Times Of Harvard

 United States President Joe Biden has said he plans to press his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin on human rights during a summit in Geneva next month. During a speech to mark the Memorial Day holiday on Sunday, Biden said he would make clear during the meeting that “we will not stand by and let him abuse those rights”. Biden and Putin, who have exchanged some harsh words and rebukes since the US president took office in January, will meet on June 16. “The leaders will discuss the full range of pressing issues, as we seek to restore predictability and stability to the US-Russia relationship,” White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki said in a statement last week confirming the summit. The Kremlin said in a statement that Biden and Putin would discuss bilateral ties, problems related to strategic nuclear stability, and other issues including cooperation in the fight against COVID-19 and regional conflicts. The leaders’ first in-person meeting comes as relations between Washington an...

 A Silicon Valley tech giant could end up enabling one of the world's worst human rights abusers to better spy on its citizens, human rights campaigners said on Wednesday. When Google announced last year that it had finalised an agreement to build a major new cloud-computing centre in Saudi Arabia, the company said the move would allow businesses there to "confidently grow and scale their offerings in this market." The company opened the first such centres, known as Google Cloud regions, in 2020, starting with the US, Indonesia, and South Korea. It also announced plans to open them in Spain, France, Italy, and Qatar. But in a statement, critics said that setting up shop in Saudi Arabia could end up bringing more than just faster data transfer speeds to its clients, including Saudi Aramco, a state-owned oil company. "In a country where dissidents are arrested, jailed for their expression and tortured for their work - Google's plan could give the Saudi authorities ...

We need to acknowledge what an extraordinary moment this is. Mainstream media are finally focused on Israeli attacks on Palestinian children. The New York Times did the unprecedented, and devoted a huge portion of its front page to the images of 65 children, almost all of them Palestinian, killed during the recent onslaught. The accompanying report is almost impossible to look at, it is the face of innocence, beauty, hope, all defiled. Notes the Times:     Nearly all of the children killed were Palestinian. In all 69 children were killed, two of them Israelis. Nothing like this took place in 2014 when Israel killed 526 children. While in 2018, the New York Times ran four columnists’ justifications of Israel’s slaughter of over 200 unarmed protesters on the Gaza border, as well as the maiming of thousands more. From Jim Zogby:     Never thought I’d see the day when Palestinian victims were pictured, named, & their stories told. These children deserve to ...

 WhatsApp has filed a lawsuit in Delhi against the Indian government seeking to block regulations coming into force on Wednesday that experts say would compel the California-based Facebook unit to break privacy protections, sources said. The case, described to Reuters by people familiar with it, asks the Delhi High Court to declare that one of the new rules is a violation of privacy rights in India’s constitution since it requires social media companies to identify the “first originator of information” when authorities demand it. While the law requires WhatsApp to unmask only people credibly accused of wrongdoing, the company says it cannot do that alone in practice. Because messages are end-to-end encrypted, to comply with the law WhatsApp says it would have break encryption for receivers, as well as “originators”, of messages. Reuters, which first reported the story on Wednesday, could not independently confirm the complaint had been filed in court by WhatsApp, which has nearly 4...

 President Joe Biden will meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Geneva next month, the White House confirmed on Tuesday, The meeting on June 16 is being added onto the end of Biden's first international trip as president. He is scheduled to visit England for the Group of Seven summit and Brussels for a NATO summit. The statement from the White House says Biden and Putin will discuss "the full range of pressing issues, as we seek to restore predictability and stability to the U.S.-Russia relationship." In a separate statement, the Kremlin said the leaders "intend to discuss the state and prospects of further development of Russian-American relations, problems of strategic stability, as well as topical issues on the international agenda, including interaction in the fight against the coronavirus pandemic and the settlement of regional conflicts." The meeting in Switzerland comes as tensions between the U.S. and Russia escalate in the first months of the Bi...

 Last weekend in Atlanta, as hundreds of pro-Palestinian demonstrators rallied downtown, one sign stood out in particular: “We can’t breathe since 1948,” it read – a nod to the social unrest of the last year that has followed the murder of George Floyd. Experts say it’s a reflection of the way that American support for the Palestinian cause is growing, a trend that a recent Gallup poll showed was on the rise even before the most recent Palestinian-Israeli conflict. “It’s not a huge surprise that a lot of non-white Americans can empathize and identify with Palestinians because of their own history of oppression and settler colonialism,” said Khaled Elgindy, senior fellow at the Middle East Institute in Washington, D.C. “The old image of Israel as David fighting the Arab Goliath, if it was ever true, is now completely obsolete. Israel is not the underdog anymore, and people realize that.” Results of Gallup’s annual World Affairs poll, released in March, show that while most Americans...

The United States told the United Nations Security Council on Sunday it has made clear to Israel, the Palestinians and others that it is ready to offer support "should the parties seek a ceasefire" to end the worsening violence between Israel and Palestinian militants in Gaza. "The United States has been working tirelessly through diplomatic channels to try to bring an end to this conflict," U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Linda Thomas-Greenfield told the 15-member council. "Because we believe Israelis and Palestinians equally have a right to live in safety and security." As the Security Council held its first public meeting - after two private briefings last week - Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Israel's campaign in Hamas Islamist-run Gaza was continuing at "full force". Washington - a strong ally of Israel - has been isolated at the United Nations over its objection to a public statement by the Security Council on the worst violence bet...

The Biden administration on Wednesday took aim at Saudi Arabia and a number of other countries for repressing religious freedom as it forges ahead with its aim of restoring human rights as a primary focus of American foreign policy. The condemnation was similar to that lodged by the Trump administration, which had been criticized for prioritizing religious freedom over other rights, and reflected continuity in the U.S. position that China’s crackdown on Muslims and other religious minorities in western Xinjiang constitutes “genocide.” Yet, a senior official said religious freedom is just one element in the administration's broader human rights strategy. Much as his predecessor did, Secretary of State Antony Blinken used the release of the State Department’s annual International Religious Freedom Report to lambaste China for severe restrictions on its citizens’ ability to worship freely. He also announced a travel ban on a former senior Chinese official the U.S. accuses of persecuti...

 Israeli forces shot dead at least two Palestinians and wounded hundreds more in the occupied West Bank during protests to mark the Nakba, when nearly 800,000 Palestinians were forcibly expelled from their homes to make way for the establishment of the state of Israel in 1948. The Palestinian Wafa news agency, citing health officials, said two Palestinians were killed and 450 others wounded during Saturday’s demonstrations. At least 104 people were injured by live fire, the agency reported. The latest casualties came a day after at least 11 Palestinians were killed and more than 500 injured in the occupied West Bank by Israeli forces. While commemorating the 73rd anniversary of the Nakba or the “Catastrophe”, protesters in the West Bank also decried Israel’s ongoing aerial bombardment in Gaza, the threat of forced expulsion of Palestinians from their homes in East Jerusalem, and the repeated Israeli raids on Al-Aqsa Mosque, Islam’s third holiest site. In Ramallah, Nakba sirens rang...

 After another night of intense bombardment by Israeli forces, Palestinians and Israelis on Friday surveyed a landscape marred by violence that has spread from the West Bank to Israel to Gaza and back to the West Bank, leaving scores dead, mostly Palestinians. Most of the death and destruction have occurred in Gaza, the already impoverished territory, where officials said more than 120 people had died, including 31 children, scores of buildings were destroyed, and electricity water were running critically short. More than 2,000 rockets have been fired at Israel from Gaza this week, and eight Israelis, including a soldier, have been killed, Israeli officials said on Friday. A Hamas spokesman told on Friday that the group was open to a “calming” of hostilities, and that Egypt and Qatar were leading efforts to mediate with Israel. But the rocket barrage appeared to slow overnight, as Israeli jets and drones once again pounded targets in the territory, joined for the first time by arti...

 There is no simple answer to the question “What set off the current violence in Palestine?” But in an episode of The Daily this week, Isabel Kershner, The New York Times’s Jerusalem correspondent, explained the series of recent events that reignited violence in the region. In Jerusalem, nearly every square foot of land is contested — its ownership and tenancy symbolic of larger abiding questions about who has rightful claim to a city considered holy by three major world religions. As Isabel explained, a longstanding legal battle over attempts to forcibly evict six Palestinian families from their homes in East Jerusalem heightened tensions in the weeks leading up to the outbreak of violence. The always tenuous peace was further tested by the overlap of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan with a month of politically charged days in Israel. A series of provocative events followed: Israeli forces barred people from gathering to celebrate Ramadan outside Damascus Gate, an Old City entranc...

 As United States and Egyptian mediators headed to Israel to begin de-escalation talks, the antagonists were weighing delicate internal considerations before agreeing to discussions on ending the violence. But even before the mediators got to work, Israel’s caretaker prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, appeared to have calculated that brute force was required first. Early Friday, Israeli ground troops shelled Gaza — a potentially major move of escalation against the Hamas militants who have been launching rockets at Israel. For the Palestinians, the indefinite postponement of elections last month by the Palestinian Authority president, Mahmoud Abbas, created a vacuum that Hamas is more than willing to fill. Hamas argues that it is the only Palestinian faction that, with its large stockpile of improved missiles, is defending the holy places of Jerusalem, turning Mr. Abbas into a spectator. The Biden administration has resisted calls at the United Nations Security Council for an imme...

Thousands of protesters in Jordan, Israel’s eastern neighbor, marched toward the border on Friday morning, chanting slogans in solidarity with the Palestinians and waving Palestinian flags as Jordanian riot police surrounded them. “We are here. Either we go down, or they will have to carry us back,” they chanted, videos posted to social media showed. “To Palestine, to Palestine. We are going to Palestine. We are going in millions as martyrs to Palestine.” Arriving in buses and cars, the protesters called on Jordan’s government to open the border, where it has stepped up security in recent days amid the growing conflict between Israel and the Palestinians. Before the protesters could reach the demarcation line, however, the riot police blocked their path, social media videos and photos at the scene showed. Jordanians have been protesting near the Israeli Embassy in Amman for several days, some of the largest expressions of solidarity for the Palestinians in a region that has otherwise r...

Deadly conflict between Israelis and Palestinians has in the past sparked protests and intense flare-ups of anger in Europe, sometimes leading to anti-Semitic acts, particularly in 2014, when Israel invaded the Gaza Strip. And with the current conflict intensifying and more protests being organized, officials in France and Germany are taking steps to avoid a repeat. France banned a pro-Palestinian protest planned for this weekend in Paris, sparking an intense political debate and an unsuccessful court challenge from the organizers of the demonstration, and the government has deployed police around the country in anticipation of other protests and possible violence. In Germany, where protesters this week attacked synagogues, burned Israeli flags and marched through the streets chanting slurs against Jews, law enforcement readied for several demonstrations in Berlin on Saturday and officials said that anti-Semitism would not be tolerated. Felix Klein, a German official tasked with counte...

 Story of a Gazan family whose celebration turned to horror. The taxi was loaded with everything the family would need for Eid al-Fitr, a holiday of feasts and cookies and new clothes that Israeli airstrikes on Gaza had, even before the assault by ground forces on Friday, transfigured into a time of explosions and fear. In their four suitcases, the al-Hatu family — mother, father, son and daughter — had made sure to pack kaak filled with date paste, the biscuits traditionally shared among friends and family during Eid al-Fitr, which marks the end of the fasting month of Ramadan. But they also brought enough clothing and food for several days — no one knew when it might be safe to go back home. Until then, to try to escape the airstrikes, they were going to stay with another daughter, on Al Mughrabi Street, a five-minute drive away. They had all agreed: It would feel safer if they were all together, said the son, Mohammed al-Hatu, 28. They were still unloading the taxi driver’s whit...

Israel has intensified its assault on Gaza, as Palestinian militants continue to fire rockets into Israel on the fifth day of hostilities. Israel's military said air and ground forces were involved in attacks on Friday but had not entered Gaza. Video from Gaza City showed the night sky lit up by explosions from Israeli artillery, gunboats and air strikes. Some 119 people have been killed in Gaza and eight have died in Israel since fighting began on Monday. Meanwhile, Jewish and Israeli-Arab mobs have been fighting within Israel, prompting its president to warn of civil war. Defence Minister Benny Gantz ordered a "massive reinforcement" of security forces to suppress the internal unrest that has seen more than 400 people arrested. Police say Israeli Arabs have been responsible for most of the trouble and reject the accusation that they are standing by while gangs of Jewish youths target Arab homes. This week's violence in Gaza and Israel is the worst since 2014. It cam...

 An explosion inside a mosque on the outskirts of the Afghan capital Kabul killed at least 12 people during Friday prayers as worshipers gathered for the Eid al-Fitr holiday during a ceasefire. The Taliban insurgent group, which declared the three-day truce for the holiday, condemned the attack in a statement, and there was no immediate claim of responsibility. Ferdous Faramarz, spokesman for the Kabul police, said the mosque's Imam was among the 12 dead and that at least 15 people were wounded in the blast at a mosque in the capital's Shakar Dara district. The blast came less than a week after an explosion at a school killed 80 people, most of them schoolgirls from the ethnic Hazara Shi'ite Muslim minority. The Taliban also denounced that attack and no one claimed responsibility. U.S. officials believe the attack on the school may have been the work of a rival militant group such as Islamic State. Such groups have not signed on to the holiday ceasefire. Violence, including...

 The Arab world has broadly condemned Israel’s bombardment of Gaza and Israeli police raids this week on the grounds of Jerusalem’s Al Aqsa Mosque, one of Islam’s holiest sites. Leaders have spoken out, protests have taken place, social media is aflame. But at the government level, the condemnation so far is largely rhetorical. Since 2014, when Israel mounted a seven-week offensive into Gaza, the region’s concerns have shifted, with new fears about Iran’s influence and a growing recognition by Arab nations of the reality of Israel. The escalation of violence has put a great strain on those governments, which had argued that their closer relationship with Israel would help restrain Israeli actions aimed at Palestinians, especially the governments that normalized relations with Israel including the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Sudan and Morocco. “I have not seen any Arab state that has not expressed support for the Palestinians on a rhetorical level, and it would be very difficult ...

 As Hamas rockets have rained down on Israeli cities, Israeli airstrikes and artillery have crumbled buildings in the Gaza Strip, and violent mobs have attacked one another in Israel's streets, President Biden has remained mostly muted about the escalating crisis. Biden did not issue any hastily arranged remarks on the Middle East violence, or even bring up the topic himself when he appeared in public. The times Biden spoke publicly on the matter came when reporters specifically asked about it. And when he talked, the president appeared to weigh every word very carefully, and spoke in muted tones. "My expectation and hope is that this will be closing down sooner than later," Biden said at the White House on Wednesday. "Constant contact" is how Biden phrased it to reporters. He has personally spoken to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Blinken spoke to Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas. A State Department envoy has traveled to the region. And...

Palestinian militants have fired some 1,800 rockets from Gaza at Israel this week, far more than in previous clashes, according to Israeli officials, who on Thursday expressed surprise at the size of the barrage and the range of some of the rockets. Israel’s “Iron Dome” antimissile system has shot down many of the rockets, and many others have struck places where they could do little damage. But some of the rockets, which are unguided, have hit populated areas, blowing up buildings and cars and killing seven people in Israel. The increasingly sophisticated arsenal of rockets is the primary weapon of Hamas, the militant group that controls Gaza. Other groups there, like Islamic Jihad, also have them. Israeli intelligence estimates there are 30,000 rockets and mortar projectiles stockpiled in Gaza. Hamas was believed before this week to have rockets with ranges approaching 100 miles, and many more with shorter ranges. Israel’s largest cities, Jerusalem and Tel-Aviv, as well as its primar...

Explosions caused by a car bomb and mortars outside a school in the Afghan capital Kabul on Saturday killed at least 85 people and wounded over 161, mostly female students, officials said. The released pictures of the attack in front of the Sayed Al-Shuhada school should have shaken the world, these pictures should have awakened the sleeping conscience of the world, and everyone was supposed to say why? And for what crime?  

The video below shows the overnight movement of Merkava tanks of the Israeli regime.  

This report covers the period 9 December 2020 to 28 April 2021. At the time of this report, over 127,500 people across the UK have died within 28 days of a positive test for coronavirus (COVID-19). A national immunisation campaign has been underway in the United Kingdom since early December 2020. Three COVID-19 vaccines, Pfizer/BioNTech, COVID-19 Vaccine AstraZeneca and COVID-19 Vaccine Moderna, are currently being used in the UK. All vaccines and medicines have some side effects. These side effects need to be continuously balanced against the expected benefits in preventing illness. The Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine was evaluated in clinical trials involving more than 44,000 participants. The most frequent adverse reactions in trials were pain at the injection site, fatigue, headache, myalgia (muscle pains), chills, arthralgia (joint pains), and fever; these were each reported in more than 1 in 10 people.  Adverse reactions were reported less frequently in older adults (over 55 years) t...

 Twelve-year-old Moises Bracamonte knows how to prepare fertiliser and water the black beans and corn that his family grows in Venezuela’s western Tachira state. He says the most difficult part of agricultural work is “breaking the ground” to sow the seeds without a tractor or an ox. “Why is it difficult with a pick? Because the pick is heavy, and you have to do a lot of picking if you have a lot of seeds,” he said in an interview in the living room of his house in Cordero, a town some 800km (500 miles) southwest of Caracas. With schools closed and no access to the internet, Moises and his 11-year-old brother Jesus help their father, also named Moises, 58, grow the food that provides for their family, something they almost never did before the coronavirus pandemic. Coronavirus quarantine measures have boosted the number of children in the workforce in Venezuela, according to child protection activists in the South American nation, which faces a deep economic crisis that has worsene...

Several Palestinians have been killed in an Israeli air raid in the besieged Gaza Strip, according to the Palestinian health ministry, after Hamas launched rockets from the coastal territory towards Israel. The Gaza health ministry said on Monday that nine Palestinians, including three children, were killed “in a series of strikes in northern Gaza”. The strikes came after Hamas fired several rockets at Israel, after the expiration of the group’s ultimatum demanding Israel stand down forces in the Al Aqsa Mosque compound in Jerusalem. Earlier on Monday tensions at the compound, the third holiest in Islam which is also revered by Jews, escalated with more than 300 Palestinians wounded after Israeli police stormed the mosque, firing rubber bullets, stun grenades and tear gas.  

 Afghan families have been burying their children who were killed in explosions outside a secondary school in the capital, Kabul, on Saturday. The death toll in a bomb attack that targeted schoolgirls in Kabul on Saturday has risen to 85, Afghan officials told CNN on Monday. Another 147 people were wounded in the attack in front of the Sayed Al-Shuhada school, said Danish Hedayat, head of media for the second vice president of Afghanistan. A car bomb was detonated in the neighborhood of Dasht-e-Barchi, and two more bombs exploded when students rushed out in panic. There has been no official claim of responsibility yet. The Taliban has denied being behind Saturday evening's blasts. Conflict is raging in Afghanistan, with security forces in daily combat with the Taliban, who have waged war to overthrow the foreign-backed government since they were ousted from power in Kabul in 2001. Although the United States did not meet a May 1 withdrawal deadline agreed in talks with the Taliban l...

 Egypt’s Al-Azhar, the highest seat of Sunni Muslim learning, on Monday denounced the world's “disgraceful silence” over the Israeli attacks on Palestinians at the Al-Aqsa Mosque. "The world is still in a disgraceful silence towards the brutal Zionist terrorism and shameful violations against Al-Aqsa Mosque, our [Palestinian] brothers and our holiest sites in Arab Palestine," Ahmed el-Tayeb, grand imam of Al-Azhar said in a statement on Facebook. El-Tayeb said Palestine and its people will always confront the oppressors and remain steadfast in defending the holy sites. "Tribute to this great people who are oppressed, O Almighty, bestow them with your victory," he added. According to the Palestine Red Crescent, at least 305 people were injured on Monday as Israeli forces fired rubber-coated bullets, tear gas, and stun grenades at Palestinians who were on guard to prevent possible raids by extremist Jews. Tensions have run high in the Sheikh Jarrah area since last...

 Russia will retaliate against sanctions imposed by the European Union, although it considers the restrictions placed on Russian citizens and entities "a road to nowhere," Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said Thursday. Speaking at a news conference in Yerevan following a meeting with his Armenian counterpart Ara Ayvazyan, Lavrov said the EU has introduced sanctions against Russia "without any persuasive grounds." “We will not leave unanswered such attacks on Russia, on members of the Russian leadership, on parliamentarians of the Russian Federation, and on our companies whose only culpability in the eyes of the European Union is their registration in a country that the EU has chosen to declare an aggressor illegally and for no reason," he said. Commenting on Russia's recent decision to blacklist eight top EU officials, Lavrov said: "We declared persona non grata those people in the European Union structures and in a number of EU member states due to the...

 Somalia on Thursday announced resumption of diplomatic ties with neighboring Kenya after almost five-month suspension. In a news conference, Somalia’s Deputy Information Minister Abdirahman Yusuf announced the resumption of diplomatic relations with Kenya, saying it is in the interest of both the countries. Last December, Somalia had severed diplomatic ties with Kenya, accusing Nairobi of interfering in Mogadishu’s internal affairs. Yusuf said Kenya has also welcomed the step, which aims to protect the interests of the two countries. Kenya and Somalia were embroiled in a diplomatic row that crippled security, education, and trade ties between the two East African neighbors.

 At least 25 people, including a police officer, were killed in a shoot-out on Thursday during an operation against drug traffickers in Rio de Janeiro’s Jacarezinho slum, police said. Suspects tried to escape across rooftops as police entered the slum in armoured vehicles and helicopters flew overhead, television images showed. The intense firefight kept residents in their homes. Three policemen were shot and one died of a head wound in hospital, police said. Bullets fired during the battle struck a light rail coach and two passengers were hurt by shattered glass from the broken window, the fire brigade said. Criminal headquarters Jacarezinho is one of the city’s most populous poor neighbourhoods, known as favelas, with some 40,000 residents. It is dominated by the Comando Vermelho, one of Brazil’s leading criminal organisations. The police consider Jacarezinho to be one of the group’s headquarters. Thursday’s operation was aimed at investigating the organisation’s recruitment of t...

 Former Maldives president and current Parliament Speaker Mohamed Nasheed was injured in a blast outside his family home on Thursday, police said in a statement. “Following an explosion … Speaker of Parliament President Mohamed Nasheed has sustained injuries and is currently receiving treatment at ADK Hospital [in the capital Male],” the statement said on Thursday. Photos circulated on social media showed a ripped up motorcycle at the scene but police did not say whether the blast was an assassination attempt. Maldives Home Minister Imran Abdulla told a local television channel that Nasheed’s injuries were not life-threatening and that the government will receive the assistance of foreign agencies in its investigation. An unidentified Maldivian government official told AFP news agency by telephone that “Nasheed escaped an assassination attempt”. “He is injured, but his condition is stable.” Shrapnel injuries A family member said Nasheed, 53, had sustained several wounds.  “The...