Times Of Harvard

 Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro will replace the commanders of the country's army, navy and air force will be replaced, the defense ministry said Tuesday. The announcement comes a day after the underfire head of state overhauled his cabinet with six substitutions, including a new defense minister. "The decision was communicated in a meeting on Tuesday with incoming defense minister (Walter Souza) Braga Netto and outgoing minister Fernando Azevedo," the goverment said in a statement. What other changes has the president made? Bolsonaro on Monday sacked a string of officials, including Defense Minister Azevedo. Some local media, including the Folha de Sao Paulo daily, reported that the military chiefs had quit en masse in protest at the unexpected ministerial reshuffle.   The highest profile casualty on Monday was Foreign Minister Ernesto Araujo. He had most recently been under fire for comments and actions that critics said impeded faster access to coronavirus vaccines...

A top health official in the United States has warned of “impending doom” amid rising cases of COVID-19, even as the country continues to outpace expectations on vaccine distribution. During a news conference on Monday, Dr Rochelle Walensky, head of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), said she was “going to reflect on the recurring feeling I have of impending doom”. “We have so much to look forward to, so much promise and potential of where we are, and so much reason for hope, but right now, I’m scared,” she told reporters. The US is averaging 63,000 new cases a day as of March 29, according to data from Johns Hopkins University – a rise that comes after a recent plateau in new infections. Meanwhile, an average of 2.7 million vaccine jabs have been administered across the country per day during the last week, CNBC reported. The CDC says more than 145.8 million vaccine doses have been administered as of Monday since the country’s vaccination drive began late last year,...

 Shipping traffic through Egypt’s Suez Canal resumed on Monday after a giant container ship that blocked the busy waterway for almost a week was refloated. Live footage on a local television station showed the ship surrounded by tug boats moving slowly in the centre of the canal. The station, ExtraNews, said the ship was moving at a speed of 1.5 knots (2.8kmph). “Admiral Osama Rabie, the Chairman of the Suez Canal Authority [SCA], announces the resumption of maritime traffic in the Suez Canal after the Authority successfully rescues and floats the giant Panamanian container ship EVER GIVEN,” a statement from the SCA said. “She’s free,” an official involved in the salvage operation said. The 400-metre long Ever Given got jammed diagonally across a southern section of the canal in strong winds early last Tuesday, halting traffic on the shortest shipping route between Europe and Asia. After dredging and excavation work over the weekend, rescue workers from the SCA and a team from Dutc...

With the world's worst humanitarian crisis now entering its seventh year, the United Nations predicts that another 672,000 people could be displaced by the end of 2021 if the current level of violence continues. Already this year, 834 civilian homes have been hit by gun violence.  "Yemenis have endured six years of empty promises from world leaders, many of whom continue to fan the flames of this war. Decisive action must be taken now to stop the relentless countdown to a completely avoidable famine," said Jan Egeland, Secretary General of the Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC). "Yemenis need three things to end this nightmare: a ceasefire to prevent famine, a doubling of aid, and the resumption of peace talks." Six years of war have had a devastating impact on Yemen's people, economy and development. It has set the country's development back 21 years and robbed a generation of its future. If the conflict continues, Yemenis, already facing an extreme humani...

A 23-year-old American peace activist is being remembered, 18 years after she was crushed to death by an Israeli bulldozer. Rachel Corrie was killed on March 16, 2003 while staging a peaceful protest to protect the home of a Palestinian family from demolition. #RachelCorrie became one of the top trending topics on Twitter on her death anniversary. Born in Olympia, Washington, Corrie dedicated her life to human rights, defending Palestinian rights in particular. She was the youngest of three children of Craig and Cindy Corrie, who described their family as "average American, politically liberal, economically conservative, middle class". Corrie was known for her love for peace and defending Palestinian rights, frequently exposing violations by Israel in the occupied Palestinian territories. In 2003, she went to Gaza for her senior-year college assignment; to connect her hometown with Rafah, as part of a sister cities project. During her stay, she engaged with members of the Int...

 Saudi Arabia is one of the primary belligerents in Yemen's six-year civil war. Now, the Saudi government has presented a peace initiative. But that does not automatically mean an end to the conflict. Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman had hoped to quickly crush Houthi rebels with Saudi Arabia's intervention in the conflict in Yemen. Saudi Arabia and a number of other Middle Eastern countries have been backing the troops of President Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi in the battle against the Shiite Houthis, who, in turn, have the support of Saudi Arabia's primary regional rival, Iran. But it has become clear that the Houthis have been steadily gaining ground since the conflict started on March 26, 2015. Saudi Arabia can no longer win the war. According to UN estimates, more than 230,000 people have been killed and millions are hungry and sick. And the ailing health system has collapsed under the strain of the coronavirus pandemic. Saudi Arabia has put forward a plan to end the war in ...

Since the creation of Israel in 1967, the issue of Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails has become one of the most sensitive aspects of the ongoing Palestinian national struggle. According to the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), Israel has detained roughly one third of the Palestinian population (some 850,000 people) since the 1967 Middle East War, when Israel captured East Jerusalem, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. Relatives of Palestinian prisoners suffer when they visit their detained loved ones. They often have to travel great distances to reach the prisons and are frequently subject to strip-searches by Israeli guards. Concerns for the fate of longstanding prisoners – and the deterioration of prisoners’ physical and mental health – also contribute to families’ suffering. Since 1967, 206 Palestinians have died after being detained by Israeli authorities, according to the PLO’s Ministry for Prisoners’ Affairs. These include 71 who died from torture, 54 from medical negli...

Saudi authorities carried out a sweeping campaign of repression against independent dissidents and activists. The Twitter account of Mua'taqili al-Rai, which works on human rights and the situation of Saudi civil liberties, reported the arrest of a number of Saudi women, including a pregnant woman, by the Al-Saud regime. According to the report, these women were actively reporting about the human rights in Saudi Arabia. The new wave of detainees is said to have coincided with criticism from European human rights organizations about the alarming conditions and physical and mental of some Jordanian and Palestinian detainees in Saudi Arabia.  According to Mua'taqili al-Rai , more than 60 Jordanian and Palestinian prisoners are being held in Al-Saud detention centers and prisons with harsh conditions as well as repeated violations of the basic rights of prisoners. Earlier, Amnesty International called for the immediate release of Mohammed al-Khudari, a former Hamas militant in Sau...

 Norway’s representative to the Human Rights Council, Mr. Hans Brattskar, called on Saudi Arabia to allow freedom of opinion, expression, and assembly without fear of retaliatory prosecution. In a speech at the HRC’s 43rd session, Brattskar noted that states continue to prosecute individuals who express their opinion, especially using the internet. He stressed that journalists are those most liable to prosecution because of expressing their opinion. The international community has harshly and successively criticized Saudi Arabia for the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul. A UN report also accused senior officials, including Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, of involvement in Khashoggi’s assassination, due to his opposing positions.

 Two teenage girls have been charged with the botched carjacking and killing of an Uber Eats driver in Washington, D.C. Metropolitan police officials have charged the girls, ages 13 and 15, with felony murder and armed carjacking, according to a news release. The girls were reportedly armed with a Taser when they attempted to steal the vehicle belonging to Mohammad Anwar, 66, of Springfield, Virginia. Police officers were called around 4:30 p.m. Tuesday to the 1200 block of Van Street Southeast, a block from Nationals Park, for a car crash. There, they found Anwar, who had been thrown from his overturned Honda Accord and was suffering life-threatening injuries. Anwar was rushed to a hospital. “After all lifesaving efforts failed, the victim was pronounced dead,” the news release said. The Washington Post reported that the attempted carjacking began as Anwar sat in his car outside the Navy Yard Metro Station. Homicide Detective Chad Leo, who testified Wednesday at the girls’ initial...

 Joe Biden has invited 40 world leaders to a virtual summit on the climate crisis, the White House said in a statement on Friday. Heads of state, including Xi Jinping of China and Russia’s Vladimir Putin, have been asked to attend the two-day meeting meant to mark Washington’s return to the front lines of the fight against human-caused climate change, after Donald Trump disengaged from the process. “They know they’re invited,” Biden said of Xi and Putin. “But I haven’t spoken to either one of them yet.” The start of the summit on 22 April coincides with Earth Day, and it will come ahead of a major UN meeting on the crisis, scheduled for November in Glasgow, Scotland. Biden’s event is being staged entirely online due to the coronavirus pandemic. The president kept his campaign pledge to rejoin the Paris climate agreement on his first day in the White House, after Trump pulled out of the deal. The return of the world’s largest economy and second-largest emitter of carbon dioxide beca...

Earlier this month, nine Yazidi women were reunited for the first time in years with their 12 children – all born to members of the armed group ISIL (ISIS) who brutally persecuted the Yazidi community in northern Iraq and enslaved its women. The reunification followed months of lobbying and negotiations between former US diplomat Peter Galbraith, the Iraqi Kurdistan Regional Government, and Kurdish officials in Syria. They reached a deal allowing the children to leave the Al-Hol refugee camp in eastern Syria and cross the border into Iraq. Despite the breakthrough, Yazidi elders have refused to let the children join the small religious community, which considers them outcasts who can never be allowed into society. The decision has left their mothers, already traumatised by years of violence and atrocities, facing a wrenching choice between keeping their children or staying with their community. In August 2014, ISIL launched a violent attack on the Yazidis, an ancient religious minority...

 North Korea threatened a further military build-up on Saturday in response to Joe Biden’s condemnation of this week’s missile launches, a weapons test that marked Pyongyang’s first substantive provocation since the US president took office. The nuclear-armed North has a long history of using weapons tests to ramp up tensions, in a carefully calibrated process to try to forward its objectives. Pyongyang had been biding its time since the new administration took office in Washington, not even officially acknowledging its existence until last week. But on Thursday, it launched two weapons from its east coast into the Sea of Japan, known as the East Sea in Korea. Following the launch, Biden labelled the test a violation of UN resolutions and advised the isolated state against ramping up military testing, warning that “there will be responses if they choose to escalate.” Ri Pyong Chol, a leading official in North Korea’s missile programme who supervised the test, said the president’s c...

Several civilians were reported killed across Myanmar on Saturday as the military government puts on a major show of strength for the annual Armed Forces Day, even as it struggles to quell widespread protests against its rule. At least three protesters were reported killed in the country’s largest city, Yangon, according to Channel News Asia. Earlier, eight people were reported killed in Dala township, south of Yangon. Another protester was also killed and four others were seriously injured in Bago region on Saturday morning, according to The Irrawaddy newspaper. In Meikhtila in Mandalay, a 13-year-old girl was also reportedly shot dead, while she was inside her family’s house. The military earlier warned that pro-democracy protesters risked being shot in the head or back if they continue their demonstrations, adding that it was determined to prevent any disruptions to the military events in the capital, Naypyidaw. A broadcast on the state MRTV news channel warned on Friday, “You shoul...

Saudi officials said that eight drones were deployed in the attack. Houthi forces said they also targeted sites owned by Saudi Aramco, and military structures.  A fuel tank at an oil facility in Saudi Arabia caught fire after being struck by a projectile, the government said on Friday, in an attack suspected to be launched by Yemen's Houthi rebels. The attack took place on the sixth anniversary of Saudi Arabia's entry into Yemen's civil war. The projectiles in Jizan in southwest Saudi Arabia, near the border with Yemen, hailed from what Saudi defense officials described as a slew of eight bomb-carrying drones launched by the rebels. In a televised speech, Houthi forces took responsibility for the attacks, which they said targeted facilities owned by state-owned oil company Saudi Aramco, and military sites. The Iran-aligned group said they launched attacks against King Abdelaziz military base in Dammam and military sites in Najran and Asir. The group also said they targeted ...

Today, the Israeli people are going to the ballot box for the fifth time since I was sworn in as president, and after the vote I will be required for the sixth, or possibly the seventh, time to decide who to entrust with forming a government, said the Israeli President Reuven Rivlin. In its 73 years of independence, the State of Israeli has not experienced a political crisis like the one we are currently in. I have not yet completed my seven years as President of the State of Israel, and I am already level with President Chaim Herzog who served for over ten years. During those years, the State of Israel went to elections three times, and President Herzog was called upon five times to decide who should form the government.  In the days after the elections, I will meet the people’s representatives in the Knesset that you are voting for today, and I will ask them which candidate they recommend should be entrusted with forming a government. These people are your representatives. They s...

 Officials from Mexico and the United States have discussed how to address the “root causes” of migration from Central America, the Mexican foreign ministry said on Tuesday, after President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador earlier urged Washington to help spur development in the region. US President Joe Biden’s administration sent envoys to Mexico to discuss a recent increase in arrivals at the US-Mexico border. Those talks will continue in Guatemala. “Humanitarian actions were highlighted to promote, in the short term, inclusive economic development in the north of Central America that mitigates the root causes behind migratory flows in the region,” Mexico’s foreign ministry said in a statement. The officials, including Foreign Minister Marcelo Ebrard, also discussed different mechanisms for “orderly and safe” migration, and the protection of human rights, particularly those of children, the ministry said. There was no immediate comment from the White House on the outcome of the talks....

 A container ship heading to Rotterdam has ran aground in the Suez Canal, blocking other vessels from travelling through one of the world’s busiest waterways, according to shipping company GAC and shipping data on Refinitiv Eikon. The 200,000-tonne vessel en route from the Red Sea to the Mediterranean ran aground at about 7:40am (05:40 GMT) on Tuesday after the ship suffered a blackout, GAC said on its website. It added that 15 other ships in the northbound convoy behind the vessel were detained at anchorages waiting for the Canal to be cleared. A southbound convoy was also blocked, GAC said. The container ship, the Ever Given, is 400 metres long (1,312 feet), 59 metres wide (193 feet), and can carry up to 20,000 20-foot (6.09 metres) equivalent (TEU) shipping containers. Images posted on social media showed the ship, with a full cargo, blocking the entire canal lane. Taiwan’s Evergreen Marine Corp, which is leasing the vessel under a time charter, said the shipowner had informed i...

Day by day the Saudi airlines are becoming least secure for its citizens as the Kingdom's main sites are being continuosly attacked by the Yemeni Ansar Allah.  Questions have abounded all week as to how Saudi Arabia, the planet’s third-highest defense spender and steward of the world’s largest oil facility, allowed itself to fall victim to a drone and missile attack that has wiped out its crude production and also made its citizens less secure. The Saudi Airlines announced on Twitter that it had to delay the flights against its will just for the protection of its passengers as the kingdom is continuosly under drone and missile attacks by Yemen's Houthis. Meanwhile, Investors are likely asking themselves how the kingdom could have left itself so vulnerable and what that means for the future of oil, global markets and the long-awaited Aramco public stock offering. So how did the Saudis, who in 2018 spent an estimated $67.6 billion on arms — second only to the U.S. and China — fai...

 While parliamentary elections will be held in the occupied territories in the coming days, the Jerusalem Post wrote in an article that Netanyahu, may lose control after elections just like Trump did and take similar actions to Trump with the support of his supporters. The riot at the US Capitol was preceded by several acts of violence and intimidation such as the vandalizing of the personal home of Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi. Similarly, the term “leftists traitors” has been painted on houses of anti-Netanyahu activists and has been showing up on signs at political events with increasing frequency. Trump is responsible for contributing to the riot at the capitol, not just through his words immediately prior to the outbreak of violence but through his months-long campaign to present the election as having been “stolen.” It is in a similar vein that Netanyahu has attempted to present the legal proceedings against him as a political coup, despite the ample evidence against him ...

Yemen’s Houthi Ansarullah launched a major drone and missile strike at the heart of the Saudi oil industry in Dhahran and Ras Tanura on Sunday. Ras Tanura on the east coast of Saudi Arabia is the site of a huge refinery and the world’s biggest oil export terminal. According to Houthi spokesman Yahya Sarie, 14 drones and 8 ballistic missiles were deployed in the operation which also targeted Saudi Aramco facilities in Jazan, Asir and Dammam.  This amounts to a concerted assault on the oil industry that Saudi Arabia’s economy relies on, aimed at inflicting as much material and moral damage as possible on the country’s government. As a result, oil prices rose to over $70 per barrel for the first time in two years, reflecting market fears about Saudi Arabia’s ability to continue exporting crude at current levels. And the US embassy warned its nationals in Saudi Arabia – around 6,000 of whom reside in the oil producing Eastern Province where Saudi Aramco is based—to take precautions and...

 At least eight people, most of them Asian women, were killed in shootings at three different spas in the US state of Georgia on Tuesday, with a 21-year-old white man in custody on suspicion of staging all three attacks, police said. The shootings came with many Asian Americans already on edge following a recent spike in hate crimes against the community and triggered immediate fears that Asian-run businesses may have been deliberately singled out. Four of the victims were killed at Young’s Asian Massage near Acworth, a suburb of Georgia’s capital city Atlanta, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution newspaper reported. Captain Jay Baker of the Cherokee County sheriff’s office told the paper the victims were two Asian women, a white woman and a white man, while a Hispanic man was wounded. The Atlanta police department separately confirmed that four women were found dead at two business establishments in northeast Atlanta, identified as the Gold Massage Spa and Aroma Therapy spa. Police to...

  The violence in August this year in Charlottesville shocked the US public and sparked a debate about the influence of extreme right movements on the internet. The central question was where the limits to freedom of speech lie. Just a few days after the far-right marches, the major web hosting company GoDaddy cut off The Daily Stormer, probably the largest neo-Nazi website in the US, with over 300,000 registered users. Authors on the site had repeatedly made insulting remarks about Heather Heyer, the 32-year-old killed when a rightwing extremist ploughed a car into a group of counter-protesters. Google then blocked the website editor’s attempt to switch to one of its servers. The site then appeared for a time under a Russian domain name. The choice of Russia was no coincidence. In their ongoing search for sympathizers online, far-right groups all too gladly use Russian web hosting services and network providers. In Russia, they are subject to comparatively few restrictions on raci...

 Jordan said on Thursday the kingdom’s crown prince cancelled a visit to Jerusalem’s al Aqsa mosque to prevent Israel from undermining his first such trip to the city’s holy sites. Foreign Minister Ayman al Safadi confirmed the planned visit, which Israel earlier said had been scheduled for Wednesday but cancelled over a dispute regarding security arrangements at the site, which it did not specify. Safadi said Prince Hussein Bin Abdullah had planned to join Palestinian worshippers during a service in the mosque, which is Islam’s third holiest site and located in Jerusalem’s walled Old City, which Israel captured in the 1967 Middle East war. Jews revere the site as the vestige of their two ancient temples, and it has often been a flashpoint of Israeli-Palestinian violence. Safadi said Israel had changed the crown prince’s programme agreed with Amman and the move was seen as compromising the right of Palestinians and other Muslims to worship at the site. “The Aqsa in its entirety is ...

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was due to visit the United Arab Emirates on Thursday but postponed the trip due to difficulties in coordinating an air corridor over Jordan, his office has said. The trip would have been the first by a leader of Israel, which formalised relations with the Gulf power last year, as well as a foreign policy flourish for Netanyahu ahead of his bid for re-election on March 23. The UAE has not formally confirmed the planned visit, which leaked to Israeli media on Wednesday. According to a statement issued by Netanyahu's office, he and Abu Dhabi’s Crown Prince Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed al Nahyan agreed to reschedule. A hold-up in overflight permission from Amman for Netanyahu's plane "apparently" stemmed from the cancellation of a visit by Jordanian Crown Prince Hussein bin Abdullah to Jerusalem's Al Aqsa Mosque compound on Wednesday over a dispute regarding security arrangements at the site, the statement said. Permission eventually ca...

 The United States reserves the right to sanction Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman in the future if necessary, White House spokeswoman Jen Psaki said on Monday. “Of course we reserve the right to take any action at a time and manner of our choosing,” Psaki said at a briefing, adding that, “Historically, the United States through Democratic and Republican presidents has not typically sanctioned government leaders of countries where we have diplomatic relations.”  

Meghan Markle has been condemned for wearing extravagant "blood money" diamond earrings gifted to her by a controversial Saudi prince. She has been slammed by those fighting for justice for murdered Jamal Khashoggi - as they were given to her by the man accused of ordering his death. Michael Eisner said the chandelier earrings were "bought with blood money" by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. He said he was "baffled" that the Duchess did not know the Saudi royal was linked to Khashoggi's high-profile murder when she wore the earrings to a State dinner in 2018. Her lawyers, however, have insisted that at the time, Meghan was unaware of the widespread speculation that the Saudi royal family was likely behind the killing of the Washington Post journalist. Mr Eisner spoke out as it was reported Meghan still has the sparklers - which were given to her as a wedding gift. The Mail on Sunday today reported the incredible Chopard earrings remain Meghan's r...

 In 2015, an unassuming-looking Bill Gates came on stage at the TED conference in Vancouver to issue a dire warning. "If anything kills over 10 million people over the next few decades, it is likely to be a highly infectious virus rather than war," he told the audience. His prescient words picked up some coverage at the time, but largely went unheeded. But now, the video of this talk has now been viewed more than 64 million times - with many people more interested in the reasons behind that speech than the talk itself. Some accuse of him of leading a class of global elites. Others believe he is leading efforts to depopulate the world. Still more accuse him of making vaccines mandatory, or even attempting to implant microchips into people. He is accused of rolling out a tetanus vaccine in Kenya that includes abortion drugs. A video on the website of The New American Magazine's Facebook page continues with the theme of mass depopulation via vaccines and abortion, and also l...