this documentary. It’s the first big documentary Zeteo is putting out. It’s also the first anniversary of the founding of Zeteo. Can you talk about the proof that you feel is here in the documentary that Alon Scagio, this — and explain who he is and the unit he was a part of? Dion, it’s quite something when you go to his grave. But how you can absolutely be sure this is the man?
MEHDI HASAN:So, Amy, Nermeen, thanks for having us here. I’ve been on this show many times. I just want to say, great to be here on set with both of you. Thank you for what you do.
This is actually our second documentary, but it is our biggest so far, because the revelations in this film that Dion and the team put out are huge in many ways — identifying the soldier, as you mentioned, Alon Scagio, identifying the Biden cover-up, which we just heard Tony Abu Akleh point out. People didn’t realise just how big that cover-up was.
Remember, Joe Biden was the man who said, “If you harm an American, we will respond.” And what is very clear in the case of Shireen Abu Akleh, an American citizen who spent a lot of her life in New Jersey, they did not respond.
In terms of the soldier itself, when Dion came to me and said, “We want to make this film. It’ll be almost like a true crime documentary. We’re going to go out and find out who did it” — because we all — everyone followed the story. You guys covered it in 2022. It was a huge story in the world.
But three years later, to not even know the name of the shooter — and I was, “Well, will we be able to find this out? It’s one of Israel’s most closely guarded secrets.” And yet, Dion and his team were able to do the reporting that got inside of Duvdevan, this elite special forces unit in Israel.
It literally means “the cherry on top.” That’s how proud they are of their eliteness. And yet, no matter how elite you are, Israel’s way of fighting wars means you kill innocent people.
And what comes out in the film from interviews, not just with a soldier, an Israeli soldier, who speaks in the film and talks about how, “Hey, if you see a camera, you take the shot,” but also speaking to Chris Van Hollen, United States Senator from Maryland, who’s been one of the few Democratic voices critical of Biden in the Senate, who says there’s been no change in Israel’s rules of engagement over the years.
And therefore, it was so important on multiple levels to do this film, to identify the shooter, because, of course, as you pointed out in your news headlines, Amy, they just killed a hundred Palestinians yesterday.
So this is not some old story from history where this happened in 2022 and we’re going back. Everything that happened since, you could argue, flows from that — the Americans who have been killed, the journalists who have been killed in Gaza, Palestinians, the sense of impunity that Israel has and Israel’s soldiers have.
There are reports that Israeli soldiers are saying to Palestinians, “Hey, Trump has our back. Hey, the US government has our back.” And it wasn’t just Trump. It was Joe Biden, too.
And that was why it was so important to make this film, to identify the shooter, to call out Israel’s practices when it comes to journalists, and to call out the US role.
AMY GOODMAN: I just want to go to Dion, for people who aren’t familiar with the progression of what the Biden administration said, the serious cover-up not only by Israel, but of its main military weapons supplier and supporter of its war on Gaza, and that is Joe Biden, from the beginning.
First Israel said it was a Palestinian militant. At that point, what did President Biden say?
DION NISSENBAUM: So, at the very beginning, they said that they wanted the shooter to be prosecuted. They used that word at the State Department and said, “This person who killed an American journalist should be prosecuted.” But when it started to become clear that it was probably an Israeli soldier, their tone shifted, and it became talking about vague calls for accountability or changes to the rules of engagement, which never actually happened.
So, you got to a point where the Israeli government admitted it was likely them, the US government called for them to change the rules of engagement, and the Israeli government said no. And we have this interview in the film with Senator Chris Van Hollen, who says that, essentially, Israel was giving the middle finger to the US government on this.
And we have seen, since that time, more Americans being killed in the West Bank, dozens and dozens and dozens of journalists being killed, with no accountability. And we would like to see that change.
This is a trajectory that you’re seeing. You know, the blue vest no longer provides any protection for journalists in Israel. The Israeli military itself has said that wearing a blue vest with “Press” on it does not necessarily mean that you are a journalist.
They are saying that terrorists wear blue vests, too. So, if you are a journalist operating in the West Bank now, you have to assume that the Israeli military could target you.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: Well, let’s go to another clip from the film Who Killed Shireen?, which features Ali Samoudi, Shireen Abu Akleh’s producer, who was with Shireen when she was killed, and was himself shot and injured. In the clip, he speaks to the journalist Fatima AbdulKarim.
FATIMA ABDULKARIM: We are set up here now, even though we were supposed to meet at the location where you got injured and Shireen got killed.
ALI SAMOUDI: [translated] We are five minutes from the location in Maidan al-Awdah. But you could lose your soul in the five minutes it would take us to reach it. You could be hit by army bullets. They could arrest you.
So it is essentially impossible to get there. I believe the big disaster which prevented the occupation from being punished and repeating these crimes is the neglect and indifference by many of the institutions, especially American ones, which continue to defend the occupation.
FATIMA ABDULKARIM: [translated] We’re now approaching the third anniversary of Shireen’s death. How did that affect you?
ALI SAMOUDI: [translated] During that period, the occupation was making preparations for a dangerous scenario in the Jenin refugee camp. And for this reason, they didn’t want witnesses.
They opened fire on us in order to terroriSe us enough that we wouldn’t go back to the camp. And in that sense, they partially succeeded.
Since then, we have been overcome by fear. From the moment Shireen was killed, I said and continue to say and will continue to say that this bullet was meant to prevent the Palestinian media from the documentation and exposure of the occupation’s crimes.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: That was Ali Samoudi, Shireen Abu Akleh’s producer, who was with Shireen when she was killed, and was himself shot and injured.
We should note, Ali Samoudi was just detained by Israeli forces in late April. The Palestinian journalist Mariam Barghouti recently wrote, “Ali Samoudi was beaten so bad by Israeli soldiers he was immediately hospitalised. This man has been one of the few journalists that continues reporting on Israeli military abuses north of the West Bank despite the continued risk on his life,” Mariam Barghouti wrote.
The Committee to Protect Journalists spoke to the journalist’s son, Mohammed Al Samoudi, who told CPJ, quote, “My father suffers from several illnesses, including diabetes, high blood pressure, and a stomach ulcer . . . He needs a diabetes injection every two days and a specific diet. It appears he was subjected to assault and medical neglect at the interrogation center . . .
“Our lawyer told us he was transferred to an Israeli hospital after a major setback in his health. We don’t know where he is being held, interrogated, or even the hospital to which he was taken. My father has been forcibly disappeared,” he said.
So, Dion Nissenbaum, if you could give us the latest? You spoke to Ali Samoudi for the documentary, and now he’s been detained.
DION NISSENBAUM: Yeah. His words were prophetic, right? He talks about this was an attempt to silence journalists. And my colleague Fatima says the same thing, that these are ongoing, progressive efforts to silence Palestinian journalists.
And we don’t know where Ali is. He has not actually been charged with anything yet. He is one of the most respected journalists in the West Bank. And we are just seeing this progression going on.
AMY GOODMAN: So, the latest we know is he was supposed to have a hearing, and that hearing has now been delayed to May 13th, Ali Samoudi?
DION NISSENBAUM: That’s right. And he has yet to be charged, so . . .
AMY GOODMAN:I want to go back to Lina Abu Akleh, who’s in New Jersey, where Shireen grew up. Lina, you were listed on Time magazine’s 100 emerging leaders for publicly demanding scrutiny of Israel’s treatment of Palestinians, the horror.
And again, our condolences on the death of your aunt, on the killing of your aunt, and also to Anton, Shireen’s brother. Lina, you’ve also, of course, spoken to Ali Samoudi. This continues now. He’s in detention — his son says, “just disappeared”.
What are you demanding right now? We have a new administration. We’ve moved from the Biden administration to the Trump administration. And are you in touch with them? Are they speaking to you?
LINA ABU AKLEH: Well, our demands haven’t changed. From day one, we’re calling for the US administration to complete its investigation, or for the FBI to continue its investigation, and to finally release — to finally hold someone to account.
And we have enough evidence that could have been — that the administration could have used to expedite this case. But, unfortunately, this new administration, as well, no one has spoken to us. We haven’t been in touch with anyone, and it’s just been radio silence since.
For us, as I said, our demands have never changed. It’s been always to hold the entire system to account, the entire chain of command, the military, for the killing of an American citizen, a journalist, a Palestinian, Palestinian American journalist.
As we’ve been talking, targeting journalists isn’t happening just by shooting at them or killing them. There’s so many different forms of targeting journalists, especially in Gaza and the West Bank and Jerusalem.
So, for us, it’s really important as a family that we don’t see other families experience what we are going through, for this — for impunity, for Israel’s impunity, to end, because, at the end of the day, accountability is the only way to put an end to this impunity.
AMY GOODMAN: I am horrified to ask this question to Shireen’s family members, to Lina, to Tony, Shireen’s brother, but the revelation in the film — we were all there last night at its premiere in New York — that the Israeli soldiers are using a photograph of Shireen’s face for target practice. Tony Abu Akleh, if you could respond?
ANTON ABU AKLEH: You know, there is no words to describe our sorrow and pain hearing this. But, you know, I would just want to know why. Why would they do this thing? What did Shireen do to them for them to use her as a target practice? You know, this is absolutely barbaric act, unjustified. Unjustified.
And we really hope that this US administration will be able to put an end to all this impunity they are enjoying. If they didn’t enjoy all this impunity, they wouldn’t have been doing this. Practising on a journalist? Why? You know, you can practice on anything, but on a journalist?
This shows that this targeting of more journalists, whether in Gaza, in Palestine, it’s systematic. It’s been planned for. And they’ve been targeting and shutting off those voices, those reports, from reaching anywhere in the world.
NERMEEN SHAIKH:And, Anton, if you could say — you know, you mentioned last night, as well, Shireen was, in fact, extremely cautious as a journalist. If you could elaborate on that? What precisely —
ANTON ABU AKLEH: Absolutely. Absolutely. Shireen was very careful. Every time she’s in the field, she would take her time to put on the gear, the required helmet, the vest with “press” written on it, before going there. She also tried to identify herself as a journalist, whether to the Israelis or to the Palestinians, so she’s not attacked.
And she always went by the book, followed the rules, how to act, how to be careful, how to speak to those people involved, so she can protect herself. But, unfortunately, he was — this soldier, as stated in the documentary, targeted Shireen just because she’s Shireen and she’s a journalist. That’s it. There is no other explanation.
Sixteen bullets were fired on Shireen. Not even her helmet, nor the vest she was wearing, were able to protect her, unfortunately.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: Mehdi Hasan, you wanted to respond.
MEHDI HASAN: So, Tony asks, “Why? Why would you do this? Why would you target not just a journalist in the field, but then use her face for target practice?” — as Dion and his team reveal in the film. And there is, unfortunately, a very simple answer to that question, which is that the Israeli military — and not just the Israeli military, but many people in our world today — have dehumanised Palestinians.
There is the removal of humanity from the people you are oppressing, occupying, subjugating and killing. It doesn’t matter if you’re an American citizen. It doesn’t matter if you have a press jacket on. It only matters that you are Palestinian in the sniper’s sights.
And that is how they have managed to pull of the killing of so many journalists, so many children. The first documentary we commissioned last year was called Israel’s Real Extremism, and it was about the Israeli soldiers who go into Gaza and make TikTok videos wearing Palestinian women’s underwear, playing with Palestinian children’s toys. It is the ultimate form of dehumanisation, the idea that these people don’t count, their lives have no value.
And what’s so tragic and shocking — and the film exposes this — is that Joe Biden — forget the Israeli military — Joe Biden also joined in that dehumanisation. Do you remember at the start of this conflict when he comes out and he says, “Well, I’m not sure I believe the Palestinian death toll numbers,” when he puts out a statement at the hundred days after October 7th and doesn’t mention Palestinian casualties.
And that has been the fundamental problem. This was the great comforter-in-chief. Joe Biden was supposed to be the empath. And yet, as Tony points out, what was so shocking in the film is he didn’t even raise Shireen’s case with Naftali Bennett, the prime minister of Israel at the time.
Again, would he have done that if it was an American journalist in Moscow? We know that’s not the case. We know when American journalists, especially white American journalists, are taken elsewhere in the world, the government gives a damn. And yet, in the case of Shireen, the only explanation is because she was a Palestinian American journalist.
AMY GOODMAN:You know, in the United States, the US government is responsible for American citizens, which Biden pointed out at the beginning, when he thought it was a Palestinian militant who had killed her. But, Lina, you yourself are a journalist. And I’m thinking I want to hear your response to using her face, because, of course, that is not just the face of Shireen, but I think it’s the face of journalism.
And it’s not just American journalism, of course. I mean, in fact, she’s known to hundreds of millions of people around world as the face and voice of Al Jazeera Arabic. She spoke in Arabic. She was known as that to the rest of the world. But to see that and that revealed in this documentary?
LINA ABU AKLEH: Yeah, it was horrifying, actually. And it just goes on to show how the Israeli military is built. It’s barbarism. It’s the character of revenge, of hate. And that is part of the entire system. And as Mehdi and as my father just mentioned, this is all about dehumanizing Palestinians, regardless if they’re journalists, if they’re doctors, they’re officials. For them, they simply don’t care about Palestinian lives.
And for us, Shireen will always be the voice of Palestine. And she continues to be remembered for the legacy that she left behind. And she continues to live through so many, so many journalists, who have picked up the microphone, who have picked up the camera, just because of Shireen.
So, regardless of how the Israeli military continues to dehumanise journalists and how the US fails to protect Palestinian American journalists, we will continue to push forward to continue to highlight the life and the legacy that Shireen left behind.
NERMEEN SHAIKH:Well, let’s turn to Shireen Abu Akleh in her own words. This is an excerpt from the Al Jazeera English documentary The Killing of Shireen Abu Akleh.
SHIREEN ABU AKLEH: [translated] Sometimes the Israeli army doesn’t want you there, so they target you, even if they later say it was an accident. They might say, “We saw some young men around you.” So they target you on purpose, as a way of scaring you off because they don’t want you there.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: So, that was Shireen in her own words in an Al Jazeera documentary. So, Lina, I know you have to go soon, but if you could just tell us: What do you want people to know about Shireen, as an aunt, a sister and a journalist?
LINA ABU AKLEH: Yes, so, we know Shireen as the journalist, but behind the camera, she was one of the most empathetic people. She was very sincere. And something not a lot of people know, but she was a very funny person. She had a very unique sense of humor, that she lit up every room she entered. She cared about everyone and anyone. She enjoyed life.
Shireen, at the end of the day, loved life. She had plans. She had dreams that she still wanted to achieve. But her life was cut short by that small bullet, which would change our lives entirely.
But at the end of the day, Shireen was a professional journalist who always advocated for truth, for justice. And at the end of the day, all she wanted to do was humanise Palestinians and talk about the struggles of living under occupation. But at the same time, she wanted to celebrate their achievements.
She shed light on all the happy moments, all the accomplishments of the Palestinian people. And this is something that really touched millions of Palestinians, of Arabs around the world. She was able to enter the hearts of the people through the small camera lens. And until this day, she continues to be remembered for that.
AMY GOODMAN: Before we go, we’re going to keep you on, Mehdi, to talk about other issues during the Trump administration, but how can people access Who Killed Shireen?
MEHDI HASAN: So, it’s available online at WhoKilledShireen.com, is where you can go to watch it. We are releasing the film right now only to paid subscribers. We hope to change that in the forthcoming days.
People often say to me, “How can you put it behind a paywall?” Journalism — a free press isn’t free, sadly. We have to fund films like this. Dion came to us because a lot of other people didn’t want to fund a topic like this, didn’t want to fund an investigation like this.
So, we’re proud to be able to fund such documentaries, but we also need support from our contributors, our subscribers and the viewers. But it’s an important film, and I hope as many people will watch it as possible, WhoKilledShireen.com.
AMY GOODMAN:We want to thank Lina, the niece of Shireen Abu Akleh, and Anton, Tony, the older brother of Shireen Abu Akleh, for joining us from New Jersey. Together, we saw the documentary last night, Who Killed Shireen? And we want to thank Dion Nissenbaum, who is the filmmaker, the correspondent on this film, formerly a correspondent with The Wall Street Journal. The founder of Zeteo, on this first anniversary of Zeteo, is Mehdi Hasan.
Source: People’s Republic of China in Russian – People’s Republic of China in Russian –
Source: People’s Republic of China – State Council News
BEIJING, May 10 (Xinhua) — China’s revised Marriage Registration Regulations took effect Saturday, simplifying paperwork and giving couples more flexibility.
Under the new provisions, couples will no longer need to register their relationship at their place of residence or registration, which for many years was necessary to submit marriage applications.
Now, to formalize their relationship, couples from mainland China will only need identification cards and a signed statement saying they are not currently married to anyone and have no blood relatives within three generations to the other party.
In addition, under the new provisions, couples will be able to register their marriage at any relevant authority throughout the country, regardless of where their families are registered.
The Ministry of Civil Affairs said the change also applies to couples where one of the prospective spouses is a mainland Chinese resident and the other is a foreign national, a resident of the Hong Kong and Macao Special Administrative Regions, Taiwan, or a Chinese expatriate.
Currently, couples can marry, divorce or apply for re-issuance of marriage certificates at any authorized registration authority, regardless of the place of registration of the family of one of the spouses in the mainland part of the country.
The revised provisions are part of China’s efforts to streamline government services and ease the burden on those who live and work far from their place of residence.
According to official data, 1.81 million marriages were registered in China in the first quarter of this year, down 8 percent from a year earlier.
In 2023, the country saw an increase in registered marriages after nine consecutive years of decline. However, in 2024, the downward trend resumed, with registrations falling to their lowest level since 1980. -0-
Leo, 69, formerly Cardinal Robert Prevost, is originally from Chicago, and has spent most of his career as a missionary in Peru.
He became a cardinal only in 2023 and has become the first-ever US pope.
PCC general secretary Reverend James Bhagwan said he was not a Vatican insider, but there had been talk of cardinals feeling that the new pope should be a “middle-of-the-road person”.
Reverend Bhagwan said there had been prayers for God’s wisdom to guide the decisions made at the Conclave.
“I think if we look at where the decisions perhaps were made or based on, there had been a lot of talk that the cardinals going into Conclave had felt that a new pope would need to be someone who could take forward the legacy of Pope Francis, reaching out to those in the margins, but also be a sort of a middle-of-the-road person,” he said.
Hopes for climate response Reverend Bhagwan said the Pacific hoped that Pope Leo carried on the late Pope Francis’s connection to the climate change response.
He said Pope Francis released his “laudate deum” exhortation on the climate shortly before the United Nations climate summit in Dubai last year.
“The focus on care for creation, the focus for ending fossil fuels and climate justice, the focus on people from the margins — I think that’s important for the Pacific people at this time.
“I know that the Catholic Church in the Pacific has been focused on on its synodal process, and so he spoke about synodality as well.
“I know that there were hopes for an Oceania synod, just as Pope Francis held a synod of the Amazon. And I think that is still something that’s in the hearts of many of our Catholic leaders and Catholic members.
“We hope that this will be an opportunity to still bring that focus to the Pacific.”
He said they were confident Pope Leo would pick up many of the issues Francis was well known for, like speaking up for climate change, human trafficking and the plight of refugees; and within the church, a different way of meeting and talking with one another — known as synodality — which is an ongoing process.
“I think any pope needs to be able to challenge things that are happening around the world, especially if it is affecting the lives of people, where the poor are getting poorer and the rich are getting richer.”
Pope Leo appeared to be a very calm person, he added.
This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.
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Media Contact: Company Name: IOnline Payday Loans Registered Office Address: 1095 Sugar View Dr Ste 500 Sheridan, WY 82801 Company Website: https://ionlinepaydayloans.com/ Email: mria@ionlinepaydayloans.com Phone: 307-777-7311 Contact person name: Mria
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Source: Hong Kong Government special administrative region
SLW to attend APEC Ministerial Meeting in Korea During his visit, Mr Sun will also meet with senior officials responsible for manpower and labour issues from APEC member economy governments, including Korea.
Mr Sun will return to Hong Kong on May 13. In his absence, the Under Secretary for Labour and Welfare, Mr Ho Kai-ming, will be the Acting Secretary for Labour and Welfare. Issued at HKT 12:00
Owned lab in Everett, WA that billed Medicare $8.7 million for COVID tests that were never legitimately ordered or performed
Seattle – An Indian national indicted for health care fraud will make his initial appearance today in U.S. District Court in Seattle, announced Acting U.S. Attorney Teal Luthy Miller. Mohammed Asif, 34, was arrested on April 10, 2025, at Chicago O’Hare International Airport while attempting to board an international flight. Asif is charged with health care fraud and conspiracy to commit health care fraud in connection with the operation of American Labworks LLC, a diagnostic testing laboratory in Everett, Washington. The indictment alleges that Asif conspired with others to bill Medicare for COVID-19 tests and other respiratory illness tests that had not been ordered or performed.
“Medicare provides critical funding for senior citizens’ health care needs, which makes this type of fraud all the more reprehensible,” said Acting U.S. Attorney Miller. “This case stands as an example of how federal law enforcement is working diligently to protect those critical tax dollars from fraud schemes.”
According to the indictment and an earlier-filed criminal complaint, the Washington Secretary of State has American Labworks being formed in October 2021 and dissolved in March 2025. Washington Department of Health records indicate that its license as a Medical Test Site expired in December 2023. Asif is listed in filings with the state and with Medicare as the owner and director of American Labworks.
Claims data from April 2024 to December 2024 show that American Labworks billed Medicare more than $8.7 million for laboratory testing services, including for COVID-19 testing. Medicare paid out over $1.1 million to the lab.
Between June 2024 and March 2025, Medicare received more than 200 complaints from enrollees and others about American Labworks. Many of these complainants reported that Medicare was billed for testing that was never received. For example, one Medicare enrollee noted that Medicare paid American Labworks $545 for COVID-19 tests in August 2023 and March 2024. But the beneficiary had never had any COVID-19 tests on those dates. Multiple Medicare beneficiaries said they too had seen bills for tests that never occurred. Physicians who had allegedly ordered the tests said they had not sent patients to American Labworks, and many patients said they had never heard of the referring physician listed in the records.
In some instances, the billing records indicated a beneficiary’s testing date of service occurred after other records indicated the beneficiary was dead. And in other instances, the physician who allegedly referred the patient for testing was dead at the time of the date of service.
Financial records indicate Mohammed Asif received multiple checks and made withdrawals from the American Labworks bank account, which he controlled. In May 2024, he withdrew $260,000 from the American Labworks checking account. Soon after that Asif, who had been in the U.S. on a student visa, retuned to India. He came back to the U.S. in March 2025 as investigators were unraveling the fraud. Prosecutors and special agents with the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Office of Inspector General (HHS-OIG) and Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) moved quickly to draft the criminal complaint and take Asif into custody. A grand jury then returned the indictment of Asif on April 23.
Asif is alleged to have conspired with other people to accomplish the fraud. Those coconspirators are not named in the criminal complaint or indictment. The government’s investigation is ongoing.
“By all appearances, there is nothing legitimate about Mr. Asif’s company.” said W. Mike Herrington, Special Agent in Charge of the FBI’s Seattle field office. “Mr. Asif, along with his co-conspirators, used this apparently illegitimate company to fraudulently bill Medicare almost $9 million for tests that were never done. When we receive allegations such as these, the FBI and our partners will aggressively investigate potential fraud against the US taxpayer.”
“Through this scheme to fraudulently bill Medicare for laboratory testing services never furnished, the defendant diverted taxpayer money that was meant to pay for legitimate medical services,” said Acting Special Agent in Charge Robb Breeden of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Office of Inspector General (HHS-OIG). “HHS-OIG will continue to work with our law enforcement partners to hold accountable those who exploit federal health care programs for their own personal gain.”
Health care fraud and conspiracy to commit health care fraud are punishable by up to ten years in prison and a fine of up to $250,000.
The charges contained in the indictment are only allegations. A person is presumed innocent unless and until he or she is proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt in a court of law.
The case is being investigated by HHS-OIG and the FBI.
The case is being prosecuted by Assistant United States Attorney Philip Kopczynski.
SAN DIEGO – The United States has filed a civil complaint alleging that two brothers fraudulently obtained more than $8 million in pandemic-related loans by lying on applications and claiming funds for three businesses that don’t exist.
The loans were issued through the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP), which was part of the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act, a federal law enacted in March 2020 designed to provide emergency financial assistance to the millions of Americans suffering the economic effects caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. The PPP offered relief by authorizing hundreds of billions of dollars in potentially-forgivable loans to small businesses for job retention and certain other expenses.
The loan applications required the borrower to certify the type of business, the number of employees the business supported, and that the business was in operation as of February 15, 2020. Borrowers were eligible to seek forgiveness of the loans if they spent the loan proceeds on employee payroll and other eligible expenses.
The civil complaint alleges that between March 25, 2021, and April 28, 2021, brothers Duraid A. Zaia and Kusay Karana obtained four PPP loans for four businesses, two purportedly owned by Zaia and two by Karana. The complaint alleges that the businesses were either non-existent or were grossly exaggerated in size. The complaint alleges that Zaia and Karana obtained approximately $8.3 million dollars in PPP loans through those fraudulent applications.
In one example, the complaint alleges that Zaia applied for a PPP loan for a business called “Ramona Egg Ranch.” The complaint describes how Zaia certified in his application that this business employed 75 people and had annual payroll costs exceeding $9.5 million. But, according to the complaint, federal income tax returns that Zaia submitted in support of that loan reported annual payroll costs of just $62,848.
In another example the complaint alleges that soon after Zaia submitted the Ramona Egg Ranch application, he submitted a second application for a business called “The Duriad A. Zaia Sole Proprietorship.” The complaint describes how Zaia certified that the business employed 137 people and that it was established in 2016. But, according to the complaint, the business could not have operated at all in 2020 because it did not have an Employer Identification Number (EIN) until March 30, 2021. As the complaint explains, without an EIN a business could not legally pay employees because it would not have a tax identification number to report employee wages, payroll taxes, or its own income taxes.
The complaint also alleges that Zaia and Karana bolstered their loans by fabricating lists of employees who worked at their businesses. The complaint asserts that the lists of employees are fraudulent because they show a large percentage of employees simultaneously working at two or more different businesses on a full-time basis. In one example, the complaint describes how Zaia submitted a list of 108 employees that supposedly worked at one of Zaia’s businesses, and Karana submitted a list of 110 employees that supposedly worked at one of Karana’s businesses. But 41 people with the same name and the same full-time equivalent salary appeared on both lists.
The complaint alleges that after Zaia and Karana were denied forgiveness of their loans and then defaulted on all their loans, the United States, through the Small Business Administration (SBA), repaid the lenders that issued the loans. The complaint asserts that taken together, the principal, interest, and processing fees for the brothers’ loans resulted in a loss of over $8.6 million to the United States.
The United States’ complaint asserts that Zaia and Karana violated the False Claims Act (FCA). The United States filed its complaint after it intervened in a lawsuit filed by a private citizen against Zaia and the Ramona Egg Ranch. Under its so-called qui tam provisions, the FCA allows private citizens with knowledge of fraud against the federal government to sue on behalf of the government and potentially receive a portion of recovered funds.
“COVID-relief programs were designed to help people and businesses under extreme financial stress during the pandemic,” said U.S. Attorney Adam Gordon. “This complaint seeks to hold accountable those who took advantage of those programs by fraud. My office will continue to pursue those who knowingly cheat taxpayers by abusing the Paycheck Protection Program and other pandemic-related programs.”
“Intentional misrepresentation to gain access to SBA program funds intended for the nation’s small businesses will not be tolerated,” said SBA OIG’s Western Region Assistant Special Agent in Charge Jonathan Huang. “Our Office will remain relentless in the pursuit of wrongdoers who seek to exploit SBA’s vital economic programs. I want to thank the U.S. Attorney’s Office, and our law enforcement partners for their dedication and commitment to seeing justice served.”
This case is being handled by Assistant U.S. Attorney Stephen H. Wong of the Civil Division of the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of California. Anyone with information about allegations of attempted fraud involving COVID-19 can report it by calling the Department of Justice’s National Center for Disaster Fraud (NCDF) Hotline at 866-720-5721 or via the NCDF Web Complaint Form at: https://www.justice.gov/disaster-fraud/ncdf-disaster-complaint-form.
The complaint contains allegations of unlawful conduct; the allegations must be proven in federal court.
IMO, this sounds like an expression of sorrow and regret about the conflict, and about the evils it is feeding and fostering. Regardless, the institute has described that comment by Davis as antisemitic.
“‘You cannot claim to champion social cohesion while minimising or rationalising antisemitic hate,’ the institute said. ‘Social trust depends on moral consistency, especially from those in leadership. Peter Davis’s actions erode that trust.’”
For the record, Davis wasn’t rationalising or minimising antisemitic hate. His comments look far more like a legitimate observation that the longer the need for a political-diplomatic solution is violently resisted, the worse things will be for everyone — including Jewish citizens, via the stoking of antisemitism.
The basic point at issue here is that criticisms of the actions of the Israeli government do not equate to a racist hostility to the Jewish people. (Similarly, the criticisms of Donald Trump’s actions cannot be minimised or rationalised as due to anti-Americanism.)
Appalled by Netanyahu actions Many Jewish people in fact, also feel appalled by the actions of the Netanyahu government, which repeatedly violate international law.
In the light of the extreme acts of violence being inflicted daily by the IDF on the people of Gaza, the upsurge in hateful graffiti by neo-Nazi opportunists while still being vile, is hardly surprising.
Around the world, the security of innocent Israeli citizens is being recklessly endangered by the ultra-violent actions of their own government.
If you want to protect your citizens from an existing fire, it’s best not to toss gasoline on the flames.
To repeat: the vast majority of the current criticisms of the Israeli state have nothing whatsoever to do with antisemitism. At a time when Israel is killing scores of innocent Palestinians on a nightly basis with systematic air strikes and the shelling of civilian neighbourhoods, when it is weaponising access to humanitarian aid as an apparent tool of ethnic cleansing, when it is executing medical staff and assassinating journalists, when it is killing thousands of children and starving the survivors . . . antisemitism is not the reason why most people oppose these evils. Common humanity demands it.
Ironically, the press release by the NZ Israel Institute concludes with these words: “There must be zero tolerance for hate in any form.” Too bad the institute seems to have such a limited capacity for self-reflection.
Footnote One: For the best part of 80 years, the world has felt sympathy to Jews in recognition of the Holocaust. The genocide now being committed in Gaza by the Netanyahu government cannot help but reduce public support for Israel.
It also cannot help but erode the status of the Holocaust as a unique expression of human evil.
One would have hoped the NZ Israel Institute might acknowledge the self-defeating nature of the Netanyahu government policies — if only because, on a daily basis, the state of Israel is abetting its enemies, and alienating its friends.
Footnote Two: As yet, the so-called Free Speech Union has not come out to support the free speech rights of Peter Davis, and to rebuke the NZ Israel Institute for trying to muzzle them.
Colour me not surprised.
This is a section of Gordon Campbell’s Scoop column published yesterday under the subheading “Pot Calls Out Kettle”; the main portion of the column about the new Pope is here. Republished by Asia Pacific Report with permission.
Source: People’s Republic of China in Russian – People’s Republic of China in Russian –
Source: People’s Republic of China – State Council News
BEIJING, May 10 (Xinhua) — China urges India and Pakistan to act in the interests of peace and stability and maintain composure and restraint, a Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson said Saturday when asked to comment on the escalating tensions between the two countries.
Pakistan reportedly claimed that India had struck the Nur Khan airbase and other targets in the early hours of May 10. Pakistan, in turn, announced a retaliatory strike and launched an operation called Banyan-ul-Marsoos.
The Chinese side has been closely monitoring the developments in the situation between India and Pakistan and is deeply concerned about the escalation. China urges both sides to act in the interests of peace and stability, maintain composure and restraint, return to the track of political settlement through peaceful means, and refrain from any actions that may further escalate tensions, the Chinese diplomat said.
“This is in line with the fundamental interests of India and Pakistan, will benefit stability and peace in the region, and is in line with the common expectations of the international community. China is willing to continue to play a constructive role in this direction,” the Chinese Foreign Ministry added. -0-
Source: People’s Republic of China – State Council News
Xinhua | 10. 05. 2025
Keywords: PRC, Luis Inacio Lula, Lula, Brazil, Silva, the creation of the Workers’ Party, the Brazilian state of Pernambuco, the beginning of his, state visit, year, January, participated, term, Silva, was born, will visit
BEIJING, May 10 (Xinhua) — At the invitation of Chinese President Xi Jinping, Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva will pay a state visit to China from May 10 to 14.
L. I. Lula da Silva was born on October 27, 1945 in the Brazilian state of Pernambuco. At the beginning of his political career, he led the labor movement and participated in the creation of the Workers’ Party, and was a member of the Chamber of Deputies of Brazil.
In October 2002, L. I. Lula do Silva was elected as the 35th President of Brazil and re-elected in 2006. In October 2022, he was elected to a third presidential term and took office on January 1, 2023. –0–
Source: Xinhua
Biography of the President of Brazil Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva Biography of the President of Brazil Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva
The monarchy is a dated and undemocratic institution.
More in Scottish Independence
Maintaining the royal family is becoming increasingly unjustifiable, says the Scottish Greens Co-Leader, Patrick Harvie MSP.
Mr Harvie’s calls for the monarchy to be abolished come ahead of a Republic Day protest in Edinburgh, where he will be speaking alongside his Green colleague Maggie Chapman and campaigners from across the political spectrum.
The event, hosted by Our Republic, is held against the backdrop of increasing inequality in the country as many struggle with household bills, UK Government’s decision to cut social security for disabled people, and the axing of pensioner’s winter fuel payments.
While the UK Government has struggled to stem the tide of the cost-of-living, the royal family has seen their wealth go from strength to strength in recent times.
Several nations across the commonwealth are already reassessing their relationship with the crown and the Greens Co-Leader is making the case for Scotland to follow suit.
Mr Harvie said:
“There is no place in modern Scotland for the monarchy.
“Our society is experiencing widespread inequality, with the cost of living crisis continuing to push many to the brink. However, it seems the royal family has never had it so good.
“The taxpayer-funded sovereign grant rises year on year. They don’t pay capital gains tax, they don’t pay corporation tax and they’re exempt from stamp duty. They have received millions of pounds of income in rent from the NHS, schools and the armed forces for operating on the vast swathes of land that they own.
“It is completely at odds with the struggles faced by some of our most vulnerable communities. We should not have a system that only benefits the super-rich, while leaving the rest of us to pick up the bill.
“The monarchy is a profoundly outdated and undemocratic institution. We must have a serious conversation about the country we see ourselves as.
“The idea that we should show this preference for one unaccountable family, who take far more from society than they give, is the exact opposite image of Scotland I would like to see. I believe we can do so much better for the people living in our country.
“Scotland has the potential to be a modern independent democratic republic. It can be a greener and fairer country that redistributes the wealth hoarded by monarchy and the rest of the super-rich, and uses it to the benefit of the many people who are struggling.
“Ultimately, it should be the people of Scotland who are sovereign and I will continue to make the case that with the powers of independence we can tackle the profound inequality that is highlighted by the lifestyle that the royals enjoy.”
Source: People’s Republic of China – State Council News
BEIJING, May 10 (Xinhua) — Chinese President Xi Jinping recently published an article entitled “Lessons from the Past for the Future” in the Rossiyskaya Gazeta newspaper, stressing the need to learn from history, draw wisdom and strength from the profound experience of World War II and the great victory in the World Anti-Fascist War, resolutely oppose all forms of hegemonism and power politics, and jointly create a better future for humanity.
Representatives of many countries told Xinhua that in this article, the Chinese leader, based on the common interests of all mankind, looks at both the past and the present and puts forward a series of important proposals. Today, when unilateralism, hegemonism, tyranny and bullying have become serious threats, all countries in the world should stand on the right side of history, the side of justice, resolutely safeguard the post-war world order, firmly uphold international justice and work together for a bright future for mankind.
“TO PROTECT HISTORICAL TRUTH, WE MUST WORK HARD”
On the occasion of the 80th anniversary of the Victory of the Chinese People in the War of Resistance against Japanese Aggression and the Victory of the Soviet Union in the Great Patriotic War, Chinese President Xi Jinping emphasized that holding a correct view of the history of World War II is of great practical importance. In his opinion piece, the Chinese leader quoted a line from the well-known Soviet song “Katyusha”: “Apple and pear trees were in bloom.” This not only reminded us of the shared historical memory of the two peoples who fought shoulder to shoulder in World War II, but also that Russian-Chinese friendship has only grown stronger,” said Alexei Rodionov, a sinologist and professor at St. Petersburg State University.
“The air raid sirens for the victims of the Nanjing Massacre still sound, and the railway tracks in front of the Auschwitz concentration camp still gleam coldly,” said Virun Phichaiwonphakdee, director of the Thailand-China Belt and Road Studies Center. “Historical memory and truth that are not erased by time provide us with inspiration and lessons, always reminding us of reality and pointing the way to the future,” he quoted Xi Jinping as saying. “Victory in World War II was achieved at the cost of blood and sacrifice. Protecting history is not only respecting history, but also protecting justice in the modern world,” the expert noted.
“Any attempt to distort the historical truth about World War II and deny the victory in World War II will not succeed. The people of the world will not tolerate attempts to turn back history,” said Japanese biological weapons expert, Professor Emeritus of Shiga Medical University Kazuo Nishiyama. He fully agrees that humanity should draw wisdom and strength from the profound lessons of World War II and the great victory in the anti-fascist war. “In order to protect the historical truth, it is still necessary to work tirelessly to prevent the repetition of tragedies in the future,” the scientist believes.
“World War II is a tragedy for all of humanity. We must tell history in a comprehensive and truthful manner, deeply understand the atrocities of war, and strengthen education for peace,” said Pawel Machcewicz, founding director of the Museum of World War II in Gdansk, Poland.
“For Serbia, Xi Jinping’s article carries an important message: defending the truth requires great efforts. The state visit of President Xi Jinping to Russia is such an effort,” said Aleksandar Mitic, a research fellow at the Serbian Institute of International Politics and Economics. “Unfortunately, we still see how certain Western forces are trying to downplay the enormous sacrifices and contributions of China, Russia, Serbia and other countries to the historic victory over fascism and militarism, but these attempts are doomed to failure,” he said.
According to French entrepreneur and commentator Arnaud Bertrand, Xi Jinping’s article contains many profound thoughts, especially when he compares the past and the present, points out that humanity is once again at a crossroads of “solidarity or division, dialogue or confrontation, win-win or zero-sum game,” and declares the need to resolutely defend the post-war international order and the authority of the UN. “President Xi Jinping’s opinion piece is a window into China’s contemporary strategic thinking. As a defender of the post-war world order, China is committed to countering hegemonic forces and is an important power that upholds the multilateral system and international law,” A. Bertrand noted.
“CHINA, AS THE MAIN THEATER OF MILITARY OPERATIONS IN THE EAST, MADE AN OUTSTANDING CONTRIBUTION TO THE VICTORY IN WORLD WAR II”
In his opinion article, Xi Jinping emphasized that, as the main theaters of military operations in Asia and Europe, China and the Soviet Union bore the brunt of the attacks of militaristic Japan and Nazi Germany, and made a decisive contribution to the victory in the World Anti-Fascist War. The international community generally believes that the victory on the main eastern front completely destroyed the ambitions of militarism and fascism and was of great global significance.
“The victory was achieved thanks to the joint efforts of the anti-Hitler coalition, and the USSR and China were its most important part,” emphasized the scientific secretary of the Victory Museum in Moscow Boris Cheltsov. According to him, the peoples of the USSR and China fought shoulder to shoulder against fascism and militarism, supporting each other. As the main theater of military operations in the East, China made an invaluable contribution to the final defeat of Japanese militarism and the victory over fascism due to the enormous sacrifice of the entire people.
Guzel Maitdinova, Director of the Center for Geopolitical Studies at the Russian-Tajik /Slavonic/ University, noted that China has always been the main force in the fight against Japanese militarism, and most of the Japanese army was held back on the Chinese front. The Chinese people, having made enormous sacrifices, held the main eastern front and made an outstanding contribution to the victory in World War II, she added.
“Without China, World War II might not have ended in 1945,” said Faruk Borić, chairman of the Bosnian-Chinese Friendship Association. According to him, the front in China effectively held back the Japanese invaders and provided valuable time for victory in Europe, playing an important role in the global fight against fascism. He also noted that as a permanent member of the UN Security Council, China has always actively supported the multilateral order, firmly upholding the international system with the UN as the core and the world order based on international law. “China’s respect for history makes it an indispensable force in maintaining world peace,” the expert said.
President Xi Jinping has emphasized that Taiwan’s return to China is an important part of the outcome of World War II and the post-war world order. Gu Xuewu, Director of the Center for Global Studies at the University of Bonn in Germany, noted that Taiwan’s return was one of the outcomes of the victory in World War II and was widely recognized by the international community. Undermining these outcomes would seriously disrupt the existing world order.
Muhab Nassar, an associate professor of international law at Cairo University, said China’s sovereignty over Taiwan is a legally justified and recognized fact. Xi Jinping’s opinion piece once again expressed a firm position: the Taiwan issue concerns China’s fundamental interests, which China will not compromise under any circumstances.
“TO ACHIEVE UNIVERSAL DEVELOPMENT AND PROSPERITY, THE WORLD NEEDS JUSTICE, NOT HEGEMONY”
In his opinion article, President Xi Jinping stated that today’s world still faces a growing deficit in peace, development, security and governance. The vision of a community with a shared future for humanity, the Global Development Initiative, the Global Security Initiative and the Global Civilization Initiative are designed to address this deficit, actively participate and join forces with other countries in advancing the reform of the global governance system through the prism of justice and fairness.
Akkan Suver, chairman of Turkey’s Marmara Group Foundation for Strategic and Social Research, said the three global initiatives proposed by Xi Jinping “represent a fair concept of global governance that truly protects multilateralism.” “Amid the rise of unilateralism, China firmly opposes any form of hegemony and power politics, and is committed to upholding the international order and norms that serve the interests of developing countries. In the face of multiple conflicts, the world needs dialogue and cooperation rather than division, and global development needs reason and conscience rather than dictate,” he said.
General Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Kurdistan operating in Iraq Kawa Mahmud fully agrees with Xi Jinping’s statement that “the world needs justice, not hegemony.” He noted that today’s world still suffers from manifestations of hegemonism and power politics, which only increases uncertainty in the international situation. “To achieve universal development and prosperity, the world needs justice, not hegemony. Only a fair and rational system of global governance can meet the interests of all countries. The formation of a multipolar world based on mutual respect and mutual benefit has become the consensus of most states,” the politician emphasized.
“The Middle East has long been an arena of instability, from the war in Iraq to the Syrian crisis, the conflict in Yemen and the Palestinian-Israeli issue. The peace deficit is only getting worse,” said Abdullah al-Dosari, editor-in-chief of the Kuwaiti newspaper Al-Arab, after reading Xi Jinping’s article. “The concept of a community with a common destiny for humanity that he proposed, the emphasis on dialogue rather than confrontation, on partnership rather than the creation of blocs, on mutually beneficial cooperation rather than a zero-sum game – all of this is important for ensuring peace and stability in the region,” the editor-in-chief is confident.
Qaiser Nawab, Chairman of Pakistan’s Belt and Road Organization for Sustainable Development, said President Xi Jinping had deeply revealed China’s understanding of the world order, emphasizing dialogue, common development and respect for diversity, and calling for a more inclusive and fair international governance system. He said China’s three global initiatives are helping to shape a fairer and more inclusive world.
“In his article, President Xi Jinping noted that light will dispel darkness, and justice will ultimately triumph over evil. This is not only a profound summary of the historical lessons of World War II, but also a reflection of the realities of the modern world: peace and justice do not come naturally, they must be firmly defended,” said Chuan Keng Koon, director of the Sun Yat-sen Centre of the Penang Science Society (Malaysia). “Today, when we recall that history, we do not do so for the sake of inciting hatred, but to gain wisdom and strength. By learning from the past, we resolutely oppose hegemonism and power politics, and always uphold the path of peace, development and mutually beneficial cooperation,” the expert emphasized. –0–
Source: People’s Republic of China – State Council News
China strongly urges India and Pakistan to act in the larger interest of peace and stability and exercise calm and restraint, a Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson said on Saturday.
The spokesperson made the remarks when asked to comment on the escalating tension between India and Pakistan.
According to media reports, Pakistan said India hit targets including the Nur Khan air base on the early morning of May 10. Pakistan has vowed to resolutely strike back and launched “Operation Bunyan-ul-Marsoos.”
Noting that China is closely following the ongoing situation between India and Pakistan and is deeply concerned about the escalation, the spokesperson said China strongly urges both sides to act in the larger interest of peace and stability, exercise calm and restraint, return to the track of political settlement through peaceful means, and refrain from any action that could further escalate tensions.
“This will be important for the fundamental interest of both India and Pakistan, and for a stable and peaceful region. This is also what the international community hopes to see,” said the spokesperson, adding that China is willing to continue to play a constructive role to this end.
Source: People’s Republic of China – State Council News
The 13th batch of emergency humanitarian assistance dispatched by the Chinese government was handed over to Myanmar on Saturday in Yangon.
The aid supplies included 1,576 prefabricated houses, which were accepted by Yangon Region Minister for Natural Resources U Zaw Win.
A 7.9-magnitude earthquake struck Myanmar on March 28. As of May 9, the earthquake has claimed around 3,800 lives and injured over 5,100 people, with around 100 others remaining unaccounted for, according to Myanmar’s official data.
Secretary for Labour & Welfare Chris Sun will depart for Jeju, Korea, tomorrow to attend the Seventh Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) Human Resources Development Ministerial Meeting.
During his visit, Mr Sun will also meet senior officials responsible for manpower and labour issues from APEC member economy governments, including Korea.
Mr Sun will return to Hong Kong on May 13. In his absence, Under Secretary for Labour & Welfare Ho Kai-ming will be the Acting Secretary.