Libyan military commander Khalifa Haftar is set to challenge Gaddafi’s son for the top job, announcing his presidential bid. The election will take place on December 24.
“I declare my candidacy for the presidential election, not because I am chasing power but because I want to lead our people towards glory, progress and prosperity,” the de facto leader of Eastern Libya said in a televised speech.
Haftar added that the election is the only way out of the severe crisis the country has been plunged into.
The announcement was expected; in September, Haftar announced that he was temporarily stepping down as head of the force known as the Libyan National Army, fulfilling the requirement for presidential hopefuls to suspend public work three months before an election.
Haftar will run against the son of former leader Muammar Gaddafi, Saif al-Islam Gaddafi, who represents the Popular Front for the Liberation of Libya.
Haftar’s presidential bid is likely to anger many who consider him a war criminal responsible for the indiscriminate killing of civilians during his military campaign. A number of civil lawsuits have been filed against him in a US federal court for alleged war crimes. Haftar has both US and Libyan citizenship, and owns property in Virginia.
Following years of civil war and political chaos after the NATO-backed intervention that saw Muammar Gaddafi deposed and brutally murdered, the upcoming election is widely viewed as an opportunity for political settlement and the long-awaited unification of the country, divided now between Haftar’s forces and the Tripoli-based Government of National Accord. However, there is still no consensus on the legal grounds for the election, which could become an obstacle for the peace process.
At least two people were wounded by police gunfire in the Dutch city of Rotterdam after a protest over renewed Covid-19 restrictions spiraled into a violent riot, seeing demonstrators torch a squad car and clash with officers.
A large crowd of protesters showed up at Rotterdam’s iconic Coolsingel street on Friday evening to denounce a new round of pandemic measures, including an ongoing partial lockdown, a ban on New Year’s Eve fireworks displays, as well as fears the government will impose a ‘2G’ pass system allowing only the vaccinated and those who’ve recently recovered from the virus to enter a long list of public places.
At least two people were wounded during the demonstration, a local police spokesperson told Reuters, adding the injuries were “probably” due to officers’ “warning shots” but also noting that “direct shots were fired because the situation was life-threatening” to law enforcement.
Footage of the heated protest circulated online, some clips showing a police squad car fully engulfed in flames after it was apparently torched by rioters.
🇳🇱 Pays-Bas : Des émeutes sont en cours à #Rotterdam en marge d’une manifestation contre les restrictions sanitaires.
Demonstrators were also seen launching fireworks at police, who appeared to respond with large quantities of tear gas, which at one point blanketed the area.
Local law enforcement said that officers deployed a mobile riot control unit to Coolsingel and unleashed water cannon on protesters who refused to clear the streets, also noting that some arrests were made after an emergency order was imposed to cordon off the area.
The Dutch government announced the fireworks ban earlier on Friday, saying it is meant to “prevent, as much as possible, extra strain on healthcare, law enforcement and first responders.” However, while private displays are prohibited, officials said that local governments may still put on fireworks shows so long as their Covid-19 restrictions allow it.
The Netherlands currently has a ‘3G’ rule in place, allowing the vaccinated, the recently recovered, as well as those who test negative for the virus to enter most public spaces. But as the country remains under a partial three-week lockdown to rein in growing infections, officials are now mulling the stricter ‘2G’ scheme, prompting the intense demonstrations seen on Friday night.
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France has imposed a curfew on its overseas territory of Guadeloupe and is sending extra police to the island, citing days of “violence,” unrest and vandalism in response to harsh pandemic restrictions.
“Given the ongoing social unrest and acts of vandalism, the prefect of Guadeloupe has decided to establish a curfew starting today from 6pm to 5am,” Alexandre Rochatte, who represents the archipelago as prefect, said on Friday.
Earlier on Friday, the French Interior Ministry noted that 200 French police officers and gendarmes would be shipped into Guadeloupe in the coming days to crack down on the “violence” and “restore republican order.”
The move comes after nearly a week of heated protests over local Covid-19 policies – which include mandatory vaccinations for healthcare staff and other ‘essential’ workers, among other things. Demonstrators have torched cars and erected burning barricades in the streets, while doctors, firefighters and other professionals have walked off their jobs in protest, according to Reuters.
Barrages incendiées et affront*ments cette nuit en #Guadeloupe où la grève générale illimitée, enclenchée contre le pass sanitaire et l’obligation vaccinale exprime désormais une colère plus large contre les problématiques sociales, économiques et environnementales de l’île. pic.twitter.com/gXToww1gXZ
In footage circulating online earlier this week, men purported to be protesting firefighters were seen soaking police with a water hose hooked up to a nearby fire hydrant. Officers quickly shut off the spigot.
A firefighter sprinkles the gendarmes during the evacuation of a dam in #Guadeloupe where an unlimited general strike began today against the health pass and compulsory vaccination under penalty of suspension but also to denounce other problems of the territory . pic.twitter.com/lDtDkMx4YZ
As in mainland France, residents are also required to present proof of vaccination, a negative PCR test or show they recently recovered from the virus in order to enter a number of public establishments, including restaurants and museums.
Those policies have proven unpopular for many locals, with trade unions launching indefinite strikes in protest over the past week, joined by other residents in street demonstrations.
Libyan military commander Khalifa Haftar is set to challenge Gaddafi’s son for the top job, announcing his presidential bid. The election will take place on December 24.
“I declare my candidacy for the presidential election, not because I am chasing power but because I want to lead our people towards glory, progress and prosperity,” the de facto leader of Eastern Libya said in a televised speech.
Haftar added that the election is the only way out of the severe crisis the country has been plunged into.
The announcement was expected; in September, Haftar announced that he was temporarily stepping down as head of the force known as the Libyan National Army, fulfilling the requirement for presidential hopefuls to suspend public work three months before an election.
Haftar will run against the son of former leader Muammar Gaddafi, Saif al-Islam Gaddafi, who represents the Popular Front for the Liberation of Libya.
Haftar’s presidential bid is likely to anger many who consider him a war criminal responsible for the indiscriminate killing of civilians during his military campaign. A number of civil lawsuits have been filed against him in a US federal court for alleged war crimes. Haftar has both US and Libyan citizenship, and owns property in Virginia.
Following years of civil war and political chaos after the NATO-backed intervention that saw Muammar Gaddafi deposed and brutally murdered, the upcoming election is widely viewed as an opportunity for political settlement and the long-awaited unification of the country, divided now between Haftar’s forces and the Tripoli-based Government of National Accord. However, there is still no consensus on the legal grounds for the election, which could become an obstacle for the peace process.
Some voters in Germany’s capital, Berlin, may have to re-cast their ballots after the country’s federal election czar filed an official complaint over irregularities in a parliamentary vote held two months ago.
The election – which saw Berliners decide the makeup of the German parliament, the Bundestag, as well as select city representatives – was marred by irregularities at numerous polling stations, according to the official, Georg Thiel.
Among the most common problems were ballot shortages and long lines, with waiting times of up to two hours. In some cases, voters were also seen casting their ballots past a 6pm cutoff – the time when all polling stations were supposed to have closed. Thiel, who was tasked with overseeing elections at federal level, saw all of the above as reason enough to raise an objection in the German capital, local media reported on Friday.
Thiel identified six Berlin constituencies where irregularities were allegedly rampant, potentially setting the stage for a re-do election in the city.
It is now up to a special Bundestag committee to examine Thiel’s complaint and see if the reported violations ran afoul of German law or electoral procedures. For the vote to be repeated, however, at least one of those violations would have to be deemed serious enough to have affected the distribution of seats in the Bundestag.
The September 26 election saw outgoing Chancellor Angela Merkel’s conservatives take a historic beating, with the Social Democrats coming out on top. The Social Democratic Party (SPD) has been engaged in coalition talks with the Greens and the Free Democratic Party ever since, with the trio expected to announce a preliminary deal as early as next week.
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Objects, including spacecraft, could pierce through the universe using several black holes as a ‘shortcut’, a new study suggests.
The new theory posited by French physicist Pascal Koiran marks a break from earlier research in the field of black hole studies. Previously, it was thought that a so-called ‘wormhole’ composed of two black holes would be prone to instantly collapse, thus making it impossible for an object to successfully travel all the way from one side and out the other. However, by employing different metrics, the French scientist’s new model has arrived at a very different conclusion: “We show that the particle reaches the wormhole throat for a finite value t′1 of the time marker t′.” In essence, that means an object, for instance, a spacecraft, could pass through this wormhole portal intact and reach some far-away region of the universe, taking far less time than would be needed if traveling conventionally.
The study in its entirety will see the light of day in the upcoming issue of the Journal of Modern Physics D, though an abstract has been available since early October.
Yet, there are too many ifs as to whether this purely theoretical model has any bearing on the way the universe actually works. For starters, to create such a time-and-space tunnel you would need a regular black hole and a so-called white hole, which is essentially a black hole in reverse. While black holes never let anything out, their ‘twins’ never let anything in. So, according to Albert Einstein’s theory of general relativity and Nathan Rosen’s additions to it, if you were to connect the two, they would make up a bridge across time and space. However, if the laws postulated by another branch of physics, thermodynamics, are anything to go by, such a construct would be highly unstable. Perhaps more importantly, the very existence of white holes has yet to be proven beyond a reasonable doubt. At present, they remain a pure theorization, thus putting any talk of space-and-time portals on rather shaky ground.
Objects, including spacecraft, could pierce through the universe using several black holes as a ‘shortcut’, a new study suggests.
The new theory posited by French physicist Pascal Koiran marks a break from earlier research in the field of black hole studies. Previously, it was thought that a so-called ‘wormhole’ composed of two black holes would be prone to instantly collapse, thus making it impossible for an object to successfully travel all the way from one side and out the other. However, by employing different metrics, the French scientist’s new model has arrived at a very different conclusion: “We show that the particle reaches the wormhole throat for a finite value t′1 of the time marker t′.” In essence, that means an object, for instance, a spacecraft, could pass through this wormhole portal intact and reach some far-away region of the universe, taking far less time than would be needed if traveling conventionally.
The study in its entirety will see the light of day in the upcoming issue of the Journal of Modern Physics D, though an abstract has been available since early October.
Yet, there are too many ifs as to whether this purely theoretical model has any bearing on the way the universe actually works. For starters, to create such a time-and-space tunnel you would need a regular black hole and a so-called white hole, which is essentially a black hole in reverse. While black holes never let anything out, their ‘twins’ never let anything in. So, according to Albert Einstein’s theory of general relativity and Nathan Rosen’s additions to it, if you were to connect the two, they would make up a bridge across time and space. However, if the laws postulated by another branch of physics, thermodynamics, are anything to go by, such a construct would be highly unstable. Perhaps more importantly, the very existence of white holes has yet to be proven beyond a reasonable doubt. At present, they remain a pure theorization, thus putting any talk of space-and-time portals on rather shaky ground.
France shouldn’t remain silent on Julian Assange, leftist leader Jean-Luc Melenchon has said, after the imprisoned WikiLeaks co-founder’s father suggested that Paris could offer asylum to his son.
The life of Assange – who is being held in solitary confinement at London’s Belmarsh maximum security prison while a British court considers an extradition request by the US – is under threat, Melenchon wrote on Twitter on Tuesday.
“For years, we’ve been calling for France to accept him,” the head of the leftist La France Insoumise (France Unbowed) party said, insisting that “France shouldn’t remain silent.”
The statement by Melenchon, who won 19.6% of the ballot in the first round of the French presidential election in 2017, follows a visit by Assange’s father, John Shipton, to the Whistleblower Meeting in Paris on Monday.
During the event, Shipton told Sputnik news agency that it would be “an honorable thing” for the French government to grant his son asylum.
“I feel that France hasn’t attacked Julian over the last 12 years and consequently France is free to act in return for the information that WikiLeaks and Julian brought to France,” he said, referring to the website’s revelations of the US intelligence agencies spying on French presidents and hacking into local banks.
🔴 John #Shipton : «La France n’a pas attaqué #Julian pendant les dernières années difficiles, donc la France est libre d’agir en échange des informations que #WikiLeaks et Julian ont apportées à la France. Ce serait honorable pour la #France d’offrir [l’asile] à Julian #Assange» pic.twitter.com/ceZ7qTARua
Several dozen French lawmakers have also recently called upon Paris to take Assange in, with the Australian-born publisher’s legal team saying last year that their client was hoping to find asylum on French soil.
Assange could face up to 175 years behind bars if he’s extradited to the US, where he’s wanted on espionage charges over the release by WikiLeaks of classified documents on Iraq, Afghanistan, Guantanamo Bay, and others.
He was placed in Belmarsh in April 2019 over breach of bail, after being holed up in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London for seven years.
The publisher had been fleeing an arrest warrant issued over sexual assault allegations which he has always denied, and which failed to result in any actual charges due to lack of evidence.
Assange’s supporters insist that he has actually been persecuted over his legitimate journalistic activities and revealing the truth to the public.
The UK High Court is expected to rule on the appeal by the US against a lower court decision to bar the WikiLeaks co-founder’s extradition to America due to the 50-year-old’s poor health condition and risk of suicide.
Assange’s team will then be able to challenge the ruling in the Supreme Court if it’s not favorable.
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The International Criminal Court has halted an investigation into alleged rights abuses carried out by Philippines authorities as part of a harsh crackdown on the drug trade, saying it is reviewing a deferral request from Manila.
The ICC’s chief prosecutor Karim Khan said the probe was suspended after the Philippines government filed a request to defer the case earlier this month, according to court documents cited by Reuters on Friday.
“The prosecution has temporarily suspended its investigative activities while it assesses the scope and effect of the deferral request,” he wrote, adding that the court is seeking more information from the government in Manila.
Based in The Hague, the ICC allows states to ask for postponements if they conduct their own investigations into the charges in question. President Rodrigo Duterte’s administration filed its deferral request on November 10, while the country’s Justice Ministry announced its own investigation into the alleged abuses late last month.
The court initially opened the probe in September over allegations that Philippines police had carried out thousands of extrajudicial executions and used other brutal tactics against suspected drug dealers, and that Duterte gave implicit backing to those actions. Activists have accused authorities of killing innocent people, including children, though the police insist they only use violence in self-defense.
While Duterte has declined to cooperate with the ICC probe, saying it has no authority on the island nation, and even pulled the Philippines out of the international body in 2019, the court has jurisdiction to investigate alleged violations committed by the country while it was still a member.
The president’s chief legal counsel, Salvador Panelo, confirmed the deferral request in brief comments to Reuters, saying “There is no inconsistency with the request for suspension of action,” though he did not elaborate.
Since its founding some 20 years ago, the ICC has successfully convicted just five people of war crimes or crimes against humanity – all leaders of armed movements in Africa, including in Mali, Uganda and the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
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France shouldn’t remain silent on Julian Assange, leftist leader Jean-Luc Melenchon has said, after the imprisoned WikiLeaks co-founder’s father suggested that Paris could offer asylum to his son.
The life of Assange – who is being held in solitary confinement at London’s Belmarsh maximum security prison while a British court considers an extradition request by the US – is under threat, Melenchon wrote on Twitter on Tuesday.
“For years, we’ve been calling for France to accept him,” the head of the leftist La France Insoumise (France Unbowed) party said, insisting that “France shouldn’t remain silent.”
The statement by Melenchon, who won 19.6% of the ballot in the first round of the French presidential election in 2017, follows a visit by Assange’s father, John Shipton, to the Whistleblower Meeting in Paris on Monday.
During the event, Shipton told Sputnik news agency that it would be “an honorable thing” for the French government to grant his son asylum.
“I feel that France hasn’t attacked Julian over the last 12 years and consequently France is free to act in return for the information that WikiLeaks and Julian brought to France,” he said, referring to the website’s revelations of the US intelligence agencies spying on French presidents and hacking into local banks.
🔴 John #Shipton : «La France n’a pas attaqué #Julian pendant les dernières années difficiles, donc la France est libre d’agir en échange des informations que #WikiLeaks et Julian ont apportées à la France. Ce serait honorable pour la #France d’offrir [l’asile] à Julian #Assange» pic.twitter.com/ceZ7qTARua
Several dozen French lawmakers have also recently called upon Paris to take Assange in, with the Australian-born publisher’s legal team saying last year that their client was hoping to find asylum on French soil.
Assange could face up to 175 years behind bars if he’s extradited to the US, where he’s wanted on espionage charges over the release by WikiLeaks of classified documents on Iraq, Afghanistan, Guantanamo Bay, and others.
He was placed in Belmarsh in April 2019 over breach of bail, after being holed up in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London for seven years.
The publisher had been fleeing an arrest warrant issued over sexual assault allegations which he has always denied, and which failed to result in any actual charges due to lack of evidence.
Assange’s supporters insist that he has actually been persecuted over his legitimate journalistic activities and revealing the truth to the public.
The UK High Court is expected to rule on the appeal by the US against a lower court decision to bar the WikiLeaks co-founder’s extradition to America due to the 50-year-old’s poor health condition and risk of suicide.
Assange’s team will then be able to challenge the ruling in the Supreme Court if it’s not favorable.
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