Palestinian rights group wins a legal bid to challenge UK ban
A High Court judge ruled that the government's decision on Palestine Action can be reviewed. The ban puts Palestine Action on par with the likes of al-Qaida and Hamas. It means membership in the group or support for its actions is punishable by up to 14 years in prison.
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Winnipeg Free Press
2 hours ago
- Winnipeg Free Press
3 people die in overnight Ukrainian drone strikes on Russia
Ukrainian drone attacks overnight into Saturday killed three people, Russian officials said Saturday. Russia's Defense Ministry said air defenses intercepted or destroyed 112 drones across eight Russian regions and the Russian-occupied Crimean Peninsula. A drone attack on the Rostov region, on the border with Ukraine, killed one person, acting governor Yuri Slyusar said. Further from the front line, a woman was killed and two other people wounded in a drone strike on business premises in the Penza region, according to regional governor Oleg Melnichenko. In the Samara region, falling drone debris sparked a fire that killed an elderly resident, regional Gov. Vyacheslav Fedorishchev said. According to the Ukrainian air force, Russia launched 53 drones and decoys at Ukraine overnight into Saturday. It said that air defenses shot down or jammed 45 drones. Eleven people were wounded in an overnight drone strike on the Kharkiv region, Gov. Oleh Syniehubov said Saturday. The reciprocal drone strikes followed a day of mourning in the Ukrainian capital Kyiv on Friday, after a Russian drone and missile attack killed 31 people, including five children, and wounded over 150. The continued attacks come after U.S. President Donald Trump on Tuesday gave Russian President Vladimir Putin a shorter deadline — Aug. 8 — for peace efforts to make progress. Trump said Thursday that special envoy Steve Witkoff is heading to Russia to push Moscow to agree to a ceasefire in its war with Ukraine and has threatened new economic sanctions if progress is not made. ___ Follow AP's coverage of the war in Ukraine at
Winnipeg Free Press
3 hours ago
- Winnipeg Free Press
Recognizing a state, and making a point
Opinion Canada will recognize a state that does not exist. A state that may never exist. A state that has yet to meet the internationally accepted attributes of statehood: a permanent population, a defined territory, an effective government, and exercised sovereignty. This is Palestine. Palestine is not yet a reality, but Canada is recognizing another reality. The reality of war, hunger, hardship, and politics. Almost two years after the horrific Hamas massacre of Israelis and others on Oct. 7, 2023, Israel is locked into a grinding war of lethal attrition against Hamas in Gaza. No immediate ceasefire prospects and no clear end game by any of the protagonists except the destruction of the other exists. ABDEL KAREEM HANA / THE ASSOCIATED PRESS FILES A Palestinian boy carrying a plastic jerry can of water walks past buildings destroyed during Israeli air and ground operations in Gaza City on July 25. The most volatile neighbourhood in the world has seen more than 50 wars, insurgencies, coups, and rebellions of one sort or another since the end of the Second World War. The pattern is violently familiar and, therefore, depressingly inuring to most of us. Many expected Gaza to follow this same pattern. Israel's right to exist in peace and the monstrous scale of the Hamas terrorism gave it the legal and moral agency to strike back, hard. Retaliation by Israel would be harsh but somehow acceptable. Few shed any tears when key Hamas leaders were hunted down and eliminated. The tears came afterwards. The relentlessly dangerous and difficult task of eradicating a deeply embedded terrorist network in dense urban areas has meant more civilian casualties and visible suffering than much of the international community could stomach. With no end in sight. This is what prompted Prime Minister Mark Carney's momentous decision to recognize the State of Palestine during the next United Nations General Assembly this fall. 'The deepening suffering of civilians leaves no room for delay in co-ordinated international action to support peace, security, and the dignity of all human life', he said in a formal statement this week. There is something else, though. Canada has concluded that the Israeli government of Benjamin Netanyahu will never accept a two-state solution of a fully sovereign Palestine living side by side with Israel. This has been the bedrock foreign policy principle of Canada — and many other countries — for peace in the Middle East. Unwilling to dismiss this principled approach, the Canadian prime minister has decided to dismiss the Israeli prime minster's approach to the principle. 'Regrettably, this approach is no longer tenable', Carney said. 'Prospects for a two-state solution have been steadily and gravely eroded' he went on, listing four reasons, three of which identify Israeli actions, making clear where most of the blame resides. With zero influence over how Israel is prosecuting the war, Canada is joining other countries to influence what happens after the war. In that sense, Canada is remaining consistent with the United States. Not the U.S. of President Donald Trump but the U.S. of former president Joe Biden. One month into the war, in November 2023, the U.S. set out a 'day after the war' declaration for Gaza and Israel. Meant to prevent a wider conflict from erupting, that declaration stated: 'The United States believes key elements should include no forcible displacement of Palestinians from Gaza. Not now. Not after the war. No use of Gaza as a platform for terrorism or other violent attacks. No reoccupation of Gaza after the conflict ends. No attempt to blockade or besiege Gaza. No reduction in the territory of Gaza.' Weekday Evenings Today's must-read stories and a roundup of the day's headlines, delivered every evening. This may yet come to pass, but it appears very far off right now. Politicians though live in the here and now. They see hunger lines in Gaza and become distressed. They read motions to annex the West Bank from the Israeli Knesset or statements by the Israeli prime minister to never agree to a fully fledged Palestinian state and become disturbed. They see no end in sight and are frustrated. All this is leaving Israel more politically isolated today than it was before Oct. 7. But it is also more militarily powerful, capable, and dominant in the region than ever before. And it has a fast friend in Donald Trump creating a superpower 'alliance of two' giving it more licence to act as it sees fit in Gaza and the region. It is doing so, and countries have taken notice. Short of declaring war, recognizing a governing entity, no matter how tenuous, as a sovereign state is as declaratory you can get in international relations. Canada, like France and Great Britain, is utilizing the entirely precedented and legal discretion it has under international law to unilaterally recognize another state. But doing so now, absent a negotiated peace settlement to create such a state, is not so much a diplomatic gesture of support for Palestinians, but a diplomatic rejection of Israel's actions in Gaza and the West Bank. For Canada, the momentous part is not breaking with international law by declaring its recognition of Palestine as a state but breaking with its own international tradition of allying with the U.S. on key international issues. Indeed, this decision signals a widening chasm with America. Trump wants 'to break us, so that America can own us', said Carney on election night. What he didn't say is that maybe Canada has to break with America first. David McLaughlin is a former clerk of the executive council and cabinet secretary in the Manitoba government.
Winnipeg Free Press
4 hours ago
- Winnipeg Free Press
Appeals court keeps order blocking Trump administration from indiscriminate immigration sweeps
LOS ANGELES (AP) — A federal appeals court ruled Friday night to uphold a lower court's temporary order blocking the Trump administration from conducting indiscriminate immigration stops and arrests in Southern California. A three-judge panel of the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals held a hearing Monday afternoon at which the federal government asked the court to overturn a temporary restraining order issued July 12 by Judge Maame E. Frimpong, arguing it hindered their enforcement of immigration law. Immigrant advocacy groups filed suit last month accusing President Donald Trump's administration of systematically targeting brown-skinned people in Southern California during the administration's crackdown on illegal immigration. The lawsuit included three detained immigrants and two U.S. citizens as plaintiffs. In her order, Frimpong said there was a 'mountain of evidence' that federal immigration enforcement tactics were violating the Constitution. She wrote the government cannot use factors such as apparent race or ethnicity, speaking Spanish or English with an accent, presence at a location such as a tow yard or car wash, or someone's occupation as the only basis for reasonable suspicion to detain someone. The Los Angeles region has been a battleground with the Trump administration over its aggressive immigration strategy that spurred protests and the deployment of the National Guards and Marines for several weeks. Federal agents have rounded up immigrants without legal status to be in the U.S. from Home Depots, car washes, bus stops, and farms, many who have lived in the country for decades. Among the plaintiffs is Los Angeles resident Brian Gavidia, who was shown in a video taken by a friend June 13 being seized by federal agents as he yells, 'I was born here in the states, East LA bro!' They want to 'send us back to a world where a U.S. citizen … can be grabbed, slammed against a fence and have his phone and ID taken from him just because he was working at a tow yard in a Latino neighborhood,' American Civil Liberties Union attorney Mohammad Tajsar told the court. The federal government argued that it hadn't been given enough time to collect and present evidence in the lawsuit, given that it was filed shortly before the July 4 holiday and a hearing was held the following week. 'It's a very serious thing to say that multiple federal government agencies have a policy of violating the Constitution,' attorney Jacob Roth said. He also argued that the lower court's order was too broad, and that immigrant advocates did not present enough evidence to prove that the government had an official policy of stopping people without reasonable suspicion. He referred to the four factors of race, language, presence at a location, and occupation that were listed in the temporary restraining order, saying the court should not be able to ban the government from using them at all. He also argued that the order was unclear on what exactly is permissible under law. 'Legally, I think it's appropriate to use the factors for reasonable suspicion,' Roth said The judges sharply questioned the government over their arguments. 'No one has suggested that you cannot consider these factors at all,' Judge Jennifer Sung said. However, those factors alone only form a 'broad profile' and don't satisfy the reasonable suspicion standard to stop someone, she said. Sung, a Biden appointee, said that in an area like Los Angeles, where Latinos make up as much as half the population, those factors 'cannot possibly weed out those who have undocumented status and those who have documented legal status.' She also asked: 'What is the harm to being told not to do something that you claim you're already not doing?'
