World News

A Chinese mercenary has shared details about North Korean soldiers allegedly killed shortly after they joined Russia's war effort in Ukraine.

The information was shared on X (formerly Twitter) by the account @whyyoutouzhele on Sunday, in a conversation between a gun-for-hire fighting alongside Russian forces, who goes by the handle "Dian Yuzhang," and a mercenary who has returned to China and goes by the name Li Dafu.

These claims emerged just days after South Korea's National Intelligence Service confirmed that North Korean troops had been training in Russia before being sent to bolster Russia's diminished forces and help contain Ukraine's counteroffensive in Russia's Kursk region.

Two of drug lord Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán Loera’s sons have confirmed they are negotiating for a plea deal with the US government, an attorney for the pair confirmed during a federal court status hearing in Chicago on Monday.

The hearing confirmed an August report from the Mexican news organization Milenio that Ovidio Guzmán and Joaquín Guzmán López were negotiating a deal for a more lenient sentence and to become cooperating witnesses for the US government.

During Monday’s hearing for Ovidio Guzmán, the federal judge also allowed for him and his brother to be represented by the same attorney, Jeffrey Lichtman, who represented El Chapo during his sensational 2019 federal trial.

. . .

Ovidio Guzmán and Joaquín Guzmán López, along with their other two brothers still at large in Mexico, were the leaders of “Los Chapitos”, a faction of the Sinaloa cartel in Mexico, one of the biggest organized crime groups in Mexico.

MBFC
Archive

Israeli forces are blocking humanitarian missions aimed at rescuing people who are trapped under the rubble due to Israeli strikes in north Gaza, the UN has reported. The development comes as Israel wages a horrific ethnic cleansing campaign in the north that has killed hundreds of Palestinians so far.

The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) in the occupied Palestinian territory said on Sunday that it has been requesting that Israel grant them access to north Gaza for days so that workers can reach the dozens of people buried alive under the rubble. Those trapped are likely to die if Israel continues denying access, the group said.

The blockade is part of Israel’s plan, known as the “Generals’ Plan,” to empty the entirety of north Gaza of Palestinians, either by death or forced displacement. According to Al Jazeera, medical sources in Gaza say that the Israeli military has killed at least 640 Palestinians in north Gaza over the past 17 days of its mass killing and starvation campaign.

Over the weekend, pictures and videos emerged showing Israeli forces rounding up crowds of Palestinians from Jabalia refugee camp and forcing them to leave, which some have labeled as a “death march.” There is nowhere for displaced people to go; Lazzarini has reported that UN shelters in the region are so overcrowded that people are being forced to take shelter in bathrooms.

The UN Human Rights Office has expressed concern that Israel is aiming to exterminate the Palestinian population of north Gaza.

In which China tells Cuba that it should stop being so communist if it wants to succeed:

China publicly supports Cuba’s right to choose its own path to economic development “in line with its national conditions”, but privately Chinese officials have long urged the Cuban leadership to shift from its vertically planned economy to something closer to the Chinese model, according to economists and diplomats briefed on the situation.

Chinese officials have been perplexed and frustrated at the Cuban leadership’s unwillingness to decisively implement a market-oriented reform programme despite the glaring dysfunction of the status quo, the people said.

An Israeli settler leader has told a conference on Israel's frontier with Gaza that Palestinians will "disappear" from the territory and said that thousands of people stand ready to move there "from north to south”.

Addressing a conference on Monday also attended by Israeli Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir and Knesset members from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud party, Daniella Weiss called for Palestinians living in Gaza to be relocated to other countries.

“We came here with one clear purpose: the purpose is to settle the entire Gaza Strip, not just part of it, not just a few settlements, the entire Gaza Strip from north to south,” said Weiss.

Weiss, the leader of Nachala, an orthodox settler movement which organised the conference, said there were six settler groups and more than 700 families looking to settle in Gaza, where more than 42,600 Palestinians have been killed since Israel launched its war against Hamas in October last year following the Hamas-led attacks in southern Israel.

Weiss’s comments were echoed by Ben Gvir, who later told the crowd: “We are the owners of the land”. Ben Gvir also called for Palestinians in Gaza to “voluntarily” transfer to other countries.

Monday’s conference, which was billed by organisers as “a celebration for the preparation of settling Gaza", took place near Reim kibbutz, with the sound of Israel’s ongoing bombardment of northern Gaza audible in the background and with smoke rising over the horizon a few kilometres to the west.

Israeli police and the Shin Bet domestic intelligence agency say they have arrested a network of Israeli citizens spying for Iran who allegedly provided information on military bases and conducted surveillance of individuals.

The investigators claimed the network had been active for about two years. According to reports in the Israeli press, the suspects are accused of photographing and collecting information about Israeli bases and facilities, including the defence headquarters in Tel Aviv, known as the Kirya, and the Nevatim and Ramat David airbases.

The Nevatim base was targeted by Iran’s two missile attacks this year, and Ramat David has been targeted by Hezbollah.

“This is one of the most serious security cases investigated in recent years,” state prosecutors said. Police said the group had carried out 600 missions over two years.

MBFC
Archive

The former U.S. Marine describes the moment of his arrest and the long years waiting for his release.

Speaking in Washington in his first lengthy newspaper interview since he was released on Aug. 1 in the largest East-West prisoner swap since the Cold War, Mr. Whelan, 54, said he thought the arrest, in late December 2018, was a prank. It wasn’t.

Within hours, he found himself locked into a 9-foot-square cell in Moscow’s notorious, high-security Lefortovo Prison, where Soviet-era political prisoners had been tortured. So began Mr. Whelan’s odyssey through what he described as Russia’s harsh, often surreal, state-manipulated criminal justice system. His ordeal lasted, by his own count, five years, seven months and five days.

At Lefortovo, he survived an emergency hernia surgery in the middle of the night at a hospital where, he said, half the overhead lights did not work, and when the doctors dropped instruments on the floor, they picked them up and kept going. Sent to a labor camp after his conviction, he endured a diet of bread, tea and a watery fish soup that seemed better suited as cat food, as well as once-a-week cold showers and long days sewing buttons and buttonholes on winter uniforms for government workers.

. . .

Mr. Whelan’s arrest was a new chapter in what is called hostage diplomacy, when citizens of the United States or other nations are arrested and imprisoned on sham charges in order to be exchanged for a person or some concession.

MBFC
Archive

U.S. and Canadian warships sailed through the Taiwan Strait on Sunday, almost a week after China held massive war games around Taiwan, which Beijing claims as its own territory.

The destroyer USS Higgins and the Canadian frigate HMCS Vancouver made a "routine" transit of the Taiwan Strait meant to uphold the principle of freedom of navigation for all countries, read a statement Monday by the U.S. Navy's 7th Fleet.

The U.S. Navy, occasionally joined by ships from allied countries, regularly transits the sensitive waterway separating China from Taiwan. Germany sent two warships through the Taiwan Strait last month as it seeks to increase its defense engagement in the Asia-Pacific region.

AMY GOODMAN: The Biden administration has launched a probe after highly classified U.S. intelligence documents were posted online showing Israel is taking steps to launch a retaliatory attack on Iran. One document came from the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, the other from the NSA, the National Security Agency. The documents reference recent Israeli drills involving air-launched ballistic missiles, as well as covert drone activity. On Friday, President Biden was asked if he knew how and when Israel would attack Iran. Biden responded by saying “yes and yes,” unquote.

AMY GOODMAN: So, Professor, can you comment on these leaked U.S. documents, intelligence documents, describing satellite images of Israeli military preparations for a potential strike in Iran? You also have the Foreign Ministry coming out today in Tehran, speaking out and saying it would be illegal to attack nuclear plants in Iran, according to the United Nations. If you can comment on all of this? The intelligence documents, not clear how they were leaked, coming from, among other places, the NSA, the National Security Agency, the intelligence agency in the United States that’s many times larger than the CIA.

HASSAN AHMADIAN: You know, we still don’t know the intricacies of these leaks. But, obviously, if they are intentional or not intentional, the leaking, it makes a different — I mean, the messaging or the message of them being linked will be different. But in any case, I think the Iranians are saying that these leaks show that the Israelis are trying to attack places of strategic importance that are legally — you know, should not to be attacked, but Israel is obviously trying or inching closer to attack them. It’s within the Iranian, you know, international or diplomatic reach, which the foreign minister and the president have been on the past few weeks telling the world that we don’t want escalation, but, obviously, the Israelis are coming to force it upon us, and we will have to retaliate.

The legality of the issue is obvious. I mean, it’s illegal, as per international law, to attack the atomic energy agency structure. It’s very obvious that it’s not legal to attack such places. But, I mean, the Israeli policy in assassinating scientists, killing a guest in an inauguration day in Iran, all the policies that have been pulled off previously were illegal, as well. So, the Iranians know that this is not going to affect the situation, but they are telling the world, “These are the evidence. We are not after this escalation, but you should look at Israel and what it’s doing to provoke Iran and its allies to retaliate.”

AMY GOODMAN: The Israeli military says it’s hit buildings housing nearly a dozen bank branches of Al-Qard al-Hassan, a financial institution with ties to Hezbollah. Many of the banks were located in residential buildings and held the savings for many Lebanese residents.

On Sunday, UNIFIL, the U.N. peacekeeping forces in Lebanon, accused Israel of deliberately demolishing another U.N. observation tower in what UNIFIL described as a “flagrant violation of international law.”

JAMIL MOUAWAD: Actually, the situation in Lebanon is incredibly difficult. We currently live in a limbo. Life has come to a halt, basically, with people concerned about when do they go about their normal life, when students will go back to schools, to universities, people will go back to their jobs, but also to their normal life. So, there is a lot of anxiety going on.

Yesterday, as you mentioned, Israel attacked directly and bombed financial institutions related directly to Hezbollah. Of course, we all know that Israel has identified any institution, civilian or not, directly affiliated with Hezbollah as a threat, and they are bombing it. Of course, this is only a way to demolish buildings in Lebanon and to further terrorize the Lebanese civilians.

AMY GOODMAN: “The nightmare in Gaza is intensifying.” Those are the words of a top U.N. official as Israel escalates its war amidst a devastating siege and forced expulsion of Palestinians in northern Gaza. Health officials there say at least 87 people were killed in an Israeli airstrike on Beit Lahia on Saturday. Survivors said the dead include many women and children.

AHMED AL HAJEEN: [translated] We were asleep around 12 a.m. when it suddenly felt like an earthquake hit the area. Debris was falling on us. We rushed outside after hearing screams of women and children and found that our neighbors had been targeted by massive bombs. Tons of explosives had fallen on a residential neighborhood full of civilians and displaced families. All those who were martyred here are children, women and displaced people who fled from other areas due to heavy strikes, seeking shelter in what they believed to be a safer place.

AMY GOODMAN: Today, Al Jazeera reports at least 33 more Palestinians in Gaza were killed by Israeli attacks, including 18 in the Jabaliya refugee camp alone. Palestinians have shared footage on social media that appears to show people in Jabaliya being hit by a strike as they try to rescue an injured person in the street.

Israel is also targeting the last three functioning hospitals in northern Gaza: the Indonesian, Al-Awda and Kamal Adwan hospitals. Doctors Without Borders reports more than 350 patients are believed to be trapped inside the hospitals. This is an urgent video call for help made Sunday by Dr. Marwan Sultan, director of the Indonesian Hospital in northern Gaza.

South Korea has summoned the Russian ambassador, seeking the "immediate withdrawal" of North Korean troops which it says are being trained to fight in Ukraine.

About 1,500 North Korean soldiers, including those from the special forces, have already arrived in Russia, according to Seoul's spy agency.

In a meeting with the ambassador Georgiy Zinoviev, South Korea's vice-foreign minister Kim Hong-kyun denounced the move and warned that Seoul will "respond with all measures available".

Princeton University, the only other North American school to do so, rolled back its commitment recently

The University of Toronto's environment school has announced it will financially dissociate from fossil fuel companies, in a landmark win for climate activists.

The institution has committed to stop taking funds from the sector for research, sponsorships, scholarships or infrastructure such as buildings. It will also halt collaborations with the industry on events and school initiatives and cease to host fossil fuel recruitment events, while working to "increase transparency about the our funding, donations, and partnerships".

The decision makes University of Toronto's School of the Environment the only academic institution in North America with a commitment to fossil fuel dissociation. Princeton University made such a commitment in 2022 but walked it back this month.

The school's decision came after months of pressure from climate advocates on and off campus.