IDF official admits ‘extensive collateral damage’ in Gaza camp strike
What do we know about the Maghazi strike?
David Gritten
BBC News
According to the UN Human Rights Office, the Israeli Air Force reportedly carried out more than 50 strikes across central Gaza on Sunday and Monday, including on Maghazi refugee camp.
Two strikes hit seven residential buildings in Maghazi, killing an estimated 86 Palestinians and injuring many more, the UN statement said. An unknown number of people were also believed to be trapped under the rubble.
Another UN organisation said the affected houses belonged to the Qandil, Abu Ahed, Abu Hamida, Abu Rahma, Si-Salem and al-Nawasra families.
Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) also said a hospital in the central town of Deir al-Balah had admitted 209 injured and 131 dead following bombings on Sunday night in Maghazi and the nearby Bureij refugee camp.
Three defence industry leaders removed from China advisory body
Departures are part of purge of figures linked to military, thought to be related to a procurement investigation
Three senior aerospace and defence business leaders have been removed from a top political advisory body to the Chinese Communist party (CCP), in the latest purge of figures linked to China’s military.
State media reported that the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC) had revoked the seats of Liu Shiqian, the chair of the weapons manufacturer China North Industries Group; Wu Yansheng, the chair of China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation; and Wang Changqing, a deputy manager of the state-owned China Aerospace Science and Industry Corporation (Casic).
The CPPCC is a government advisory body that consists of CCP delegates and representatives from industry groups.
India: Pegasus spyware used to target jorunalists — reports
Amnesty International has found evidence of journalists in India being targeted with Pegasus spyware. The discovery comes amid what the rights group claims is a “targeted crackdown on freedom of expression.”
High-profile journalists in India have been targeted with the invasive spyware Pegasus, according to a report published by Amnesty International on Thursday.
The civil rights watchdog carried out forensic investigations on the iPhones belonging to Siddharth Varadarajan, the founding editor of The Wire, and Anand Mangnale, the South Asia editor of The Organized Crime and Corruption Report Project (OCCRP).
“Our latest findings show that increasingly, journalists in India face the threat of unlawful surveillance simply for doing their jobs, alongside other tools of repression including imprisonment under draconian laws, smear campaigns, harassment, and intimidation,” Donncha O Cearbhaill, the head of Amnesty’s Security Lab, said.
Women’s rights and women wronged in 2023
The year saw progress on women’s rights in some countries, such as Spain’s introduction of menstrual leave, France’s bid to enshrine abortion rights in the constitution and the arrival of the #MeToo movement in Taiwan. But there were also setbacks in 2023, from Taliban edicts tightening restrictions on Afghan women to what the UN called a “global epidemic of femicide”.
The year 2022 was marked by major convulsions in women’s rights across the world, from the US Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe v. Wade to the “Woman, life, freedom” chants in Iran, which were followed by a massive government crackdown.
This year saw more gradual developments, from the continuing assaults on and pushback against diminishing abortion rights in the US to the steady disappearance of women from public life in Afghanistan.
FRANCE 24 looks back at some of the major developments in 2023 that left their mark on women’s rights across the world.
Japanese government overrides Okinawa objection to Henoko work
The central government on Thursday gave the green light for a modified landfill plan that will see a key U.S. military base moved within Okinawa Prefecture, taking the unprecedented step of overriding the local government’s objection to the plan.
The Defense Ministry will commence work to reinforce soft ground at the relocation site for U.S. Marine Corps Air Station Futenma as early as Jan. 12, a government source said.
The approval is “a milestone” for the total transfer of the Futenma air base as early as possible, Defense Minister Minoru Kihara told reporters.
Leader of Sudan’s RSF visits Ethiopia in rare foreign trip as war rages
The trip by the paramilitary group’s leader comes a week after his forces captured the North African nation’s second largest city.
The leader of Sudan’s paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF), General Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, has visited neighbouring Ethiopia, where he has had discussions on the end of the war between the RSF and Sudan’s army.
Dagalo, known as “Hemedti”, landed in Ethiopia’s capital, Addis Ababa, on Thursday in the second stop of his first known public foreign trip since the war erupted on April 15.
The trip comes weeks after RSF fighters captured the country’s second-largest city, Wad Madani, once a hub for hundreds of thousands of people displaced by the eight-month war.
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