Workers begin recovering bodies from Brazil plane crash

Emergency crews on Saturday began removing the victims of a plane crash in Brazil's Sao Paulo state that killed all 62 people aboard, as authorities sifted through the wreckage to try to determine what caused the plane's dramatic plunge.Videos showed the ATR 72-500 plane in a sickening downward spin Friday before it crashed into a residential area of the town of Vinhedo, some 80 kilometers northwest of Sao Paulo city.The Voepass airlines said Saturday that verification of the passenger list showed there were 62 people on board, not 61 as reported earlier. All 62 were Brazilian; there were no survivors.While some houses at the crash site were damaged, no injuries or deaths were reported among their residents.The crash transformed the plane's fuselage into a mass of twisted iron. As of Saturday morning, 16 bodies had been removed, firefighters said.In all, some 200 people were working on the recovery effort. The dead are being transported to the Sao Paulo morgue.The normally peaceful, wooded enclave where the plane came down was swarming Saturday with police cars, ambulances and firetrucks.A steady overnight rain complicated recovery work, which could 'take days,' according to Captain Maycon Cristo, a spokesman for local firefighters.The twin-engine turboprop, built by French-Italian aviation firm ATR, was on a flight from Cascavel in southern Parana state to Sao Paulo's Guarulhos international airport.The company said its experts will assist in the investigation.According to the Flight Radar 24 website, the plane flew for about an hour at 17,000 feet, until at 1:21 pm (1621 GMT) it began rapidly losing altitude.Radar contact was lost at 1:22 pm, the Brazilian air force reported.Brazil's Aeronautical Accidents Investigation and Prevention Center (CENIPA) has opened an inquiry into the cause of the crash.Its investigators on Friday recovered the 'black box' containing flight data that might be useful in the inquiry.The plane had been in use since 2010 and was in compliance with current standards, the National Civil Aviation Agency said, adding that the four crew members were all fully certified.Voepass's operations director, Marcel Moura, said the plane had undergone routine maintenance the night before the accident and that 'no technical problems' were found.Residents of the neighborhood where the plane fell said they had heard a loud noise and then watched in horror as the plane came down in an almost vertical free-fall.Videos showed an enormous cloud of smoke rising from the scene.Military police told local media there were no casualties on the ground, and that fires sparked by the crash had been brought under control.It was one of the worst aviation accidents in the country's history.In 2007, an Airbus A320 of Brazil's TAM airlines overran a runway at Sao Paulo's Congonhas airport and crashed into a warehouse, killing all 187 on board and 12 runway workers.Two years later, an Air France A330 on a Rio de Janeiro-to-Paris flight crashed into the Atlantic. All 228 people on board died.

source https://www.gulf-times.com/article/688364/international/workers-begin-recovering-bodies-from-brazil-plane-crash

Maduro turns to Supreme Court to cement disputed election victory

President Nicolas Maduro appeared before Venezuela’s Supreme Court yesterday, asking the country’s top judicial body to affirm his disputed re-election.Opposition leader Maria Corina Machado meanwhile continued to challenge the July 28 vote, telling AFP that she would offer Maduro “guarantees and incentives” for a “negotiated transition” of power that would see him leave office.The South American nation has been in political crisis since election authorities declared Maduro the winner of last month’s poll, a decision questioned both at home and abroad.The National Electoral Council (CNE) has yet to release detailed results from the vote, while the opposition has released copies of 84% of ballots cast, showing an easy win for their candidate, Edmundo Gonzalez Urrutia.The government says those results are forged.The Supreme Court – widely seen as aligned with Maduro – has summoned all presidential candidates before it, though some of the opposition has refused to attend.Maduro arrived at the court alongside his wife Cilia Flores, state attorney Reinaldo Munoz and several members of his government.The contested election sparked protests that have left at least 24 people dead, according to rights groups, and more than 2,000 arrested.“We want peace, tranquillity, that is why I filed this contentious appeal before the Supreme Court,” Maduro said on Thursday at a rally in Caracas. “There have been two days of hearings, all candidates and all parties were summoned...it’s my turn.”Machado called for greater support from the international community.Speaking to AFP via voice notes sent while in hiding amid fears for her safety, she said the opposition was “determined to move forwards in a negotiation”.“It will be a complex, delicate transition process, in which we are going to unite the whole nation,” said the 56-year-old Machado, who was barred from running herself against Maduro.She added that Maduro has “completely, absolutely, lost legitimacy” and that “all Venezuelans and the world know that Edmundo Gonzalez won in a landslide”.Lawmaker Diosdado Cabello, a powerful Maduro ally, dismissed Machado’s offer.“She is not in a position to negotiate anything,” he told reporters as he arrived at the Supreme Court, shortly before Maduro. “Offering conditions, to whom? Here the CNE, which is the governing body, gave a result: Nicolas Maduro won.”Giulio Cellini, a director at the political consultancy group LOG Consultancy, said that the whole process was an “ambush” of Gonzalez Urrutia since both the high court and election authority are “controlled by Maduro”.Fellow left-wing governments from Brazil, Colombia and Mexico noted the verification process undertaken by the court but asked that the CNE “transparently disclose the electoral results”.The CNE ratified Maduro’s victory, saying he had earned 52% of votes. In addition to not publishing detailed results, it has also claimed to have been hacked.Jennie Lincoln, head of the Carter Centre delegation that was invited to monitor the Venezuelan election, told AFP that it had “no evidence” of a cyberattack.Furthering his post-election crackdown on Thursday, Maduro suspended access to the social media site X as he faced continued international pressure.The president announced his government was blocking the social media platform formerly known as Twitter for 10 days, while accusing the site’s owner Elon Musk of “inciting hate and fascism” in Venezuela.Maduro and Musk have been locked in a war of words via X.Maduro has overseen a national collapse, including an 80% drop in the once-wealthy oil-rich country’s GDP, amid domestic economic mismanagement and international sanctions.According to the United Nations, more than 7mn Venezuelans have fled the country of 30mn since Maduro took over in 2013, mostly to other Latin American countries and the United States.Meanwhile, Panama’s President Jose Raul Mulino told broadcaster CNN yesterday that he would give Maduro safe passage to act as a “bridge” to a third country in order to allow for a political transition in Venezuela.“If that’s the contribution, the sacrifice that Panama has to make, by offering our soil so that this man and his family can leave Venezuela, Panama would do it without a doubt,” Mulino said in an interview.Panama is part of a group of Latin American countries that have cut diplomatic ties with Venezuela since the disputed July 28 election, including Argentina, Chile, Costa Rica, the Dominican Republic, Peru, and Uruguay.

source https://www.gulf-times.com/article/688328/international/maduro-turns-to-supreme-court-to-cement-disputed-election-victory

Turkiye to open 58th civilian airport on Saturday

Turkish Minister of Transport and Infrastructure Abdulkadir Oraloglu has announced the opening of Cukurova International Airport in the south of the country on August 10.The Minister noted that the new airport will be the 58th civilian airport in Turkiye. He added that the airport will serve 5 million people, given its location close to as it is near to Mersin, Adana, Osmaniye and Nigde.He said that the widest aircraft can land on the airport's main runway, which is 3,500 meters long and 60 meters wide.The airport's capacity is 8 million passengers annually, and its hall area is 110,000 square meters, he added.

source https://www.gulf-times.com/article/688294/international/turkiye-to-open-58th-civilian-airport-on-saturday

Trump says he’s willing to debate Harris three times

Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump has said that he is willing to debate his Democratic rival Kamala Harris three times in September on different networks during a news conference yesterday at his Palm Beach, Florida, residence.Trump said he wanted to hold debates on September 4 on Fox, September 10 on NBC, and September 25 on ABC.He did not offer specific terms, such as whether there would be an audience, and it was not immediately clear whether his campaign had made a proposal to Harris’s camp.The conference was Trump’s first public appearance since Harris selected Minnesota Governor Tim Walz as her running mate on Tuesday.Harris, the US vice-president, and Walz headlined rallies in the battleground states of Michigan and Wisconsin on Wednesday, drawing tens of thousands of attendees in a fresh sign of how her late entry into the race has galvanised Democrats.Her rapid rise, following President Joe Biden’s decision last month to abandon his faltering campaign, has sent Trump’s team scrambling to recalibrate their strategy and messaging.Opinion polls show Harris has erased the lead Trump had built over Biden, and Democrats have raked in hundreds of millions of dollars from voters and big donors in a matter of weeks.Harris and Walz were scheduled to meet with auto workers in Detroit yesterday, following the United Auto Workers union’s endorsement of their candidacy, as part of a push to mobilise blue-collar workers in key battleground states.The Harris campaign cancelled events yesterday in North Carolina and today in Georgia, where Tropical Storm Debby is bringing heavy rain and dangerous flooding.The Democrats will head to Arizona and Nevada later this week, visiting two more swing states likely to play a key role in the November 5 election.Trump’s running mate, Senator JD Vance of Ohio, also cancelled campaign events in North Carolina yesterday due to the storm.He has spent the last few days trailing Harris and Walz around the country, an unusual move intended to provide a “contrast”, he told reporters on Wednesday.The Trump campaign has criticised the Democrat vice-president for not taking questions from reporters since launching her campaign 2-1/2 weeks ago.Trump has conducted a steady stream of media interviews, though they are usually with friendly, right-leaning outlets and reporters.On Wednesday, he called into the Fox & Friends morning programme and took questions from the programme’s hosts.Biden has meanwhile warned that he is “not confident at all” of a peaceful handover of power to Harris if Trump loses November’s election, in an extract of a CBS interview broadcast on Wednesday.The president said Trump’s hints on the campaign trail about not accepting a defeat should be taken seriously.“If Trump loses, I’m not confident at all,” Biden told the US network in the interview, which was due to air fully on Sunday, when asked if he believed there would be a calm transfer in January 2025.“He means what he says. We don’t take him seriously. He means it – all the stuff about ‘if we lose there’ll be a bloodbath,’” added Biden.While campaigning earlier this year, Biden regularly brought up the fact that Trump’s supporters stormed the US Capitol on January 6, 2021, after Biden beat him in the 2020 election.Biden also frequently quoted Trump as saying there would be a “bloodbath” if he lost – although the Republican said he was talking in the context of electric car imports from China.Trump has, however, maintained his false claim that the 2020 election was stolen from him, and in the CBS interview Biden accused the former president of trying to install allies in key electoral positions in US states to manipulate counts if the same thing happened again.“You can’t love your country only when you win,” said Biden.The ageing president has long framed Trump as a threat to US democracy.Harris has sometimes echoed that theme, while focusing more on a positive vision in a campaign that has reenergised Democrats, brought in millions of dollars and helped her nose ahead of Trump in opinion polls.In the news conference at his residence yesterday, Trump said that there would be a peaceful transfer of power after the US presidential vote – but immediately questioned whether there would be “honest elections”.“Of course there’ll be a peaceful transfer, and there was last time,” Trump told a news conference, despite a mob of his supporters storming Congress in 2021 after his loss. “I just hope we’re going to have honest elections.”

source https://www.gulf-times.com/article/688265/international/trump-says-hes-willing-to-debate-harris-three-times

Europe condemns Israeli Minister's statements on "starving Gaza

'The European Union and several European countries strongly condemned the statement of the Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, in which he said, 'the starvation of two million Palestinians in the Gaza Strip may be just and moral.'In a statement, the EU's High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy Josep Borrell said 'we strongly condemn the recent statements made by the Israeli Finance Minister last Monday.' Borrell considered Smotrich's statement 'extremely shameful'. He stressed that 'deliberately starving civilians is a war crime.'France, for its part, expressed its 'deep dismay at the outrageous remarks' made by Smotrich.A French Foreign Ministry spokesman said in a statement that 'France calls on the Israeli government to condemn these unacceptable remarks in the strongest possible terms.'In London, British Foreign Secretary David Lammy said in a post on the social media platform X: 'There can be no justification for Minister Smotrich's comments.'Lammy called on the Israeli government to 'retract and condemn his statements,' adding that 'deliberately starving civilians is a war crime.'For its part, the German Foreign Ministry condemned Smotrich's statements.A spokesman for the Foreign Ministry in Berlin said, 'the statements of the Israeli Finance Minister are unacceptable and completely outrageous. We reject them in the strongest terms.'The spokesman added, 'it is a humanitarian duty and a basic principle of international humanitarian law that even in war, civilians must be protected and must have, for example, the right to access water and food.

source https://www.gulf-times.com/article/688236/international/europe-condemns-israeli-ministers-statements-on-starving-gaza

Bangladesh’s new interim leader Yunus heads home

The Nobel Peace laureate tapped to lead an interim government in Bangladesh called for calm and boarded a flight yesterday to return home, a day before his new government is expected to be sworn in to replace ousted prime minister Sheikh Hasina.Mohamed Yunus, 84, was picked by President Mohamed Shahabuddin to lead the new interim government, a key demand of student demonstrators whose uprising drove Hasina to flee to India on Monday.“Let us make the best use of our new victory,” he said in a statement before departing Paris, where he had been receiving medical treatment while out on bail from criminal cases brought under Hasina. “I fervently appeal to everybody to stay calm. Please refrain from all kinds of violence.”Outside the airport, he told reporters: “I’m looking forward to going back home and see what’s happening there and how we can organise ourselves to get out of the trouble that we’re in.“I’ll go and talk to them. I’m just fresh in this whole area,” said Yunus, an economist who was awarded the 2006 Nobel Peace Prize for founding a bank that pioneered fighting poverty with small loans to ordinary people.President Shahabuddin said the rest of the interim government needed to be finalised soon to overcome the crisis and pave the way for elections. Nahid Islam, a key student leader, said he expected the members to be chosen soon.Army chief General Waker-Uz-Zaman said that he was hopeful the interim government would be sworn in by late today and that the situation in the country was improving and was expected to become normal in the next 3-4 days.He also said that military leaders had held discussions with student leaders, political parties, and the president and that he was confident that Yunus would be able to take the country towards a democratic process.

source https://www.gulf-times.com/article/688215/international/bangladeshs-new-interim-leader-yunus-heads-home

Upbeat Harris swings by the swing states

Kamala Harris took her breakneck presidential campaign on a tour of US election battlegrounds yesterday as she seeks to build a coalition of Democrats, independents and disaffected Republicans to power her to the White House.The 59-year-old vice-president has been riding a wave of excitement and an upward swing in polling in the two weeks since she replaced President Joe Biden as the Democratic candidate to take on Republican Donald Trump on November 5.Harris and her new running mate, Minnesota Governor Tim Walz, will take their double act to Eau Claire, Wisconsin, before travelling to Detroit, Michigan, for a rally with members of the United Auto Workers union.Just hours after Walz was announced on Tuesday, the pair held the biggest Democratic event of the election so far in front of a raucous crowd of around 14,000 in the crucial swing state of Pennsylvania.“We are the underdogs in this race, but we have the momentum and I know exactly what we are up against,” Harris told the crowd.Walz, a 60-year-old former Army National Guard officer, has been governor of the staunchly Democratic state of Minnesota since 2019 but before that he had a record as a congressman of winning over moderate and independent voters.Seen initially as an outsider for the VP pick, Walz enjoyed viral success in distilling Democrats’ attack lines against Republicans into a relatable one-word characterisation — “weird” — that propelled him up Harris’s shortlist. He is scheduled to appear with Harris in each of the swing states, with stops in Arizona and Nevada later in the week. Events in North Carolina and Georgia were postponed due to bad weather.Team Harris-Walz plans to have more than 750 staff on the ground in the “blue wall” states of Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Michigan — crucial for victory in November — when the Democratic National Convention opens in Chicago in mid-August.“Vice President Kamala Harris and Governor Tim Walz’s momentum across the battlegrounds, including the blue wall, is real and will be on full display today,” said Dan Kanninen, Battleground States Director for the Harris campaign.But many Republicans have voiced delight that Walz was chosen over the more centrist Pennsylvania governor, Josh Shapiro, a popular leader of a state that most pundits agree will be the biggest prize in 2024.Republicans are seeking to brand Walz as a far-left ideologue who offered benefits to undocumented migrants and tolerated rioting in the streets in 2020 after the police murder of African-American George Floyd.House Majority Leader Steve Scalise posted on X that Walz had “let rioters burn Minneapolis to the ground in 2020.”The Trump campaign itself has been accusing Walz — who retired from the National Guard in 2005 — of having “deserted” his unit just as it was being deployed to Iraq.It’s not clear how decisive the VP issue will be for either side. Trump himself acknowledged in a recent interview that “the vice president — in terms of the election — does not have any impact.... The choice of a vice president makes no difference.”Trump has declined to focus on Harris’s policy weaknesses, instead favouring personal attacks to try to halt her rise.Harris has a 51-48% lead over Trump in the latest NPR/PBS News/Marist survey and has edged ahead by 0.5 percentage points in the RealClearPolitics nationwide average of polls.The organisation had Trump three points ahead of Biden at the point when the president made way for Harris, 17 days ago.Where Trump used to be famed for his knack of defining his opponents with an incisive one-word sobriquet — such as “Crooked Hillary” Clinton or “Sleepy Joe” Biden — he has struggled to come up with a nickname that sticks on Harris. His latest taunt — calling her “Kamabla” — looks more like a typo than an effective insult and has left pundits scratching their heads.

source https://www.gulf-times.com/article/688213/international/upbeat-harris-swings-by-the-swing-states

Thousands evacuated as Russia fights major Ukrainian border incursion

Russia yesterday battled a major cross-border incursion from Ukraine for a second day, the most serious attack on Russian territory by Ukraine’s forces in months that prompted both countries to evacuate several thousand civilians.A local state of emergency was introduced in Russia’s Kursk region yesterday evening, 36 hours after Ukrainian soldiers, tanks and armoured vehicles stormed into the western border region.Russia said it launched air and artillery firepower to repel the attack throughout yesterday, after having rushed reinforcements to the region in a bid to halt Ukrainian advances.After two days of fighting, both the extent of the damage and the depth of the Ukrainian advance into Russian territory was unclear — though several reports from both Ukrainian and Russian military bloggers suggested the fighters had gained several kilometres.President Vladimir Putin said Ukraine had attacked civilian buildings while Russia’s top general vowed to crush the incursion.“The Kyiv regime has undertaken another large-scale provocation,” Putin said in a televised meeting with government officials. “It is firing indiscriminately from various types of weapons, including rockets, at civilian buildings, residential houses and ambulances,” he added.Kursk Governor Alexei Smirnov introduced a localised state of emergency in the region last evening, a move that gives authorities additional powers to bring the situation under control.At least five civilians have been killed and 31 wounded since the incursion began, Russian health officials said yesterday.Senior Ukrainian officials have not commented directly on the attack.Authorities in Ukraine’s northeastern Sumy region, just across the border from Kursk, announced they were evacuating about 6,000 people, without elaborating.Several thousand were also evacuated from the Kursk region.Some Russian military bloggers were reporting Ukrainian troops had reached the town of Sudzha, some 8km from the border, and were shelling it constantly.The small town of about 5,000 people is home to the Sudzha metering station, the last major transit point for Russian pipeline gas still heading to Europe via Ukraine.A priest in the town, Evgeny Shestopalov, said in a video shared by Russian media that Sudzha was “on fire” and that residents unable to evacuate were sheltering at his church.“Our church is full of people, children. Not everyone has shelters, not everyone can leave,” he said.A local Russian TV station broadcast images from the centre of the city showing destroyed buildings, debris strewn across the street and large craters in the ground from artillery hits.Russia’s National Guard said it was strengthening defences at the Kursk nuclear power station, some 60km from the border with Ukraine.The Chief of Russia’s General Staff, Valery Gerasimov, said up 1,000 combatants from Ukraine had been involved in the offensive, and that Russian forces had stopped them penetrating deeper into the Kursk region.“The operation will end with the enemy’s defeat and them being pushed back to the state border,” he told Putin in a televised meeting.Ukraine has not claimed responsibility for the incursion, the most serious cross-border attack in months.President Volodymyr Zelensky yesterday thanked Ukrainian troops for their “bravery” in an evening address published on social media.“The more pressure we put on Russia...the closer we will get to peace. A just peace through just force,” he said, without making any specific reference to the fighting in Kursk. A security source in Ukraine told AFP that Kyiv had struck a Russian helicopter using a drone on Tuesday over the Kursk region, but did not explicitly link it to the incursion.Ukrainian presidential aide Mykhailo Podolyak also alluded to the attacks. Moscow had used its “border regions with impunity for massive air and artillery attacks”, he said on social media.

source https://www.gulf-times.com/article/688214/international/thousands-evacuated-as-russia-fights-major-ukrainian-border-incursion

Beekeepers, scientists tackle sticky problem of honey fraud

Lynne Ingram cuts a peaceful figure as she tends to a row of humming beehives in a leafy corner of Somerset, southwest England.But the master beekeeper, who has been keeping hives for more than 40 years, has found herself in a fight against a tricky and evolving foe – honey fraudsters.The practice of adulterating honey is well known, and historically adulterants such as ash and potato flour have been used.Now, advancements in technology and science have made it much easier, with “bespoke, designer or bioengineered” syrups used as diluting agents capable of fooling authenticity tests, Ingram said.She founded the UK Honey Authenticity Network (HAN UK) in 2021 to raise awareness about natural honey and warn of the threat posed by fraud.“One of the impacts we’re seeing all over the world is beekeepers going out of business,” she said.Adulterated honey can be sold to retailers for a price several times lower than genuine producers can afford.As well as producing their own honey, many larger-scale beekeepers have crop pollination contracts with farmers, delivering thousands of colonies to growers across the country.If they go out of business due to unfair competition, this vital natural method of pollinating crops is reduced and food production suffers.The British Beekeepers Association, which represents more than 25,000 producers and where Ingram is a honey ambassador, wants the risk of fraud to be recognised to protect the industry and consumers.“I’d like to see an acknowledgement that there is actually an issue here,” she said.In May, the European Union updated its honey regulations to ensure clearer product labelling and a “honey traceability system” to increase transparency.On the labelling for blended honeys, for example, all countries of origin are now required to appear near a product’s name, where previously it was only mandatory to state whether blending had occurred.Labelling in the UK, which has now left the EU, is not as stringent and Ingram believes consumers are “being misled” by vague packaging.Behind the EU action is an apparent increase in adulterated honey arriving in the 27-nation bloc.The substandard adulterates can have adverse effects on consumers’ health, such as raising the risk of diabetes, obesity, and liver or kidney damage.Between 2021 and 2022, 46% of the honey tested as it entered the EU was flagged as potentially fraudulent, up from 14% in the 2015-17 period.Of the suspicious consignments, 74% were of Chinese origin.Honey imported from the UK had a 100% suspicion rate.The EU said this honey was probably produced in third countries and blended again in the UK before being sent to the bloc.The UK is the second largest importer of honey in terms of volume in the whole of Europe. China is its top supplier.Not all of the UK’s imported honey leaves the country, however. Considerable quantities stay on the domestic market. “We think there’s an awful lot of it on the shelves,” said Ingram, adding that adulterated honey was “widely available” in big supermarkets.Behind the closed blinds of a research laboratory at Aston University in Birmingham, central England, researchers fighting honey fraud are harnessing cutting-edge technology.Aston scientists and beekeepers, including Ingram, are using light to reveal the contents of honey samples at the molecular level.The technique – known as Fluorescence Excitation-Emission Spectroscopy (FLE) – involves firing lasers into samples.The light frequencies re-emitted are then collated into a three-dimensional image – or “molecular fingerprint” – of the honey tested.Alex Rozhin, the project lead and a reader in nanotechnology, said the test “can trace different molecules through the spectrum and confirm which type of biochemicals are present”.In the darkened lab, the light from different honeys is clearly visible.The first gives off a vivid green and the second a cooler blue, indicating distinct chemical compositions.Using FLE, Rozhin says his team “can immediately trace a concentration of fraud inside samples” with “different spectral bands corresponding to syrup (or) to natural honey”.Rozhin said FLE is more accurate than existing tests and can provide results far quicker, at a greatly reduced cost and without the need for highly trained personnel.One of the Aston team’s aims is to create a version of FLE that can be used by honey producers or even consumers with scaled-down equipment or eventually just a smartphone.Rolling the test out like this would also accelerate the creation of a honey database which, through machine learning, could be used as a catalogue of biometric signatures.“If we get a new sample and it’s been tampered with and it’s different from how the database is built up, we’ll know there’s something obscure,” said Steven Daniels, an Aston research associate specialising in machine learning.Ingram said the test could close international gaps in testing methods by establishing a unified standard, but the government needed to monitor the sector too.“We really need to get to grips with this,” she said.

source https://www.gulf-times.com/article/688129/international/beekeepers-scientists-tackle-sticky-problem-of-honey-fraud

UK expands jail capacity to house anti-Muslim rioters

The British government has increased its prison capacity to help tackle violent, week-long anti-Muslim riots that have prompted a growing number of countries to warn their citizens about the dangers of travelling in Britain.Riots across a number of towns and cities have erupted following the murder of three girls at a Taylor Swift-themed event in Southport, a seaside town in northern England, after false messaging on social media wrongly identified the suspected killer as a Muslim migrant.Unrest has spread, with rioters targeting mosques and smashing windows of hotels housing asylum-seekers from Africa and the Middle East, chanting “get them out”, in the first widespread outbreak of violence in Britain for 13 years.Unverified videos online have shown some ethnic minorities being beaten up and one man photographed at a protest in Sunderland on Friday had a swastika tattooed on his back.“My message to anyone who chooses to take part in this violence and thuggery is simple: the police, courts and prisons stand ready and you will face the consequences of your appalling acts,” Justice Secretary Shabana Mahmood said.The justice department, which is due to release some prisoners early as it battles a jail overcrowding crisis, said nearly 600 prison places had been secured to accommodate those engaged in violence. About 400 people have been arrested so far.The unrest has prompted India, Australia, Nigeria and other countries to warn their citizens to stay vigilant.Saminata Bangura, a 52-year-old support worker in a care home in Liverpool, northern England, said she had felt so welcome in Britain after she moved from Sierra Leone. But she was now scared and largely staying at home.“I’m so scared, even when I’m walking now, because everywhere, we’re scared, especially, we Blacks,” she said, describing how a library was vandalised near where she lives.Prime Minister Keir Starmer has vowed a reckoning to those who have engaged in rioting, hurling bricks at the police and counter protesters, and looting shops and burning cars.Police yesterday charged a 28-year-old man with stirring up racial hatred over Facebook posts linked to the disorder. A 14-year-old pleaded guilty to violent disorder.On Monday night trouble flared in Plymouth, southern England, and again in Belfast in Northern Ireland, where hundreds of rioters threw petrol bombs and heavy masonry at officers and set a police Land Rover on fire.Messages online say immigration centres and law firms aiding migrants would be targeted today, prompting anti-fascist groups to say they will counter any demonstration.Police have blamed online disinformation, amplified by high-profile figures, for driving the violence.

source https://www.gulf-times.com/article/688130/international/uk-expands-jail-capacity-to-house-anti-muslim-rioters

Debby soaks northern Florida, eyes Georgia next

Tropical Storm Debby dropped buckets of rain across northern Florida yesterday afternoon as it plodded toward Georgia and the Carolinas, where forecasters expect the downgraded hurricane to bring a week of torrential downpours and catastrophic flooding.The storm had lost some of its windspeed after slamming Florida’s Gulf Coast around 7am last morning as a Category 1 hurricane. It made landfall near Steinhatchee, in the Big Bend region about 70 miles southeast of Tallahassee, delivering winds of up to 80mph, the National Hurricane Center said.The hurricane centre predicted Debby would move offshore into the Atlantic by Tuesday night, then re-strengthen and come back inland to drench the coasts of Georgia and South Carolina later in the week.The centre forecast “catastrophic flooding,” with local areas along Georgia and South Carolina’s coastline receiving 20 to 30 inches of rain by Friday morning. The governors of Georgia and South Carolina have declared states of emergency in anticipation of Debby’s damage.“This is going to be an event that is going to be probably here for the next five to seven days, maybe as long as 10 days, depending on how much rainfall we get,” said Florida Division of Emergency Management Executive Director Kevin Guthrie.By midday yesterday, Debby had already dumped eight to 16 inches of rain in some parts of central Florida, according to local weather reports.Hours after the storm’s landfall in Steinhatchee, heavy rains were still falling on the beach town, and bayfront restaurants were flooded. Further south in Hillsborough County, rescue crews in Tampa recovered the body of an 18-wheeler truck driver who had lost control of the vehicle on Interstate 75 and went into the Tampa Bypass Canal, local TV station WTSP reported.Roughly 240,000 customers were without power in Florida, according to Poweroutage.us, and flight trackers showed hundreds of flights originating from and heading to Florida airports were cancelled yesterday.A slow-moving tropical storm as it passed over Cuba, Debby gained strength from exceptionally warm Gulf waters as it paralleled Florida’s Gulf Coast on Sunday.Debby bears some of the hallmarks of Hurricane Harvey, which hit Corpus Christi, Texas, in August 2017. Downgraded to a tropical storm as it moved inland, Harvey lingered over Texas, dumping about 50 inches of rain on Houston and causing $125bn in damage.Climate scientists believe man-made global warming from burning fossil fuels has raised the temperature of the oceans, making storms bigger and more devastating. The last hurricane to make a direct hit on the Big Bend region was Hurricane Idalia, which briefly gained Category 4 strength before making landfall as a Category 3 in August 2023, with winds of more than 125mph.The National Centers for Environmental Information estimated $3.5bn in damages. DeSantis described the initial effects of Debby as “modest” compared with Idalia.Forecasters expect numerous Atlantic hurricanes in the 2024 season, which began on June 1, including four to seven major ones. That would exceed the record-breaking 2005 season that spawned the devastating Katrina and Rita hurricanes.Only one hurricane, Beryl, has yet formed in the Atlantic this year. The earliest Category 5 storm on record, it struck the Caribbean and Mexico’s Yucatan peninsula before rolling up the Gulf Coast of Texas as a Category 1 storm, with sustained winds up to 95mph.

source https://www.gulf-times.com/article/688050/international/debby-soaks-northern-florida-eyes-georgia-next