World
Newborn among 7 dead in Italian island landslide
Search teams have recovered seven dead, including a 3-week-old infant and a pair of young siblings, buried in mud and debris that hurtled down a mountainside and through a densely populated port city on the resort island of Ischia, officials said Sunday.
The Naples prefect confirmed that five people remained missing, and feared buried under the debris of an enormous landslide that struck Casamicciola before dawn on Saturday. Its force collapsed buildings and pushed vehicles into the sea.
The other victims were identified as the infant boy’s parents, a 5-year-old girl and her 11-year-old brother, a 31-year-old island resident and a Bulgarian tourist.
Read more: 1 dead, up to 12 missing in landslide on Italian island
“Mud and water tend to fill every space,'' Luca Cari, the spokesman for Italian firefighters, told RAI state TV. ”Our teams are searching with hope, even if it is very difficult."
“Our biggest hope is that people identified as missing have found refuge with relatives and friends and have not advised of their position,” he added.
The risks of landslides remained in the highest part of the town, near where heavy rainfall loosened a chunk of mountainside, requiring search teams to enter by foot, he said.
Small bulldozers first focused on clearing roads to allow rescue vehicles to pass, while dive teams were brought in to check cars that had been pushed into the sea.
“We are continuing the search with our hearts broken, because among the missing are also minors," Giacomo Pascale, the mayor of the neighboring town of Lacco Ameno, told RAI.
Pope Francis expressed his closeness to the people of Ischia during the traditional Sunday blessing in St. Peter's Square. “I am praying for the victims, for those who are suffering and for those who are involved in the rescue,” he said.
The Naples prefect, Claudio Palomba, said on Sunday that 30 homes had been inundated and more than 200 people had been displaced. Five people were injured.
The massive landslide before dawn on Saturday was triggered by exceptional rainfall, and sent a mass of mud and debris hurtling through the port of Casamicciola, collapsing buildings and sweeping vehicles into the sea.
One widely circulated video showed a man, covered with mud, clinging to a shutter, chest-deep in muddy water. Another family escaped a home on the mountainside that appeared Sunday to teeter over a precipice, the daily Corriere della Sera reported.
The island received 126 millimeters (nearly five inches) of rain in six hours, the heaviest rainfall in 20 years, according to officials. Experts said the disaster was exacerbated by building in areas of high risk on the mountainous island, which is also in an seismically active zone. Two people were killed in 2017 when a 4.0-magnitude quake struck Casamicciola and Lacco Ameno.
Read more: At least 31 dead in south Philippines floods, landslides
“There is territory that cannot be occupied. You cannot change the use of a zone where there is water. The course of the water created this disaster," geologist Riccardo Caniparoli told RAI. “There are norms and laws that were not respected.”
Vincenzo De Luca, president of the Campagna region where Ischia is located, said houses in areas at risk must be demolished, suggesting they had been built without necessary permits.
“People need to understand that you cannot live in some areas. There is no such thing as the necessity (to build) illegally," De Luca told RAI. ”Buildings in fragile zones should be demolished."
The Italian government declared a state of emergency for the island during an urgent Cabinet meeting Sunday, earmarking 2 million euros (nearly $2.1 million) for the rescue and to restore public services.
“The government expresses its closeness to the citizens, mayors and towns of the island of Ischia, and thanks the rescue workers searching for the victims," Premier Giorgia Meloni said in a statement.
Riots in Belgium, Netherlands after Morocco win at World Cup
Riots broke out in several Belgian and Dutch cities after Morocco’s 2-0 upset win over Belgium at the World Cup Sunday.
Police detained about a dozen people after they deployed water cannons and fire tear gas to disperse crowds in Brussels and eight more in the Northern city of Antwerp. Two police officials were injured in the Dutch port city of Rotterdam. By late evening Sunday, an uneasy calm had returned to most of the cities involved.
Dozens of rioters overturned and torched cars, set electric scooters on fire and pelted cars with bricks. Police moved in after one person suffered facial injuries, said Brussels police spokeswoman Ilse Van de Keere.
Read more: What happened to Morocco's first-choice GK before kickoff v Belgium?
Brussels mayor Philippe Close urged people to stay away from the city center and said authorities were doing their utmost to keep order in the streets. Even subway and tram traffic had to be interrupted on police orders.
“Those are not fans, they are rioters. Moroccan fans are there to celebrate,” Close said. There were also disturbances in the city of Antwerp and Liege.
“Sad to see how a few individuals abuse a situation to run amok,” said Interior Minister Annelies Verlinden.
Police in the neighboring Netherlands said violence erupted in the port city of Rotterdam, with riot officers attempting to break up a group of 500 soccer supporters who pelted police with fireworks and glass. Media reported unrest in the capital Amsterdam and The Hague.
Read more: Morocco beat Belgium 2-0 pulling off another shock at World Cup
Morocco’s victory was a major upset at the World Cup and was enthusiastically celebrated by fans with Moroccan immigrant roots in many Belgian and Dutch cities.
China crowds angered by Covid curbs openly urge Xi to resign
Protesters pushed to the brink by China’s strict COVID measures in Shanghai called for the removal of the country’s all-powerful leader and clashed with police Sunday as crowds took to the streets in several cities in an astounding challenge to the government.
Police forcibly cleared the demonstrators in China’s financial capital who called for Xi Jinping’s resignation and the end of the Chinese Communist Party’s rule — but hours later people rallied again in the same spot, and social media reports indicated protests also spread to at least seven other cities, including the capital of Beijing, and dozens of university campuses.
Largescale protests are exceedingly rare in China, where public expressions of dissent are routinely stifled — but a direct rebuke of Xi, the country’s most powerful leader in decades, is extraordinary.
Three years after the virus first emerged, China is the only major country still trying to stop transmission of COVID-19 — a “zero COVID” policy that regularly sees millions of people confined to their homes for weeks at a time and requires near-constant testing. The measures were originally widely accepted for minimizing deaths while other countries suffered devastating wavs of infections, but that consensus has begun to fray in recent weeks.
Then on Friday, 10 people died in a fire in an apartment building, and many believe their rescue was delayed because of excessive lockdown measures. That sparked a weekend of protests, as the Chinese public’s ability to tolerate the harsh measures has apparently reached breaking point.Hundreds of demonstrators gathered late Saturday in Shanghai, which experienced a devastating lockdown in the spring in which people struggled to secure groceries and medicines and were forcefully taken into centralized quarantine.
Read: Protests over China's COVID controls spread across country
On a street named for the city in China’s far west where the fire happened, one group of protesters brought candles, flowers and signs honoring those who died in the blaze. Another, according to a protester who insisted on anonymity, was more active, shouting slogans and singing the national anthem.
In a video of the protest seen by The Associated Press, chants sounded loud and clear: “Xi Jinping! Step down! CCP! Step down!” Xi, arguably China’s most dominant leader since Mao Zedong, was recently named to another term as head of the ruling Chinese Communist Party, and some expect him to try to stay in power for life.
The protester and another, who gave only his last name, Zhao, confirmed the chants. Both insisted on having their identities shielded because they fear arrest or retribution.
The atmosphere of the protest encouraged people to speak about topics considered taboo, including the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre in which the ruling Communist Party had ordered troops to fire on pro-democracy student demonstrators, the unnamed protester said. Some also called for an official apology for the deaths in the fire in Urumqi in the Xinjiang region. One member of the Uyghur ethnic group that is native to Xinjiang and has been the target of a sweeping security crackdown shared his experiences of discrimination and police violence.
Read: China reports 10,000 new virus cases, capital closes parks
“Everyone thinks that Chinese people are afraid to come out and protest, that they don’t have any courage,” said the protester, who said it was his first time demonstrating. “Actually in my heart, I also thought this way. But then when I went there, I found that the environment was such that everyone was very brave.”
Initially peaceful, the scene turned violent in the early hours of Sunday. Hundreds of police surrounded the protesters and broke up the first more active group before they came for the second as they tried to move people off the main street. The protester said that he saw multiple people being taken away, forced by police into vans, but could not identify them.
The protester named Zhao said one of his friends was beaten by police and two were pepper sprayed. He said police stomped his feet as he tried to stop them from taking his friend away. He lost his shoes in the process, and left the protest barefoot.
Zhao said protesters yelled slogans, including one that has become a frequent rallying cry: “(We) do not want PCR (tests), but want freedom.”
On Sunday afternoon, crowds returned to the same spot and again railed against PCR tests. People stood and filmed as police started shoving at people.
A crowdsourced list on social media showed that there were also demonstrations at 50 universities. Videos posted on social media that said they were filmed in Nanjing in the east, Guangzhou in the south, Beijing in the north and at least five other cities showed protesters tussling with police in white protective suits or dismantling barricades used to seal off neighborhoods. The Associated Press could not independently verify all the protests.
In Beijing, students at the nation’s top college, Tsinghua University, held a demonstration Sunday afternoon in front of one of the school’s cafeterias. Three young women stood there initially with a simple message of condolence for the victims of the Urumqi apartment fire, according to a witness, who refused to be named out of fear of retribution, and images of the protest the AP has seen.
Students shouted “freedom of speech” and sang the Internationale, the socialist anthem. The deputy Communist Party secretary of the school arrived at the protest, promising to hold a schoolwide discussion.
Meanwhile, two cities in China’s northwest, where residents have been confined to their homes for up to four months, eased some anti-virus controls Sunday after public protests Friday.
Meanwhile, Urumqi, where the fire occurred, as well as the smaller city of Korla were preparing to reopen markets and other businesses in areas deemed at low risk of virus transmission and to restart bus, train and airline service, state media reported.
Monkeys in central Thailand city mark their day with feast
A meal fit for monkeys was served on Sunday at the annual Monkey Feast Festival in central Thailand.
Amid the morning traffic, rows of monkey statues holding trays were lined up outside the compound of the Ancient Three Pagodas, while volunteers prepared food across the road for real monkeys — the symbol of Lopburi province, around 150 kilometers (93 miles) north of Bangkok.
Throngs of macaque monkeys ran around, at times fighting with each other, while the crowds of visitors and locals grew.
As the carefully prepared feast was brought toward the temple, the ravenous creatures began to pounce and were soon devouring the largely vegetarian spread.
While the entertainment value of the festival is high, organizers are quick to point out that it is not just monkey business.
Read: Thailand pre-school shooting: Death toll rises to 36
“This monkey feast festival is a successful event that helps promote Lopburi’s tourism among international tourists every year,” said Yongyuth Kitwatanusont, the festival’s founder.
“Previously, there were around 300 monkeys in Lopburi before increasing to nearly 4,000 nowadays. But Lopburi is known as a monkey city, which means monkeys and people can live in harmony.”
Such harmony could be seen in the lack of shyness exhibited by the monkeys, which climbed on to visitors, vehicles and lampposts. At times the curious animals looked beyond the abundant feast and took an interest in other items.
“There was a monkey on my back as I was trying to take a selfie. He grabbed the sunglasses right off my face and ran off on to the top of a lamppost and was trying to eat them for a while,” said Ayisha Bhatt, an English teacher from California working in Thailand.
The delighted onlookers were largely undeterred by the risk of petty theft, although some were content to exercise caution.
Read: Thailand now offering 10-year visa: Who are eligible?
“We have to take care with them, better leave them to it. Not too near is better,” said Carlos Rodway, a tourist from Cadiz, Spain, having previously been unceremoniously treated as a climbing frame by one audacious monkey.
The festival is an annual tradition in Lopburi, the provincial capital, and held as a way to show gratitude to the monkeys for bringing in tourism. This year’s theme is “monkeys feeding monkeys,” an antidote to previous years where monkey participation had decreased due to high numbers of tourists, which intimidated the animals.
Pockets of shelling across Ukraine as wintry warfare looms
Shelling by Russian forces struck several areas in eastern and southern Ukraine overnight as utility crews continued a scramble to restore power, water and heating following widespread strikes in recent weeks, officials said Sunday.
With persistent snowfall blanketing the capital, Kyiv, Sunday, analysts predicted that wintry weather — bringing with it frozen terrain and grueling fighting conditions — could have an increasing impact on the direction of the conflict that has raged since Russian forces invaded Ukraine more than nine months ago.
But for the moment, both sides were bogged down by heavy rain and muddy battlefield conditions in some areas, experts said.
After a blistering barrage of Russian artillery strikes on at least two occasions over the past two weeks, infrastructure teams in Ukraine were fanning out in around-the-clock deployments to restore key basic services as many Ukrainians dealt with only a few hours of electricity per day — if any.
Ukrenergo, the state power grid operator, said Sunday that electricity producers are now supplying about 80% of demand. That’s an improvement from Saturday’s 75%, the company says.
The Institute for the Study of War, a think tank that has been closely monitoring developments in Ukraine, said reporting from both sides indicated that heavy rain and mud have had an impact — but wider freezing expected along the front lines in coming days could play a role.
Read more: Most Ukrainians left without power after Russian strikes
“It is unclear if either side is actively planning or preparing to resume major offensive or counter-offensive operations at that time, but the meteorological factors that have been hindering such operations will begin lifting,” it said in a note published Saturday.
ISW said Russian forces were digging in further east of the city of Kherson, from which they were expelled by Ukrainian forces more than two weeks ago, and continued “routine artillery fire” across the Dnipro River.
In the eastern Donetsk region, five people were killed in shelling over the past day, according to governor Pavlo Kyrylenko. Overnight shelling was reported by regional leaders in the Zaporizhzhia and Dnipropetrovsk areas to the west.
Kharkiv governor Oleh Syniehubov said one person was killed and three wounded in the northeastern region.
A day earlier, a long column of cars, vans and trucks caravanned away from the recently liberated city of Kherson after intense shelling in recent days and amid concerns more pummeling from the Russian forces nearby could loom again in coming days.
Read more: Civilians escape Kherson after Russian strikes on freed city
“The day before yesterday, artillery hit our house. Four flats burned down. Windows shattered,” said city resident Vitaliy Nadochiy, driving out with a terrier on his lap and a Ukrainian flag dangling from a sun visor. “We can’t be there. There is no electricity, no water, heating. So we are leaving to go to my brother.”
Energy-rich Qatar faces fast-rising climate risks at home
At a suburban park near Doha, the capital city of Qatar, cool air from vents in the ground blasted joggers on a November day that reached almost 32 degrees Celsius (90 degrees Fahrenheit).
The small park with air-conditioned paths is an apt illustration of World Cup host Qatar’s answers, so far, to the rising temperatures its people face. The wealthy Gulf Arab nation has been able to pay for extreme adaptive measures like this thanks to the natural gas it exports to the world.
A small peninsula that juts out into the Persian Gulf, Qatar sits in a region that, outside the Arctic, is warming faster than anyplace else on earth.
“It's already bad. And it's getting worse," said Jos Lelieveld, an atmospheric chemist at Germany's Max Planck Institute. Part of the reason is the warming waters of the Persian Gulf, a shallow, narrow sea that contributes to stifling humidity in Qatar during some months.
“It’s a pretty difficult environment. It’s quite hostile,” said Karim Elgendy, an associate fellow at the London-based Chatham House think tank. Without its ability to pay for imported food, heavy air-conditioning and desalinated ocean water, he said, the contemporary country couldn't exist.
Already, Qatar has faced a significant rise in temperatures compared to pre-industrial times. Scientists and others concerned about climate change are trying to keep the Earth as a whole from warming by more than 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) on average because research shows it will be profoundly disruptive, making many people homeless, inundating coastlines and destroying ecosystems.
“Qatar has an enormous amount to lose in terms of the effects of climate change,” said Mohammed Ayoub, a professor at the Environment and Energy Research Institute at Qatar's Hamad bin Khalifa University. It is one of the world's hottest countries and will experience even more heat extremes, floods, droughts and sand and dust storms.
CLIMATE PLEDGES
If Qatar is one of the world’s wealthiest nations per capita, it is also one of the most polluting per person. Around this country slightly smaller than the U.S. state of Connecticut, large SUVs are a common sight, filled with cheap gasoline. Air-conditioning blasts the insides of buildings year-round. Even the country’s drinking water is energy intensive, with nearly all of it coming from desalination plants that burn fossil fuel for the force needed to press ocean water through tiny filters to make it consumable.
In recent years, Qatar has inched forward making climate pledges. At the 2015 Paris climate talks, it did not commit to reducing emissions, but set a goal six years later to cut emissions 25% by 2030. One way would be to use carbon capture and storage at gas production facilities, a much-discussed technology that has yet to be deployed at scale.
Read more: COP27: How will UN climate deal on loss and damage work?
Recently, the country also connected a solar power plant to its electric grid that could power 10% of the nation's energy needs at full capacity.
In Doha, there is a new metro system, more green spaces and parks, and the upscale Msheireb district which was designed to take advantage of natural wind flows.
But it's not clear that Qatar can reach its reduction goal in seven years. At the recent U.N. climate conference in Egypt, Qatar’s environment minister Sheikh Faleh bin Nasser bin Ahmed bin Ali Al Thani said the country was “working to translate these ambitions to facts.”
The ministry of environment and climate change did not respond to multiple requests from The Associated Press for comment on its emissions reduction plan.
In the past, it has said that one key effort will be to diversify Qatar's economy.
Many observers say hosting the World Cup is part of branching out from oil and gas to become an entertainment and events destination. But to hold the event, Qatar built enormous amounts of infrastructure over a 12-year period — with a massive carbon footprint, despite its claims otherwise.
“They can’t diversify without spending money,” said Elgendy. "And that money will come from oil and gas. It’s a bit of a conundrum.”
Read more: Qatar World Cup: Biggest party or scam in the world?
GLOBAL DEMAND FOR GAS
Qatari officials and some academics argue that exporting liquefied natural gas to the world can help the transition to clean energy because the fossil fuel is less polluting than oil and coal. That view is increasingly unsupported by science as the extent of leaks from natural gas infrastructure becomes clear. Leaking natural gas is far more harmful for the climate than carbon dioxide, ton for ton.
Earlier this year, state-owned gas giant Qatar Energy joined an industry-led pledge to reduce nearly all methane emissions from operations by 2030. Methane is the the principal constituent of natural gas.
But a real turn away from fossil fuels has yet to begin here.
After Russia's invasion of Ukraine, Europe’s race to replace gas from that country left Qatar — among the world’s top natural gas producers and exporters — in pole position to benefit.
Qatar inked new deals with several energy companies, including a recent 27-year agreement to provide liquefied natural gas to Chinese oil and gas company Sinopec.
“Since the war in Ukraine, everyone is talking to the Qataris now to see if they can get that gas,” Elgendy said.
Kim's daughter called 'most beloved' child in 2nd appearance
North Korea's leader has taken his daughter to a meeting with missile scientists in her second public appearance, in which state media called her Kim Jong Un's “most beloved” child, deepening outside debate over whether she is being primed as his successor.
The daughter, believed to Kim’s second child named Ju Ae and about 9 or 10 years old, was first unveiled to the outside world last weekend in state media photos showing her observing the North’s intercontinental ballistic missile launch the previous day with her parents and other older officials. The daughter wearing a white puffy coat and red shoes was shown walking hand-in-hand with Kim past a huge missile loaded on a launch truck and watching a soaring weapon.
On Sunday, the North’s state media mentioned her for the second time, saying she and Kim took group photos with scientists, technicians, officials and other workers involved in what it called the test-launch of its Hwasong-17 ICBM.
KCNA described her as Kim’s “most beloved” or “precious” child, a more honorific title than her previous description of “(Kim’s) beloved” child on its Nov. 19 dispatch. It also released a slew of photos showing the daughter in a long, black coat with a black fur collar, holding her father’s arm.
Read more: Kim claims that the ICBM test shows the ability to counter US threats
Some photos showed the two of them standing in the middle of a line of uniformed soldiers before a massive missile atop a launch truck. Others showed Kim's daughter clapping her hands or talking to her father as people cheered in the background.
Taking after her mother Ri Sol Ju, who wasn’t visible in any of the photos Sunday, she had a more mature appearance than in her unveiling a week ago.
“This is certainly striking. The photograph of Kim Ju Ae standing alongside her father while being celebrated by technicians and scientists involved in the latest ICBM launch would support the idea that this is the start of her being positioned as a potential successor,” said Ankit Panda, an expert with the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
“State media underscoring her father’s love for her further underscores this, I think. Finally, both of her initial public appearances have been in the context of strategic nuclear weapons — the crown jewels of North Korea’s national defense capabilities. That doesn’t strike me as coincidental,” Panda said.
After her first public appearance, South Korea’s spy service told lawmakers that it assessed the girl pictured is Kim’s second child, who is about 10 and whose name is Ju Ae. The National Intelligence Service said her looks matched information that she is taller and bigger than other girls of the same age. It also said that her unveiling appeared to reflect Kim’s resolve to protect the security of North Korea’s future generations in the face of a standoff with the United States.
Read more: Kim threatens to use nukes amid tensions with US, S. Korea
South Korean media previously speculated Kim has three children — born in 2010, 2013 and 2017 — and that the first child is a son while the third one is a daughter. The unveiled daughter is highly likely the child who retired NBA star Dennis Rodman saw during his 2013 trip to Pyongyang. After that visit, Rodman told the British newspaper The Guardian that he and Kim had a “relaxing time by the sea” with the leader’s family and that he held Kim’s baby daughter, named Ju Ae.
North Korea has made no mention of Kim’s reported two other children. But speculation that his eldest child is a son has led some experts to question how a daughter can be Kim's successor given the deeply male-dominated, patriarchal nature of North Korean society. Kim is a third-generation member of the family that has run North Korea for more than seven decades, and his father and grandfather successively governed the country before he inherited power in late 2011.
“We’ve been told that Kim has three children, including possibly a son. If this is true, and if we assume that the male child — who has yet to be revealed — will be the heir, is Ju Ae truly Kim’s most ‘precious,’ from a succession standpoint?” said Soo Kim, a security analyst at the California-based RAND Corporation. “I think it is too early to draw any conclusions.”
She said that Kim Jong Un may think his daughter’s unveiling is an effective distraction while conditioning Washington, Seoul and others to living with the North Korean nuclear threat as “the spectacle of Ju Ae appears to eclipse the intensifying gravity of North Korea’s nuclear and missile threat." She added that by parading his daughter around, Kim Jong Un may also want to tell his people that nuclear weapons are the sole guarantor for the country’s future.
In remarks at the group photo session, Kim Jong Un called the recently tested Hwasong-17 “a great entity of strategic strength” and ordered officials to further build the country’s military capability to a “more absolute and irreversible one.” The North’s Hwasong-17 launch was part of a barrage of missile tests that it says were meant to issue a warning over U.S.-South Korean military drills that it views as an invasion rehearsal.
Analyst Cheong Seong-Chang at the private Sejong Institute in South Korea said that Kim Jong Un cannot make his son his successor if he thinks he lacks leadership. Cheong said Kim may be preventing potential pushback for choosing a daughter as a fourth-generation leader, so he likely brought her to a successful ICBM launch event to help public loyalty toward him be carried on smoothly to his daughter.
“When a king has many children, it’s natural for him to make his most beloved child as his successor,” Cheong said. “Kim Ju Ae is expected to appear occasionally at Kim Jong Un’s public events and take a succession training.”
Revealing the young Ju Ae came as a huge surprise to foreign experts, as Kim Jong Un and his father Kim Jong Il were both first mentioned in state media dispatches after they became adults. Cheong, however, said Kim Jong Il had Kim Jong Un in mind as his heir when his son was 8 years old. Cheong cited his conversations with Kim Jong Un’s aunt and her husband, who defected to the United States.
The fact that the South Korean spy agency said Ju Ae is about 10 years old despite reportedly being born in 2013 could be related to the country’s age-calculating system that typically makes people’s age one or two years older.
Protests over China's COVID controls spread across country
Protests against China's pervasive anti-virus controls that have confined millions of people to their homes spread to Shanghai and other cities after complaints they might have worsened the death toll in an apartment fire in the northwest.
Shanghai police used pepper spray against about 300 protesters, according to a witness. They gathered Saturday night to mourn the deaths of at least 10 people in an apartment fire last week in Urumqi in the Xinjiang region in the northwest.
Videos posted on social media that said they were filmed in Nanjing in the east, Guangzhou in the south and at least five other cities showed protesters tussling with police in white protective suits or dismantling barricades used to seal off neighborhoods. Witnesses said a protest occurred in Urumqi, but The Associated Press was unable to confirm details of other videos.
President Xi Jinping’s government faces mounting anger at its “zero-COVID” policy that has shut down access to areas throughout China in an attempt to isolate every case at a time when other governments are easing controls and trying to live with the virus.
Read more: China reports 10,000 new virus cases, capital closes parks
That has kept China’s infection rate lower than the United States and other countries. But the ruling Communist Party faces growing complaints about the economic and human cost as businesses close and families are isolated for weeks with limited access to food and medicine.
Some protesters were shown in videos shouting for Xi to step down or the ruling party to give up power.
Party leaders promised last month to make restrictions less disruptive by easing quarantine and other rules but said they were sticking to “zero-COVID.” Meanwhile, an upsurge in infections that pushed daily cases above 30,000 for the first time has led local authorities to impose restrictions residents complain exceed what is allowed by the national government.
The fire deaths in Urumqi triggered an outpouring of angry questions online about whether firefighters who needed three hours to extinguish the blaze or victims trying to escape might have been obstructed by locked doors or other controls. Authorities denied that, but the disaster became a focal point for public anger about anti-disease restrictions, ruling party propaganda and censorship.
In Shanghai, protesters gathered at Middle Urumqi Road at midnight with flowers, candles and signs reading “Urumqi, November 24, those who died rest in peace,” according to a participant who would give only his family name, Zhao.
Zhao said one of his friends was beaten by police and two were pepper-sprayed. He said police stomped on his feet as he tried to stop them from taking his friend away. He lost his shoes and left barefoot.
According to Zhao, protesters yelled slogans including “Xi Jinping, step down, Communist Party, step down,” “Unlock Xinjiang, unlock China,” “do not want PCR (tests), want freedom” and “press freedom.”
Around 100 police stood in lines to prevent protesters from gathering or leaving, Zhao said. He said buses with more police arrived later.
Read more: China launches Covid-19 vaccine inhaled through mouth
Another protester, who gave only his family name, Xu, said there was a larger crowd of thousands of demonstrators, but police stood in the road and let them pass on the sidewalk.
Internet users posted videos and accounts on Chinese and foreign social media showing protests in Shanghai, Nanjing, Chengdu and Chongqing in the southwest and Urumqi and Korla in Xinjiang.
A video that said it was shot in Urumqi showed protesters chanting, “Remove the Communist Party! Remove Xi Jinping!”
Protests in Xinjiang are especially risky following a security crackdown against Uyghurs and other mostly Muslim ethnic minorities that has included mass detentions.
Most protesters in the videos were members of China's dominant Han ethnic group. A Uyghur woman in Urumqi said Uyghurs were too scared to take to the streets.
“Han Chinese people know they will not be punished if they speak against the lockdown,” said the woman, who asked not to be identified by name for fear of retaliation. “Uyghurs are different. If we dare say such things, we will be taken to prison or to the camps.”
Posts on Chinese social media were quickly deleted, which Beijing often does to suppress criticism it worries might serve as a rallying point for opposition to one-party rule.
People in some parts of Xinjiang have been confined to their homes since early August. Some complain they lack access to food and medicine and have posted appeals for help online.
In a possible attempt to placate the public, authorities on Saturday announced they had achieved “societal zero-COVID” and restrictions in Urumqi and Korla would be relaxed. The government said taxi, railway, bus and other public services that had been suspended for weeks would resume. State-owned China Southern Airlines announced it would resume flights from Urumqi to four Chinese cities starting Monday.
Social media users greeted news the disease was under control with disbelief and sarcasm. “Only China can achieve this speed,” wrote one user on the Sina Weibo social media service.
Anger boiled over earlier after Urumqi city officials appeared to blame the deaths from Thursday night's fire on the apartment tower’s residents.
“Some residents’ ability to rescue themselves was too weak,” said Li Wensheng, head of Urumqi’s fire department, at a news conference.
Police announced the arrest of a 24-year-old woman on charges of spreading “untrue information” about the death toll online.
Late Friday, people in Urumqi marched largely peacefully in big puffy winter jackets in the cold winter night.
Videos of protests featured people holding the Chinese flag and shouting “Open up, open up." Some shouted and pushed against rows of men in the white protective suits.
Two Urumqi residents who declined to be named for fear of retribution said large-scale protests occurred Friday night. One of them said he had friends who participated.
The AP pinpointed the locations of two of the videos of the protests in different parts of Urumqi. In one video, police in face masks and hospital gowns faced off against shouting protesters. In another, one protester spoke to a crowd about their demands. It was unclear how widespread the protests were.
Xi has defended the strategy as an example of the superiority of the Chinese system compared with the United States and other Western countries, which politicized the use of face masks and had difficulties enacting widespread lockdowns.
But support for “zero-COVID” has cratered in recent months, as tragedies sparked public anger.
Last week, the government of the central city of Zhengzhou apologized for the death of a 4-month old girl who was in quarantine. Her father said his efforts to take her to a hospital were delayed after ambulance workers balked at helping them because he tested positive for the virus.
The Uyghur woman in Urumqi said she had been unable to leave her apartment since Aug. 8, and was not even allowed to open her window. On Friday, she and her neighbors defied the order, opening their windows and shouting in protest.
“No more lockdowns! No more lockdowns!” they screamed, according to the woman.
Civilians escape Kherson after Russian strikes on freed city
Fleeing shelling, civilians on Saturday streamed out of the southern Ukrainian city whose recapture they had celebrated just weeks earlier.
The exodus from Kherson came as Ukraine solemnly remembered a Stalin-era famine and sought to ensure that Russia's war in Ukraine doesn’t deprive others worldwide of its vital food exports.
A line of trucks, vans and cars, some towing trailers or ferrying out pets and other belongings, stretched a kilometer or more on the outskirts of the city of Kherson.
Days of intensive shelling by Russian forces prompted a bittersweet exodus: Many civilians were happy that their city had been won back, but lamented that they couldn't stay.
“It is sad that we are leaving our home,” said Yevhen Yankov, as a van he was in inched forward. "Now we are free, but we have to leave, because there is shelling, and there are dead among the population.”
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Poking her head out from the back, Svitlana Romanivna added: “We went through real hell. Our neighborhood was burning, it was a nightmare. Everything was in flames.”
Emilie Fourrey, emergency project coordinator for aid group Doctors Without Borders in Ukraine, said an evacuation of 400 patients of Kherson's psychiatric hospital, which is situated near both an electrical plant and the frontline, had begun on Thursday and was set to continue in the coming days.
Ukraine in recent days has faced a blistering onslaught of Russian artillery fire and drone attacks, with the shelling especially intense in Kherson. Often the barrage has largely targeted infrastructure, though civilian casualties have been reported. Repair crews across the country were scrambling to restore heat, electricity and water services that were blasted into disrepair.
Russia has ratcheted up its attacks on critical infrastructure after suffering battlefield setbacks. A prominent Russian nationalist said Saturday the Russian military doesn't have enough doctors, in what was a rare public admission of problems within the military.
In the capital Kyiv, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy oversaw a busy day of diplomacy, welcoming several European Union leaders for meetings and hosting an “International Summit on Food Security” to discuss food security and agricultural exports from the country. A deal brokered by the U.N. and Turkey has allowed for safe exports of Ukrainian grain in the Black Sea amid wartime disruptions that have affected traffic.
“The total amount we have raised for ‘Grain from Ukraine’ is already about $150 million. The work continues," Zelenskyy said in his nightly TV address. “We are preparing up to 60 ships. All of us together do not just send Ukrainian agricultural products to those countries that suffer the most from the food crisis. We reaffirm that hunger should never again be used as a weapon.”
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The prime ministers of Belgium, Poland and Lithuania and the president of Hungary were on hand, many others participated by video. Zelenskyy said more than 20 countries supported the summit.
Ukrainian Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal said Ukraine — despite its own financial straits — has allocated 900 million hryvna ($24 million) to purchase corn for countries including Yemen, Sudan, Kenya and Nigeria.
Our food security summit was supported by more than 20 countries. The total amount we have raised for ‘Grain from Ukraine’ is already about 150 million US dollars. The work continues. We are preparing up to 60 ships. All of us together do not just send Ukrainian agricultural products to those countries that suffer the most from the food crisis. We reaffirm that hunger should never again be used as a weapon.
The reminder about food supplies was timely: Ukrainians were marking the 90th anniversary of the start of the “Holodomor,” or Great Famine, which killed more than 3 million people over two years as the Soviet government under dictator Josef Stalin confiscated food and grain supplies and deported many Ukrainians.
German Chancellor Olaf Scholz marked the commemoration by drawing parallels with the impact of the war on Ukraine on world markets. Exports from Ukraine have resumed under a U.N.-brokered deal but have still been far short of pre-war levels, driving up global prices.
“Today, we stand united in stating that hunger must never again be used as a weapon,” Scholz said in a video message. “That is why we cannot tolerate what we are witnessing: The worst global food crisis in years with abhorrent consequences for millions of people – from Afghanistan to Madagascar, from the Sahel to the Horn of Africa.”
He said Germany, with the U.N.'s World Food Program, will provide an additional 15 million euros for further grain shipments from Ukraine.
Scholz spokes as a cross-party group of lawmakers in Germany are seeking to pass a parliamentary resolution next week that would recognize the 1930s famine as “genocide.”
Last year Ukraine and Russia provided around 30% of the world’s exported wheat and barley, 20% of its corn, and over 50% of its sunflower oil, the U.N. has said.
In a post on the Telegram social network on Saturday, Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko said more than 3,000 specialists for a local utility continued to work “around the clock” and had succeeded in restoring heat to more than more than 90% of residential buildings. While about one-quarter of Kyiv residents remained without electricity, he said water serviced had been returned to all in the city.
The scramble to restore power came as Belgian Prime Minister Alexander De Croo met Saturday with Zelenskyy in Kyiv.
“This might be a difficult winter,” he said, alluding to Belgium's contributions of generators, and support for schools and hospitals in Ukraine, as well as military aid such as “fuel, machine guns, propelled artillery and so on.”
“And by standing here, we hope that we provide you hope and resilience in fighting through this difficult period.”
Pakistan's ex-PM Khan says his party to quit all assemblies
Pakistan's former premier Imran Khan said Saturday his party was quitting the country's regional and national assemblies, as he made his first public appearance since being wounded in a gun attack earlier this month.
Khan, a former cricket star turned politician, was ousted in a no-confidence vote in Parliament in April. He is now in the opposition and has been demanding early elections, claiming his ouster was illegal and orchestrated by Prime Minister Shahbaz Sharif, with the U.S. government’s help. Sharif and Washington have dismissed the allegations and the current government says the next polls will be held as scheduled in 2023.
Khan launched a protest march late last month from the eastern city of Lahore toward Islamabad as part of his campaign for early polls, but stepped down from personally leading the convoy after he was wounded by a gunman who opened fire at his vehicle. One of Khan’s supporters was killed and 13 were wounded in the attack. The gunman was arrested.
On Saturday night, in Rawalpindi city near Islamabad, Khan rejoined the protest march.
He told tens of thousands of his cheering supporters that his Tehreek-e-Insaf party was leaving all regional and national assemblies and getting out of this "corrupt system.”
His party resigned from the national assembly en masse in April ahead of a vote to elect a new prime minister, although most of the resignations have yet to be accepted. Khan's stronghold is in the northwest province of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, and leaving the Punjab assembly would hand power to his rivals.
The politician spoke for more than an hour, including references to the Sufi mystic Rumi, the fall of the Soviet Union, and the seventh-century Shiite leader Imam Hussain.
Toward the end of his speech, he did a U-turn on his demand for snap elections, saying his party would win the polls scheduled for nine months' time. He also said he would no longer march on the capital.
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“They (government) cannot deal with a march in Islamabad, they can call as many police as they want, but they cannot stop the hundreds of thousands from entering Islamabad,” said Khan. "We could have created a situation like Sri Lanka. I have decided against marching on Islamabad because I don’t want there to be anarchy in the country. I don't want to cause any harm to this country."
After months of protests over an economic crisis that has led to shortages of essentials such as food and medicine, thousands of Sri Lankans stormed the president’s residence in July, forcing then-President Gotabaya Rajapaksa to flee and later resign.
Khan said he will meet his chief ministers and parliamentary party and announce the timing of the exit.
The rally came days after the appointment of a new army chief, Asim Munir, who ran the country's spy agency during Khan's term in office but was fired without an explanation from the then-premier.
Munir replaces Gen. Qamar Javed Bajwa, who Khan has also accused of playing a role in his ouster. Bajwa denies the allegation.
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Pakistan's Foreign Minister Bilawal Bhutto Zardari described Khan's Saturday night rally as a “facesaving flopshow.”
He said in a tweet: “Unable to pull revolution crowds, failed at undermining appointments of new chiefs, frustrated, resorts to resignation drama.”