totalyNOTaPIRATE [none/use name]

Wtf

Democrats eye Harris 2028 presidential run as they devise political comeback Party aides are confident in US vice-president’s ability to bounce back, including a bid for California governor emocratic party aides have begun to float ideas for a Kamala Harris political comeback, reportedly eyeing another run at the US’s highest office even as the party continues to grapple with the electoral messages contained in the vice-president’s decisive defeat in November’s White House race against Donald Trump.

Harris, who has reportedly not ruled out a second run for the presidency, is now reported to be considering a run for the California governorship, currently held until 2027 by Gavin Newsom. Newsom was a rumoured presidential contender during the chaotic summer that saw Joe Biden step down from a rematch with Trump – whom he defeated in the 2020 election – and then endorse Harris as his replacement.

According to the Washington Post on Monday, some Democratic party aides believe Trump – who, among other things, overcame a criminal conviction and other such charges to win – has sufficiently overturned the norms of losing White House candidates’ not attempting a second bite at the proverbial apple to give Harris the opportunity of a repeat bid in 2028, this time for the full cycle.

“Since Donald Trump has rewritten the rules – the norms – I don’t believe Kamala Harris or anyone should try to go with precedent, ever,” said Donna Brazile, a Harris ally, Al Gore 2000 presidential campaign manager and political commentator. “There are no rule books.”

Molly Murphy, a pollster who worked on the both the Biden and Harris campaigns, told the outlet: “The rules potentially don’t apply this time, and she still absolutely could have a mulligan because of the unique circumstances of this race and the candidate switch.

“But I don’t think it will be a given.”

The sentiment that Harris could make another bid for the White House comes as the Democratic party is sculpting an argument that her loss to Trump was not as comprehensive as has been popularly portrayed. She emerged from her three-month, $1.5bn campaign with higher approval ratings than she entered it, according to the political website 538, though she lost the electoral college 312-226 and became the first of three candidates to lose the popular vote to Trump.

“She is ending this race in a very different place than other nominees that have lost,” one Harris adviser told the outlet. “Her approval is higher. People were very happy with the race that she ran.”

Supporters further point to unequal political consequences for male and female candidates following a ballot box loss. Hillary Clinton did not attempt another run after losing to Trump in 2016, handing the Democratic torch to one-term president Biden.

Debbie Walsh, director of the center for American women and politics at Rutgers University, told the Post, “landing in general has kind of been harder for women”, noting that women who served at state level positions “don’t get the soft landing of a position in a law firm that allows them to regroup and earn some money and maybe run for something else. They struggle a bit.”

But as Harris considers her future – husband Doug Emhoff is returning to entertainment law – donors and supporters in California, where she served as a US senator and state attorney general, are pushing for a run for governor in 2026 to replace who would then be the outgoing, term-limited Newsom.

“The people that drove that conversation – within 18 minutes of the election being called – was the finance team,” one Harris confidante told the outlet.

If Harris, who beat Trump by 20 points in California, runs for and wins the governorship, she would become the nation’s first Black female governor, a considerable consolation prize.

But other Democrats are also considering both races. For president, Newsom as well as fellow governors JB Pritzker of Illinois and Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan are said to be getting into position.

Harris campaign aides acknowledge the competition but say her name recognition, coupled with donors and experience as well as a conviction that she was dragged by Biden’s unpopularity, opens the starting gate for a comeback.

It’s almost Shakespearean that Joe Biden didn’t just kill his own campaign – he killed hers, too,” a Harris campaign adviser told the Post.

Meanwhile, California congresswoman Katie Porter, a potential state governor candidate, diplomatically told the outlet: “I am certain that everyone will want to support Kamala Harris in continuing to serve this country.”

Harris herself has not revealed her thinking but is said to be “processing” her loss and plans to “stay in the fight”.

“The fight that fueled our campaign – a fight for freedom and opportunity – that did not end on November 5,” Harris said on a call with donors and supporters in November.

Harris ultimately used the word “fight” 19 times during that call.

That last sentence killed me inside. My day is ruined.

Settler officer down

By the guardian

"Israel announces death of soldier killed ‘during combat in Lebanon’

Israel has announced the death of a soldier in Lebanon during what it has described as its “limited” ground operation inside the neighbouring company.

It said the 22-year-old, part of a commando brigade, “fell during combat in Lebanon.”

Earlier Hezbollah claimed that it had inflicted casualties on Israeli troops it engaged in Maroun al-Ras, a Lebanese village in the south of the country which is opposite Avivim and Yir’on in Israel"

Israel taking firsts Ls directly by hezbollah. Probably more unreported as aways.

A Third Woman Died Under Texas’ Abortion Ban. Doctors Are Avoiding D&Cs and Reaching for Riskier Miscarriage Treatments. Thirty-five-year-old Porsha Ngumezi’s case raises questions about how abortion bans are pressuring doctors to avoid standard care even in straightforward miscarriages. by Lizzie Presser and Kavitha Surana. PROPUBLICA Wrapping his wife in a blanket as she mourned the loss of her pregnancy at 11 weeks, Hope Ngumezi wondered why no obstetrician was coming to see her.

Over the course of six hours on June 11, 2023, Porsha Ngumezi had bled so much in the emergency department at Houston Methodist Sugar Land that she’d needed two transfusions. She was anxious to get home to her young sons, but, according to a nurse’s notes, she was still “passing large clots the size of grapefruit.”

Hope dialed his mother, a former physician, who was unequivocal. “You need a D&C,” she told them, referring to dilation and curettage, a common procedure for first-trimester miscarriages and abortions. If a doctor could remove the remaining tissue from her uterus, the bleeding would end.

But when Dr. Andrew Ryan Davis, the obstetrician on duty, finally arrived, he said it was the hospital’s “routine” to give a drug called misoprostol to help the body pass the tissue, Hope recalled. Hope trusted the doctor. Porsha took the pills, according to records, and the bleeding continued.

Three hours later, her heart stopped.

The 35-year-old’s death was preventable, according to more than a dozen doctors who reviewed a detailed summary of her case for ProPublica. Some said it raises serious questions about how abortion bans are pressuring doctors to diverge from the standard of care and reach for less-effective options that could expose their patients to more risks. Doctors and patients described similar decisions they’ve witnessed across the state.

It was clear Porsha needed an emergency D&C, the medical experts said. She was hemorrhaging and the doctors knew she had a blood-clotting disorder, which put her at greater danger of excessive and prolonged bleeding. “Misoprostol at 11 weeks is not going to work fast enough,” said Dr. Amber Truehart, an OB-GYN at the University of New Mexico Center for Reproductive Health. “The patient will continue to bleed and have a higher risk of going into hemorrhagic shock.” The medical examiner found the cause of death to be hemorrhage.

D&Cs — a staple of maternal health care — can be lifesaving. Doctors insert a straw-like tube into the uterus and gently suction out any remaining pregnancy tissue. Once the uterus is emptied, it can close, usually stopping the bleeding.

But because D&Cs are also used to end pregnancies, the procedure has become tangled up in state legislation that restricts abortions. In Texas, any doctor who violates the strict law risks up to 99 years in prison. Porsha’s is the fifth case ProPublica has reported in which women died after they did not receive a D&C or its second-trimester equivalent, a dilation and evacuation; three of those deaths were in Texas.

ProPublica condensed 200 pages of medical records into a summary of the case in consultation with two maternal-fetal medicine specialists and then reviewed it with more than a dozen experts around the country, including researchers at prestigious universities, OB-GYNs who regularly handle miscarriages, and experts in maternal health.

Texas doctors told ProPublica the law has changed the way their colleagues see the procedure; some no longer consider it a first-line treatment, fearing legal repercussions or dissuaded by the extra legwork required to document the miscarriage and get hospital approval to carry out a D&C. This has occurred, ProPublica found, even in cases like Porsha’s where there isn’t a fetal heartbeat or the circumstances should fall under an exception in the law. Some doctors are transferring those patients to other hospitals, which delays their care, or they’re defaulting to treatments that aren’t the medical standard.

Misoprostol, the medicine given to Porsha, is an effective method to complete low-risk miscarriages but is not recommended when a patient is unstable. The drug is also part of a two-pill regimen for abortions, yet administering it may draw less scrutiny than a D&C because it requires a smaller medical team and because the drug is commonly used to induce labor and treat postpartum hemorrhage. Since 2022, some Texas women who were bleeding heavily while miscarrying have gone public about only receiving medication when they asked for D&Cs. One later passed out in a pool of her own blood.

“Stigma and fear are there for D&Cs in a way that they are not for misoprostol,” said Dr. Alison Goulding, an OB-GYN in Houston. “Doctors assume that a D&C is not standard in Texas anymore, even in cases where it should be recommended. People are afraid: They see D&C as abortion and abortion as illegal.” Hope visits his wife’s gravesite in Pearland, Texas. Credit: Danielle Villasana for ProPublica

Doctors and nurses involved in Porsha’s care did not respond to multiple requests for comment.

Several physicians who reviewed the summary of her case pointed out that Davis’ post-mortem notes did not reflect nurses’ documented concerns about Porsha’s “heavy bleeding.” After Porsha died, Davis wrote instead that the nurses and other providers described the bleeding as “minimal,” though no nurses wrote this in the records. ProPublica tried to ask Davis about this discrepancy. He did not respond to emails, texts or calls.

Houston Methodist officials declined to answer a detailed list of questions about Porsha’s treatment. They did not comment when asked whether Davis’ approach was the hospital’s “routine.” A spokesperson said that “each patient’s care is unique to that individual.”

“All Houston Methodist hospitals follow all state laws,” the spokesperson added, “including the abortion law in place in Texas.” “We Need to See the Doctor”

Hope and his two sons outside their home in Houston Credit: Danielle Villasana for ProPublica

Hope marveled at the energy Porsha had for their two sons, ages 5 and 3. Whenever she wasn’t working, she was chasing them through the house or dancing with them in the living room. As a finance manager at a charter school system, she was in charge of the household budget. As an engineer for an airline, Hope took them on flights around the world — to Chile, Bali, Guam, Singapore, Argentina.

The two had met at Lamar University in Beaumont, Texas. “When Porsha and I began dating,” Hope said, “I already knew I was going to love her.” She was magnetic and driven, going on to earn an MBA, but she was also gentle with him, always protecting his feelings. Both were raised in big families and they wanted to build one of their own.

When he learned Porsha was pregnant again in the spring of 2023, Hope wished for a girl. Porsha found a new OB-GYN who said she could see her after 11 weeks. Ten weeks in, though, Porsha noticed she was spotting. Over the phone, the obstetrician told her to go to the emergency room if it got worse.

To celebrate the end of the school year, Porsha and Hope took their boys to a water park in Austin, and as they headed back, on June 11, Porsha told Hope that the bleeding was heavier. They decided Hope would stay with the boys at home until a relative could take over; Porsha would drive to the emergency room at Houston Methodist Sugar Land, one of seven community hospitals that are part of the Houston Methodist system.

At 6:30 p.m, three hours after Porsha arrived at the hospital, she saw huge clots in the toilet. “Significant bleeding,” the emergency physician wrote. “I’m starting to feel a lot of pain,” Porsha texted Hope. Around 7:30 p.m., she wrote: “She said I might need surgery if I don’t stop bleeding,” referring to the nurse. At 7:50 p.m., after a nurse changed her second diaper in an hour: “Come now.”

Still, the doctor didn’t mention a D&C at this point, records show. Medical experts told ProPublica that this wait-and-see approach has become more common under abortion bans. Unless there is “overt information indicating that the patient is at significant risk,” hospital administrators have told physicians to simply monitor them, said Dr. Robert Carpenter, a maternal-fetal medicine specialist who works in several hospital systems in Houston. Methodist declined to share its miscarriage protocols with ProPublica or explain how it is guiding doctors under the abortion ban.

As Porsha waited for Hope, a radiologist completed an ultrasound and noted that she had “a pregnancy of unknown location.” The scan detected a “sac-like structure” but no fetus or cardiac activity. This report, combined with her symptoms, indicated she was miscarrying.

But the ultrasound record alone was less definitive from a legal perspective, several doctors explained to ProPublica. Since Porsha had not had a prenatal visit, there was no documentation to prove she was 11 weeks along. On paper, this “pregnancy of unknown location” diagnosis could also suggest that she was only a few weeks into a normally developing pregnancy, when cardiac activity wouldn’t be detected. Texas outlaws abortion from the moment of fertilization; a record showing there is no cardiac activity isn’t enough to give physicians cover to intervene, experts said.

Dr. Gabrielle Taper, who recently worked as an OB-GYN resident in Austin, said that she regularly witnessed delays after ultrasound reports like these. “If it’s a pregnancy of unknown location, if we do something to manage it, is that considered an abortion or not?” she said, adding that this was one of the key problems she encountered. After the abortion ban went into effect, she said, “there was much more hesitation about: When can we intervene, do we have enough evidence to say this is a miscarriage, how long are we going to wait, what will we use to feel definitive?”

Amnesty late as aways

A report from Amnesty International alleges that Israel’s war against Hamas in the Gaza Strip constitutes the crime of genocide under international law, the first such determination by a major human rights organisation in the 14-month-old conflict.

The 32-page report examining events in Gaza between October 2023 to July 2024, published on Thursday, found that Israel had “brazenly, continuously and with total impunity … unleashed hell” on the strip’s 2.3 million population, noting that the “atrocity crimes” against Israelis by Hamas on 7 October 2023, which triggered the war, “do not justify genocide”.

Israel has “committed prohibited acts under the Genocide Convention, namely killing, causing serious bodily or mental harm, and deliberately inflicting on Palestinians in Gaza conditions of life calculated to bring about their physical destruction” with the “specific intent to destroy Palestinians” in the territory, the report said.

It marks the first time Amnesty has alleged the crime of genocide during an ongoing conflict, and builds on a March report by the UN special rapporteur for Palestine that concluded “there are reasonable grounds to believe” Israel was committing genocide against Palestinians.

“Our damning findings must serve as a wake-up call: this is genocide and it must stop now,” Agnès Callamard, the group’s secretary general, said in a news conference on Wednesday.

Amnesty cited the deliberate obstruction of aid and power supplies together with “massive damage, destruction and displacement”, leading to the collapse of water, sanitation, food and healthcare systems, in what it called a “pattern of conduct” within the context of the occupation and blockade of Gaza.

“We did not necessarily start out thinking we would come to this conclusion. We knew there was a risk of genocide, as the international court of justice said,” Budour Hassan, Amnesty’s Israel and occupied Palestinian territories researcher, told the Guardian. “When you join the dots together, the totality of the evidence, it is not just violations of international law. This is something deeper.”

The main allegations in the report are:

The unprecedented scale and magnitude of the military offensive, which has caused death and destruction at a speed and level unmatched in any other 21st-century conflict;

Intent to destroy, after considering and discounting arguments such as Israeli recklessness and callous disregard for civilian life in the pursuit of Hamas;

Killing and causing serious bodily or mental harm in repeated direct attacks on civilians and civilian infrastructure, or deliberately indiscriminate attacks; and

Inflicting conditions of life calculated to bring about physical destruction, such as destroying medical infrastructure, the obstruction of aid, and repeated use of arbitrary and sweeping “evacuation orders” for 90% of the population to unsuitable areas.

As an occupying power, Israel is legally obliged to provide for the needs of the occupied population, Kristine Beckerle, an adviser to Amnesty’s Middle East and North Africa team, said on Wednesday. She described Israel’s May offensive on Rafah, until then the last place of relative safety in the strip, as a major turning point when it came to establishing intent.

“[Israel] had made Rafah the main aid point, and it knew civilians would go there. The ICJ ordered them to stop and they went ahead anyway,” she said. “Rafah was key.”

At least 47 people including four children were killed in air strikes across Gaza on Tuesday, according to health officials in the territory, including at least 21 who were sheltering in tent camp housing displaced people near the city of Khan Younis. The Israeli military said it had targeted Hamas militants.

Amnesty has called on the UN to enforce a ceasefire, impose targeted sanctions on Israeli and top Hamas officials, and for western governments such as the US, the UK and Germany to stop providing security assistance and selling arms to Israel.

The rights group has also urged the international criminal court, which last month issued arrest warrants for the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, and the former defence minister Yoav Gallant, to add genocide to the list of war crimes it is investigating.

Finally, it called for the unconditional release of civilian hostages and for “Hamas and other Palestinian armed groups responsible for the crimes committed on 7 October to be held to account”.

The report, You Feel Like You Are Subhuman’: Israel’s Genocide Against Palestinians in Gaza, is likely to be met with outrage in Israel and generate accusations of antisemitism. Several legal experts and genocide studies scholars contend that the 7 October attack was also genocidal.

The Holocaust led to the creation of the Jewish state and the Geneva conventions, which codified and outlawed genocide as a punishable crime. Both initiatives were the international community’s “never again” response to the horrors inflicted on European Jews by the Nazis in world war two.

In its conclusion, the report says that Amnesty “recognises that there is resistance and hesitancy among many in finding genocidal intent when it comes to Israel’s conduct in Gaza”, which has “impeded justice and accountability”.

“Amnesty International concedes that identifying genocide in armed conflict is complex and challenging, because of the multiple objectives that may exist simultaneously. Nonetheless, it is critical to recognise genocide, and to insist that war can never excuse it,” it states.

Amnesty said the report was based on fieldwork, interviews with 212 people, including victims, witnesses and healthcare workers in Gaza, analysis of extensive visual and digital evidence, and more than 100 statements from Israeli government and military actors it said amounted to “dehumanising discourse”. It also used video and photo evidence of soldiers committing or celebrating war crimes.

Israel’s acts in Gaza were examined “in their totality, taking into account their recurrence and simultaneous occurrence, and both their immediate impact and their cumulative and mutually reinforcing consequences”, it said. Findings were shared “extensively” on multiple occasions with Israeli authorities, the group added, but were not met with responses.

Thursday’s publication builds on the London-based rights group’s previous bold positions on Israel’s occupation of the Palestinian territories. In 2022, Amnesty joined Human Rights Watch and the respected Israeli NGO B’Tselem in issuing a major report accusing Israel of apartheid, as part of a growing movement to redefine the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as a struggle for equal rights rather than a territorial dispute. Israeli politicians called for the report to be withdrawn, alleging antisemitism.

Rules based order did it again, now Unifil People got injuried by Israel.

William Christou

William Christou reports from Beirut for the Guardian

Human Rights Watch (HRW) called for a UN inquiry into Israeli attacks on peacekeepers belonging to the UN Interim Force in Lebanon (Unifil) on Friday, after three separate attacks on Unifil personnel in south Lebanon.

HRW said that Israel’s attacks on UN peacekeepers could be a violation of the laws of war, as peacekeepers, including armed members, are civilians. It further called for the UN to “urgently establish” an international investigation in Lebanon and Israel and that their results are made public.

On Friday morning, a Unifil outpost in south Lebanon came under fire. On Thursday, its headquarters in Naqoura had been repeatedly hit, injuring two peacekeepers after an Israeli tank fired at an observation tower on the base. The Israeli military shot at a Unifil position where peacekeepers were sheltering on Wednesday and an Israeli drone flew up to the entrance of the bunker where they were sheltering, Unifil said.

Unifil said its more than 10,400 peacekeepers would remain in south Lebanon until the situation becomes impossible for them to operate. Peacekeepers are already severely restricted in their movements due to Israeli troop presence in south Lebanon.

The peacekeeping force has been present in south Lebanon since 1978, originally designed to confirm Israel’s withdrawal and ensure that armed groups could not use the area as a launching pad for attacks against Israel. Since 2006, it has been tasked with an observation mission to ensure that armed groups do not operate in the area, in line with UN Resolution 1701 which ended the 2006 war between Israel and Hezbollah.

Unifil has also had a focus on facilitating humanitarian access and aid to south Lebanon, a mission it continues to this day.

“With over 2,000 people killed and over one million people displaced in Lebanon since mid-September, it is crucial for Unifil to be allowed to fulfil its civilian protection and humanitarian functions”, Lama Fakih, Middle East and north Africa director at Human Rights Watch, said.

German Org named after a literal NSDAP (nazi party) member dont want to give a award to a anti israeli guy.

German architecture award rescinded over British artist’s Israel boycott vow

Schelling Architecture Foundation refuses to give James Bridle his €10k prize after he signed open letter Philip Oltermann European culture editor Mon 18 Nov 2024 14.27 GMT

A German architecture foundation has rescinded one of its €10,000 (£8,360) awards from a British artist over an open letter he signed promising a boycott of Israeli cultural institutions, citing the German parliament’s controversial antisemitism resolution as a factor behind the decision.

The Athens-based artist and author James Bridle was announced in June as the recipient of the Schelling Architecture Foundation’s theory prize, awarded every two years, for his “outstanding contributions to architectural theory”.

But on Sunday, days before this Wednesday’s awards ceremony in the south-western city of Karlsruhe, Bridle was informed in an email that the foundation’s committee had decided unanimously not to award him the prize because he was among the several thousand authors who signed an open letter calling for a boycott of Israeli cultural institutions.

Signatories of the pledge, published on LitHub at the end of October, stated that “we will not work with Israeli cultural institutions that are complicit or have remained silent observers of the overwhelming oppression of Palestinians”.

In a press release, the foundation said Bridle’s signature on the letter was “in direct contradiction” to responsibilities from the “awareness of Germany’s national history”.

The foundation’s prizes, which have been awarded since 1992, are named after the late German architect Erich Schilling. On its website, the foundation says Schilling was a member of the NSDAP, the German Nazi party, between 1937 and 1945, and worked on the construction of the offices of the publishing house of the party newspaper Der Führer.

“We respect the right to express political views, especially since the foundation does not accuse James Bridle of antisemitism,” its statement said. “But the foundation can neither support nor be associated with a call for cultural isolation of Israel.”

In its email to Bridle, which has been seen by the Guardian, the foundation further linked its decision to a cross-party resolution passed by the German parliament earlier this month.

“The German Bundestag has just passed a resolution on the protection of Jewish life, which points the way forward for state institutions and is relevant to society as a whole,” the foundation said in its email.

The resolution, entitled Never Again is Now: Protecting, Preserving and Strengthening Jewish Life in Germany, was first proposed after the Hamas terror attack on 7 October 2023. International NGOs including Amnesty International and Israeli Jewish groups campaigning for a two-state solution have criticised its text for eliding antisemitism and criticism of Israel’s human rights record, predicting it would have a chilling effect on freedom of expression.

The resolution says “the Bundestag reaffirms its decision to ensure that no organisations or projects that spread antisemitism, question Israel’s right to exist, call for a boycott of Israel or actively support the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement receive financial support”.

Bridle told the Guardian: “Although they are clearly not prepared to state it outright, the foundation’s decision is an accusation of antisemitism, which is abhorrent. It is particularly so given the organisation’s own history.”

Bridle said there was an irony in that the Schilling jury cited as particularly deserving of recognition his 2022 bookd Ways of Being, which contained a discussion of Israel’s “apartheid wall” in the occupied West Bank, and “of the relationship between genocide and ecocide”.

A spokesperson for the foundation said the other nominees for the prize had been informed of their decision, “and we have to be prepared for there to be further reactions”.

South korea update

• The Yonhap News Agency is reporting that members of the national assembly have been banned from entering the building, with the South Korean military having reportedly announced the suspension of all parliamentary activity. We have not yet independently verified this information. The parliament speaker is traveling to parliament and plans to convene a session, according to local broadcaster YTN TV.

-The US, south Korea’s most powerful ally, has not yet commented on the martial law declaration. About 28,500 American troops are stationed in south Korea to guard against north Korea, led by Kim Jong Un.

• Here is a statement from martial law commander Park An-su.

He said:

All political activities are banned in South Korea following the imposition of martial law on Tuesday and all media will be subject to government monitoring.

All political activities, including those of the national assembly, local councils, political parties, and political associations, as well as assemblies and demonstrations, are strictly prohibited.

All media and publications shall be subject to the control of the martial law command.

With martial law imposed, all military units in the south, which remains technically at war with the nuclear-armed north, have been ordered to strengthen their emergency alert and readiness postures, Yonhap news agency reported. Under south Korean law, lawmakers cannot be arrested by the martial law command and the government has to lift martial law if the majority of the national assembly demands it in a vote. The leader of the prime minister’s own conservative party, Han Dong-hoon, has vowed to stop the imposition of the law “with the people” and Lee Jae-myung, the leader of the opposition Democratic party, which has a majority in parliament, has also expressed opposition to it.

A taxi driver in Seoul who asked to remain anonymous for fear of reprisal said: “They’re using exactly the same methods they used in the Park Chung-hee and Chun Doo-hwan eras … Whenever their regime is in crisis, they use war-mongering and martial law to cover it up.”

Park and Chun were military dictators in South Korea between 1961 and 1988. “I never imagined this would happen again,” the taxi driver said.

-South Korean markets started reacting to the news. The won tumbled to the lowest level against the dollar in two years: 1,443 won per dollar.

-The Chinese Embassy in Korea told Chinese citizens in the country to remain calm and pay attention to political changes. It asked them to “strengthen safety awareness, reduce unnecessary outings, express political opinions with caution and abide by the official decrees issued by Korea.”

-Live video broadcast by state news media shows soldiers pushing against citizens who are trying to enter the National Assembly building.

New lancet paper

than official number, Lancet study finds

Analysis estimates death toll by end of June was 64,260, with 59% being women, children and people over 65 Guardian staff and agencies Fri 10 Jan 2025 18.47 GMT

Research published in the Lancet medical journal estimates that the death toll in Gaza during the first nine months of the Israel-Hamas war was about 40% higher than numbers recorded by the Palestinian territory’s health ministry.

The peer-reviewed statistical analysis was conducted by academics at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, Yale University and other institutions, using a statistical method called capture-recapture analysis.

The researchers sought to assess the death toll from Israel’s air and ground campaign in Gaza between October 2023 and the end of June 2024, estimating 64,260 deaths due to traumatic injury during this period. The study said 59.1% were women, children and people over the age of 65. It did not provide an estimate of Palestinian combatants among the dead.

Up to 30 June last year, the health ministry in Gaza reported a death toll of 37,877 in the war, which began on 7 October 2023 after the Hamas-led attack on southern Israel in which 1,200 people were killed and more than 250 taken hostages.

According to Palestinian health officials, a total of more than 46,000 people have been killed in the Gaza war, from a prewar population of about 2.3 million.

It has not been possible for international media to independently verify the death toll in Gaza as Israel does not allow foreign journalists into the territory.

A senior Israeli official, commenting on the study published on Friday, said Israel’s armed forces went to great lengths to avoid civilian casualties. “No other army in the world has ever taken such wide-ranging measures,” the official said.

“These include providing advance warning to civilians to evacuate, safe zones and taking any and all measures to prevent harm to civilians. The figures provided in this report do not reflect the situation on the ground.”

The Lancet study said the Palestinian health ministry’s capacity for maintaining electronic death records had previously proven reliable, but deteriorated under Israel’s military campaign, which has included raids on hospitals and other healthcare facilities and disruptions to digital communications.

Israel accuses Hamas of using hospitals as cover for its operations, which the militant group denies.

The study used death toll data from the health ministry, an online survey launched by the ministry for Palestinians to report relatives’ deaths, and social media obituaries to estimate that there were between 55,298 and 78,525 deaths from traumatic injuries in Gaza up to 30 June 2024.

The study’s best estimate was 64,260 dead, which would mean the health ministry had under-reported the number of deaths to that point by 41%. The estimate represented 2.9% of Gaza’s prewar population, “or approximately one in 35 inhabitants”, the study said.

The figure is only for deaths from traumatic injuries and does not include deaths from a lack of healthcare or food, or the thousands believed to be buried under rubble.

The Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics (PCBS) estimates that, on top of the official death toll from the health ministry, another 11,000 Palestinians are missing and presumed dead.

The researchers scoured the three lists, searching for duplicates. “We only kept in the analysis those who were confirmed dead by their relatives or confirmed dead by the morgues and the hospital,” said Zeina Jamaluddine, an epidemiologist at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine and the lead author of the study.

“Then we looked at the overlaps between the three lists, and based on the overlaps, you can come up with a total estimation of the population that was killed,” Jamaluddine told Agence France-Presse.

However, the researchers cautioned that the hospital lists did not always provide the cause of death, so it was possible that people with non-traumatic deaths could have been included, potentially leading to an overestimate.

Patrick Ball, a statistician at the US-based Human Rights Data Analysis Group not involved in the research, has used capture-recapture methods to estimate death tolls for conflicts in Guatemala, Kosovo, Peru and Colombia.

Ball told AFP the well-tested technique had been used for centuries and that the researchers had reached “a good estimate” for Gaza.

Kevin McConway, a professor of applied statistics at Britain’s Open University, said there was “inevitably a lot of uncertainty” when making estimates from incomplete data, but it was “admirable” that the researchers had used three other approaches to check their estimates.

Agence France-Presse and Reuters contributed to this report

Link to lancet https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(24)02678-3/fulltext

Not even a month

Hundreds protest in Christian areas of Syrian capital after Christmas tree burned

Demonstrations flare after video spread on social media showing hooded fighters setting fire to tree Agence France-Presse in Damascus and Reuters Tue 24 Dec 2024 11.48 GMT

Hundreds of demonstrators took to the streets in Christian areas of Damascus early on Tuesday to protest against the burning of a Christmas tree near Hama in central Syria, Agence France-Presse journalists witnessed.

“We demand the rights of Christians,” protesters chanted as they marched through the Syrian capital towards the headquarters of the Orthodox patriarchate in the Bab Sharqi neighbourhood.

The protests come a little more than two weeks after an armed coalition led by Islamists toppled the government of Bashar al-Assad, who had cast himself as a protector of minorities in the Sunni-majority country.

A demonstrator who gave his name as Georges told AFP he was protesting “injustice against Christians”.

“If we’re not allowed to live our Christian faith in our country, as we used to, then we don’t belong here any more,” he said.

The protests erupted after a video spread on social media showing hooded fighters setting fire to a Christmas tree in the Christian-majority town of Suqaylabiyah, near Hama.

According to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, the fighters were foreigners from the Islamist group Ansar al-Tawhid.

In another video posted to social media, a religious leader from Syria’s victorious Islamist group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) addressed local people, claiming those who torched the tree were “not Syrian” and promising they would be punished. “The tree will be restored and lit up by tomorrow morning,” he said.

The Islamist HTS movement, rooted in al-Qaida and supported by Turkey, has promised to protect minorities since its lightning offensive toppled Assad this month after years of stalemate.

Turkey’s interior minister said on Tuesday that more than 25,000 Syrians had returned home from Turkey since Assad was ousted. Turkey is home to nearly 3 million refugees who fled the civil war that broke out in 2011, and whose presence has been an issue for President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s government.

“The number of people returning to Syria in the last 15 days has exceeded 25,000,” Ali Yerlikaya told the official Anadolu news agency. Ankara is in close touch with Syria’s new leaders and focusing on the voluntary return of Syrian refugees, hoping the shift in power in Damascus will allow many of them to head home.

The US military said on Monday it conducted an airstrike in Syria that killed two Islamic State operatives and wounded one. The IS operatives were moving a truckload of weapons in Dayr az Zawr province, an area formerly controlled by the Syrian government and Russians, when they were targeted with the airstrike, US Central Command said in a statement on X.

Israel rejects french USA ceasefire deal. Israel is off the rails. Imperialists cant control it anymore.

By the guardian:

"Benjamin Netanyahu rules out US-French ceasefire proposal

Benjamin Netanyahu’s office has ruled out a ceasefire proposal between Israel and Hezbollah, saying “The news about a ceasefire – not true. This is an American-French proposal, to which the prime minister did not even respond.”

It said, instead, that “the prime minister instructed the IDF to continue the fighting with full force”. Over 600 people have been killed and thousands wounded in Lebanon since Israel began an intense bombing campaign on Monday.

Israel’s foreign minister Israel Katz joined the prime minister in ruling out Israel accepting a US-French proposed 21-day ceasefire between Israel and Hezbollah.

In a message posted to social media, Katz said: “There will be no ceasefire in the north. We will continue to fight against the terrorist organization Hezbollah with all our might until victory and the safe return of the residents of the north to their homes.”

About 60,000 Israelis have fled their homes in northern Israel due to continual fighting between Israel, Hezbollah and other anti-Israeli forces based in Lebanon. On the Lebanese side of the UN-drawn blue line that separates the two countries, tens of thousands of Lebanese have also been internally displaced.

Earlier Israel’s hardline far-right finance minister, who has previously described it as his life’s mission to thwart the creation of a Palestinian state, also rejected the idea of a ceasefire. Bezalel Smotrich said “The campaign in the north should end in one scenario – crushing Hezbollah.”

Israel’s military claimed that overnight it struck “approximately 75 terror targets belonging to the Hezbollah terrorist organisation” in Beqaa and in southern Lebanon. Authorities in Lebanon reported at least four more people killed this morning, and that 23 Syrians, mostly women and children, were killed by an Israeli strike on Younine in Lebanon during the night.

The US and France had called for a temporary ceasefire to make way for broader negotiations. The joint statement issued by US president Joe Biden and French counterpart Emmanuel Macron said: “It is time for a settlement on the Israel-Lebanon border that ensures safety and security to enable civilians to return to their homes. The exchange of fire since October 7th, and in particular over the past two weeks, threatens a much broader conflict, and harm to civilians.”

The Jerusalem Post earlier reported that community leaders of northern Israel are unhappy with the prospect of a ceasefire, with one regional council’s chairman saying “There is a time for negotiations, this is not the time. This is a time for war.” "