News Briefs for December 10, 2024
HAVANA TIMES – Here are the top international news stories compiled by Democracy Now on Tuesday, December 10, 2024.
Israel Launches Massive Airstrikes Across Syria Following Assad’s Ouster
Dec 10, 2024
Israel’s military has launched a wide-scale assault on Syria after the fall of Bashar al-Assad’s regime, bombing military sites, weapons warehouses, airports and army air bases in cities and provinces across Syria, including the capital, Damascus. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reports in just the two days, Israel has carried out some 340 airstrikes. Meanwhile, the governments of Iraq, Iran, Saudi Arabia and Qatar have condemned Israel’s seizure of more land in the Israeli-occupied Syrian Golan Heights, saying it violates a 1974 ceasefire. Israel seized the Golan Heights in 1967 and later annexed the region. On Monday, the armed groups who toppled Syria’s longtime authoritarian President Bashar al-Assad said a Syrian transitional authority would be headed by Mohammed al-Bashir, an engineer who served as the fifth prime minister of the self-declared Syrian Salvation Government. We’ll have more on Syria after headlines.
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As European Nations Freeze Asylum Applications, Austria Will Begin Deporting Syrian Refugees
Dec 10, 2024
The government of Austria says it will begin deporting Syrian refugees following the revolution that toppled Bashar al-Assad’s regime. About 100,000 Syrians have resettled in Austria in the 13 years since Syria’s civil war erupted. Meanwhile, the governments of Belgium, France, Greece, Germany and the United Kingdom said they would pause applications for asylum by Syrians. More than 14 million people have fled Syria since 2011. The largest share of refugees — about 3 million — live in Turkey. On Monday, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan ordered the reopening of two border crossings in southern Turkey, where hundreds of refugees queued up to return to Syria.
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Israeli Massacres Across Gaza Target Flour Line, Wipe Al-Kahlout Family Off Civil Registry
Dec 10, 2024
In news from Gaza, multiple massacres carried out by Israeli forces across the war-torn Palestinian territory killed dozens of people since Monday, many of them children. These included an Israeli air attack on a flour distribution line in southern Rafah and strikes on central Gaza’s Nuseirat camp. In northern Beit Hanoun, separate Israeli strikes killed 25 people belonging to two households of the Al-Kahlout family, wiping the prominent Gaza family entirely from the civil registry.
Israel is also continuing its deadly assault on Gaza’s beleaguered hospitals. Dr. Marwan al-Sultan, director of Indonesian Hospital in northern Gaza, called on international actors to help ensure the safety of health facilities after Israeli attacks injured patients and destroyed parts of the hospital.
Israeli Airstrike Kills 2 West Bank Palestinians in Tubas; Israeli Army Makes Arrests Amid Ongoing Raids
Dec 10, 2024
In the occupied West Bank, at least two Palestinians were killed in an Israeli airstrike on the city of Tubas Monday. The victims were 26 and 32 years old. The attack came about a week after Palestinian authorities reported Israeli soldiers besieged the Tubas Hospital, assaulting and arresting medical staff and patients.
Meanwhile, the Israeli army detained at least 16 Palestinians during raids across the occupied West Bank Monday. Israeli forces have arrested over 12,000 Palestinians in the West Bank since last October.
This all comes as the Israeli human rights group B’Tselem has released a new report detailing the gruesome abuse of Palestinians by Israeli soldiers in the city of Hebron. B’Tselem documented the testimonies of over 20 Palestinians, one as young as 14 years old, who described being beaten, sexually assaulted and, in one case, even being stabbed by Israeli soldiers. We’ll have more on this report later in the broadcast.
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Benjamin Netanyahu Takes the Stand in Delayed Corruption Trial
Dec 10, 2024
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu returned to a courtroom in Jerusalem today to face multiple charges of corruption, fraud, breach of the public trust and bribery. All three trials have been postponed on multiple occasions, first due to the COVID-19 pandemic and later as Netanyahu led Israel’s devastating assault on Gaza. In one case, Netanyahu is accused of enacting regulatory decisions worth hundreds of millions of dollars to the owner of an online news site in exchange for a promise to drop negative stories about Netanyahu. In another case, Netanyahu is accused of accepting champagne, cigars and other gifts from two wealthy businessmen in exchange for political favors.
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Kyiv Pushes Foreign Troop Presence in Ukraine as Part of Resolution to Russia’s War
Dec 10, 2024
Ukraine says Russian artillery fire killed a 91-year-old woman in a village in the eastern Donetsk region on Monday in an attack that wounded four others. Separately, one man was reportedly killed and seven others wounded in Russian attacks on the southern Kherson region.
Russia’s latest attacks came as Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky proposed a settlement to end Russia’s assault, calling for the deployment of foreign troops in Ukraine while Kyiv waits for its application to join NATO. Zelensky made the proposal after meeting with Friedrich Merz, the conservative candidate for chancellor of Germany, who made a surprise trip to Kyiv on Monday. After talks with Zelensky, Merz said that, if elected to lead Germany, he would seek to send long-range cruise missiles to Ukraine.
Friedrich Merz: “We want your army to be capable of hitting military bases in Russia — not the civilian population, not infrastructure, but the military targets from which your country is being attacked. And I said it a few weeks ago in the German parliament: With these range limits, we are forcing your country to fight with one hand tied behind your back. This is not our position.”
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Authorities Arrest and Charge 26-Year-Old Luigi Mangione in Fatal Shooting of UnitedHealthcare CEO
Dec 10, 2024
Here in the United States, authorities in Pennsylvania have arrested a 26-year-old white man for murder over the fatal shooting of the UnitedHealthcare CEO in Manhattan last week. Luigi Mangione was apprehended at a McDonald’s in Altoona, Pennsylvania, Monday, after an employee called in a tip. Police found what they believe is a “ghost gun” and silencer, likely made with a 3D printer. Ghost guns are self-assembled with kits purchased online and do not carry serial numbers.
Authorities also found a handwritten manifesto which reads, “These parasites had it coming. I do apologize for any strife and trauma, but it had to be done.” The manifesto also states that he was working alone and condemned corporations that “continue to abuse our country for immense profit because the American public has allowed them to get away with it.”
Mangione is from a prominent Baltimore family but appears to have withdrawn from his friends and family around six months ago.He suffered from a severe, debilitating back injury and has undergone surgery for his condition. He went to the Gilman School in Baltimore, an elite private school, and then to the University of Pennsylvania for undergrad and a graduate degree in engineering.
Meanwhile, in New York, advocates have highlighted the stark contrast in the response to the shooting of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson and another fatal attack that took place one day later on a Manhattan street. Seventeen-year-old Yeremi Colino, who was living at an immigrant shelter, was stabbed to death. Another teenager was also stabbed but survived. A group of assailants, who are still on the loose, asked the two teens if they spoke English right before the deadly attack.
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New York Jury Acquits Daniel Penny, Who Killed Distressed Street Performer Jordan Neely
Dec 10, 2024
A New York jury on Monday acquitted subway vigilante Daniel Penny in the chokehold death of street performer Jordan Neely on a Manhattan subway train last May, finding Penny not guilty of criminally negligent homicide. Thirty-year-old Neely, a beloved Michael Jackson impersonator, was unhoused and hungry, and crying out for help when Penny, a white former U.S. marine, attacked him and pinned him down on a subway train by the neck for six minutes. Neely’s family has separately filed a civil lawsuit against Penny. Neely’s father, Andre Zachery, was removed from the New York courtroom yesterday after protesting the not-guilty verdict, along with others. Zachery spoke from outside the courthouse.
Andre Zachery: “I miss my son. My son didn’t have to go through this. I didn’t have to go through this, either. It hurts, really, really hurts. What are we going to do, people? What’s going to happen to us now? I had enough of this. System is rigged. Come on, people. Let’s do something about this.”
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Nikki Giovanni, Acclaimed Poet, Educator and Activist, Dies at 81
Dec 10, 2024
Image Credit: Disney General Entertainment Content via Getty Images
Nikki Giovanni, one of the most celebrated poets in the United States, has died of cancer at the age of 81. Giovanni was dubbed the “Princess of Black Poetry” after she published her first collection of poems, “Black Feeling, Black Talk,” in 1968. She went on to publish more than 30 books, including a memoir that was a finalist for the National Book Award and a children’s picture book titled “Rosa,” about the civil rights legend Rosa Parks. Giovanni was a distinguished professor of English at Virginia Tech University, where in the fall of 2005 she removed a student from her introductory creative writing course and reported his disturbing behavior to her department head. That student went on to kill 32 people and wound 17 others in a campus shooting at Virginia Tech, after which Giovanni became a fierce advocate for gun control. In 2013, Nikki Giovanni joined us in our Democracy Now! studio, where she shared some of her poems.
Nikki Giovanni: “Poetry is as necessary
To life
As salt is to stew
As garlic is to pasta
As perfume is to summer nights
As shaving lotion is to mornings
As your smile is to
My happiness
“Poetry is as significant
To life
As yeast is to bread
As butter is to toast
As grapes are to wine
As sugar is to lemons
How else will we get
Lemonade
“Poetry is to me
Your voice
Your touch
Your laughter
That feeling at the end of the day
That I am
Not alone”
Nikki Giovanni has died at the age of 81 of cancer. Click here to see our interviews with her.