Global leaders and CEOs of major U.S. corporations will all be at the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) forum in San Francisco, offering tempting targets to protest.
“We can say beyond a reasonable doubt that this will be the largest anti-Xi protest during the bilateral talks hosted here in the United States in the history of Xi Jinping’s time as a dictator of China,” Pema Doma, executive director of Students for a Free Tibet, said early in the day.
The group formed a human chain that prevented conference attendees from walking through the intersection, diverting some commuters and delegates onto nearby streets.
Police donned protective helmets and formed a line about 50 feet (15 meters) from a speaker and microphone for speeches, but there were no major clashes before the non-Chinese protests ended, around midday.
Thousands of police lined streets near the convention center, and protests in the days before Biden and Xi’s meeting had been relatively peaceful, with some crowds stretching for blocks, including a march uniting several interest groups on Sunday.
San Francisco has cleaned up downtown streets for the meeting, and it had prepared for potential confrontation with demonstrators: eight-foot-high (2.4-meter-high) metal mesh barriers have been erected to keep people on sidewalks from interfering with vehicle traffic near the convention center.
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BRUSSELS, Nov 15 (Reuters) - NATO will replace its ageing fleet of AWACS surveillance planes, in service since the Cold War in the 1980s, with a militarised version of the Boeing 737 commercial jet, the alliance said on Wednesday, in a deal likely worth billions of euros.
Acting like a flying radar tower, the AWACS (Airborne Warning and Control System) jets with the distinctive, nine-metre wide radomes on their backs have been NATO’s eyes in the sky since 1982.
They are capable of monitoring an area of some 300,000 square kilometres (115,000 sq miles), a territory the size of Poland, according to NATO, and can also detect ground targets such as ships.
The alliance did not specify why it chose to replace its fleet of 14 AWACS planes with only six Wedgetail jets, but it said the new aircraft would have better capabilities and be more expensive than their predecessors.
Based at Geilenkirchen airbase in Germany, the AWACS fleet has been widely used for NATO surveillance missions along the alliance’s eastern flank in the wake of Russia’s attack on Ukraine.
In the past, the aircraft supported NATO missions in the Balkans, Afghanistan and Iraq, but also events such as the 2006 World Cup in Germany and summit meetings.
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Ukraine said on Tuesday it had secured a foothold on the eastern bank of the Dnipro “against all odds”, a potentially major setback for Russian occupation forces in the south where Kyiv is trying to open a new line of attack.
Vladimir Saldo, the Russian-installed governor of the part of Kherson region which Moscow controls, acknowledged in a statement that Ukrainian forces had managed to cross the river, but said they were taking heavy losses.
Natalia Humeniuk, spokesperson for Ukraine’s southern military command, described the frontline as “fairly fluid” and said Kyiv’s forces had been putting Russian troops under pressure along the river.
Russia has largely held Kyiv’s counteroffensive at bay in the southeast, but an advance in occupied Kherson region could spread their defences thinner and ratchet up pressure.
Yermak made his remarks during a trip to the United States, a key ally of Kyiv that has provided vital military assistance since the February 2022 invasion, although questions now swirl over the sustainability of such aid.
This week, in a highly unusual incident, two Russian state news agencies published alerts saying Moscow was moving troops to “more favourable positions” east of the river, language it has used in the past to describe retreats.
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LONDON, Nov 15 (Reuters) - The UK Supreme Court ruled on Wednesday that the government’s scheme to send asylum seekers to Rwanda was unlawful, dealing a massive blow to Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s major election pledge on immigration before a vote expected next year.
The court unanimously rejected the government’s appeal against an earlier ruling that migrants could not be sent to Rwanda because it could not be considered a safe third country.
The Rwanda scheme is the central plank of Sunak’s immigration policy as he prepares to face an election next year, amid concern among some voters about the numbers of asylum seekers arriving in small boats on Britain’s shores.
Announcing the court’s decision, court President Robert Reed said the five judges involved agreed there were “substantial grounds for believing that asylum seekers sent to Rwanda would be at real risk of refoulement”, being sent back to their country of origin.
But he left open the chance the scheme could be resurrected saying “the changes needed to eliminate the risk of refoulement may be delivered in the future, but they have not been shown to be in place now”.
The ruling is a major setback to Sunak’s promise to stop migrants arriving without permission on the south coast of Britain in small boats from Europe.
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Will be interested to learn about the new generation of Cuban immigrations vs those of the past - most already in the US grew up with memories pre Castro, young ones now might be quite removed?
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Click here to see the summaryGENEVA, Nov 14 (Reuters) - A quarter of Somalia’s population is forecast to face “crisis-level hunger or worse” this year due to drought and floods caused by climate change, the World Food Programme (WFP) said on Tuesday. Floods that have uprooted hundreds of thousands of people in Somalia and neighbouring countries in East Africa following a historic drought earlier this year have been described by the United Nations as a once-in-a-century event. “Livelihoods and lives are at risk, 4.3 million people – a quarter of the population – are forecast to face crisis-level hunger or worse by the end of this year,” said Petroc Wilton, WFP spokesperson for Somalia. The floods, which followed heavy rains that started in early October, have already killed at least 32 people and forced more than 456,800 from their homes in Somalia, according to the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs. Speaking to Reuters in Luuq town, where the Jubba River burst its banks, aid group World Vision said it had managed to rescue some villagers trapped due to flooding. “We have so far rescued over 400 people from the locations that are completely submerged by the water as a result of the heavy rains that were witnessed over the last week,” Muhidin Abdullahi, its operations manager in Somalia said. — Saved 46% of original text.
Many voters said they were underwhelmed by Weah’s first term, which has been dogged by graft scandals and persistent poverty in Africa’s oldest independent republic.
Boakai said on Tuesday that it was normal for the runoff to have a lower turnout, but said Weah’s party was “panicking” and trying to stop ballots being cast, without providing details.
No major incidents were reported on Tuesday, with calm and order prevailing at various voting centres, said a team of observers from the Economic Community of West African States.
The electoral commission flagged rumours about pre-marked ballots on social media and said it was “fake news” to discourage voters.
He has cult-like support in many areas, inspired by his rise from a Monrovia slum to international soccer stardom, but he has been unable to ease widespread poverty or stamp out corruption.
The economy grew 4.8% in 2022, driven by gold production and a relatively good harvest, but more than 80% of the population still face moderate or severe food insecurity, the World Bank said in July.
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GAZA/JERUSALEM, Nov 14 (Reuters) - The lives of 36 babies at Gaza’s Al Shifa Hospital were hanging in the balance on Tuesday, according to medical staff there who said there was no clear mechanism to move them despite an Israeli effort to supply incubators for an evacuation.
The 36 babies, who weigh less than 1.5 kg (3.3 pounds) and with some as small as 700 to 800 grammes, were now lying side-by-side on ordinary beds, exposing them to infection and without any individual adjustments to humidity levels and temperatures, staff said.
The military also posted a video showing Shani Sasson, a spokesperson from an Israeli Defence Ministry liaison office that deals with Palestinian civilian affairs, standing in front of incubators and saying a formal offer of help had been made.
Images published by the military showed standard transport incubators, said Arthur Edelman, a professor of paediatrics and neonatology at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
The military did not say what steps it would take to make an evacuation possible, amid intense air strikes and ongoing fighting in the vicinity of Al Shifa hospital.
The Israeli military posted an audio recording of what it said was a conversation between a senior officer from Israel’s Coordination and Liaison Administration and the director-general of Al Shifa Hospital, speaking in Arabic, subtitled in English.
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JERUSALEM, Nov 14 (Reuters) - A senior far-right member of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government said on Tuesday Gaza could not survive as an independent entity and it would be better for Palestinians there to leave for other countries.
Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, who heads one of the religious nationalist parties in Netanyahu’s coalition, said he supported a call by two members of the Israeli parliament who wrote in a Wall Street Journal editorial that Western countries should accept Gazan families who expressed a desire to relocate.
“This is the right humanitarian solution for the residents of Gaza and the entire region after 75 years of refugees, poverty and danger.”
Smotrich spoke during Israel’s invasion of the Gaza Strip, a blockaded coastal enclave ruled by the Islamist movement Hamas that is home to some 2.3 million people, most of them refugees after earlier wars.
The Israeli military has told residents of northern Gaza to leave their homes and head to the southern end of the Strip, where it said they would be safer, and said they would be able to return once the situation is stabilised.
However there has been little clarity about Israel’s longer term intentions, and countries including the United States have said that Gaza should be governed by Palestinians.
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As well as protests, the conflict has sparked a rise in antisemitic and Islamophobic incidents in the United States including violent assaults and online harassment, according to advocacy groups.
Organizers of Tuesday’s demonstration said they estimated 200,000 people were attending to show U.S. support for Israel, demand the release of hostages and condemn antisemitic violence and harassment.
“A ceasefire is a pause that would allow Hamas to rearm,” said Ariel Ben-Chitrit, 33, a federal government worker from Herndon, Virginia, who was carrying a blue and white Israeli flag at Tuesday’s protest.
The Biden administration has rebuffed calls for a ceasefire but has urged Israel to grant pauses in the fighting for civilians to move to safer locations and for humanitarian aid to enter Gaza.
Authorities ordered an increased police presence for the demonstration, the House’s Sergeant at Arms said on Monday, but it added there was no specific threat and measures were being taken out of an abundance of caution.
The only counter demonstration witnessed by Reuters correspondents was outside the main crowd enclosure, where several dozen Orthodox Jews from anti-Zionist group Neturei Karta chanted “1, 2, 3, 4, Zionism no more,” and “down, down the state of Israel.”
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GAZA/JERUSALEM, Nov 14 (Reuters) - Palestinians trapped inside Gaza’s biggest hospital were digging a mass grave on Tuesday to bury patients who died under Israeli encirclement, and said no plan was in place to evacuate babies despite Israel announcing an offer to send portable incubators.
Hamas, Gaza’s ruling Islamist group, denies fighters are present and says 650 patients and 5,000-7,000 other displaced civilians are trapped inside the hospital grounds, under constant fire from snipers and drones.
Around two thirds of Gaza’s 2.3 million people have been made homeless, unable to escape the crowded territory where food, fuel, fresh water and medical supplies are running out.
Dr Ahmed El Mokhallalati, a surgeon, told Reuters from Al Shifa hospital that the main risk now was from dead bodies decomposing inside.
On Monday, Israel’s military released video and photos of what it said were weapons Hamas had stored in the basement of another hospital, Rantissi, specialising in cancer treatment for children.
White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan told reporters Washington would “like to see considerably longer pauses - days, not hours - in the context of a hostage release.”
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