Few Canadians have been brought home from camps for Islamic State families in northeast Syria, and many remain there.
A Canadian parliament committee has recommended the government repatriate Canadians from Islamic State (IS) camps in northeast Syria.
Syria’s northwestern city of Idlib, which is under the control of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, witnessed the opening of its first female coffee shop in what some deemed a type of discrimination against women. Others saw it as an outlet for women to escape the prevailing patriarchy in the Syrian opposition areas.
The bodies were found near Ras Al-Ara, a coastal village in the southern Yemeni province that’s known as a smuggling hub.
At least 25 migrants were found dead off Yemen’s Red Sea coast after a ship carrying some 200 people from Djibouti capsized in the turbulent waters, UN and local officials said Monday.
L’avenir les inquiète, le passé les rassure, le déclin les hante. Si les Français se passionnent pour leur histoire, ce n’est pas pour comprendre le présent, c’est parce que c’était mieux avant depuis toujours !
Je vous parle d’un pays lointain.
Ses habitants sont les plus intelligents, les plus riches et, on ne sait pourquoi, les plus malheureux du monde. Dans leur suffisance infinie, ils se croient seuls sur terre, ils n’ont d’ennemis qu’eux-mêmes. Contrairement aux Austriaques et aux Estivaldins – des peuplades voisines qui sans être barbares leur restent terriblement étrangères –, ils ne sont ni du Nord ni du Sud, ils sont situés au centre du monde civilisé, avec vue sur la montagne ou sur la mer ; ils sont convaincus depuis longtemps que leurs frontières, dictées moins par l’histoire que par leur destin, dessinent un hexagone, c’est-à-dire les contours d’un espace mental.
Le président Macron a annoncé la fin de l’opération Barkhane. La France n’a plus les moyens d’assumer l’endiguement de la montée djihadiste dans le Sahel
Le 10 juin, Emmanuel Macron a annoncé la fin de l’opération Barkhane, après presque sept ans. Si elle semble très claire de premier abord, cette information est en réalité, pour reprendre le bon mot de Churchill sur la Russie, un rébus enveloppé de mystère au sein d’une énigme. Surtout que l’annonce vise plusieurs audiences différentes.
Central and Eastern European nations are anxious about the coming summit meeting between U.S. President Joe Biden and Russian President Vladimir Putin, wary of what they see as hostile intentions from the Kremlin.
Some in the countries that once were part of the Soviet Union or the Moscow-led Warsaw Pact during the Cold War worry that Washington could scale down support for its allies in the region in a bid to secure a more stable and predictable relationship with Russia.
President Joe Biden frequently talks about what he sees as central in executing effective foreign policy: building personal relationships.
But unlike his four most recent White House predecessors, who made an effort to build a measure of rapport with Vladimir Putin, Biden has made clear that the virtue of fusing a personal connection might have its limits when it comes to the Russian leader.
Israel’s new government on Monday approved a contentious parade by Israeli nationalists through Palestinian areas around Jerusalem’s Old City, setting the stage for possible renewed confrontations just weeks after an 11-day war with Hamas militants in the Gaza Strip. Hamas called on Palestinians to “resist” the march.
The parade, scheduled for Tuesday, creates an early test for the fledgling government led by Prime Minister Naftali Bennett — a patchwork of parties that includes hard-line nationalists as well as the first Arab party to sit in a governing coalition.
Every year, Israeli ultranationalists hold the boisterous march, waving blue-and-white flags and chanting slogans as they march through the Old City’s Damascus Gate and into the heart of the Muslim Quarter to celebrate Israel’s capture of east Jerusalem in the 1967 Mideast war. The Palestinians consider the march a provocation.
The parade was originally scheduled for May 10. At the time, tensions already were high following weeks of clashes between Israeli police and Palestinian demonstrators around the Al-Aqsa Mosque, one of Islam’s holiest sites, as well as attempts by Jewish settlers to evict dozens of Palestinians from their homes in a nearby neighborhood.
As thousands of Jewish activists began the procession, police ordered a change in the route to avoid the Damascus Gate. Hamas militants in Gaza then fired a barrage of rockets toward Jerusalem, igniting the war that took over 250 Palestinian lives and killed 13 people in Israel.
U.N. deputy spokesman Farhan Haq said U.N. officials have made clear “the need for all sides to refrain from unilateral steps and provocations, for them to exercise restraint and allow for the necessary work to be done to solidify the current cease-fire.”
Omer Bar-Lev, the new Cabinet minister who oversees police, said he met with police, military and top security officials to review the plan.
“I got the impression that the police are well-prepared and a great effort is being made to preserve the delicate fabric of life and public security,” Bar-Lev said.
His statement gave no details on the parade route. But Israeli media said the crowd would walk past the Damascus Gate but not enter the Muslim Quarter.
A police official, speaking on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to talk to the media, said about 2,000 police would be deployed.
Israel annexed east Jerusalem after the 1967 war and considers the area, home to the city’s most sensitive religious sites, to be part of its capital. The competing claims to the holy city by Palestinians and Israelis lie at the heart of the conflict and have sparked many rounds of violence.
Hamas issued a statement calling on Palestinians to show “valiant resistance” to the march. It urged people to gather in the streets of the Old City and at the Al-Aqsa Mosque to “rise up in the face of the occupier and resist it by all means to stop its crimes and arrogance.”
Israeli Channel 13 TV said the military was on heightened alert in the occupied West Bank and along the Gaza front to prepare for possible violence.
The military said it was “conducting ongoing situational assessments and is prepared for a variety of developments and scenarios.” It said, however, there were no reinforcements of troops.
Israeli lawmakers on Sunday narrowly approved Bennett’s new governing coalition, ousting Benjamin Netanyahu after 12 years in power.
On Monday, Bennett held a brief handover meeting with his predecessor, but without the formal ceremony that traditionally accompanies a change in government — a sign of Netanyahu’s lingering anger and hostility toward the new government.
Bennett presides over a diverse and fragile coalition comprised of eight small and midsize parties with deep ideological differences — but promised to try to heal the divided nation. Netanyahu serves as the opposition leader.
David Bitan, a Likud lawmaker, told Kan public radio that Netanyahu did not hold a formal handover ceremony with Bennett because he feels “cheated” by the formation of the Bennett-Lapid government and “doesn’t want to give even the slightest legitimacy to this matter.”
The coalition includes three parties that are headed by politicians who used to be Netanyahu allies, including Bennett. Although they share Netanyahu’s hard-line ideology on many issues, the three leaders clashed with the divisive former prime minister over his personality and leadership style.
Under a coalition agreement, Bennett will hold the office of premier for the first two years of the term, and then Foreign Minister Yair Lapid, the architect of the coalition, will become prime minister.
Bennett, 49, became prime minister after Sunday’s 60-59 vote in Knesset, capping a chaotic parliamentary session. The motion passed after a member of the coalition was taken by ambulance from hospital to the parliament building to cast her vote, and despite an abstention by a coalition member from the Islamist Raam party.
Bennett faces a challenge of holding the tenuous coalition together and said he is prioritizing mending the many rifts dividing Israeli society.
President Joe Biden used his first appearance at a NATO summit since taking office to call on Russian President Vladimir Putin to step back from provocative actions targeting the U.S. and its allies on Monday. NATO leaders joined the United States in formally accusing Moscow and Beijing of malign actions.
Biden’s sharp words for Russia and his friendly interactions with NATO allies marked a sharp shift in tone from the past four years and highlighted the renewed U.S. commitment to the 30-country alliance that was frequently maligned by predecessor Donald Trump.
G7 is divided over the China issue.
A report by The Telegraph (“China divides G7 as Biden calls for international investigation into origins of Covid-19”, June 14, 2021) said:
“Joe Biden has called for an international investigation to establish whether Covid-19 leaked from a Chinese laboratory as he tried to rally G7 leaders behind a ‘competition with autocracies.’