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EU climate chief doesn’t rule out return to Dutch politics

Published Thu, 26 Dec 2024 15:14:37 GMT

Frans Timmermans, the EU’s Green Deal chief, is leaving open the option of returning to national politics following the resignation of Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte. Asked at a press conference on Tuesday whether he was interested in a return to Dutch politics, the commissioner — a member of the Netherlands’ center-left Labor Party — didn’t say no. “My party and the Green party are holding a referendum that will allow the [party] members to speak out on whether they want to have a joint list and a joint program. Anything I would say now would disturb that process,” he said. “It’s up to the members of both parties to express themselves and then everybody will have to make up their minds about what happens next,” he added.The Netherlands will hold a general election in November following the government’s collapse over migration policy. Rutte on Monday announced his departure from politics after serving 13 years as prime minister and 1...

German businessman’s dismembered body found in Thailand freezer with chainsaw and hedge clippers

Published Thu, 26 Dec 2024 15:14:37 GMT

BANGKOK (AP) — The dismembered body of a missing German businessman was found in a freezer inside a house in southern Thailand, police said Tuesday.Tawee Kudthalaeng, the police chief in the town of Nong Prue, said the body of 62-year-old Hans-Peter Mack was discovered at about 11 p.m. Monday. Mack had been missing for a week.Investigators located his body by using security camera footage from the area, Tawee said. He did not elaborate, but photos and video published by Thai media showed the freezer in the bed of a black truck with a man squatting next to it. Mack was last seen driving his Mercedes sedan in Pattaya, a coastal city in southern Thailand, according to a missing person announcement distributed by his family that offered a reward of 3 million baht ($86,000) for information leading to his return. Crowds gathered outside the gates of the house where his body turned up and watched as forensic teams in white coveralls, hair nets and blue gloves pored over the scene. Video br...

Taiwan’s #MeToo movement is making a resurgence as accusations hit politics, TV and schools

Published Thu, 26 Dec 2024 15:14:37 GMT

TAIPEI, Taiwan (AP) — Taiwan is facing a long-delayed reckoning with sexual harassment and sexual violence. In the past month, people have stepped forward with accusations, one after the other, leading to criminal investigations, resignations at different levels of government, and a society-wide discussion of the unspoken rules that govern gender norms in society.Taiwan’s #MeToo movement, which had a brief wave of accusations in 2017 as the #MeToo movement swept the globe, reignited on May 31 when a woman named Chen Chien-jou who worked for the Democratic Progressive Party, the party in power, accused film director Hsueh Chao-hui of groping her and making unwanted sexual advances. When she went to tell Hsu Chia-tien, the party’s head of women’s affairs, Chen was met with dismissal and asked why she hadn’t screamed.With the 2024 presidential campaign kicking off, Hsu has since resigned from her post, and the party vowed to make changes internally with the backing of its n...

Olympic champion Caster Semenya wins appeal against testosterone rules at human rights court

Published Thu, 26 Dec 2024 15:14:37 GMT

Double Olympic champion runner Caster Semenya won an appeal against track and field’s testosterone rules on Tuesday when the European Court of Human Rights ruled she had been discriminated against.The ruling could force sport’s highest court to re-examine the regulations that force Semenya and other female athletes to artificially reduce naturally high testosterone levels in order to compete at top meets such as the Olympics and world champinships.The Strasbourg-based rights court ruled in Semenya’s favor by a 4-3 majority of judges.The court also ruled the South African runner was denied an “effective remedy” against that discrimination when the Court of Arbitration for Sport and Switzerland’s supreme court denied her two previous appeals against the rules.It was not immediately clear if the ruling would force an immediate rollback of the rules and if the 32-year-old Semenya would be allowed to compete at next year’s Olympics in Paris.She was the 2012 ...

Australian war hero appeals court decision that blamed him for unlawful killings in Afghanistan

Published Thu, 26 Dec 2024 15:14:37 GMT

CANBERRA, Australia (AP) — Australia’s most decorated living war veteran lodged an appeal on Tuesday against a civil court ruling that blamed him for the unlawful killings of four Afghans.Ben Roberts-Smith, who retired from Australia’s elite Special Air Service Regiment a decade ago, lost a landmark defamation suit on June 1 against newspapers that had accused him of an array of war crimes.The Federal Court confirmed that the 44-year-old recipient of the revered Victorian Cross for gallantry in Afghanistan filed an appeal with the court on Tuesday against that ruling.Roberts-Smith had taken leave from his job as a state manager of the Seven West Media national business since 2021 to focus on the court case and quit a day after the verdict. His case has been financed by the company’s billionaire executive chair, Kerry Stokes.Roberts-Smith has been fighting to salvage his reputation through a defamation suit since Australian newspaper articles in 2018 accused him of war crimes includi...

Israelis block highways in nationwide protests of government’s plan to overhaul judiciary

Published Thu, 26 Dec 2024 15:14:37 GMT

JERUSALEM (AP) — Israeli protesters blocked highways leading to Jerusalem, Haifa and Tel Aviv at the start of countrywide demonstrations Tuesday against the government’s planned judicial overhaul that has divided the nation.The demonstrations came the morning after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s parliamentary coalition gave initial approval to a bill to limit the Supreme Court’s oversight powers, pressing forward with contentious proposed changes to the judiciary despite widespread opposition.The legislation is one of several bills proposed by Netanyahu’s ultranationalist and ultra-Orthodox allies. The plan has provoked months of sustained protests by opponents who say it is pushing the country toward authoritarian rule.Anti-overhaul activists called for nationwide mass demonstrations throughout the day, including protests at Israel’s main international airport that could disrupt travel. On Tuesday, 300 reservists from the military’s cyber unit signed a letter saying they...

Thousands gather in Bosnia and commemorate the 1995 Srebrenica massacre anniversary

Published Thu, 26 Dec 2024 15:14:37 GMT

SREBRENICA, Bosnia-Herzegovina (AP) — Thousands of people from around Bosnia and abroad gathered in Srebrenica on Tuesday for the annual ritual of commemorating the 1995 massacre in the eastern town and to give a dignified burial to the victims unearthed from mass graves and only recently identified through DNA analysis.Twenty-eight years after they were brutally murdered in Europe’s only acknowledged genocide since the Holocaust, 27 men and three teenage boys will be laid to rest Tuesday at a vast and ever-expanding memorial cemetery just outside Srebrenica, joining more than 6,600 massacre victims already reburied there.Relatives of the victims can bury only partial remains of their loved ones as they are typically found scattered over several different mass graves, sometimes miles (kilometers) apart. Such was the case of Mirsda Merdzic, who will bury her father on Tuesday.“Only a very few bones of his were retrieved because he had been found (in a mass grave) near the Drina River...

Saudi Arabia deposits $2 billion in Pakistan’s central bank as a boost ahead of a key IMF meeting

Published Thu, 26 Dec 2024 15:14:37 GMT

ISLAMABAD (AP) — Saudi Arabia has deposited $2 billion into Pakistan’s central bank, the government said Tuesday, a much-needed financial boost ahead of a critical meeting of the International Monetary Fund on the new bailout package for the cash-strapped South Asian country. In a video statement, Pakistani Finance Minister Ishaq Dar said the kingdom was making good on its promise to bolster Pakistan’s foreign exchange reserves. The infusion is not a loan as such but will shore up the reserves and remain with Pakistan’s central bank for at least a year. The development comes on the eve of the meeting of he IMF’s executive board which is expected to approve a new and much-needed $3 billion loan to Pakistan to help the country overcome an economic crisis.Dar said that with the Saudi deposit, Pakistan’s foreign exchange reserves which dropped to $9.6 billion last week — barely enough to pay import bills for a month — have gone up to $11.6. “We thank the Sa...

In the news today: Trudeau at NATO summit, new announcement from ethics watchdog

Published Thu, 26 Dec 2024 15:14:37 GMT

Here is a roundup of stories from The Canadian Press designed to bring you up to speed on what you need to know today…Canada lags behind allies as NATO plans to increase defence spending targetsPrime Minister Justin Trudeau is in Vilnius, Lithuania, today for the NATO leaders’ annual summit. The 31 member states are expected to make a more ambitious pledge on military spending than they have before. The target has long been for countries to spend two per cent of their GDP on defence, but now that’s expected to only be the minimum. Canada is currently spending just shy of 1.3 per cent of its economy on the military, and some experts say the time has come to signal that Canadians are more serious about meeting their obligations. Corporate ethics czar starting China labour probeOttawa’s corporate-ethics watchdog is set to announce investigations into whether Canadian companies are importing products made through human-rights violations in China.Sheri Meyerhoffer...

Rapper Lil Nas X reported to be among among scooter-riding tourists stopped in Oslo tunnel

Published Thu, 26 Dec 2024 15:14:37 GMT

COPENHAGEN, Denmark (AP) — Police in Norway’s capital briefly stopped four Americans who rode through an Oslo tunnel on electric scooters, and a Norwegian newspaper said one of them was rapper Lil Nas X. Authorities briefly closed the Festning tunnel, but none of the scooter riders were detained or charged. The tourists had followed a GPS route into the 1.8-kilometer (1.1 mile) downtown tunnel late Monday, police said. The four “used large parts of the roadway,” so a road traffic center had to shut down some lanes, police said. “They apologized. We have escorted them out,” the police department said on Twitter.Norwegian newspaper Dagbladet reported Tuesday that Lil Nas X, whose real name is Montero Lamar Hill, was one of the four tourists. The musician is in Oslo to perform at the outdoor Slottsffell festival nearby on Wednesday.It was not the first time that a foreign tourist rode through part of a vast and busy tunnel system in the center of the Norwegian capital on an...