World
Powerful Hurricane Hilary heads for Mexico's Baja. Rare tropical storm watch issued for California
Hurricane Hilary churned off Mexico's Pacific coast Friday as a powerful Category 4 storm threatening to unleash torrential rains on the mudslide-prone border city of Tijuana before heading into Southern California as the first tropical storm there in 84 years.
Forecasters warned the storm could cause extreme flooding, mudslides and even tornadoes across the region.
Hilary grew rapidly in strength early Friday before losing some steam, with its maximum sustained winds clocked at 130 mph (215 kph) in the evening, after falling from 145 mph (230 kph). Nevertheless, it was forecast to still be a hurricane when approaching Mexico’s Baja California peninsula on Saturday night and a tropical storm when approaching Southern California on Sunday.
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Hilary was already disrupting life.
Major League Baseball rescheduled three Sunday games in Southern California, moving them to Saturday as part of split-doubleheaders. The National Park Service closed Joshua Tree National Park and Mojave National Preserve to keep people from becoming stranded amid flooding. Cities across the region, including in Arizona, were offering sandbags to safeguard properties against floodwaters.
No tropical storm has made landfall in Southern California since Sept. 25, 1939, according to the National Weather Service. The watch was posted for a wide swath of Southern California from the coast to interior mountains and deserts. The U.S. National Hurricane Center warned of potential threats to life and property.
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The latest forecast pointed to Hilary making landfall along a sparsely populated area of the Baja peninsula Sunday, about 200 miles (330 kilometers) south of the Pacific port city of Ensenada.
As it moves north, it could bring heavy rains to Tijuana. Mayor Montserrat Caballero Ramirez said the city was tracking the storm closely and clearing out storm drains.
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The sprawling border metropolis of 1.9 million people is particularly at risk of landslides and flooding, in part because of its hilly terrain. Shacks are perched on cliffs with little vegetation to hold soil in place. In addition, dozens of people live under tarps on the streets and in canals in flood zones, including migrants who arrive daily from various parts of the world.
The city was setting up four shelters in high-risk zones and warning residents in risky zones, Caballero Ramirez said.
“We are a vulnerable city being on one of the most visited borders in the world and because of our landscape," she said.
Mexico issued a tropical storm watch for parts of mainland Mexico and put 18,000 soldiers on alert.
On Friday evening, Hilary was centered about 310 miles (495 kilometers) south-southwest of Cabo San Lucas, near the southern tip of the Baja peninsula. It was moving northwest at 12 mph (19 kph) and was expected to turn more toward the north.
Some Cabo San Lucas schools were being prepared as temporary shelters, said Flora Aguilar, a city official.
In La Paz, the picturesque capital of Baja California Sur state on the Sea of Cortez, police patrolled closed beaches to keep swimmers out of the whipped-up surf. Schools were shut down in five municipalities.
It was increasingly likely that Hilary would reach California early Monday while still at tropical storm strength, though widespread rain was expected to begin as early as Saturday, the National Weather Service’s San Diego office said.
Hurricane officials said the storm could bring heavy rainfall to the southwestern United States, dumping 3 to 6 inches (8-15 centimeters) in places, with isolated amounts of up to 10 inches (25 centimeters), in portions of southern California and southern Nevada.
“Two to three inches of rainfall in Southern California is unheard of” for this time of year, said Kristen Corbosiero, a University of Albany atmospheric scientist who specializes in Pacific hurricanes. “That’s a whole summer and fall amount of rain coming in probably six to 12 hours.”
The region could face once-in-a-century rains and there is a good chance Nevada will break its all-time rainfall record, said meteorologist Jeff Masters of Yale Climate Connections and a former government in-flight hurricane meteorologist.
President Joe Biden said the Federal Emergency Management Agency had pre-positioned staff and supplies in the region.
“I urge everyone, everyone in the path of this storm, to take precautions and listen to the guidance of state and local officials,” Biden told reporters Friday at Camp David, where he is meeting with the leaders of Japan and South Korea.
Deputies with the Los Angeles Sheriff's Department announced warnings over public address systems and urged homeless people living in riverbeds and other potentially dangerous areas to move into shelters before the storm hits.
Authorities in the city were also helping arrange food, cots and shelters for people who needed them, officials said at an afternoon news conference.
Janice Hahn, chair of the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors, said planning had been underway for several days, which included evacuation plans for the tourist destination of Santa Catalina Island, off the coast.
“I don’t think any of us — I know me particularly — never thought I’d be standing here talking about a hurricane or a tropical storm,” Hahn said.
Officials in Southern California were also re-enforcing sand berms, built to protect low-lying coastal communities against winter surf, like in Huntington Beach, which dubs itself as “Surf City USA."
In nearby Newport Beach, Tanner Atkinson waited in a line of vehicles for free sandbags at a city distribution point.
“I mean a lot of people here are excited because the waves are gonna get pretty heavy," Atkinson said. "But I mean, it’s gonna be some rain, so usually there’s some flooding and the landslides and things like that.”
SpaceX delayed the launch of a satellite-carrying rocket from a base on California’s central coast until at least Monday. The company said conditions in the Pacific could make it difficult for a ship to recover the rocket booster.
Storms don’t usually hit Southern California because prevailing winds usually push them either due west into open ocean or northeastward into Mexico and other parts of the U.S. Southwest, according to experts.
“Almost all of them just go out to sea. That’s why we never hear about them,” said Kerry Emanuel, a hurricane professor at Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
That's unlikely to happen with Hilary mostly because of a high pressure heat dome that is expected to bring triple digit heat indices in the Midwest and block the eastern turn, Masters said.
After Israeli raids, Palestinian police struggle in militant hotbed, reflecting region on the brink
Last month, after the biggest Israeli military raid on a Palestinian refugee camp in the occupied West Bank in years, Palestinians turned their wrath on their own security forces.
They unleashed gunfire, firebombs and pipe bombs at Palestinian security buildings in an outpouring of rage against the Palestinian Authority’s failure to protect them from the devastating July 3 raid and a long-running, deeply unpopular security alliance with Israel.
“The horrible events of that night reminded us of the lead-up to the Hamas coup in Gaza,” the head of police in Jenin, Brig. Gen. Azzam Jebara, said at a ceremony this week for officers who defended a police station from rampaging protesters. “It was a warning.”
Scarred by the Hamas militant group’s violent takeover of Gaza from Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas’ forces in 2007, the Palestinian Authority has cooperated with Israel to suppress Islamist militant groups and keep the secular nationalist Fatah party in power in the West Bank. Hamas is both a major threat to Israel and the biggest rival to Fatah.
The July unrest exposed Palestinians’ seething resentment toward their semi-autonomous government and forced a reckoning for their beaten-down security forces, who in their blue camouflage uniforms have come to embody the tensions tearing at Palestinian society. Widely derided for working with Israel, the forces remain a symbol of Palestinian hopes for statehood.
Seeking to regain trust during a lull in Israeli military raids, Palestinian police have stepped up a campaign to restore order in the city of Jenin, long a bastion of crime adjacent to the militarized refugee camp.
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But the force's efforts to seize cars, cash and drugs have also revealed their limits. Unable to protect their people from radical Jewish settler attacks and near-daily Israeli military raids across the West Bank, Palestinian security forces described a law enforcement system on the brink of collapse.
“If we think we’re establishing control now, we’re fooling ourselves,” said Ibrahim Abahre, deputy head of Preventive Security, a domestic intelligence agency, in Jenin. “At any moment, the Israeli army could enter and everything could explode.”
Since the spring of last year, militants from the Jenin refugee camp, where Palestinian forces have lost control, have carried out dozens of shooting attacks in the West Bank and Israel. Israeli soldiers have repeatedly raided the camp to kill and capture suspected militants.
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On July 3, Israeli special forces entered the camp under the cover of drone strikes, killing 12 Palestinians, at least eight of them militants, wounding dozens and leaving a trail of destruction. An Israeli soldier was also killed in the operation, which recalled one of the biggest battles of the second Palestinian uprising over 20 years ago.
Nearly 180 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli fire across the West Bank in 2023, almost half of them affiliated with militant groups, according to a tally by The Associated Press. It’s the territory's highest death toll in nearly two decades. Palestinian attacks on Israelis have killed 27 people this year.
Israel says its incursions are counterterrorism efforts prompted by the reluctance of Palestinian security forces to intervene against militants.
“There is a line to how many Israelis can be killed while the Palestinians work out their internal struggles,” said an Israeli military official, speaking on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to talk to reporters. “At some point, we just have to go in.”
Palestinians accuse Israel of trying to undermine their security efforts.
“They want to embarrass us,” said acting Jenin governor Kamal Abu al-Rub. The Israeli raids, Palestinian officials say, have inflamed tensions, stoked anger toward the Palestinian Authority and inspired more militancy.
“We understand the Palestinian Authority has lost power,” said Maj. Gen. Akram Rajoub, a longtime security commander and former Jenin governor. “But we are trying to control the chaos that erupts when Israel invades. Chaos is what undermines respect for the authority.”
Read more: Niger's neighbours running out of options as defence chiefs meet to discuss potential military force
In the camp, independent fighters drawn from a new generation of frustrated Palestinians have emerged from factions like Fatah, Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad. Militants say they've seen the Palestinian Authority, which promised them statehood, morph into a subcontractor for the Israeli occupation that can barely pay salaries or provide municipal services.
“Abbas can have his politics. My specialty is resistance,” said 32-year-old Abu Suleiman, who served as a major in the security forces before being suspended for his militant activity.
“Everything the Palestinian Authority does is in Israel’s interest,” he added from his living room, its shattered windows taped shut, walls pockmarked from July's raid. He gave only his nom de guerre because he is wanted by the Israeli military.
At the funeral last month for those killed in the raid, jostling crowds shouted insults at senior officials from the ruling Fatah party and chased them out of the camp. “Collaborators!" they chanted — a reference to Palestinian intelligence coordination with Israel.
“It was a natural, collective response to say, ‘wake up. Your job is to defend and protect us here, and you have failed,’” said 51-year-old Nidal Naghnagheyeh, the head of a committee running social support programs in the camp.
A week after the raid, 87-year-old Abbas visited the camp for the first time in over a decade to display solidarity. Palestinian security forces began to rebuild their presence in Jenin — a bid to show they can impose order without Israeli interference. Israel's army scaled back its operations in the camp to allow for that, the Israeli military official said.
Palestinian authorities have deployed 1,000 new security officers from Abbas' presidential guard across the city of Jenin. They have set up checkpoints to catch criminals who long have taken refuge in the city. Militants are lying low, officials say, rather than shooting in the air and showing off their M-16s in the streets.
In the weeks since, police say they've seized scores of stolen cars from the streets, confiscated hundreds of narcotic pills and arrested 364 criminals, including over a dozen wanted in cold murder cases. Authorities are preparing to inaugurate a local prison.
Vendors without permits have been expelled from Jenin’s outdoor market and sent outside the city center.
But the law-and-order campaign does not extend to the territory's greatest source of instability — the Jenin refugee camp. Police say they won’t disarm gunmen wanted by Israel or make arrests in the camp, underscoring the complexity of the security situation.
But even the stepped-up police tactics have rankled gunmen, who drive stolen cars to commit shooting attacks, carry smuggled weapons and own unlicensed vegetable stands. Last month the mayor, who helped devise the Jenin market makeover, narrowly escaped when peddlers angry about losing their income opened fire on his car.
“At night we face the Israeli army and during the day the Palestinian Authority is now after us,” Abu Suleiman said, adding that he had been stopped this week by plainclothes Palestinian police and almost opened fire, mistaking the men for undercover Israeli soldiers. “At some point, hell will break loose."
Jebara, the police chief, said authorities' failure to dismantle militant groups is tantamount to the failure of the Palestinian national project, which officers like him had hoped they were building.
“I joined the police force 21 years ago because I wanted to be accountable to my people, to impose sovereignty on our own land,” he said. “Now Israeli settlements have killed our state. Where does that leave us?”
Iranian FM says ties with Saudi Arabia "moving in right direction"
Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian said here on Thursday the relations between his country and Saudi Arabia are moving in the right direction and both sides will advance cooperation in various fields.
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Amir-Abdollahian made the remarks in a joint press conference with Saudi Foreign Minister Faisal bin Farhan Al Saud after their meeting in the Saudi capital Riyadh.
The Iranian top diplomat, who is on his first official visit to Saudi Arabia since the two countries agreed to restore diplomatic relations in a China-brokered deal in March, said his meeting with the Saudi minister was "fruitful."
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Iran is committed to implementing the agreements reached between the two countries in the security and economic fields, and will set up a technical and executive committee to promote their implementation, he said.
Amir-Abdollahian confirmed that the Iranian president will visit Saudi Arabia soon.
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He also voiced his support for Saudi Arabia to host the World Expo 2030.
While stressing the importance of cooperation between Saudi Arabia and Iran, the Saudi minister said the restoration of diplomatic relations with Iran is the key to maintaining regional security.
He said Saudi Arabia will maintain communication and coordination with Iran and promote new progress in bilateral relations on the basis of mutual respect.
The Saudi official also welcomed the Iranian president's planned visit to Saudi Arabia.
Niger's neighbours running out of options as defence chiefs meet to discuss potential military force
West African defense chiefs met Thursday to discuss the crisis in Niger after coup leaders there ignored their deadline to step down, leaving the region's countries with few options in their effort to restore democratic rule.
Niger's democratically elected president, Mohamed Bazoum, was overthrown in July and remains under house arrest with his wife and son in the capital, Niamey.
Defence chiefs from the West African regional bloc, ECOWAS, were meeting Thursday in Ghana to discuss next steps in their stated goal of restoring Bazoum. Coup leaders in Niger already have ignored a deadline to restate him or face military intervention.
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This is the first meeting since ECOWAS ordered the deployment of a “standby force” last week to restore constitutional rule in the country. It’s unclear if or when troops would intervene. A force would likely consist of several thousands soldiers from Nigeria, Ivory Coast, Senegal and Benin and could take weeks or months to prepare, say conflict experts.
ECOWAS has a poor track record in stemming the region’s rampant coups: neighboring Burkina Faso and Mali have each had two within three years. Niger's coup was seen by the international community and ECOWAS as one too many and in addition to threatening a military invasion, the bloc has imposed severe economic and travel sanctions.
But as time drags on with no military action and a standstill in negotiations, the junta is entrenching its power, leaving ECOWAS with few choices.
“ECOWAS has few good options ... particularly as the (junta) seems unwilling for the moment to cede to outside pressure," said Andrew Lebovich, a research fellow with the Clingendael Institute, a think tank.
"An intervention could backfire and damage the organization in numerous ways, while a failure to extract major concessions from the (junta) could weaken the organization politically at an already fragile time," he said.
The top security body of the African Union met Monday to consider whether it would support military intervention but has yet to make public its decision.
The AU's Peace and Security Council could overrule a military intervention if it felt that wider stability on the continent was threatened by it. If it rejects the use of force, there are few grounds under which ECOWAS could claim legal justification, said Lebovich.
But on Thursday, Abdel-Fatau Musah, the ECOWAS commissioner for peace and security, told reporters that the bloc was working with the United Nations on Niger's situation and didn't “need any approval from the Security Council to find a solution to the crisis."
In recent years, Western countries have poured hundreds of millions of dollars of aid into Niger, which was seen as one of the last democratic countries in the Sahel region south of the Sahara Desert that it could partner with to beat back a growing jihadi insurgency linked to al-Qaida and the Islamic State group. France and the United States have approximately 2,500 military personnel in the country, which trained soldiers and, in the case of France, conducted joint operations.
Since the coup, both countries have suspended military operations, which Sahel experts say is leading to an increase in attacks.
On Tuesday, at least 17 Nigerien soldiers were killed and nearly two dozen wounded in the Tillaberi region in the biggest attack by jihadis in six months. Former militants have told The AP that active jihadis would leverage the coup to move around more freely and plan further violence while Niger's security forces are distracted in Niamey and Western assistance has halted.
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Displaced people who fled jihadi violence and are now living in makeshift huts in Niamey say they've suffered enough from the extremists. They don't want more problems from their neighbors.
“I ask God not to bring (ECOWAS). We lost more than 600 people (from jihadi violence). I support the military, and God curse anyone who doesn’t love Niger,” said Daouda Mounkaila. Last year he, his wife and their 11 children were chased from their home in Tillaberi, one of the hardest-hit regions in the country.
Others in the capital are trying to cope with the impact of the ECOWAS sanctions.
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Niger relies on neighboring Nigeria for up to 90% of its energy, which has in part been cut off. The streets are littered with generators powering shops. Restaurant owners say they can't keep their fridges cold and have lost customers.
The sanctions are making it hard for aid groups to get food and supplies in. Before the coup, more than 4 million people in Niger — a country of some 25 million — were in need of humanitarian assistance, a number that's now expected to surge, say aid groups.
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Trucks are stuck at the borders with Benin and Nigeria. Routes through countries that have ignored the sanctions, such as Burkina Faso, are dangerous because they're infiltrated with extremists.
“With the closure of land and air borders, it’s hard to bring aid into the country,” said Louise Aubin, the U.N. resident coordinator in Niger. Supplies such as food and vaccines could run out. It’s unclear how long the current stock will last, she said.
Taliban official says women lose value if their faces are visible to men in public
Women lose value if men can see their uncovered faces in public, a spokesman for a key ministry of Afghanistan’s Taliban government said Thursday, adding that religious scholars in the country agree that a woman must keep her face covered when outside the home.
The Taliban, who took over the country in August of 2021, have cited the failure of women to observe the proper way to wear the hijab, or Islamic headscarf, as a reason for barring them from most public spaces, including parks, jobs and university.
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Molvi Mohammad Sadiq Akif, the spokesman for the Taliban’s Ministry of Vice and Virtue, said in an interview Thursday with The Associated Press that if women’s faces are visible in public there is a possibility of fitna, or falling into sin.
“It is very bad to see women (without the hijab) in some areas (big cities), and our scholars also agree that women’s faces should be hidden,” Akif said. “It’s not that her face will be harmed or damaged. A woman has her own value and that value decreases by men looking at her. Allah gives respect to females in hijab and there is value in this.”
Tim Winter, who is the Shaykh Zayed Lecturer in Islamic Studies at the Faculty of Divinity at Cambridge University, said there was no scriptural mandate in Islam for face coverings and the Taliban would struggle to find anything in Islamic scripture that backed their interpretation of hijab rules.
“Their name implies they are not senior religious experts,” he told AP. “The word Taliban means students. "
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He said the Taliban operate on the basis of textbooks used in village madrassas, religious schools, and that Muslim scholars who have been to Afghanistan during both periods of Taliban rule have been underwhelmed by their level of religious knowledge. “They have just been so isolated from the wider Muslim community.”
The Taliban’s restrictions on girls and women have caused global outrage, including from some Muslim-majority countries.
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On Wednesday, U.N. special envoy Gordon Brown said the International Criminal Court should prosecute Taliban leaders for crimes against humanity for denying education and employment to Afghan girls and women.
Akif, who is the main spokesman for the Vice and Virtue Ministry, did not answer questions about the bans, including whether any of them could be lifted if there were to be universal adherence to hijab rules. He said there were other departments to deal with these issues.
Akif said the ministry faced no obstacles in its work and that people supported its measures.
“People wanted to implement Sharia (Islamic law) here. Now we’re carrying out the implementation of Sharia.” All the decrees are Islamic rulings and the Taliban have added nothing to them, he said. “The orders of Sharia were issued 1,400 years ago and they are still there.”
He said that under the current administration men no longer harass or stare at women like they used to do in the time of the previous government.
The Taliban government also says it has destroyed the “evils” of drinking alcohol and bacha bazi, a practice in which wealthy or powerful men exploit boys for entertainment, especially dancing and sexual activities.
The ministry is in a fortified compound near Darul Aman Palace in the Afghan capital, Kabul. Women are forbidden from entering ministry premises, some of the guards who were on duty Thursday told AP, although there is a female-only security screening hut.
Slogans on concrete barricades praise the purpose of the ministry.
One reads: “The promotion of virtues and the prohibition of vices are an effective means of social order.” Another says: “The promotion of virtues and the prohibition of vices save society from catastrophe.”
Akif said the ministry relies on a network of officials and informants to check if people are following regulations.
“Our ombudsmen walk in markets, public places, universities, schools, madrassas and mosques,” he said. “They visit all these places and watch people. They also speak with them and educate them. We monitor them and people also cooperate with and inform us.”
When asked if women can go to parks, one of the spaces they are banned from, he said they would be able to if certain conditions could be met.
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“You can go to the park, but only if there are no men there. If there are men, then Sharia does not allow it. We don’t say that a woman can’t do sports, she can’t go to the park or she can’t run. She can do all these things, but not in the same way as some women want, to be semi-naked and among men."
China's Xi calls for measures to mitigate disastrous flooding amid economic slowdown
Chinese leader Xi Jinping has called for measures to mitigate the effects of this year’s disastrous flooding which has left scores dead and inflicted massive damage on crops, homes and infrastructure, including in and around Beijing.
At least 90 rivers have risen above warning levels and 24 have already overflowed their banks, according to state media, threatening a vast area in northeastern China with flooding, including the Songliao Basin north of the capital, which encompasses more than 1.2 million square kilometers (482,200 square miles) with a population of almost 100 million.
“As China is still in the main flood season, rainstorms, floods, typhoons and other disasters still occur frequently in many places across the country,” the Xinhua News Agency said, summarizing conclusions of Thursday's meeting of the party’s all-powerful Politburo Standing Committee presided over by President Xi.
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Participants “urged relevant localities and departments to always prioritize the safety of people’s lives and property, and keep doing a good job in flood prevention and disaster relief,” Xinhua said.
The reinforcement of dams and the efficient use of disaster relief funds to “repair damaged infrastructure such as transport, communications and electricity, and restore farmland and agricultural facilities” is crucial, it said.
Schools, hospitals and nursing homes must be swiftly restored, along with damaged housing “to ensure the affected residents can return home or move to new homes before the winter.”
The flooding this year has also affected large parts of the central and eastern parts of the country, both in the semi-tropical south and the northern plains.
Much of China is having a particularly damp summer, with 142 people killed by flooding i n July and dozens more this month.
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Meteorologists warned that thunderstorms, gales and hail will affect parts of Inner Mongolia, Heilongjiang, Jilin, Hebei, Beijing, and Tianjin in the north, along with Henan, Jiangxi, Zhejiang, and Fujian to the center and southeast.
Residents have been urged to reduce outdoor activities and seek shelter.
The severe weather comes as economic growth slid to 0.8% in the three months ending in June, down from 2.2% in January-March. That is equivalent to a 3.2% annual rate, which would be among China’s weakest in decades.
Read more:Strong earthquake and aftershock shake Colombia's capital and other cities
A survey in June found unemployment among urban workers aged 16 to 24 spiked to a record 21.3%. The statistics bureau said this week it would withhold updates while it refined its measurement.
In a speech recently published by Qiushi, the party’s top theoretical journal, Xi called for patience in a as the party tries to reverse the deepening economic slump.
That came hours after data Tuesday showed consumer and factory activity weakened further in July despite official promises to support struggling entrepreneurs. The government skipped giving an update on a politically sensitive spike in unemployment among young people.
Strong earthquake and aftershock shake Colombia's capital and other cities
A strong earthquake followed quickly by a strong aftershock shook Colombia’s capital and other major cities Thursday, sending panicked residents out onto the streets and damaging Colombia’s congressional chamber. At least one person was reported killed.
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The midday quakes were both centered about 100 miles (160 kilometers) southeast of Bogota, with the first one registering a preliminary magnitude of 6.3 and the aftershock registering a preliminary magnitude of 5.7, the U.S. Geological Survey said. A magnitude 5.0 earthquake rattled Colombia later Thursday evening.
People in the capital city of 11 million felt buildings and floors rumble, and alarms blared as throngs of residents left their homes and gathered outside.
“Everything was moving, and people came out screaming, ‘It’s shaking, it’s shaking!’,” Bogota resident Gonzalo Martin said. “A lot of people started to rush out onto the street because of the tremor.”
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Paula Henao, the Bogota fire department’s deputy director of operations, said one person died when they panicked and jumped from the seventh floor of a building.
The quake trapped some residents in elevators, and prompted scores of emergency calls to firefighters, Henao said.
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A patch of ornate stonework from the ceiling at Colombia’s House of Representatives in Bogota fell onto the seating area for lawmakers, according to video posted on an official congressional account on X, formerly known as Twitter. The chamber was unoccupied at the time, and nobody there was hurt there.
The earthquake was also felt in other big cities like Medellín and Cali.
Videos on social media showed furniture shaking and chandeliers swinging during the quake.
Pakistan arrests 129 Muslims after mob attacks on churches and homes of minority Christians
Police arrested 129 Muslims after a mob angered by an alleged Quran desecration attacked a dozen churches and nearly two dozen homes of minority Christians, officials said Thursday. Police also arrested two Christian men accused of defacing Islam's holy book.
The alleged desecration set off a violent rampage Wednesday in Jaranwala, causing Christians to flee to safer places in the eastern city as the mob inflicted one of the country's most destructive attacks on Christians.
The city police chief, Bilal Mehmood, said officers arrested Raja Amir and a friend who were accused by local Muslims of tearing pages from a Quran, writing insulting remarks on other pages and then throwing the book on the ground.
Also read: Muslim mobs attack churches in eastern Pakistan after accusing Christians of desecrating the Quran
The regional police chief, Rizwan Khan, said 129 people had been arrested as suspected rioters and the situation was under control. Authorities summoned soldiers to restore order, and Christian residents slowly returned home to see the destruction Thursday.
"We were sitting at home when suddenly we heard that a mob is coming and it is burning homes and attacking churches," Shazia Amjad said as she wept outside her charred home.
She said that the mob burned household items and furniture and that some of her possessions were stolen while she was staying with her family in a safer area.
Other Christians described similar ordeals and expressed bewilderment.
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Azeem Masih wept as he sat outsisitting outside his home, which was one of several buildings burned on his street. He said some rioters brought in vehicles to haul away Christians' household items after burning furniture and other belongings.
"Why did they do it to us? We had not done anything wrong," he said.
Local priest Khalid Mukhtar said he believed most of Jaranwala's 17 churches were attacked and his own home was damaged.
Government officials said all of the damaged churches and homes would be repaired within a week and those who suffered losses would be compensated.
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The violence drew nationwide condemnation, and caretaker Prime Minister Anwaarul-ul-Haq Kakar ordered police to ensure rioters were arrested.
The regional police chief said the mob quickly gathered and began attacking churches and Christian homes. Rioters also assaulted the offices of a city administrator, but police intervened, shooting into the air and wielding batons to disperse the attackers with the help of Muslim clerics and elders.
Videos and photos posted on social media show a throng of angry people descending on a church, throwing pieces of bricks and setting it on fire. In another video, four other churches are attacked, their windows broken as attackers throw pieces of furniture outside and set them on fire.
In another video, a man is seen climbing to the roof of a church and removing a steel cross after repeatedly hitting it with a hammer as a crowd cheers him on.
The violence drew condemnation from domestic and international human rights groups.
Amnesty International called for the repeal of Pakistan's blasphemy laws.
Under Pakistan's blasphemy laws, anyone found guilty of insulting Islam or Islamic religious figures can be sentenced to death. While authorities have yet to carry out a death sentence for blasphemy, often just an accusation can incite mobs to violence, lynchings and killings.
Rghts groups say blasphemy allegations have been used to intimidate religious minorities and settle personal scores.
Vedant Patel, a spokesperson for the U.S. State Department, urged Pakistan to conduct a full investigation. "We support peaceful freedom of expression and the right to freedom of religion and belief for everybody," he said in Washington on Wednesday.
China appears to be building an airstrip on a disputed South China Sea island
China appears to be constructing an airstrip on a disputed South China Sea island that is also claimed by Vietnam and Taiwan, according to satellite photos analyzed by The Associated Press.
The work on Triton island in the Paracel group mirrors construction on seven human-made islands in the Spratly group to the east which have been equipped with airstrips, docks and military systems, although it currently appears to be somewhat more modest in scale.
China claims virtually the entire South China Sea as its own, denying the claims of others and defying an international ruling invalidating its assertion.
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Satellite photos from Planet Labs PBC analyzed by the AP show construction on the airstrip first visible in early August. News website The Drive first reported on the satellite images Tuesday.
The runway, as currently laid out, would be more than 600 meters (2,000 feet) in length, long enough to accommodate turboprop aircraft and drones, but not fighter jets or bombers.
Also visible are large numbers of vehicle tracks running across much of the island, along with what appear to be containers and construction equipment.
Triton is one of the major islands in the Paracels, which is roughly equidistant from the coast of Vietnam and China's island province of Hainan.
The U.S. takes no stance on the sovereignty claims, but regularly sends Navy ships on "freedom of navigation operations" near the Chinese-held islands. Triton was the focus of one of those missions in 2018.
Also read: China says US military aid to Taiwan will not deter its will to unify the island
China has had a small harbor and buildings on the island for years, along with a helipad and radar arrays. Two large fields on the island sport a star from the Chinese flag and a hammer and sickle representing the ruling Communist Party.
China has refused to provide details of its island construction work other than to say it is aimed at helping global navigation safety. It has rejected accusations that it is militarizing the crucial waterway, through which an estimated $5 trillion in trade passes annually, and says it has the right to do as it wishes in its sovereign territory.
China seized full control of the Paracels from Vietnam in a brief 1974 naval conflict.
Also read: US -China conflict: A civilizational or a cold war ?
More than 60 Senegalese migrants are feared dead on a monthlong voyage to Spain
More than 60 migrants are feared dead after a Spanish fishing vessel rescued a boat off the Atlantic archipelago of Cape Verde that originally had more than 100 people aboard, authorities and migrant advocates said Thursday.
Seven bodies were found on the boat and an estimated 56 people are missing at sea and presumed dead, said International Organization for Migration spokesperson Safa Msehli. According to Senegal’s foreign affairs ministry, 38 people were rescued earlier in the week near Cape Verde, about 620 kilometers (385 miles) off the coast of West Africa.
The Spanish migration advocacy group Walking Borders said the vessel was a large fishing boat, called a pirogue, which had left Senegal on July 10.
Families in Fass Boye, a seaside town 145 kilometers (90 miles) north of the capital, Dakar, reached out to Walking Borders on July 20, after 10 days without hearing from loved ones on the boat, group founder Helena Maleno Garzón said.
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Cheikh Awa Boye, president of the local fishing association, said survivors called home from Cape Verde after the rescue. Boye said two of his nephews are among those missing.
Mamour Ba, a 30-year-old student from Fass Boye, lost his younger brother Mame Cheik on the pirogue. His brother, a fisherman and a father of one, was 23 when he died trying to reach Spain with two other brothers and a nephew, who survived.
Mamour said they were still in shock when they relayed the news on Tuesday from a borrowed phone in Cape Verde.
“They had to leave for Spain to feed their families,” explained Mamour, who has himself tried and failed twice to reach Europe. Mame Cheik’s son still does not know what happened.
“Each time we were together he asked (for him), ‘father, father, father.’ He doesn’t know, he’s just a kid,” Mamour said.
Spain’s Maritime Rescue Service confirmed that a Spanish fishing boat named the Zillarri rescued 38 people and recovered seven bodies from a Senegalese pirogue on Aug. 14 after spotting it adrift northeast of Cape Verde.
An official of the tropical tuna fishing company PEVASA, which operates the Zillarri, said the survivors were asking for help and were in a “bad state.”
Read: Muslim mobs attack churches in eastern Pakistan after accusing Christians of desecrating the Quran
The route from West Africa to Spain is one of the world’s most dangerous, yet the number of migrants leaving from Senegal on rickety wooden boats has surged over the past year. The boats try to reach Spain’s Canary Islands, an archipelago off the northwest coast of Africa that has been used as a steppingstone to continental Europe.
Nearly 1,000 migrants died while trying to reach Spain by sea in the first six months of 2023, Walking Borders says. Worsening youth unemployment, political unrest, violence by armed groups and climate change push migrants across West Africa to risk their lives on overcrowded boats.
Nearly 10,000 people have reached the Canary Islands by sea from the northwest coast of Africa so far this year, according to Spanish Interior Ministry figures.
On Aug. 7, the Moroccan navy recovered the bodies of five Senegalese migrants and rescued 189 others after their boat capsized off the coast of Western Sahara.
Read: Rescuers recover 33 bodies from a landslide at a Myanmar jade mine, with 3 people still missing
In 2021, an AP investigation found at least seven migrant boats from northwest Africa had become lost in the Atlantic and were found drifting across the Caribbean and even off Brazil, carrying only lifeless bodies.