A fragile cease-fire deal to end nearly three days of fighting between Israel and Palestinian militants in Gaza held throughout the night and into Monday morning — a sign that the latest round of violence appears to have abated.
The flare-up was the worst fighting between Israel and Gaza militant groups since Israel and Gaza's Hamas rulers fought an 11-day war last year, adding to the destruction and misery that have plagued blockaded Gaza for years.
Since Friday, Israeli aircraft had pummeled targets in Gaza while the Iran-backed Palestinian Jihad militant group fired hundreds of rockets at Israel.
As a familiar campaign jingle brings the Kenyan crowd to their feet, Hellen Atieno joins her compatriots and sways to the catchy tune at a political rally in the lakeside city of Kisumu.
Just don't expect the 23-year-old to vote.
The Biden administration’s response to the riot is “political persecution” under which more than 800 people have been arrested and over 200 criminal sentences have been handed out, she said.
The congresswoman added that people who did things that “they shouldn’t have done” should be treated better during their imprisonment, bringing up her visit to jails.
“OK, they got charged for things they shouldn’t have done, OK, that happened, they deserve their day in court, they deserve their due process rights, but honestly, my gosh, what’s happening to these people is so heartbreaking,” she said in the Lindell TV interview.
She added: “I was in that jail, I saw them, it’s so sad. They hadn’t bathed, they didn’t have haircuts, they couldn’t shave because they weren’t vaccinated. They were treated worse if they weren’t vaccinated, but, what kind of country are we?”
The Georgia representative has not given a clear stand on whether she believes Mr Trump’s supporters were involved in the US Capitol riots.
One of the biggest supporters of Mr Trump’s claims that the election declaring Joe Biden the winner was stolen, Ms Greene had sent a text message to former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows on the day of the violent attack and said that she feared there was an active shooter at the site.
"I have only come to the rally because there is money. I hope there will be something," Atieno told AFP, referring to the widespread Kenyan practice of offering freebies to prospective voters.
Currently without a job, the former fishmonger says she is so fed up with the country's insular political class that she plans to stay home when Kenya votes on August 9 in parliamentary and presidential polls.
She is not alone.
The East African economic powerhouse ranks among the world's youngest countries -- three-quarters of Kenyans are aged under 34, according to government figures.
Many have no interest in participating in an electoral process they widely dismiss as corrupt and pointless.
The number of registered young voters has dropped five percent since the 2017 poll, in contrast to over-35s, whose tally has increased, Kenya's election commission announced last month.
Over 22 million Kenyans are eligible to take part in this year's polls, with young people accounting for less than 40 percent of that number, the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission (IEBC) said.
- 'A dirty game' -
Politicians have responded with a freebie bonanza, offering cash, umbrellas, shirts, caps and even packets of maize flour -- a dietary staple -- to anyone who attends their rallies.
Over three days of fighting, 43 Palestinians were killed, including 15 children and four women, and 311 were wounded, the Palestinian Health Ministry said. Israel said some of the dead were killed by misfired rockets.
Israel on Monday said it was partially reopening crossings into Gaza for humanitarian needs and would fully open them if calm was maintained.
Life for hundreds of thousands of Israelis was disrupted during the violence. Security precautions imposed in recent days on residents of southern Israel were being gradually lifted Monday, the military said.
The violence had threatened to spiral into another all-out war but ended up being contained because Gaza's ruling Hamas group stayed on the sidelines, possibly because it fears Israeli reprisals and undoing economic understandings with Israel, including Israeli work permits for thousands of Gaza residents, that bolster its control over the coastal strip.
Israel and Hamas have fought four wars since the group overran the territory in 2007.
Barely a week after floodwaters swept downtown and left a foot of mud and twisted, gutted buildings along Main Street, an incongruous sight appeared: A flashing sign declaring JR’s Barber Shop “OPEN.”
As National Guard troops patrolled outside and volunteers on backhoes mounded up debris, J.R. Collins stood behind his barber chair, giving a touchup to one of his regulars. Like most in Fleming-Neon, Collins comes from a family built on mining — both his grandfathers worked in coal — and he has stayed in the close-knit town even as the industry shrank and others fled. Those who remain are determined to prove their community is about more than coal.
And they’ve come together to make sure Collins’ barber shop and other businesses reopen amid the devastating floods that have killed more than three dozen in eastern Kentucky.
“They were there with shovels and squeegees and water, and people packing, and kids helping,” Collins said above the din of air conditioning and a dehumidifier in his shop. “It’s good, hard-working people that like to help people out and got each other’s back.”
Fleming-Neon was once two towns: Fleming, a company town founded in the early 1900s by the Elkhorn Coal Corp. for the sole purpose of mining, and Neon, a former logging camp.
Fleming was run by Elkhorn and named for one of its executives. The company issued its own money, and workers used it for rent on company-owned homes and goods at the company store or local businesses. Neon was independent, a free town where U.S. government greenbacks, not company scrip, was legal tender — but it thrived off the glow of coal nearby.
Fleming and Neon prospered along with the company and industry. Dates still seen today on brick storefronts chronicle the boom years.
“We had department stores, we had grocery stores, we had restaurants, we had dry cleaners. We had a theater,” said Susan Polis, Fleming-Neon’s 73-year-old mayor. “You did not have to leave here to have, to get anything.”
But as the mines mechanized, the population shrank in Fleming as well as Neon. In the late 1970s, the former rival towns merged under one government in an effort to pool resources, but the bleeding continued.
Today, only about 500 people remain. And on July 28, the waters of Wright Fork rose, threatening further devastation for this valley of people who long extracted riches from the earth. But there’s a spark in Fleming-Neon that, so far, has refused to be extinguished.
A multipurpose center was set to open in a former car dealership about two weeks after the storm hit. Jeff Hawkins, a longtime educator who’s lived here since he was a teenager, said the project, dubbed Neon Lights, would include a performing arts studio, an internet cafe, event space, and an innovation incubator.
Israel launched its operation with a strike Friday on a leader of the Islamic Jihad, saying there were “concrete threats” of an anti-tank missile attack against Israelis in response to the arrest last week of another senior Islamic Jihad member in the West Bank. That arrest came after months of Israeli raids in the West Bank to round up suspects following a spate of Palestinian attacks against Israel.
It killed another Islamic Jihad leader in a strike on Saturday.
“Over these last 72-hours, the United States has worked with officials from Israel, the Palestinian Authority, Egypt, Qatar, Jordan, and others throughout the region to encourage a swift resolution to the conflict,” he said in a statement Sunday.
The U.N. Security Council was to hold an emergency meeting Monday on the violence. China, which holds the council presidency this month, scheduled the session in response to a request from the United Arab Emirates, which represents Arab nations on the council, as well as China, France, Ireland and Norway.
The exercises would include anti-submarine drills, apparently targeting U.S. support for Taiwan in the event of a potential Chinese invasion, according to social media posts from the eastern leadership of China’s ruling Communist Party’s military arm, the People’s Liberation Army.
The military has said the exercises involving missile strikes, warplanes and ship movements crossing the midline of the Taiwan Strait dividing the sides were a response to U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's visit to the self-ruled island last week.
China has ignored calls to calm the tensions, and there was no immediate indication when it would end what amounts to a blockade.
Taiwan’s defense ministry said Sunday it detected a total of 66 aircraft and 14 warships conducting the naval and air exercises. The island has responded by putting its military on alert and deploying ships, planes and other assets to monitor Chinese aircraft, ships and drones that are “simulating attacks on the island of Taiwan and our ships at sea.”
Arbery’s killing on Feb. 23, 2020, became part of a larger national reckoning over racial injustice and killings of unarmed Black people including George Floyd in Minneapolis and Breonna Taylor in Kentucky. Those two cases also resulted in the Justice Department bringing federal charges.
When they return to court Monday in Georgia, McMichael, his father Greg McMichael and neighbor William “Roddie” Bryan face possible life sentences after a jury convicted them in February of federal hate crimes, concluding that they violated Arbery’s civil rights and targeted him because of his race. All three men were also found guilty of attempted kidnapping, and the McMichaels face additional penalties for using firearms to commit a violent crime.
Whatever punishments they receive in federal court could ultimately prove more symbolic than anything. A state Superior Court judge imposed life sentences for all three men in January for Arbery’s murder, with both McMichaels denied any chance of parole.
All three defendants have remained jailed in coastal Glynn County, in the custody of U.S. marshals, while awaiting sentencing after their federal convictions in January.
Because they were first charged and convicted of murder in a state court, protocol would have them turned them over to the Georgia Department of Corrections to serve their life terms in a state prison.
In a court filings last week, both Travis and Greg McMichael asked the judge to instead divert them to a federal prison, saying they won’t be safe in a Georgia prison system that’s the subject of a U.S. Justice Department investigation focused on violence between inmates.
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