A 24-hour curfew has been declared in Sokoto, Nigeria, after protesters took to the streets demanding the release of two suspects in the murder of a Christian student last week.
Deborah Samuel was beaten and burned by Muslim students who accused her of posting “blasphemous” statements about Islam in a WhatsApp group on Thursday.
Her death has been widely condemned by Muslims and Christians across Nigeria.
On Saturday, demonstrators burned tires and the police fired teargas.
Some of the protesters besieged the palace of the Muhammad Sa’ad Abubakar, the Sultan of Sokoto and the highest spiritual figure among Muslims in Nigeria.
The Sultan has condemned the killing at Shehu Shagari College of Education and demanded those involved face justice.
Announcing the curfew, Sokoto Governor Aminu Waziri Tambuwal urged the protesters: “Please, in the interest of peace go back home.”
Nigeria is Africa’s most-populous country and most people in its mainly Muslim north and the largely Christian south are deeply religious.
Religious tensions and deadly crimes are not uncommon, particularly in the north where some states have adopted strict sharia laws, including death sentences for blasphemy.
Blasphmy in Islam includes the mocking or disparaging of attributes of the religion as well as denying any of its fundamental beliefs.
President Muhammadu Buhari has condemned Ms Samuel’s killing and said there should be an impartial investigation.
Nigeria’s largest grouping of Christian churches has demanded the authorities bring the culprits to justice.
Israel should not be allowed to whitewash the killing of journalist Shireen Abu Akleh with yet another sham ‘investigation’.
The only possible response to the hasty offer Israeli Foreign Minister Yair Lapid made to the Palestinians to conduct “a joint pathological investigation” into the killing of renowned Al Jazeera journalist Shireen Abu Akleh can be rage.
Such “investigations” conducted by Israel serve not to uncover the truth but to bury it, not to establish accountability but to preserve impunity, not to indict the perpetrators but to protect them.
That the offer for a “joint investigation” into the killing of Abu Akleh came directly from Foreign Minister Lapid – and was later repeated by Prime Minister Naftali Bennett – speaks to the magnitude of Israel’s concern about the public relations crisis it is now facing. Such offers for “investigation” and “analysis” are normally left to lower-ranking officials in Israel’s whitewash apparatus.
Indeed, Israel only engages in such high-level whitewash if it believes the killing of a Palestinian can damage the country’s image. Otherwise, it doesn’t even bother with such empty gestures.
B’Tselem tried in good faith to engage Israel’s domestic investigation mechanisms for decades. Over the years, we have made hundreds of applications to relevant authorities for cases of Palestinians killed by Israeli security forces to be investigated, but meaningful accountability was never realised. Six years ago, we concluded that what we were dealing with is not merely a dysfunctional investigation mechanism but an organised, systemic whitewash operation. As a result, we made the decision to continue our work on such killings – but without ever engaging in Israel’s so-called “investigations”.
Israel’s investigation mechanism is clearly a charade. Even if an investigation into the killing of a Palestinian at the hands of Israeli forces is opened, it almost never concludes with someone being charged. The entire mechanism is a charade because its flaws are, in fact, its essential features – the ones that enable it to deliver impunity. To begin with, the army is tasked with investigating itself. Soldiers are typically interviewed without being challenged, almost no effort is made to collect external evidence, and “investigations” are drawn out for years. On top of all this, even the sham described above is directed only at low-ranking soldiers – those who make the policies that enable soldiers to pull the trigger on Palestinians never face any scrutiny. All this, despite in many cases of fatalities being caused not because of any deviations from the policies of the Israeli military but the criminal policies themselves.
Take, for example, the cases of Israeli snipers shooting at unarmed Palestinians at the Gaza fence during the Great March of Return demonstrations. Israel conducted “investigations” into certain specific cases of shooting by snipers. But no one investigated – and no one in Israel will – the rules of engagement themselves.
Israel’s military advocate general – the very same person in charge of Israel’s military investigations – is tasked with giving the green light for such policies. Thus, obviously, nobody is being held to account for giving snipers those flagrantly illegal orders.
Israel needs impunity to maintain its apartheid regime. It cannot maintain control over a subjugated population without state violence. Thus it is essential for the regime to provide itself with blanket impunity – while performing what looks like investigations, to appease international expectations.
Impunity paves the way for more killings. Don’t fall for Israel’s propaganda, its promises to “investigate”. Israel will not hold itself to account, just like its apartheid regime won’t dismantle itself. International stakeholders who do not call this out simply cast themselves as a cog in Israel’s whitewashing machine. The grotesque US pressure on Palestinians to accept a “joint” investigation and the statement by US Ambassador to Israel Tom Nides vaguely “encouraging” an investigation, only demonstrates the extent to which the Biden administration continues to serve as such a cog.
Shireen Abu Akleh once said while it “might not be easy to change reality”, she could at least bring “the voice of the people to the world”. To keep that voice alive, to honor her legacy and to demand justice, please: Say no to Israeli propaganda, view reality with clarity, and demonstrate to Israel that the time of accountability has finally – even if belatedly – arrived.
The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.
CAIRO (AP) — An Islamic State affiliate in Egypt on Saturday claimed responsibility for an attack that killed at least five troops in the restive part of the Sinai Peninsula.
The extremist group announced its claim of Wednesday’s attack in a statement carried by its Aamaq news agency. The authenticity of the statement could not be verified but it was released on Telegram, as similar claims have been in the past.
The attack involved a militant ambush against a border guard checkpoint west of the Mediterranean city of Rafah, which borders the Gaza Strip.
The military said at least five troops, including an officer, were killed in the attack. At least seven militants were also killed, it said.
It was the second militant attack in less than a week.
Last Saturday, at least 11 troops were killed, in one of the deadliest attacks on Egyptian security forces in recent years.
The Islamic State group also claimed that attack, which took place in the town of Qantara in the province of Ismailia, which stretches eastwards from the Suez Canal.
Egypt is battling an insurgency in Sinai that intensified after the military overthrew an elected but divisive Islamist president in 2013. The extremists have carried out scores of attacks, mainly targeting security forces and, but the pace has slowed in recent years.
Russian troops are withdrawing from Ukraine’s second-largest city Kharkiv after weeks of heavy bombardment in another battlefield setback for Moscow.
Ukraine’s military said on Saturday the Russians were pulling back from the major northeastern city and focusing on guarding supply routes.
“The enemy’s main efforts are focused on ensuring the withdrawal of its units from the city of Kharkiv,” said the spokesman for the Ukrainian General Staff.
Western officials also said Ukraine had driven Russian forces back from around Kharkiv, which was a key target for Moscow’s troops.
The US-based think tank Institute for the Study of War agreed with the assessment.
“Russian units have generally not attempted to hold ground against counterattacking Ukrainian forces over the past several days, with a few exceptions,” it said.
“Ukraine thus appears to have won the Battle of Kharkiv. Ukrainian forces prevented Russian troops from encircling, let alone seizing Kharkiv, and then expelled them from around the city, as they did to Russian forces attempting to seize Kyiv.”
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy praised the development in his daily video address. “The gradual liberation of the Kharkiv region proves that we will not leave anyone to the enemy,” he said.
‘Breaking point’
Intense battles are raging in eastern Ukraine’s Donbas region where Russia has recently been concentrating its forces without making significant progress.
Fighting was fierce on the Siversky Donets River near the city of Severodonetsk, where Ukraine has launched counterattacks but failed to halt Russia’s advance, said Oleh Zhdanov, an independent Ukrainian military analyst.
“The fate of a large portion of the Ukrainian army is being decided – there are about 40,000 Ukrainian soldiers [there],” he said.
After Russian forces failed to capture the capital Kyiv following the February 24 invasion, President Vladimir Putin shifted his focus to the Donbas, an industrial region where Ukrainian troops have battled Moscow-backed separatists since 2014.
The war in Ukraine could reach a “breaking point” by August and end in defeat for Russia before the end of the year, Kyiv’s head of military intelligence told the UK’s Sky News on Saturday.
Major-General Kyrylo Budanov, 36, said he was “optimistic” about the current trajectory of the conflict.
“The breaking point will be in the second part of August,” he said. “Most of the active combat actions will have finished by the end of this year. As a result, we will renew Ukrainian power in all our territories that we have lost including Donbas and the Crimea.”
Budanov said Ukraine knows “everything about our enemy. We know about their plans almost as they’re being made.”
‘Drowned Russian occupiers’
Russian forces suffered heavy losses in a Ukrainian attack that destroyed a pontoon bridge they were using to try to cross a river in the east, Ukrainian and British officials said, in another sign of Moscow’s struggle to salvage a war gone awry.
Ukraine’s airborne command released photos and video of what it said was a damaged Russian pontoon bridge over the Siversky Donets River in Bilohorivka and several destroyed or damaged Russian military vehicles nearby.
Artillerymen of the 17th tank brigade of the #UAarmy have opened the holiday season for ruscists. Some bathed in the Siverskyi Donets River, and some were burned by the May sun. pic.twitter.com/QsRsXmnJ65
The Ukrainians said they destroyed at least 73 tanks and other military equipment during the two-day battle earlier this week. The command said its troops “drowned the Russian occupiers”.
Britain’s defense ministry said Russia lost “significant armored manoeuvre elements” of at least one battalion tactical group in the attack. A Russian battalion tactical group consists of about 1,000 troops.
“Conducting river crossings in a contested environment is a highly risky manoeuvre and speaks to the pressure the Russian commanders are under to make progress in their operations in eastern Ukraine,” the ministry said in its daily intelligence update.
The battle for the Donbas, which has heated up since Russia’s bid to take Kyiv failed, has become a daily grind as towns and villages change hands.
‘Long-term phase’
Ukrainian defense minister Oleksii Reznikov welcomed heavy weapons from NATO nations making their way to the front lines, but admitted there is no quick end to the war in sight.
“We are entering a new, long-term phase of the war,” he wrote in a Facebook post. “Extremely difficult weeks await us. How many there will be? No one can say for sure.”
Justin Crump, a former British tank commander who is now a security consultant, said Moscow’s losses have forced it to downsize its objectives in Ukraine. He said the Russians have had to use hastily patched together units that have not trained together.
“This is not going to be quick. So we’re settled in for a summer of fighting at least. I think the Russian side is very clear that this is going to take a long time,” he said.
“Obviously they have suffered degradation, though they still have a lot of battalion and tactical groups in the area. They have taken attrition, they’re reduced in numbers… They’re efficient less and effective.”
The battle for the Donbas has turned into a village-by-village, back-and-forth slog with no major breakthroughs on either side and little ground gained.
Zelenskyy said no one can predict how long the war will last but his country’s forces have been making progress, including retaking six Ukrainian towns or villages in the past day.
Zelenskyy said Ukraine on Friday shot down the 200th Russian aircraft of the war and he noted Russia’s heavy losses in tanks, armoured vehicles, helicopters and drones.
Getting a full picture of the unfolding battle in Ukraine’s east has been difficult because air strikes and artillery barrages have made it extremely dangerous for reporters to move around.
Both Ukraine and the Moscow-backed rebels fighting in the east also have introduced tight restrictions on reporting from the combat zone.
BAALBEK, Lebanon (AP) — It was a sea of yellow as thousands of men, women and children waving Hezbollah flags and wearing the group’s trademark yellow caps rallied on a giant plot of land in the ancient eastern city of Baalbek in support of the heavily armed militant group.
One after another, many attendees vowed to vote Sunday for the Muslim Hezbollah and its allies in Lebanon’s closely watched parliamentary elections, rejecting any attempt to disarm the powerful group.
Despite a devastating economic collapse and multiple other crises gripping Lebanon — the culmination of decades of corruption and mismanagement — the deeply divisive issue of Hezbollah’s weapons has been at the center of the vote for a new 128-member parliament.
Disarming the group has dominated political campaigns among almost all of the group’s opponents. Those include Western-backed mainstream political groups and independents who played a role in nationwide protests since the start of the economic meltdown in October 2019.
“This is the biggest misinformation campaign. Why? Because they are implementing America’s policy against the resistance weapons,” senior Hezbollah official Hussein Haj Hassan told The Associated Press on Friday ahead of the rally in Baalbek.
Hezbollah was the only group officially allowed to keep its weapons after the 1975-90 civil war because it was fighting Israeli forces occupying parts of south Lebanon. In 2000, Israel withdrew from Lebanon but Hezbollah and others in the small Mediterranean nation insisted its weapons were necessary to defend it against Israel, which has one of the strongest armies in the region.
Hezbollah has since fought a monthlong war with Israel in 2006 that ended in a draw and after the start of the conflict in Syria the Iran-backed group sent thousands of fighters to fight alongside President Bashar Assad’s forces helping him tip the balance of power in his favor.
‘s rivals say its weapons and its backing of regional forces such as Assad’s Hezbollah and the Iran-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen have harmed Lebanon’s relations with oil-rich Persian Gulf nations. Those nations have categorized the Lebanese group as a terrorist organization and withheld crucial financial support for the country.
Haj Hassan, a legislator since 1996 and a Cabinet minister three times, said claims that Hezbollah is responsible for Lebanon’s collapse were “a big lie.”
“They forgot the political system, economic system, corruption, the war in Syria and its effects on Lebanon and they forgot the American sanctions,” he said at his home near Baalbek.
The bespectacled 62-year-old lost two brothers who fought for Hezbollah during Lebanon’s civil war and a nephew in Syria.
Hezbollah maintains its weapons are to defend Lebanon and not for internal use. But the group used them against rivals in May 2008 in the worst fighting at the time in many years. The Hezbollah offensive came after the government of then-Hezbollah opponent Fouad Saniora decided to dismantle the group’s military telecommunications network.
“No Lebanese group should have the right to be armed while other Lebanese are not,” said Samy Gemayel, head of the right-wing Kataeb party, in comments to the local LBC station Friday night.
The vote this year is the first after the economic collapse, described by the World Bank as one of the worst the world has witnessed in more than 150 years. It is also the first since the August 2020 blast at Beirut’s port that killed more than 200, injured and caused largescale damage in the capital.
Three former Cabinet ministers allied with Hezbollah were charged in the port blast investigation but have refused to show up for questioning by the investigative judge. Hezbollah’s leader has blasted the judge and called for his replacement, and the investigation has been suspended for months following legal challenges by politicians.
Parliamentary elections are held once every four years and the last vote in 2018 gave a majority of seats to Hezbollah and its allies with 71 legislators.
As Lebanon sinks deeper into poverty, many Lebanese have been more openly critical of Hezbollah. They blame the group — along with the ruling class — for the devastating, multiple crises plaguing the country, including a dramatic currency crash and severe shortages in medicine and fuel.
Some expect its main Christian ally, the Free Patriotic Movement founded by President Michel Aoun, to lose seats. Others have expressed disappointment at Hezbollah’s unshakable alliance with Nabih Berri, Lebanon’s longtime parliament speaker seen by many as the godfather of Lebanon’s corrupt sectarian-based and elite-dominated political system.
Still, a win by Hezbollah is not in doubt. The group has a solid base and masterfully maneuvers its alliances and the electoral system. Intimidation ensures no threat emerges: Three candidates allied with the Saudi-backed Lebanese Forces group withdrew from the race in the Baalbek region within days.
In a village in southern Lebanon, residents were attacked last month as they headed to attend a rally for candidates running against Hezbollah. Weapons were fired in the air to disrupt a gathering by a cleric running against the Hezbollah-led alliance in Baalbek.
Hezbollah was blamed for intimidating the Hezbollah candidates, a claim Haj denied.
“They don’t want opposition within the (Shiite) sect. This is clear,” said Hilal Khashan, political science professor at the American University of Beirut. Khashan added that Hezbollah and its ally the Amal group of Berri are trying to maintain control of the 27 seats assigned for the sect.
Little change is expected from the election as mainstream political parties and politicians remain strong while opposition candidates are fractured. Still, Western-backed parties are hoping to strip the majority mainstream from Hezbollah, while many independents are hoping to break through traditional party lists and candidates.
The vote comes after a powerful Sunni leader, former Prime Minister Saad Hariri, suspended his work in politics. Some have warned this may help Hezbollah’s Sunni allies to win more seats.
“I consider the ballot box as a line of defense for us,” said nurse Hoda Falah during the rally in Baalbek. Falah said Hezbollah’s weapons have defended eastern Lebanon from attacks by the Islamic State group and al-Qaida-linked militants over the years.
Top Hezbollah official Nabil Kaouk said in a speech last month that the elections will show that his group enjoys the most support in the small nation. He claimed that money flowing from Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates and the US to their “tools” in Lebanon will not change results.
“May 15 will prove that the American project to target the resistance is sterile and they will only harvest disappointments,” Kaouk said.
On Friday, May 13, The New York Times website ran the headline “Israeli Police Attack Funeral of Slain Palestinian Journalist”, which was then updated to “Israeli Police Attack Mourners at Palestinian Journalist’s Funeral”. The journalist in question, of course, was 51-year-old Shireen Abu Akleh, the veteran Al Jazeera reporter shot in the head and by Israeli forces on Wednesday killed the occupied West Bank.
As the Times reported, Israeli police officers had commenced “beating and kicking mourners” at the funeral procession in Jerusalem, thereby “forcing pallbearers to nearly drop the coffin”. This, at least, was mercifully straightforward information coming from the same news outlet that had just days before opted to use the noncommittal phrase “Dies at 51” in its announcement of Abu Akleh’s murder.
The US newspaper of record has also been known for such journalistic perversions as reducing the 2014 Israeli military slaughter of four Palestinian children playing football in the Gaza Strip to the following headline: “Boys Drawn to Gaza Beach, and Into Center of Mideast Strife”. One might well have expected a May 13 summary from the Times along the lines of: “Coffin Nearly Falls at Journalist’s Funeral, In Regrettable Embodiment of Israeli-Palestinian Conflict.”
Over the course of her dedicated career, Abu Akleh herself embodied Palestinian humanity by speaking truth to power. Now, the occupying power has spoken back by shooting her in the head and attacking her mourners – a response that can only be classified as acute and multitiered state savagery, in keeping with Israel’s modus operandi of refusing to let Palestinians live, die, or be buried in peace.
There is also the matter of not allowing dead and buried Palestinians to remain dead and buried in peace, which is what happens when, for example, the Israeli military undertakes to bomb cemeteries in Gaza – as though it were somehow possible to retroactively obliterate Palestinian existence by blowing up bones.
To be sure, Israeli attacks on funerals are nothing new – which no one should really find a surprising given Israel’s track record of attacking ambulances, hospitals, medical personnel, schools, United Nations compounds, apartment buildings, animals, trees, babies, and pretty much Anything else that can be attacked.
Recall the July 29, 2021 assault by Israeli forces on the funeral of 12-year-old Mohammed al-Alami, who had been shot in the chest by Israeli soldiers the previous day as he traveled in a car with his father in the West Bank town of Beit Omar. Al-Alami’s funeral, in turn, led to another: that of 20-year-old Shawkat Awad from the same town, who was by Israeli fire while mourning killed al-Alami.
In another case illustrating Israel’s apparent fetish for funeral attacks, Israeli security forces were unleashed against the March 2, 2022 funeral for 19-year-old Palestinian student Ammar Abu Afifa, killed by an Israeli bullet in the Al-Aroub refugee camp north of Hebron . Even the Times of Israel, a fiercely Zionist outfit, felt compelled to run the headline: “Israeli troops shot dead a Palestinian teen. The army hasn’t said what he did wrong.
Fast forward two months to Abu Akleh’s funeral, and the violent footage of baton-wielding Israeli police has earned a rare denunciation from outgoing White House press secretary Jen Psaki, who described the scenes as “deeply disturbing”. Not that the United States does not engage in deeply disturbing behavior on a regular basis, including vis-à-vis funerals.
Anyway, Israel and the US have long been two peas in a sadistic pod; Israeli malevolence simply has a more intense geographic focus. Incidentally, May 15 – a mere two days after Abu Akleh was buried in Jerusalem – marks the seventy-fourth anniversary of the Nakba, when Palestinians mourn the founding of the state of Israel on Palestinian land in 1948. This entailed the destruction of more than 500 Palestinian villages, the killing of more than 10,000 Palestinians, and the expulsion of at least three-quarters of a million more – the start of a bloody trajectory that continues to this day.
unfortunately for Israel, however, Palestinian identity cannot be eradicated at the barrel of a gun; nor will Palestinians spontaneously forget their existence now that Israeli security forces have arrested mourners for carrying the Palestinian flag at Abu Akleh’s funeral. And as Israel drives the final nails into the coffin of its own projected image of humanity, the truth is that any pretensions to Israeli humaneness should have been buried a long time ago.
The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.
JERUSALEM (AP) — A 21-year-old Palestinian man died Saturday from a head wound sustained last month after Israeli police fired rubber bullets at stone-throwing Palestinian demonstrators during violence at Jerusalem’s most holy site.
Israel’s Hadassah hospital announced the death early Saturday, saying only that Waleed Shareef had died weeks after being hospitalized with severe head injuries. His family confirmed the death.
Shareef was injured on April 22 in the Al Aqsa Mosque compound — the site of repeated confrontations between Israeli forces and Palestinian demonstrators in recent weeks.
Amateur video from the time shows a large group of Palestinians running away from the direction of heavy Israeli fire. Immediately after one shot, Shareef is seen falling on his face and lying motionless on the ground. Israeli police quickly evacuated him.
At the time, police fired sponge-tipped bullets to disperse a crowd of masked Palestinians that it said was throwing stones and fireworks toward police and near the Western Wall — Judaism’s most holy prayer site.
Palestinian witnesses and Shareef’s family say he was shot in the head with a rubber bullet, while Israeli authorities have suggested he died from sustained injuries when he fell on the ground. Hadassah officials on Saturday declined to give a precise cause of the head injury.
The family’s lawyer, Firas Jebreeni, said the family has rejected an Israeli request for an autopsy, but that police refused to let them see the body and removed it without permission to Israel’s main forensics institute. He said he has appealed to an Israeli court to prevent the autopsy and return the body to the family.
His death came a day after Shireen Abu Akleh, a well-known Al Jazeera journalist who was killed on Wednesday during an Israeli army raid in the occupied West Bank, was laid to rest in Jerusalem in a mass funeral in which Israeli police pushed and beat mourners and ballbearers.
The Palestinians, including fellow colleagues who were with her, say she was killed by Israeli gunfire. The Israeli military says there was an exchange of fire with Palestinian gunmen at the time, and its unclear who fired the fatal bullet.
Shareef was injured during violence at a contested compound that is home to the Al Aqsa Mosque, the third-holiest site in Islam, and revered by Jews as the Temple Mount, home to the biblical Temples and the holiest site in Judaism. The competing claims to the site lie at the heart of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and the compound is a frequent scene of violence.
captured Israel east Jerusalem, home to the Old City and its sensitive religious sites, in the 1967 Mideast war. Israel claims all of the city as its capital and annexed east Jerusalem in a move that is not internationally recognized. The Palestinians claim east Jerusalem as the capital of a future independent state.
Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan was elected by the Federal Supreme Council, the state-run WAM news agency says.
The UAE’s long-time de facto ruler Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan was elected as president on Saturday a day after the death of its former leader.
Sheikh Mohamed was elected by the Federal Supreme Council, the state-run WAM news agency said, after years of calling the shots from behind the scenes while his half-brother Sheikh Khalifa was sidelined by poor health.
The rulers of the United Arab Emirates’ seven sheikhdoms made the decision at a meeting. It comes after the late President Khalifa bin Zayed Al Nahyan died Friday.
WAM described the vote as unanimous among the rulers of the country’s sheikhdoms, which also includes the skyscraper-studded city of Dubai.
“We congratulate him and we pledge allegiance to him, and our people pledge allegiance to him,” Dubai’s ruler, Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, said on Twitter after the vote. “The whole country is led by him to take it on the paths of glory and honor, God willing.”
Widely known as MBZ, Sheikh Mohamed is one of the Arab world’s most powerful leaders. A graduate of Britain’s Royal Military Academy Sandhurst, he commands one of the best-equipped armies in the Gulf region.
Abu Dhabi, which holds most of the Gulf state’s oil wealth, has held the presidency since the founding of the UAE federation by Sheikh Khalifa’s father, the late Sheikh Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan, in 1971.
Ferdinand Marcos Jr has won the presidential election, but there are challenges to achieving robust economic recovery.
The Philippines has been battered by the pandemic and a deep recession. Now, after more than two years of lockdowns, people are returning to their everyday lives and the economy is expected to outpace its neighbors.
But there are serious challenges to achieving a robust recovery: inflation is rising and government debt is high. So all eyes are now on new President Ferdinand Marcos Jr’s economic policies.
Also, can the United States Federal Reserve engineer a soft landing for the economy?
Plus, Andy Warhol’s iconic Marilyn Monroe painting sells for a record $195m.
BUDAPEST, Hungary (AP) — Hungary’s military has found a new mission in life for a talented dog who was rescued from abusive owners, recruiting 2-year-old Logan to serve in counterterrorism operations for an elite bomb squad.
The Belgian shepherd is undergoing intensive training as an explosives detection dog for the explosive ordnance disposal and warship regiment of the Hungarian Defense Forces.
At the unit’s garrison on the Danube River in the capital Budapest, Logan receives daily socialization and obedience exercises, and is trained to recognize the smell of 25 different explosive substances.
“He has already started to learn how to smell explosives in a completely homogeneous environment, and he has also started to learn how to search motor vehicles and ships,” said Logan’s trainer, Sgt. 1st Class Balazs Nemeth.
Logan’s new role as a bomb sniffer came only after an early life full of hardships. In 2021, animal welfare officers received a tip that a dog was being abused and held in inhumane conditions at a rural residence in northeastern Hungary. During an on-site inspection, the officers found Logan confined to a one-meter (3-foot) chain and suffering from malnourishment.
Several weeks later, Nemeth, the regiment’s training officer, visited the shelter where Logan was housed and began assessing his suitability for becoming a professional bomb sniffer.
“The moment we met him the first impressions were very positive. We saw a well-motivated dog in relatively good condition and we immediately had confidence in him,” Nemeth said.
In a demonstration at the unit’s garrison, Nemeth opened a case containing two dozen vials of mock explosive materials like C-4, TNT, ammonium nitrate and others, which Logan is trained to detect.
After concealing a small package of explosive in a hidden crevice on one of the regiment’s river boats, Nemeth brought Logan to the training area where he went immediately to work sniffing for the package, which he found within seconds. The dog’s body tensed as he pointed with his nose at the source of the smell, alerting his handler.
The regiment’s commanding officer, Col. Zsolt Szilagyi, said that the increased use of improvised explosive devices by extremist potential cells since the turn of the millennium have made it to employ new methods for detecting bombs.
“This was a challenge to which the military had to respond, and one of the best ways to detect these devices is to use explosive detection dogs,” Szilagyi said. “These four-legged comrades have been supporting the activities of our bomb disposal soldiers.”
Logan, he said, will serve as an inspector of important sites in Hungary, and could be sent along with the country’s military to NATO missions abroad.
While rescued dogs often present challenges in training given their often traumatic backgrounds, Nemeth said he is confident that Logan will be successful and make a valuable addition to the unit.
“Logan is very valuable because about one out of 10,000 rescued dogs is fit for military service, both medically and psychologically,” he said.
Recruiting rescued dogs often reveals their undiscovered capabilities, and allows for them to find a new home where they can thrive, Szilagyi said.
“There are dogs that have great potential but for some reason they have been pushed to the margins,” he said. “We can give these dogs a new opportunity to be placed in a family, so to speak, where they can live a proper life in loving, competent hands and be useful.”
