Saiful Vai Kothay Tumi evacuation of civilians in southern Ukraine Bogura 7 heath 2023 Russian President Vladimir Putin has illegally annexed territory, attacked civilian targets, called up military reservists and threatened nuclear escalation. But the Kremlin still doesn’t seem confident that its military can hold back a Ukrainian counteroffensive ahead of winter.
Xi Jinping will upend Chinese political traditions cementing his status as one of the world's most powerful leaders — and take on the U.S. to become the dominant superpower — when members of the country's ruling Communist Party extend a third term as general secretary at the Party's 20th National Congress.
The conclave kicks off Oct. 16 and runs for about a week.
EU countries on Wednesday agreed to level new sanctions on the Islamic republic over the "crackdown" during a month of demonstrations over Amini's death. The move is due to be endorsed at the bloc's foreign ministers' meeting in Luxembourg on Monday.
"We recommend that Europeans look at the issue with a realistic approach," Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian told EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell in a phone call Friday.
In a separate statement on Friday, Amir-Abdollahian said: "Who would believe that the death of one girl is so important to Westerners?"
"If it is so, what did they do regarding the hundreds of thousands of martyrs and deaths in Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria and Lebanon?" he added.
Iran has been rocked by protests since Amini's death on September 16, three days after she was arrested by morality police in Tehran for allegedly violating the country's strict dress code for women.
Xi, 69, ascended to China's top job in 2012. During his decade in power he's had far-reaching influence at home and abroad. He has centralized power and relentlessly cracked down on dissent. He has poured billions into international infrastructure projects and aggressively pursued island construction and militarization in the South China Sea.
What is China's Communist Party Congress, and what happens now?
- Xi is already poised to remain in power for the rest of his life after China's lawmakers abolished the two term limit on the presidency, a largely ceremonial title. Xi will be reconfirmed as president next March.
- About 200 top members of the Party will be backed to join the policy-making Central Committee. The Central Committee, in turn, will select 25 people to join the Party's Politburo, a kind of inner circle of this executive branch. These 25 people will then determine who makes up the Politburo's standing committee, a group of seven elite Party members headed by Xi, in the general secretary role.
- Geremie Barmé, an Australian academic, once called Xi the "chairman of everything."
Two men were sentenced to 40 years in prison each on Friday for the 2017 car-bomb murder of Maltese anti-corruption journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia, a brutal killing that rattled Europe and drew international attention to the tiny Mediterranean country’s criminal underworld.
Brothers George Degiorgio, 59, and Alfred Degiorgio, 57, who previously claimed innocence, pleaded guilty to the assassination of Caruana Galizia, a muckraker who had investigated drugs, arms traffickers, politicians and judges in a country largely known as a picturesque tourist destination. They had faced life imprisonment.
Prosecutors alleged that the brothers had been hired to kill Caruana Galizia by one of Malta’s wealthiest people, Yorgen Fenech, according to the Associated Press. Fenech is awaiting trial. There were also questions as to what role, if any, politicians played in her death. Caruana Galizia had linked associates of then-Prime Minister Joseph Muscat with suspicious financial transactions described in the Panama Papers, which detailed the hidden infrastructure of offshore tax havens. (A probe later cleared Muscat and his associates of wrongdoing related to that scandal.)
In a blog post published on the day of her murder, Caruana Galizia accused a top Muscat aide of corruption. The aide — who was subsequently sanctioned by the United States — denies wrongdoing. The premier was pushed out of office in 2020 by protesters who were furious at how the investigation of her murder was handled; an independent probe concluded last year that the Maltese state bears responsibility for her death due to its “culture of impunity” and failure to recognize the risk to her life.
“It’s been half-a-decade of agony for Daphne’s family and for the country,” wrote European Parliament President Roberta Metsola, who is Maltese, in a Facebook post. “Daphne still cannot write her blog, enjoy her children and grandchildren, potter in her garden or be with her loved ones. Today is not justice, it is a small step.”
“Daphne’s killers should never have been allowed to do what they did in the first place and the systemic failures that enabled her assassination need to be effectively addressed,” said Corinne Vella, a sister of Caruana Galizia, in a Saturday email to The Washington Post.
Caruana Galizia worked as a journalist in Malta for more than 30 years, according to a foundation established in her memory. She ran a lifestyle magazine and a corruption-focused blog titled “Running Commentary.” Her aggressive reporting on both government and opposition figures led to some 43 libel suits at the time of her death — many of which her family is still fighting.
Caruana Galizia also received numerous threats of violence before her assassination. In 1995, her front door was doused in fuel and set on fire, and her dog — one of three that were killed during her lifetime — was left in front of her home with a slit throat. In 2006, she published an article on neo-Nazi groups in Malta, leading someone to arrange a stack of tires behind her home and set them ablaze.
“She was insulted and pressured on a daily basis. She was hated,” said Pauline Adès-Mével, a spokesperson for Reporters Without Borders (RSF), who testified at the inquiry into Caruana Galizia’s murder and who had sought to support the reporter. “Unfortunately, she was already targeted, and we didn’t have time to set up any protection or legal framework for her."
Mandy Mallia, a sister of late journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia, lights candles in front of a picture of her sister in Valletta, Malta, on Friday.© AP/APCaruana Galizia was 53 when she was killed near her home in a remote town in northern Malta where she lived with her family for safety purposes. The brutal nature of her murder shocked the European Union, where hits on journalists are rare. It also spurred calls for reform in Malta, where reporters must deal with an increasingly hostile climate.
Malta ranks 78th out of 180 countries on RSF’s 2022 World Press Freedom Index, 31 places lower than at the time of Caruana Galizia’s death.
Jeremy Hunt told the BBC that some taxes will go up, while government spending may need to fall.
He said two mistakes were made in the mini-budget by Kwasi Kwarteng - cutting the top rate of tax and announcing it without an independent forecast.
But he also praised his predecessor for help offered to people struggling with their energy bills.
Mr Hunt said he agreed with the prime minister's goal of "solving the growth paradox", but added: "The way we went about it clearly wasn't right and that's why I'm sitting here now."
Speaking to BBC Radio 4's Today Programme, Mr Hunt said: "Taxes are not going to come down by as much as people hoped, and some taxes will have to go up.
Britain's new finance minister Jeremy Hunt said on Saturday that some taxes will have to go up, signalling another abrupt policy U-turn by Prime Minister Liz Truss who is battling to save her leadership just over a month into her term.
Key points:
- Britain's new finance minister Jeremy Hunt says the country needs stability and that Liz Truss needs time
- Ms Truss fired Kwasi Kwarteng as her chancellor of the exchequer on Friday and appointed Mr Hunt
- Mr Hunt says he will will make further changes to her government's fiscal plans
In an attempt to appease financial markets that have been in turmoil for three weeks, Ms Truss fired Kwasi Kwarteng as her chancellor of the exchequer on Friday and scrapped parts of their controversial economic package.
In a hurried news conference shortly after dismissing Mr Kwarteng, Ms Truss said the corporation tax rate would increase, abandoning her plan to keep it at current levels, and government spending would rise by less than previously planned.
Big, unfunded tax cuts were a central plank of Ms Truss's original plans, but Mr Hunt said tax increases were on the cards.
"We will have some very difficult decisions ahead," he told Sky News.
"The thing that people want, the markets want, the country needs now, is stability," Mr Hunt said.
"No chancellor can control the markets. But what I can do is show that we can pay for our tax and spending plans and that is going to need some very difficult decisions on both spending and tax."
Mr Hunt said he had been sanctioned by Ms Truss to make further changes to her government's fiscal plans following two major U-turns on her tax-cutting agenda already.
Asked on BBC radio if he had a clean slate and could change further elements of the tax cuts set out by his predecessor ahead of a medium term fiscal plan on October 31, Mr Hunt said: "Yes."
Mr Hunt is due to announce the government's medium-term budget plans on October 31, a key test of its ability to show investors that it can restore its economic policy credibility.
He said spending would not rise by as much as people would like, and all government departments were going to have to find more efficiencies than they were planning.
"Some taxes will not be cut as quickly as people want, and some taxes will go up. So it's going to be difficult," he said.
Mr Kwarteng's September 23 fiscal statement prompted a backlash in financial markets that was so ferocious that the Bank of England (BoE) had to intervene to prevent pension funds being caught up in the chaos as borrowing costs surged.
Mr Hunt said he agreed with Truss's fundamental approach of seeking to spark economic growth but the way she and Mr Kwarteng went about it had not worked.
"There were mistakes. It was a mistake when we're going to be asking for difficult decisions across the board on tax and spending to cut the rate of tax paid by the very wealthiest," he said.
"It was a mistake to fly blind and to do these forecasts without giving people the confidence of the Office of Budget Responsibility saying that the sums add up.
"The Prime Minister has recognised that, that's why I'm here."
Ms Truss was due to spend the weekend trying to shore up her flagging support within the Conservative Party, with newspapers quoting politicians who questioned her ability to stay in the job.
On Monday, the British government bond market faces a test when it will function for the first time without the emergency buying support provided by the BoE since September 28.
"I'm going to be asking all government departments to find additional efficiency savings."
But Mr Hunt, who was appointed as chancellor on Friday after Kwasi Kwarteng was sacked by the prime minister, refused to outline any details for his tax and spending plans.
He told BBC Breakfast he was "not going to make any commitments" and reiterated he was just hours into the job.
His comments come after the government's mini-budget last month, which included £45bn worth of tax cuts, and sparked turbulence in the financial markets.
Addressing mistakes he said were made by the ex-chancellor, Mr Hunt said: "There were two mistakes - it was wrong to cut the top rate of tax for the very highest earners at a time where we're going to have to be asking for sacrifices from everyone to get through a very difficult period.
"And it was wrong to fly blind and to announce those plans without reassuring people with the discipline of the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) that we actually can afford to pay for them."
He said both of these were now in the process of "being put right".
Mr Hunt said he would be meeting Treasury officials later and Liz Truss on Sunday.
After just 39 days as prime minister, Ms Truss is facing huge pressure from within her party as key elements of the major economic plan she and the former chancellor set out in September have been scrapped.
The prime minister is facing a backlash from Conservative MPs after announcing the government's second U-turn in a month.
Friday's U-turn on plans to cut corporation tax followed an earlier reversal of plans to cut the 45p rate of income tax for the highest earners.
One Tory MP described the party as being in a "state of despair", but Truss supporter Christopher Chope said "time will tell" if she had done enough to secure her position.
Asked whether there should be a general election, Mr Hunt told the BBC: "What the country wants now is stability.
"[Truss] has been prime minister for less than five weeks. When we are judged at a general election, we will be judged by what we deliver over the next 18 months by far more than what's happened over the last 18 weeks."
The PM has described sacking Mr Kwarteng and scrapping another key economic policy as "difficult" and admitted in a short press conference on Friday that "parts of our mini-budget went further and faster" than the markets were expecting.
In September, the Council of Europe’s commissioner for human rights wrote a letter to Malta’s prime minister, Robert Abela, outlining her concerns about press freedom.
“Freedom of expression, including media freedom and the safety of journalists, is a prerequisite of any democratic society,” the commissioner wrote, adding that it is “necessary to comply with international standards.”
“We attach the utmost importance to holding the persons who commissioned and murdered Ms. Caruana Galizia accountable, and to counting our work to ensure that the environment journalists operate within is free," Abela replied.
Here are several ways China has evolved since Xi's been in charge.
Saiful Vai Kothay Tumi evacuation of civilians in southern Ukraine Bogura 7 heath 2023
Civilians in the country’s occupied south should evacuate to Russia, Moscow-installed officials there urged this week, in a sign that the Kremlin is worried about its hold on the strategic region as Kyiv pushes to reclaim more land there after recent breakthroughs.
The head of the Moscow-appointed regional administration, Vladimir Saldo, without using the word “evacuation,” asked Moscow Thursday to welcome families from the Kherson region that want “to protect themselves” from what he described as constant Ukrainian shelling.
The Kremlin promptly agreed to support such efforts, with officials in the southern Russian region of Rostov saying the first arrivals were expected Friday, the state news agency Tass reported.
Western military analysts said the move underlined Russia’s growing concern over its ability to hold Kherson, just weeks after it claimed to annex the region and in light of sudden gains made by Ukraine’s military this month — its biggest advance in the south since Russian forces seized it early in the war.
“You don’t evacuate from a region that you have recently annexed (illegally) if you are confident of holding it,” said Phillips O’Brien, a professor of strategic studies at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland. “I think we can read this as a sign that they are very worried about their ability to hold the west bank of the Dnieper River.”
As Ukraine pressed on, Russian forces retreated from the front lines they had established in the area and sought to set up new positions they could hold along the strategic waterway.
Saiful Vai Kothay Tumi evacuation of civilians in southern Ukraine Bogura 7 heath 2023
Just hours after Saldo’s comments, the deputy head of Kherson’s Russian-installed administration, Kirill Stremousov, rushed to clarify that this was not an evacuation but an offer that has been long in the making.
“No one is making plans to retreat,” he said in a video message, as he urged people not to panic.
The preparation to evacuate some civilians could mean that the Russians are anticipating that combat could extend to the city of Kherson itself, the U.K. Defense Ministry said in its assessment of the situation Thursday.
The city is a strategic gateway to the Black Sea and the neighboring Crimean Peninsula, and has been critical in cementing Moscow’s grasp on the area. It’s the only regional center that the Russians have controlled since the start of the war.
Losing Kherson would deal a major blow to the Kremlin, with Putin himself boasting that it had been “reunited” with Russia forever after the region became one of four occupied provinces that Russia claimed to have annexed last month.
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