All posts tagged: tensions

U.S. says Iranian-American held in Iran as tensions high following Israeli attack : NPR

U.S. says Iranian-American held in Iran as tensions high following Israeli attack : NPR

Published by Sam

Holding a poster of the Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, students attend an annual rally in front of the former U.S. Embassy in Tehran, Iran, Sunday, Nov. 3, 2024, marking the 45th anniversary of Iranian students’ takeover of the embassy, starting a hostage crisis. Vahid Salemi/AP/AP hide caption toggle caption Vahid Salemi/AP/AP DUBAI, United Arab Emirates — An Iranian-American journalist who once worked for a U.S. government-funded broadcaster is believed to have been detained by Iran for months now, authorities said Sunday, further raising the stakes as Tehran threatens to retaliate over an Israeli attack on the country. The imprisonment of Reza Valizadeh, acknowledged to The Associated Press by the U.S. State Department, came as Iran marked the 45th anniversary of the American Embassy takeover and hostage crisis on Sunday. It also followed Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei threatening both Israel and the U.S. the day before with “a crushing response” as long-range B-52 bombers reached the Middle East in an attempt to deter Tehran. Valizadeh had worked for Radio Farda, an outlet …

What Tensions in the Middle East Could Mean for Harris and Trump

What Tensions in the Middle East Could Mean for Harris and Trump

Published by José

Will conflict in the region change the dynamics of the presidential race? Courtesy of Washington Week With The Atlantic October 5, 2024, 1:04 PM ET Editor’s Note: Washington Week With The Atlantic is a partnership between NewsHour Productions, WETA, and The Atlantic airing every Friday on PBS stations nationwide. Check your local listings or watch full episodes here.   With a month left until the presidential election, Kamala Harris and Donald Trump have turned to issues of foreign policy on the campaign trail as tensions in the Middle East rise. On Washington Week With The Atlantic, panelists join to discuss how potential intensification of the conflict could change the dynamics of the election. President Joe Biden continues to support Israel’s right to defend itself—with the U.S. joining Israel in shooting down Iranian missiles this week—but he has cautioned against actions that would further expand the war. Although Biden has been a “very comfortable figure for Israel” over the course of his administration, the Israelis “have big question marks” about Harris and Trump, Franklin Foer said last …

Making Womanness Striking: Salience-based Tensions in Socially Progressive Initiatives

Making Womanness Striking: Salience-based Tensions in Socially Progressive Initiatives

Published by skeptic

you [women philosophers] will always end up philosophically on the subject of your gender simply because you will be seen as a woman first and a philosopher second. – Anonymous (‘Soycrates’ Tumblr, 2015) This frustration will no doubt feel familiar to many women in our discipline. Indeed, Rebecca Buxton and Lisa Whiting contextualize their book The Philosopher Queens, which documents outstanding contributions from women philosophers over time, as a response to this common concern. Reflecting on the association between philosophy and maleness, they say that, “A result of this is that women are often remembered as women first: they are seen more as women than they’re seen as philosophers. … we forget that they are principally philosophers.” Things are often worse for other identities marginalized in philosophy; people of color, for instance, are appallingly inadequately represented in departments, syllabi, and so on; such individuals often find that they are boxed into their marginalized identities in particularly extreme ways. The nature of intersectionality means that these identities compound and intersect to create distinctive kinds of problems for …

Israel pummels Gaza as tensions surge with Hezbollah on Lebanon border

Israel pummels Gaza as tensions surge with Hezbollah on Lebanon border

Published by Sam

Gaza’s health ministry collects data from the enclave’s hospitals and the Palestinian Red Crescent. The health ministry does not report how Palestinians were killed, whether from Israeli airstrikes and artillery barrages or errant Palestinian rocket fire. It describes all casualties as victims of “Israeli aggression”. The ministry also does not distinguish between civilians and combatants.  Throughout four wars and numerous skirmishes between Israel and Hamas, UN agencies have cited the Hamas-run health ministry’s death tolls in regular reports. The International Committee of the Red Cross and Palestinian Red Crescent also use the numbers. In the aftermath of war, the UN humanitarian office has published final death tolls based on its own research into medical records. The UN’s counts have largely been consistent with the Gaza health ministry’s, with small discrepancies.  For more on the Gaza health ministry’s tolls, click here. (FRANCE 24 with AP)  Source link

Ukraine Reconstruction Official Resigns, Highlighting Tensions

Ukraine Reconstruction Official Resigns, Highlighting Tensions

Published by Sam

A Ukrainian official with a long record of anti-corruption advocacy resigned on Monday from a government agency overseeing mostly Western-financed reconstruction work in Ukraine, citing poor management of funds. His departure highlights the tension inside the government of President Volodymyr Zelensky over the allocation of wartime aid. The official, Mustafa Nayyem, who had been director of the State Agency for Restoring Ukraine, did not allege any outright embezzlement. But his claims of abuse and mismanagement risked setting back efforts by the government to assuage concerns among the United States and other allies about providing billions in aid to Ukraine’s war effort. He was the second top official involved in Ukraine’s reconstruction effort to depart in the last month, following the firing in May of Oleksandr Kubrakov, the minister of infrastructure. Mr. Kubrakov’s ministry oversaw the agency Mr. Nayyem headed. Mr. Kubrakov was perceived in Kyiv political circles as a figure aligned with the United States on spending priorities for rebuilding aid — a stance that grated on other leaders in the government who resented what …

Xi’s European tour: red carpets, but ‘no breakthroughs’ on tensions

Xi’s European tour: red carpets, but ‘no breakthroughs’ on tensions

Published by skeptic

In recent months, the EU has stepped up its investigations into alleged unfair trade practices by China in different sectors, from solar panels to electric vehicle subsidies. Beijing has slammed the moves as “protectionism”. While Xi flaunted China’s flourishing “global strategic partnership” with Hungary, it is unclear to what extent it has convinced other EU countries for whom “material gains… may not always be the top goal,” notes Chong. “The trip has done little or nothing to improve Europe’s strategic confidence or trust in Beijing direction,” said Rory Medcalf, head of the National Security College at the Australian National University. It did not help that Xi chose to visit Belgrade and Budapest, while avoiding other major capitals such as Berlin and Brussels, thus potentially “accentuating the message that NATO and China are security rivals, even adversaries”. During the visit to France, Macron thanked Xi for backing his idea of a truce in all conflicts, including Ukraine, during the Paris Olympics this summer. XI DIDN’T SEEM WILLING TO COMPROMISE ON MOSCOW But the Chinese leader — …

Israel’s Shutdown of Al Jazeera Highlights Long-Running Tensions

Israel’s Shutdown of Al Jazeera Highlights Long-Running Tensions

Published by Sam

When Israel ordered Al Jazeera on Sunday to shut down operations there, the network had a reporter covering a government meeting in West Jerusalem, another in an East Jerusalem hotel room, a third in northern Israel to cover clashes on the border with Lebanon and a fourth in Tel Aviv. But the cameras stopped rolling when Walid al-Omari, the network’s bureau chief in Ramallah, in the West Bank, ordered all of them to go home. Israeli authorities descended on a room used by Al Jazeera in the Ambassador Hotel in East Jerusalem, confiscating broadcast equipment. Israeli television and internet providers cut off its channels and blocked its websites, though people were still able to find it online. Al Jazeera, the influential Arab news network, says it will continue reporting and broadcasting from the Gaza Strip and the West Bank. But its departure from Israel marks a new low in its long-strained history with a country that much of Al Jazeera’s audience in the Arab world and beyond sees as an aggressor and an occupier. The …

How food and chopstick skills are helping ease US-China tensions | Politics News

How food and chopstick skills are helping ease US-China tensions | Politics News

Published by Sam

Shanghai, China – “The Chinese take great pride in their food,” read a memo prepared for United States President Richard Nixon ahead of his groundbreaking visit to the People’s Republic of China in 1972. Nixon’s lavish state banquet with Chinese premier Zhou Enlai in Beijing, broadcast live across the world, was crucial in improving US public opinion of a country that had been hidden from view for decades. More than half a century later, food is once again playing a central role in nurturing warmer US-China relations. With Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen both recently wrapping up their second visits to China in less than a year, meals have emerged as a key ingredient in stabilising ties between the two countries, as officials on both sides look to tap into the potential of what has been called “food diplomacy”. Yellen’s visit in early April was notable for the level of Chinese public attention on her food choices. Anticipation was high after her first visit last July, when her choice of …

Israel’s Rafah operation is fueling tensions with Washington. Here’s the reality on the ground.

Israel’s Rafah operation is fueling tensions with Washington. Here’s the reality on the ground.

Published by skeptic

To aid groups working in Rafah, the debate over Israel’s military operation in southern Gaza looks like only one thing: semantics. Israel’s military insists it has only launched a “limited” operation at the edge of a densely packed city — and not the full-blown invasion that the Biden administration warns would be a “red line” that could fray the relationship between the two allies. But the city of 1.4 million, filled with war refugees from northern Gaza, is already a slow-moving disaster, said Scott Anderson, the deputy director of UNRWA, the main U.N. agency in Gaza, and one of its few staffers still in Rafah. Anderson told POLITICO that the Israeli incursion of Israeli troops into the southeastern part of the city is already causing chaos, and prevented aid from reaching people who desperately need it. UNRWA’s fuel stocks are depleted and its food rations will run out on Friday, he warned in a Zoom interview Monday. The Biden administration has said a major invasion would be a red line — noting that it could …

U.S. delays arms shipments to Israel amid Rafah tensions

U.S. delays arms shipments to Israel amid Rafah tensions

Published by Sam

The Biden administration is delaying the sale of at least two arms shipments to Israel amid mounting concern about the country’s plan to expand a military operation in southern Gaza that could dramatically increase the conflict’s death toll, said four people familiar with the matter. The White House and State Department declined to explain the decision, but it is the first known instance of a delay in U.S. arms transfers since the Oct. 7 Hamas-led attack into Israel that killed more than 1,200 people. Source link