Two Afghan military officers were killed after their MD-530 helicopter patrolling Kholim district in Samangan province crashed into a power line. It is unknown how many helicopters, including U.S. choppers, are in the hands of the Taliban-run government. After the Taliban took over the country, around 140 Afghan pilots and others were flown out of Tajikistan to Abu Dhabi as their final destination to the US. Afghan air force pilots played a significant role in the 20-year-long war against Taliban militants, and the US forces partnered with their Afghan counterparts, with heavy reliance on airpower, to halt the advancing militant group.
A charity based in Quebec, Service à la Famille Chinoise du Grand Montréal (SFCGM), received $4.45m from the Canadian government over three years while acting as one of two Chinese “overseas police stations” in the area, according to the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. Based in an area home to almost 92,000 Chinese-Canadians, the SFCGM has been reportedly used by the Beijing government to intimidate citizens in Canada. The stations form part of a global network of similar facilities believed to be used by Beijing to keep an eye on overseas Chinese people, often via harassment of exiles.
Iran's Foreign Ministry has summoned Switzerland's ambassador and demanded that the country "correct" a tweet condemning the recent execution of three anti-government protesters in Iran. The Swiss embassy had posted a tweet calling on Iran to “‘take steps to reduce” the use of the death penalty. Iran's foreign ministry called the act "unconventional and unprofessional" in a statement, citing the use of the wrong flag in a photo included in the tweet. Switzerland is one of the few countries with diplomatic relations with Iran, which does not recognise Israel, the US or many Western European countries.
Plane crash in Croatia kills three Dutch nationals, ministry says
Reuters
23-05-21 16:08
A light aircraft carrying three Dutch nationals has crashed in a mountainous region of north-west Croatia. The aircraft was reportedly Dutch-registered, and disappeared from radar during a flight from Maribor in Slovenia to Pula on Croatia’s Adriatic Coast. The cause of the crash is unknown and an investigation has been launched.
Conservationists in Egypt have warned that the government’s bulldozing of a cemetery housing ancient tombs and mausoleums risks the destruction of many previously unknown artefacts. The cemetery, the “City of the Dead”, is a 7 km Unesco World Heritage site and is being excavated to make way for President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi’s new administrative capital, which is being billed as the new capital of Egypt. However, many of the cemetery’s antiquities are not officially registered, leading some to claim that they are being destroyed in ignorance.
Austria is implementing increased checks and tightening controls at its border with Hungary following Hungary's decision to release thousands of people convicted of people smuggling from prison. Budapest is releasing foreigners serving sentences for human trafficking on the condition that they leave Hungary within 72 hours. The Hungarian prime minister, Viktor Orban, has been widely criticised for his populist stance, particularly in relation to the refugee crisis.
An Afghan colonel who fought alongside British troops has received a threat of deportation to Rwanda after fleeing to the UK on a small boat following the Taliban’s takeover of Kabul in August 2021. The veteran claims that he was not helped after leaving his family behind in Afghanistan to escape danger, and has now received the notice of intent from the Home Office after applying to the Afghan Relocations and Assistance Policy (Arap). The colonel is being supported by Care4Calais and requires urgent assistance as regards his case, having gone through at least 11 countries before arriving in the UK.
The Afghan colonel is one of many veterans who served British interests in Afghanistan and are now being threatened with deportation or are forced to flee through illegal routes as a result of strict restrictions and delays in the UK’s evacuation schemes. Speaking to Care4Calais, he expressed concerns for his family in case he is deported to Rwanda and criticized the UK’s abandonment of Afghan military personnel when the Taliban gained power. Former heads of the Royal Navy and Army have stated that the UK has free moral obligations to Afghan military personnel to secure their safe migration to the country for a better life.
Afghanistan now lies at security risk as the Taliban fights to consolidate its grip on the country, with many civilians and former military personnel facing arrest and execution. The UK’s deadline of 31 August 2021 to evacuate Afghans who had supported coalition forces was met with criticism after only a select few were evacuated in time. The latest case involving the Afghan colonel joins a list of controversial immigration policy actions by the UK government that have been harshly criticized by NGOs and human rights activists.
Human Rights Watch is calling on the Indonesian government to support the national Press Council's efforts to protect university media outlets and mediate their disputes with school authorities. The Indonesian Student Press Association found that between 2020 and 2021, there were 48 cases of university administrators intimidating or shutting down student media outlets, among the 185 cases of alleged press-related abuses on campuses in the country. The Press Council is responsible for mediating defamation disputes, but does not protect student media outlets. Most Indonesian universities have at least one student media outlet, such as a newspaper, magazine, or online news site.
Drug driving is more prevalent than drink driving, says the National Police Chiefs’ Council. Some 70% of more than 3,000 drivers tested now implicate drugs. Delays in obtaining blood test results mean that many potential drug drivers avoid prosecution, staffing shortages in laboratories being among the contributing factors. Blunders by National Vehicle Crime Intelligence Service staff were these led by the discovery that alcohol breathalyser machines used in police stations across England and Wales are unreliable in cold weather. The machines measure levels of alcohol from samples of breath.
Human Rights Watch is calling on the Indonesian government to support the national Press Council's efforts to protect university media outlets and mediate their disputes with school authorities. The Indonesian Student Press Association found that between 2020 and 2021, there were 48 cases of university administrators intimidating or shutting down student media outlets, among the 185 cases of alleged press-related abuses on campuses in the country. The Press Council is responsible for mediating defamation disputes, but does not protect student media outlets. Most Indonesian universities have at least one student media outlet, such as a newspaper, magazine, or online news site.
The president of the Democratic Republic of Congo, Felix Tshisekedi, is set to visit China later this month for talks with Chinese officials, including President Xi Jinping, to discuss trade deals and the formalisation of a $6bn infrastructure-for-minerals deal between the two nations. During the visit, the heads of state are expected to attend a signing ceremony for several key trade and cooperation documents. The African nation is the world's leading producer of cobalt, which is found in batteries for electric vehicles.
Human Rights Watch is calling on the Indonesian government to support the national Press Council's efforts to protect university media outlets and mediate their disputes with school authorities. The Indonesian Student Press Association found that between 2020 and 2021, there were 48 cases of university administrators intimidating or shutting down student media outlets, among the 185 cases of alleged press-related abuses on campuses in the country. The Press Council is responsible for mediating defamation disputes, but does not protect student media outlets. Most Indonesian universities have at least one student media outlet, such as a newspaper, magazine, or online news site.
China's demographic data is 'unreliable'. Local governments have an incentive to inflate population figures, because more residents mean larger financial transfers from the central government, while households might claim to have more members in order to receive more benefits from local governments, the author argues. There is also political incentive to inflate birth figures. For example, to show that the shift from a one- to a two-child policy worked, the National Health and Family Planning Commission announced 18.85 million births in 2016, a 27% increase from the previous year. In Shandong and Zhejiang provinces, the reported increase was even larger: 56% and 75%, respectively. However, the simplest explanation is that it never happened. The number of administered doses of the Bacillus Calmette-Guerin vaccine (which is required for every newborn) barely increased in 2016. While population aging may not directly cause economic recession, a higher aging index – the number of people aged 59 and over per 100 individuals younger than 15 – has a strong negative correlation with GDP growth, as does higher median age and proportion of people over 59.
China's foreign ministry spokesperson Mao Ning has called on the US to have a better understanding of China and for the two countries to meet halfway to improve their bilateral relations. This comes after US President Joe Biden suggested that a change in the relationship between the two nations was possible.
British Columbia is experiencing significantly larger and more frequent forest fires than ever before, leading to concerns for carbon sequestration and biodiversity. In 2003, forest fires burned more than 250,000 hectares, but in 2017, the figure surged to 1.22 million hectares. Prof Lori Daniels, a forest ecologist at the University of British Columbia, argued that this makes recent forest fires megafires, in some cases causing complete tree mortality or reducing biodiversity by overrunning particular species. The fires have been attributed partly to climate change, which is causing hotter, drier and longer summers. Prior to colonisation, forest fires occurred regularly but tended to be far less severe, leaving much biodiversity intact. Indigenous nations managed forests using fire to cultivate food and medicinal plants and produce forage for wildlife, but this system was ended by colonisers.
Near half of all new nurses being registered in Ontario, Canada, were education outside the country of the last year, amid a labour shortage in the healthcare industry and global patchiness in nursing supply, especially for source countries Canada looks too, such as India and the Philippines, which are in the midst of local nursing supply shortfalls also. There are concerns that the rush to bring more foreign-educated nurses into healthcare systems like Ontario is a recipe for decreasing standards and compromising patient safety. The issue is part of a global trend, with nursing in high demand throughout North America, Europe and Asia, making it a hot sector for international staffing executives.
Former UK Foreign Secretary, Dominic Raab, has announced he is to stand down from parliament at the next election, citing mounting concerns over the pressure of the job on his family. The move comes a month after Raab quit his position in Prime Minister Boris Johnson's Cabinet over accusations of bullying by civil servants, claims which Raab fiercely denied. With Raab's constituency among the top targets for the Liberal Democrats in the election, he had faced an uphill battle to hold on, having won the seat by a slim margin of 2,743 votes at the 2019 election. Raab's departure is the latest in a string of withdrawals by prominent Conservative MPs; the former cabinet ministers Sajid Javid and George Eustice have both confirmed they will leave, along with younger MPs, Chloe Smith and William Wragg.
The Group of Seven's recent communiqué on nuclear disarmament has been interpreted by Russia as an attempt to exert pressure on both Moscow and Beijing. The first ever such statement from the G7 called for greater transparency about nuclear arsenals in Russia and China. Russia's Foreign Ministry believes that the recent rhetoric regarding the size of nuclear arsenals is a Western ploy to exert "psychological and military-political pressure" on the country, with Russia therefore taking the matter seriously and seeing it as part of a wider anti-Russia and anti-China propaganda.
The Russian Prime Minister, Mikhail Mishustin, is visiting China with a delegation of top Russian businessmen who have all been sanctioned by the US and its allies. Mishustin is expected to attend a Russia-China business forum in Shanghai, whilst also holding talks with Chinese leaders in Beijing. China has seen its exports to Russia substantially increase since Beijing did not join the western-led sanctions followings Russia's annexation of the Crimea.
