Looking into the eyes of an orphan in Gaza
20-month-old Amir Taha lies silently on the bed – his fluffy hair sticking up, his baby soft skin violated by a raw, jagged wound across his forehead. Purple bruises swell around one of his big brown eyes.
He’s an orphan now, his aunt says, with his parents and two of his siblings killed in an Israeli strike – one attack in the devastating war on Hamas in Gaza that Israel launched after militants carried out murderous cross-border raids targeting Israeli civilians on October 7.
Amir’s loss adds to the overwhelming human toll in the tiny territory of Gaza where more than 18,000 people have been killed, according to the Hamas-run Ministry of Health in Gaza.
Fifa, Meta and Tesco ‘most linked’ to alleged corporate migrant worker abuse
Human rights report also identifies over 90 worker deaths in different sectors around the world in the past year mainly linked to health and safety breaches
At least 90 migrant workers were reported to have died from alleged corporate abuse or neglect in the past year, but the number of deaths not publicly reported is probably much higher, according to data from the Business & Human Rights Resource Centre (BHRRC), a non-government organisation.
“Migrant workers are subjected to a range of human rights abuses – often facilitated by government regulations and permitted to continue by multinationals at the top of supply chains, who are failing to monitor, investigate and remedy abuse sufficiently,” said Isobel Archer, senior migrant rights researcher at BHRRC.
Kosovo court upholds rebel commander’s war crimes conviction
Former Kosovo Liberation Army commander Salih Mustafa has failed in his appeal of a torture and murder conviction at the special tribunal in The Hague, but has seen his jail time reduced.
The Kosovo court in The Hague on Thursday rejected the appeal of former rebel commander Salih Mustafa, who in 2022 was found guilty of torture and murder in the tribunal’s landmark first conviction.
The court, known formally as the Kosovo Specialist Chambers, upheld Mustafa’s convictions for arbitrary detention, torture, and murder but reduced his sentence by four years, meaning he now has a jail term of 22 years.
During Kosovo’s 1998-99 conflict with Serbia, Mustafa, 51, then a Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) guerrilla commander, ran a makeshift torture center where fellow ethnic Albanians accused of spying for Serb forces were detained, beaten and tortured, with one detainee dying.
Panel urges Japan to prep for digital yen that coexists with cash
Japan should make preparations to issue a digital yen “without delay” and treat it as legal tender that would coexist with cash, a government panel of experts said.
The nine-member panel under the Finance Ministry said any central bank digital currency, or a digital yen, should be usable “by anyone, anytime and anywhere” and compatible with other private companies’ digital payment services.
Currently, Japan does not have specific plans to introduce a digital yen. However, the Bank of Japan has launched a pilot program to study the feasibility of implementing such a currency.
Russia-Ukraine war: Putin tells Russia his war objectives are unchanged
By George Wright, Vitaliy Shevchenko & Paul Kirby BBC News
Russian President Vladimir Putin has said peace with Ukraine will only take place “when we achieve our objectives”.
He was fielding questions from journalists and ordinary Russians in his first marathon news conference since the full-scale invasion of Ukraine began in February 2022.
Much of the largely choreographed event focused on what he calls the “special military operation in Ukraine”.
He insisted the situation was improving throughout the front line.
The “direct line” programme, televised for more than four hours by most major channels, began with President Putin telling Russians: “The existence of our country without sovereignty is impossible. It will simply not exist.”
He added that Russia’s economy was strong for a time of war and the topic of conversation quickly moved to Ukraine.
Guyana, Venezuela, 11bn barrels of oil – and six centuries of colonial conflict
Maduro’s annexation threat is only the latest move on a chessboard stretching back to the 15th century. The outcome could reverberate throughout Latin America and the Caribbean
It is a precipitous moment for Venezuela and Guyana this week as they meet to address the longstanding dispute over the Essequibo region. Leaders from both nations have said they will come to the table with the Brazilian president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, the St Vincent and Grenadines prime minister Ralph Gonsalves, and the UN secretary general António Guterres.
In recent weeks, the two have seemed to be drawing closer to conflict. Venezuela has threatened to annex the densely forested Essequibo region, which constitutes two-thirds of Guyana’s territory, after holding a referendum to seek support. While the Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro’s pseudo-referendum further exposed his disregard for international law, both countries are reenacting what was a colonial conflict between the British and the Spanish.
The prevailing western sentiment asserts that slavery, indentureship and colonialism are mere relics of the past, holding no sway over the future. Such a stance, characterised by intellectual laziness, belies the historical threads woven through the Caribbean islands – a constellation of minuscule paradises whose tumultuous pasts continue to reverberate.
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