On Thursday, April 21 at 19:30 GMT: As the world seeks ways to move away from carbon dioxide-emitting fuels, some nations are looking towards nuclear power to fulfill their growing energy needs.
Nuclear power has been viewed unfavorably due to major accidents and the creation of radioactive waste that can pose an environmental threat for thousands of years.
But some environmentalists who see fossil fuels as an even greater environmental threat have now reconsidered their opposition to nuclear power. Supporters argue that the risks and problems associated with high costs and radioactive waste storage can be minimised with improved technologies and construction of smaller reactors.
How big of a role will nuclear energy play in the coming years? China now leads the world in the construction of new nuclear power plants. In South Korea, the UK and France, nuclear power development is viewed as a key component in achieving carbon neutrality. For some European nations, renewed interest in nuclear energy is also a means of countering rising global energy prices and energy dependence on Russia.
In this episode of The Stream, we’ll discuss the pros and cons of nuclear energy.
On this episode of The Stream, we speak with: Umair Irfan, @mairfans Senior science reporter, Vox
Kirsty Gogan, @kristygogan Founder and managing director, TerraPraxis
Shaun Burnie Former senior nuclear specialist, Greenpeace East Asia
SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — When the waves wash trash onto the beaches of front-line South Korean islands, Kang Dong Wan can often be found hunting for what he calls his “treasure” — rubbish from North Korea that provides a peek into a place that’s shut down to most outsiders.
“This can be very important material because we can learn what products are manufactured in North Korea and what goods people use there,” Kang, 48, a professor at South Korea’s Dong-A University, told The Associated Press in a recent interview.
He was forced to turn to the delicate information-gathering method because COVID-19 has made it much harder for outsiders to find out what’s going on inside North Korea, one of the world’s most cloistered nations even without pandemic border closures.
The variety, amount and increasing sophistication of the trash, he believes, confirms North Korean state media reports that leader Kim Jong Un is pushing for the production of various kinds of consumer goods and a bigger industrial design sector to meet the demands of his people and improve their livelihoods.
Kim, despite his authoritarian rule, cannot ignore the tastes of consumers who now buy products at capitalist-style markets because the country’s socialist public rationing system is broken and its economic woes have worsened during the pandemic.
“Current North Korean residents are a generation of people who’ve come to realize what the market and economy are. Kim can’t win their support if he only suppresses and controls them while sticking to a nuclear development program,” Kang said. “He needs to show there are some changes in his era.”
Before the COVID-19 pandemic, Kang regularly visited Chinese border towns to meet North Koreans staying there. He also bought North Korean products and photographed North Korean villages across the river border. He can’t go there anymore, however, because China’s anti-virus restrictions limit foreign travelers.
Since September 2020, Kang has visited five South Korean border islands off the country’s west coast and collected about 2,000 pieces of North Korean trash including snack bags, juice pouches, candy wrappers and drink bottles.
Kang said he was amazed to see dozens of different kinds of colorful packaging materials, each for certain products like seasonings, ice cream bars, snack cakes and milk and yogurt products. Many carry a variety of graphic elements, cartoon characters and lettering fonts. Some still can seem out of date by Western standards and are apparent copycats of South Korean and Japanese designs.
Kang recently published a book based on his work titled “Picking up North Korean Trash on the Five West Sea Islands.” He said he’s now also started to scour eastern South Korean front-line beaches.
Other experts study the diversity of goods and packaging designs in North Korea through state media broadcasts and publications, but Kang’s trash collection allows a more thorough analysis, said Ahn Kyung-su, head of DPRKHEALTH.ORG, a website focusing on health issues in North Korea.
Kang’s work also opens up a fascinating window into North Korea.
Ingredient information on some juice pouches, for instance, shows North Korea uses tree leaves as a sugar substitute. Kang suspects that’s because of a lack of sugar and sugar-processing equipment.
He said the discovery of more than 30 kinds of artificial flavor enhancer packets could mean that North Korean households cannot afford more expensive natural ingredients like meat and fish to cook Korean soups and stews. Many South Koreans have stopped using them at home over health concerns.
Plastic bags for detergents have phrases like “the friend of housewives” or “accommodating women.” Because the assumption is that only women do such work, it could be a reflection of the low status of women in male-dominated North Korean society.
Some wrappers display extremely exaggerated claims. One says that a walnut-flavored snack cake is a better source of protein than meat. Another says that collagen ice cream makes children grow taller and enhances skin elasticity. And yet another claims that a snack cake made with a certain kind of microalgae prevents diabetes, heart disease and aging.
Kang has been unable to verify the quality of former contents inside his trash.
North Korean snacks and cookies have generally become much softer and tastier in recent years, though their quality still lags behind that of South Korea’s internationally competitive products, according to Jeon Young-sun, a research professor at Seoul’s Konkuk University.
Noh Hyun-jeong, a North Korean defector, said she was “ecstatic” about the South Korean bread and cakes that she ate after her arrival here in 2007. She said the confectionaries and candies she had in the North were often bitter and “as hard as a rock.”
Kang Mi-Jin, another defector who runs a company analyzing North Korea’s economy, said that when she had South Koreans try new North Korean cookies and candies in blind taste tests, they thought they were South Korean. But Ahn, the website head, said the North Korean cookie he obtained in 2019 was “tasteless.”
Kang said his trash collection is an attempt to better understand the North Korean people and study how to bridge the gap between the divided Koreas in the event of future unification.
In 2019, Kang said he was denied entry at Shanghai’s airport, apparently because of his earlier, mostly unauthorized work along the China-North Korea border. During a previous period of inter-Korean detente that ended in 2008, Kang said he visited North Korea more than 10 times but could only buy limited goods that didn’t help him understand the country.
Picking up trash on the islands, about 4-20 kilometers (2.5-12 miles) from North Korean territory, is a tough job. He most often visits Yeonpyeong, an island shelled by North Korea in an attack that killed four South Koreans in 2010.
On some trips, South Korean marines quizzed Kang because residents who saw him collecting trash thought he was doing something suspicious. He was sometimes stranded when ferry services were canceled because of bad weather. Kang said he occasionally cried in frustration on the beach when he failed to find North Korean trash or received calls from acquaintances jeering or doubting his work.
“But I was heartened after collecting more and more trash … and I determined that I must find out how many goods are in a country where we can’t go and what we can find from that trash,” Kang said. “When the wind blew and the waves ran high, something always washed ashore and I was so happy because I could find something new.”
Preliminary report on March crash of Boeing 737-800 that left 132 people dead says analysis of recorders is continuing.
China has said the black box flight recorders of a plane that crashed last month were badly damaged and have yet to provide any clues to explain the aircraft’s sudden plunge into a wooded hillside, killing all 132 passengers and crew.
China Eastern flight MU5735 was on its way from Kunming to Guangzhou on March 21 when it dropped from its cruising altitude into the mountains of Guangxi in the southern part of China. The crash of the Boeing 737-800 was China’s first fatal air crash since 2010.
Summarising its preliminary crash report on Wednesday, the Civil Aviation Administration of China (CAAC) did not include any information from the cockpit voice and data recorders, which have been sent to Washington, DC, for analysis.
“The two recorders on the plane were severely damaged due to the impact, and the data restoration and analysis work is still in progress,” CAAC said in a statement.
Most accidents are caused by a mix of technical and human factors.
The commission gave no indication of the focus of its investigation but it noted that the crew were qualified, the jet was properly maintained, the weather was fine and no dangerous goods were on board.
In a potential key finding, it said most of the wreckage was concentrated in one area.
Safety analysts said that would not typically happen in the event of a catastrophic midair break-up or explosion, but did not rule out parts being torn off in the dive after CAAC said part of one wingtip was found 12 km (8 miles) away.
“Two questions you’d have to look at: did that piece coming off cause the dive or did the dive cause that piece to go off,” said Anthony Brickhouse, an air safety expert at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in Florida.
Chinese aviation expert Li Xiaojin said in the absence of other findings, data from black boxes was vital. It could take at least a year for the investigation to be concluded, he added.
“These boxes are designed to be really, really robust,” Brickhouse said. “I really can’t think of an accident in recent history where we found the boxes and we didn’t get information from them.”
No Max link
The 737-800 is a predecessor to the 737 MAX, which has not resumed commercial service in China more than three years after two fatal crashes.
But China Eastern, which grounded its entire fleet of 223 737-800 planes after the March crash, resumed those commercial flights on Sunday, effectively ruling out any immediate new safety concern over Boeing’s previous and still most widely used model.
A US official noted that no safety bulletins or other advisories had been issued by Boeing in the wake of the crash.
In its summary, CAAC did not point to any technical recommendations on the 737-800, which has been in service since 1997 with a strong safety record, according to experts. It does not have the cockpit system at the center of the MAX crisis.
Boeing declined to comment on the CAAC statement but said it would continue to support the crash investigation.
The Chinese agency said it had completed the preliminary report within the limit of 30 days. Such reports are usually made public, though they do not have to be under global rules.
China does not have a tradition of publishing widely accessible accident reports, but the statement marks a step towards transparency that has been credited with making flying safer worldwide, Paul Hayes, director of air safety at UK-based Ascend by Cirium, said.
CAAC said the last normal call from controllers to the plane was at 2:16pm local time (06:16 GMT) while it was cruising at 29,200 feet, less than six minutes before the plane disappeared from radar.
Brickhouse said it had appeared the flight was progressing normally and communications were normal.
“And then all of a sudden, the aircraft wasn’t communicating and that’s when it started diving.”
Journalist Lukman Ahmed is suing the lawyer in a bid to highlight what a problem racism is in Sudan
A racist insult broadcast live on Sudanese television during a high-profile trial involving ex-President Omar al-Bashir has triggered an outcry against the racism that continues to permeate Sudanese society three years after the long-time leader was ousted.
Warning: This article contains words which some may find offensive
Bashir’s defense team were chatting among themselves in the courtroom in the capital, Khartoum, and did not realise that their microphones were still on.
One of them was heard to say: “This ‘slave’ with his ugly nose irritates me.”
The Arabic word for slave, “abd”, is often used in Sudan to refer to people whose perceived roots are thought to be African instead of Arab – and is a derogatory term used to describe black people.
The comment, about three hours into the hearing, had nothing to do with the trial being aired on Sudan TV and the YouTube and Facebook pages of the Sudan News Agency (Suna).
The men were discussing renowned journalist Lukman Ahmed, who had just been sacked as director of the state-owned broadcaster.
Ahmed, a former BBC Arabic correspondent who originally came from Darfur, had been appointed to the role when a civilian coalition and the military were sharing power after Bashir’s ousting.
Last October, the generals reneged on the power-sharing deal, launching a coup. Ahmed stayed on in his post for another six months, but at the end he was accused of failing to honor the military head of state, having relegated news about him to the bottom of the bulletins.
A clip of the lawyer’s comments went viral, with many on social media quick to denounce the racist slur made at Ahmed’s expense.
It brought to mind one of the slogans of the 2019 uprising when revolutionaries chanted: “Oh you arrogant racist, the whole country is Darfur.”
Omar al-Bashir, who has already been found guilty for corruption since his ousting, is on trial for his role in the 1989 coup
It was aimed at Bashir, who first came to power in 1989 in an Islamist-backed coup and who became infamous around the world for the conflict in Darfur.
He has been charged by the International Criminal Court with committing war crimes and genocide there after pro-government, horse-riding Arab militias, known as Janjaweed, in the early 2000s started targeting villages and driving out their non-Arab residents – or “Zurga “, the local term for ethnic black communities. Bashir refuses to go to The Hague but denies the charges, saying they’re politically motivated.
The fact that it was one of Bashir’s lawyers who made the comment somehow drove home for the revolutionaries that Sudan has taken a step backwards.
Bashir and his contemporaries may still be on trial, but the man who ruled Sudan for nearly 30 years, holding the highest army rank of field marshal, is no longer in jail.
Since the coup he has been in a private military hospital, and many believe the junta will eventually move him home, under house arrest, on humanitarian grounds – continuing the rollback of the revolution that forced him from power.
“This is the outcome of a culture of a corrupt mentality,” the leader of the Sudanese Congress Party (SCP), which had been part of the civilian coalition that was overthrown, tweeted.
As well as Twitter outrage, the Darfur Bar Association has come out in support of Ahmed, launching a case on his behalf against the defense team and the lawyer.
Ahmed told the BBC it was intended “fight racism from spreading in the country”.
To see such blatant racism aimed at a “broad sector of the Sudanese and humanity across the world” in a formal setting “by men of law” was shocking, he said.
To make matters worse, one of the lawyers also used a blasphemous term about Ahmed, saying he cursed his religion – ironically missing the point that the journalist is Muslim too, in what is a majority Muslim country.
Since independence in 1956, racist attitudes have been prevalent in Sudan, both in private and in public – a legacy of the 19th Century slave trade when Ottoman, European and Arab traders launched raids to the south to bring back captives to sell.
Sudan’s feared Rapid Support Forces grew out of the Janjaweed
It has been a long-held belief that the racist attitudes of Khartoum’s elites has been a driving factor in the country’s turbulent history.
It ultimately pushed the South Sudanese to independence as well as triggering the rebellions against marginalization in Darfur, the Nuba Mountains and the Blue Nile, which all have large non-Arab populations.
Sudan’s racism is also the focus of a trial at The Hague, where a former Janjaweed leader denies charges of committing crimes against humanity in Darfur.
Ali Muhammad Ali Abd-al-Rahman, also known as Ali Kushayb, is the first person to be tried by the International Criminal Court (ICC) over the conflict that left about 300,000 people dead and more than two million homeless.
Since the October coup, public discourse has again become loaded with racist undertones, hate speech and incitement to violence.
Darfur has again witness a resurgence of ethnic cities and a wave of violent crime has swept the capital and other cities in recent months.
Groups from outside Khartoum from different ethnic backgrounds are being blamed for the street gangsterism, which usually involves armed men on motorbikes, known as “long nines” because of the multiple passengers aboard.
Social media is full of clips of vigilantes beating alleged criminals and lynchings, further fueling ethnic tension.
The gangs have become associated with rebels from groups in places like the Blue Nile, Darfur and the Nuba Mountains, who felt snubbed by the power-sharing government and have since sided with the military – effectively joining the side they were once fighting.
Those the rebels were purportedly representing see it as an outrage – and it feeds into distrust by Khartoum’s elites of outsiders, leading to pernicious relations between the country’s different regions.
Sudan’s deputy leader, Lt-Gen Mohamed Hamdan “Hemeti” Dagolo, is using all this to his advantage. Seen by the elite as an outsider, from Darfur, he heads the powerful paramilitary Rapid Support Force that has grown out of the Janjaweed.
But his new alliance with his former enemies – the Darfur rebels-cum-mercenaries – has allowed him to further cultivate his power.
Added to this toxic mix is the fact that Sudan has no law criminalising racism – meaning Ahmed is likely to lose his legal battle.
Yet he and his supporters hope the case will shine a light on how racism continues to demoralize the country’s social fabric – and will eventually bring some change.
After two years of COVID-19 cancellations, Rio de Janeiro’s mayor has officially opened the world’s most famous carnival celebration, handing a key to the city to “King Momo”, the symbolic ruler of the festivities.
“I proudly announce the greatest show on Earth is back – Long live, carnival,” Mayor Eduardo Paes told a cheering crowd at city hall on Wednesday, handing a giant golden key over to the jovial “monarch” as confetti rained down on them.
Tradition has it King Momo, chosen by a jury with input from a popular vote, rules Rio for Carnival, presiding over the glittering, sequin-studded spectacle of the city’s all-night samba school parades.
This year’s king is 35-year-old Wilson Dias da Costa Neto, chosen based on his “liveliness, sociability, way with words, niceness, happiness, carnival spirit and samba skills”, city hall said.
Carnival King Momo, Wilson Dias da Costa Neto, smiles during the ceremony [Bruna Prado/AP Photo]
Decked out in a shiny blue tuxedo and jeweled crown, Neto accepted the key with a huge smile.
It was a welcome change of tone from last year when Paes symbolically handed the key to a pair of health workers in white lab coats and surgical masks after announcing carnival had to be cancelled because of the pandemic.
COVID-19 has claimed more than 660,000 lives in Brazil, second only to the United States in absolute numbers.
But with more than 75 percent of the South American country’s 213 million people now fully vaccinated, the average weekly death toll has plunged from more than 3,000 a year ago to approximately 100 now.
Last celebrated in February 2020, Carnival again looked uncertain this year when fears of a new wave led city authorities to postpone it from the usual dates, just before the Catholic season of Lent.
Revellers dance in the ‘Cordão do Boitata’ parade during the traditional Black culture carnival event ‘Feira das Yabas’ in the suburbs of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil [File: Bruna Prado/AP Photo]
Two months later, the show is set to go on. The samba school parades will open on Wednesday, with the highly competitive top-flight league scheduled for Friday and Saturday nights.
City officials have not authorized the huge carnival street parties known as “blocos”, but several smaller ones are still expected to be held.
Some organisers said they would turn out, anyway — part party, part protest — and Mayor Paes, a confessed Carnival enthusiast, has said he will refrain from deploying the Municipal Guard.
“City Hall won’t impede people from being in public spaces, from celebrating, but it’s impossible that it happen at such [large] size,” the mayor said in response to a reporter’s question after giving King Momo the city’s key.
Rio de Janeiro’s Mayor Eduardo Paes hands over the city’s ceremonial key [Pilar Olivares/Reuters]
Rio’s bigger “blocos”, which typically draw tens and hundreds of thousands of revellers, have fallen into line. They use sound trucks and rely on the city for traffic detours, rubbish clean-up and more to limit disruption.
Rita Fernandes, who leads the Sebastiana association of blocos, said they are holding fire for 2023.
“We don’t want to come out at any cost, our sponsor canceled, we were discouraged by Omicron. In the end, everything was demobilised,” Fernandes said. “We don’t think the city will support over four days the volume of blocs that there are. We don’t want to create chaos in the city.”
Others are unconvinced, like Tomas Ramos, a saxophonist and member of a group that organized a protest in downtown Rio on April 13.
He shouted to musicians and spectators gathered at the steps of Rio’s theater, rallying them for full-bore Carnival festivities.
A masked reveller dances in the ‘Cordão do Boitata’ parade in the suburbs of Rio [Bruna Prado/AP Photo]
“Down with the turnstiles that transform the city into big business, where profit prevails over life, where money is freer than people,” he said.
Normally, Carnival moves some $800m for Rio’s economy and creates at least 45,000 jobs, according to official figures.
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Justice Department is filing an appeal seeking to overturn a judge’s order that voided the federal mask mandate on planes and trains and in travel hubs, said Wednesday.
The notice came minutes after the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention asked the Justice Department to appeal the decision handed down by a federal judge in Florida earlier this week.
A notice of appeal was filed in federal court in Tampa.
The CDC said in a statement Wednesday that it is its “continuing assessment that at this time an order requiring masking in the indoor transportation corridor remains necessary for the public health.”
It remained unclear whether the Biden administration would ask the appeals court to grant an emergency stay to immediately reimpose the mask mandate on public transit. An emergency stay of the lower court’s ruling would be a whiplash moment for travelers and transit workers. Most airlines and airports, many public transit systems and even ride-sharing company Uber lifted their mask-wearing requirements in the hours following Monday’s ruling.
A federal judge in Florida had struck down the national mask mandate for mass transit on Monday, leading airlines and airports to swiftly repeal their requirements that passengers wear face coverings. The Transportation Security Administration said Monday that it would it will no longer enforce the mask requirement.
The CDC had recently extended the mask mandate, which was set to expire Monday, until May 3 to allow more time to study the BA.2 omicron subvariant, which is now responsible for the vast majority of US cases. But the court ruling Monday had put that decision on hold.
The CDC said it will continue to monitor public health conditions to determine if a mandate would remain necessary. It said it believes the mandate is “a lawful order, well within CDC’s legal authority to protect public health.”
Justice Department Spokesman Anthony Coley said Wednesday night that the department was filing the appeal “in light of today’s assessment by the CDC that an order requiring masking in the transportation corridor remains necessary to protect the public health.”
After a winter surge fueled by the omicron variant that prompted record hospitalizations, the US has seen a significant drop in virus spread in recent months, leading most states and cities to drop mask mandates.
But several Northeast cities have seen a rise in hospitalizations in recent weeks, leading Philadelphia to bring back its mask mandate.
Shares of Tesla rose 4 percent after the close of regular trading.
Tesla Inc surged past Wall Street estimates for quarterly revenue and profit on Wednesday, as the electric vehicle (EV) maker raised prices in response to inflation, offsetting the impact of a Shanghai factory shutdown.
Tesla has been an outlier since the outbreak of the coronavirus pandemic, posting record deliveries and earnings for several quarters when rivals wrestling with global supply-chain snarls rolled out production halts.
Shares of Tesla rose 4 percent after the close of regular trading.
“Price increases are nicely exceeding cost inflation,” said Craig Irwin at Roth Capital.
“Chinese production issues seem well managed, and we expect Austin and Berlin to make up the slack from Shanghai’s 19-day outage.”
Tesla raised its prices in China, the United States and other countries, after CEO Elon Musk said in March that the US EV maker was facing significant inflationary pressure in raw materials and logistics amid the crisis in Ukraine.
“Our own factories have been running below capacity for several quarters as supply chain became the main limiting factor, which is likely to continue through the rest of 2022,” Tesla said in a statement.
Tesla said chip shortages and recent COVID-19 outbreaks have been weighing on its supply chain and factory operations, while prices of some raw materials have increased multifold times in recent months.
The world’s most valuable automaker said revenue was $18.8bn in the first quarter ended March 31, versus estimates of $17.8bn, according to IBES data from Refinitiv. This is up 81 percent from a year earlier.
Sales of its regulatory credit to other automakers jumped 31 percent to $679m in the first quarter from a year earlier, helping boost revenue and profits.
Its earnings per share was $3.22, beatings analysts’ estimates of $2.26.
Tesla shut down its Chinese factory for about three weeks before resuming production gradually this week. “Although limited production has recently restarted, we continue to monitor the situation closely,” the company said on Wednesday.
Musk offered to buy Twitter last week, sparking concerns about him being distracted from Tesla at a time when it is ramping up production at new factories in Berlin and Texas. The new factories will be key to meeting demand and reducing reliance on its China factory, its biggest one, which is slowly recovering from a plant shutdown.
There are concerns that Musk may sell some Tesla stocks or borrow against additional Tesla shares to finance his $43bn bid to buy Twitter.
United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres pleaded for a stop to the violence in Ukraine over the Orthodox Easter holiday as Russia presses on in its invasion of the country.
“Easter is a season for renewal, resurrection and hope,” Guterres said in remarks to reporters on Tuesday. “But this year, Holy Week is being observed under the cloud of a war that represents the total negation of the Easter message.”
“Today I am calling for a four-day Holy Week humanitarian pause beginning on Holy Thursday and running through Easter Sunday, April 24, to allow for the opening of a series of humanitarian corridors,” he added.
Guterres also estimated that roughly 40 percent of the Ukrainian population that remains in the country would soon require humanitarian assistance, calling on “Russians and Ukrainians to silence the guns and forge a path to safety for so many at immediate risk.”
“The four-day Easter period should be a moment to unite around saving lives and furthering dialogue to end the suffering in Ukraine,” the secretary-general also said.
“Inspired by Holy Week and all that it represents, I urge all parties – and all champions of peace around the world – to join my Easter appeal,” he added.
Meanwhile, on Wednesday the leader of Ukraine’s Orthodox church called for Easter services to not be held in areas affected by fighting.
“It is hard to believe this will really happen, because the enemy is trying to completely destroy us,” Metropolitan Epifaniy said in a televised address, expressing fear of potential shelling by Russian troops during services, Reuters reported.
The overwhelming majority of Ukrainian and Russian people are Orthodox Christian, Pew Research Center found.
A Pew survey conducted from 2015 to 2016 showed that 78 percent of Ukrainians and 71 percent of Russians identified as Orthodox.
Over half of Ukrainians surveyed also said that being Orthodox is at least somewhat important for someone to be truly Ukrainian, Pew’s poll also found.
This comes as the war in the besieged country continues on after nearly two months, with a Ukrainian marine commander issuing a warning Wednesday that the port city of Mariupol “may have only a few days or hours left.”
“The enemy units are dozens of times larger than ours, they have dominance in the air, in artillery, in ground troops, in equipment and in tanks,” the commander, Serhiy Volyna, said.
For the latest news, weather, sports, and streaming video, head to The Hill.
A total of 26 police officers and 14 others were wounded in the riots and 20 vehicles destroyed or damaged.
Sweden suspects foreign countries had a hand in inciting violent riots in several cities recently when crowds threw rocks and burned cars after a far-right Islamophobe announced plans to hold an anti-Muslim rally.
Rasmus Paludan, leader of the Danish far-right Stram Kurs (Hard Line) party, has burned copies of the Quran at events in Denmark where he also basshes Islam, and news spread he wanted to do the same in Sweden, sparking anger.
Paludan, who holds both Danish and Swedish nationality, “seems for some reason to hate Sweden and try to harm Sweden. I do not understand why”, said the country’s Justice Minister Morgan Johansson.
In an interview with Swedish newspaper Aftonbladet published on Wednesday, Johansson referred to online claims that surfaced earlier this year about Swedish social service agencies allegedly kidnapping Muslim children.
The foreign ministry posted a Twitter thread in February devoted to what it termed “a disinformation campaign”.
‘Middle East actors’
A Swedish agency established to counter misinformation said the kidnapping claims could be traced to an Arabic-language site creator expressed support for the armed group ISIL (ISIS).
“We see how the image of Sweden is set by some of these actors in the Middle East,” Aftonbladet quoted Johansson as saying. “It is also addressed by a couple of governments in Iraq and in Iran.”
After word of Paludan’s planned stunt reached Iran and the United Arab Emirates, the governments in Tehran and Dubai summoned Swedish diplomats to protest.
A total of 26 police officers and 14 other individuals were wounded in the riots, and 20 police vehicles destroyed or damaged, officials said. Many people were arrested.
The latest violence broke out Sunday night in Malmo, Sweden’s third-largest city, as an angry crowd of mainly young people set fire to tires, debris and garbage bins in a neighborhood known for high crime.
Cars burn in a parking lot during rioting in Norrkoping on Sunday[Stefan Jerrevang/AFP]
Unrest and violent clashes were reported in several other Swedish cities. Three people were hurt in Norrkoping on Sunday as they were hit by ricochets when police fired warning shots.
Prime Minister Magdalena Andersson visited Norrkoping and Linkoping, another city that saw rioting, on Wednesday.
Protests against plans by Stram Kurs to burn the Quran have turned violent in Sweden before. In 2020, the protesters set cars on fire and stores were damaged in damages in Malmo.
That same year, Paludan was jailed in Denmark for a month for a string of offenses, including racism.
JERUSALEM (AP) — Everyone worried this might happen.
In the weeks before a rare confluence of major Jewish, Christian and Muslim holidays, with tens of thousands of visitors expected in Jerusalem for the first time since the pandemic, Israeli, Palestinian and Arab leaders discussed how to calm tensions.
Israel took steps to ease the conditions of its nearly 55-year military rule over millions of Palestinians, lifting some movement restrictions and issuing thousands of work permits. Israeli police said they would work to ensure everyone could pray in peace.
The goal was to avoid a repeat of last year, when weeks of Hamas protests in Jerusalem eventually helped trigger an 11-day war between Israel and Gaza’s militant rulers.
It hasn’t worked out as planned.
Israel has seen the deadliest string of attacks in years. Its troops have launched arrest raids deep inside the occupied West Bank, triggering gunbattles. Clashes have broken out at a major site in Jerusalem sacred to Jews and Muslims and a rocket has been fired from Gaza.
Here’s a look at how we got here:
A WAVE OF ATTACKS
On March 22, a Palestinian citizen of Israel killed four people in a car-ramming and stabbing rampage in the city of Beersheba. Shooting attacks by Palestinians over the next three weeks, including in the heart of Tel Aviv, killed another 10.
Israeli authorities said the attackers acted mostly alone, and while Hamas and other militant groups cheered the attacks, none claimed them. Some of the assailants supported the Islamic State group, but there’s no evidence it organized the attacks.
Israel launched raids across the occupied West Bank, arresting dozens. Palestinians hurled stones and firebombs, and in Jenin, a longtime militant stronghold, gunbattles erupted.
At least 26 Palestinians have been killed, according to an Associated Press count, including the attackers and many who took part in the clash. But the dead also includes a lawyer and an 18-year-old woman who appears to have been bystanders, as well as an unarmed woman shot dead at a checkpoint.
Israel captured the West Bank, along with east Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip, in the 1967 Mideast war. The Palestinians want all three territories to form their future state.
Israel has full control over 60% of the West Bank, where it has built more than 130 settlements that are home to nearly 500,000 Jewish settlers. The unpopular Palestinian Authority administrators major population centers and cooperates with Israel on security.
___
CLASHES IN JERUSALEM
On April 15, clashes erupted at dawn between Palestinians and Israeli police at the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound in Jerusalem’s Old City. The police say Palestinians hurled stones at them and in the direction of an adjacent Jewish holy site, forcing them to move in. Palestinians say they used excessive force.
More than 150 Palestinians and three Israeli police were wounded. Police fired rubber-coated bullets and stun grenades and Palestinians hurled stones and fireworks. At one point, police burst into the mosque itself to arrest suspected stone-throwers inside.
Smaller confrontations have broken out since then, and on Sunday, Palestinians pelted buses with stones just outside the Old City.
“A Hamas-led incitement campaign has been waged against Israel,” Prime Minister Naftali Bennett said this week. “Israel is doing everything so that all peoples, as always, can celebrate the holidays safely — Jews, Muslims and Christians.”
The sprawling esplanade where the mosque is located is the third holiest site in Islam and the holiest for Jews, who refer to it as the Temple Mount because two Jewish temples stood there in antiquity. It lies at the emotional core of the century-old conflict and has been ground zero for several outbreaks of violence.
The Palestinians view regular visits by nationalist and religious Jews under police escort as a provocation and possible prelude to Israel taking over the site or partitioning it. Israeli authorities say they are committed to maintaining the status quo.
The Old City is part of east Jerusalem, which Israel annexed in a move not recognized internationally and considers part of its capital. The Palestinians want east Jerusalem to be the capital of their future state.
Discriminatory policies in east Jerusalem support the expansion of Jewish settlements. Palestinians are systematically denied construction permits, forcing many to build without authorization, risking home demolition. Dozens of Palestinian families are at risk of being forcibly removed from their homes because of a decades-long campaign by settlers to expand the Jewish presence in east Jerusalem.
Jews born in Jerusalem are Israeli citizens. Most Palestinians refuse Israeli citizenship, but those who seek it must go through a long and uncertain bureaucratic process. Palestinians who spend too much time outside east Jerusalem, for work, study or family reasons, can lose their residency and be prohibited from returning. That policy does not apply to Jews.
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AN EXCHANGE OF FIRE IN GAZA
On Monday night, a rocket was fired into southern Israel from the Gaza Strip. The military intercepted it and carried out airstrikes. No one was hurt, and no one claimed the rocket — the first to be fired at Israel in months.
Israel and Egypt have imposed a crippling block on Gaza since Hamas seized power from rival Palestinian forces 15 years ago. Unemployment hovers around 50%, electricity outputs last around 12 hours a day, tap water is undrinkable, and Hamas remains firmly in power.
Israel and Hamas have fought four wars since 2008, compounding the misery of the 2 million Palestinians who live in the narrow coastal strip. Gaza has barely started to rebuild after the most recent one, which left more than 250 Palestinians dead, including 129 civilians, according to the UN Fourteen people were killed in Israel.
Gaza’s woes long predate Hamas, which burst onto the scene in the late 1980s, during the first of two Palestinian uprisings against Israeli rule. The militant group — branded terrorists by Israel and Western countries — does not recognize Israel and has carried out numerous deadly attacks on Israeli civilians over the years.
More than half of the 2 million Palestinians living in Gaza are the descendants of refugees from what is now Israel who fled or were driven out during the 1948 war surrounding its creation.
Around 60% of Palestinians in all three territories are under the age of 30, with little or no memory of the Mideast peace process, which broke down more than a decade ago.
“We have a very radicalized generation,” said Mkhaimar Abusada, a political science professor at Gaza’s Al-Azhar University “They don’t really care if we go to another war with Israel or not, whether it’s over Al-Aqsa or any other thing.”
