Six In The Morning Monday 19 February 2024

 

Israeli soldiers fire at Palestinians approaching aid trucks in Gaza

The humanitarian situation in the Gaza Strip is growing worse by the day, but not much aid is allowed in.

Desperate Palestinians rushing toward aid trucks to fetch food in central Gaza were forced to flee after Israeli troops opened fire on them amid the rapidly deteriorating humanitarian situation in the enclave.

Footage verified by Al Jazeera shows hundreds of Palestinians in Gaza City in the central part of the besieged enclave running to get food items delivered by the United Nations in boxes on the back of trucks as bullets are fired.

“Desperate and hungry Palestinians are running out of options. Under Israeli sniper fire, they are risking their lives to reach one of the few aid trucks entering Gaza City,” said Al Jazeera’s Tareq Abu Azzoum, reporting from Rafah in southern Gaza.

A Palestinian man speaking to Al Jazeera said people lack the minimum necessities of life.

‘The Iranian regime holds all the cards’: children of jailed Nobel winner on learning to live without their mother

Human rights activist Narges Mohammadi has been in prison in Iran for most of her children’s lives. Now living as exiles in Paris, they say they will never lose hope of seeing her again

Last December, just an hour or so after she stood on the world stage to accept the Nobel peace prize for her mother, Iranian human rights activist Narges Mohammadi, 17-year-old Kiana Rahmani found herself staring at the outline of a cell taped on the floor of the Nobel Peace Center in Oslo.

Part of an exhibition commemorating what the Nobel committee described as Mohammadi’s “fight to promote human rights and freedom for all”, the tape marked the dimensions of her mother’s isolation cell in the notorious Evin prison in Tehran. Roughly 2 metres by 3 metres, it was about the size of a car parking space.

Japan aims high with climate bonds for clean tech and energy

Faced with the climate crisis, Japan is betting on its biggest strength — technology. The country is the first in the world to issue sovereign bonds aimed at funneling private money into the green transition.

Japan is selling climate bonds — last week saw the government auction off 800 billion yen ($5.33 billion, €4.95 billion) in 10-year bonds, with the next tranche planned for later this month. And that is only the beginning. The authorities hope to sell sovereign bonds worth 20 trillion yen in total to fund the country’s green transition, which is often referred to in Japan as GX.

The Asian country is the first and so far the only country in the world to offer sovereign bonds for funding the reforms targeted toward tackling climate change. These government-issued debt securities are being sold to private investors. The investors are entitled to periodic interest payments and the full nominal value of the bond several years from now.

Tribal bloodshed shines spotlight on Papua New Guinea’s domestic security issues

A tribal clash in Papua New Guinea’s remote highlands in which more than 20 people were shot dead on Sunday has put a growing internal security problem under the microscope in the strategically vital South Pacific island nation that has garnered closer military attention from the United States and China.

Julian Assange: His wife says he would not survive US jail if extradited

By Paul Gribben
BBC News
Julian Assange’s wife says the WikiLeaks founder would not survive being extradited from the UK to the US.
 
His final appeal will be heard at the High Court on Tuesday and Stella Assange says he is physically and mentally extremely weak.
She told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme that “this could very well be the final hearing for Julian”.
Mr Assange is wanted in the US on espionage charges and faces up to 175 years in prison.
The case is about him publishing thousands of classified documents in 2010 and 2011, which American authorities say broke the law and endangered lives.
He argues that the case against him is politically motivated.

Solemn monument to Japanese American WWII detainees lists more than 125,000 names

By AKIRA OLIVIA KUMAMOTO
 

Samantha Sumiko Pinedo and her grandparents file into a dimly lit enclosure at the Japanese American National Museum and approach a massive book splayed open to reveal columns of names. Pinedo is hoping the list includes her great-grandparents, who were detained in Japanese American incarceration camps during World War II.

“For a lot of people, it feels like so long ago because it was World War II. But I grew up with my Bompa (great-grandpa), who was in the internment camps,” Pinedo says.

A docent at the museum in Los Angeles gently flips to the middle of the book — called the Ireichō — and locates Kaneo Sakatani near the center of a page. This was Pinedo’s great-grandfather, and his family can now honor him.