Prince Harry recounts in his new book how he was physically attacked by his older brother Prince William during an argument over his wife Meghan, according to an excerpt leaked days before the memoir’s publication.

In the latest salvo in the brothers’ bitter feud, Harry says the alleged incident came after the heir to the British throne called Meghan “difficult”, “rude” and “abrasive”.

Details of the row come as the British royal family braces for the publication on Tuesday of Harry’s book “Spare”.

The undignified spat in 2019 — the year after Harry and Meghan married — allegedly saw William tackle his younger brother to the ground as they continued to argue.

“He grabbed me by the collar, ripping my necklace, and he knocked me to the floor. I landed on the dog’s bowl, which cracked under my back, the pieces cutting into me,” The Guardian newspaper quoted Harry’s book as saying.

Harry then told his older brother to leave. William looked “regretful, and apologised”, Harry recalled, according to the left-leaning daily, which last year questioned the monarchy’s role in modern Britain.

‘Harold’

Quoting from the exchange between the two princes in the book, the report said William turned and called back: “You don’t need to tell Meg about this.”

“You mean that you attacked me?” said Harry.

“I didn’t attack you, Harold,” William responded, seeming to use a nickname for his brother.

The revelation follows a string of other broadsides in the wake of Harry and Meghan’s decision to quit royal duties in Britain in early 2020.

A year after starting their new life in California in 2020, the couple told US chat show host Oprah Winfrey that Buckingham Palace failed to help Meghan when she felt suicidal and accused an unidentified member of the royal family of racism.

And in a Netflix docuseries aired last month they blamed William’s office for negative coverage, claiming it briefed the media against them.

Buckingham Palace has not made any public response to the claims, although Harry’s late grandmother, Queen Elizabeth II, said about the racism allegations that “recollections may vary” and promised an investigation.

William also snapped at a reporter who asked about the claims: “We are very much not a racist family.”

Britain is gearing up for the coronation of Harry’s father, King Charles III, in May following the death of the queen last year.

Harry, 38, was asked in an ITV interview to be aired on Sunday evening if he will attend the event but he dodged the question.

“There’s a lot that can happen between now and then,” he said in a new clip released on Thursday.

“The ball is in their court. There’s a lot to be discussed. And I really hope that they are willing to sit down and talk about it,” he says.

Shared grief

Harry and William previously enjoyed a close relationship, in part forged by their shared grief over the loss of their mother, Princess Diana, who died in a car crash in Paris in 1997.

As young boys, the pair provided the enduring image from the funeral, walking behind Diana’s coffin.

Asked by interviewer Tom Bradby, a friend of both brothers, if “William might say ‘How could you do this to me… after everything we went through?'”, Harry responds tersely that William would “probably say all sorts of different things”.

The former British Army captain adds that he still believes in the monarchy although he does not know if he will play any part in its future.

Responding to a question about invading his own family’s privacy, having railed against the media for doing the same thing, he says: “That would be the accusation from the people who don’t understand or don’t want to believe that my family have been briefing the press.”

In excerpts released earlier, Harry said he wanted “a family, not an institution”.

“I would like to get my father back. I would like to get my brother back,” he said.

Source: AFP

Nearly 1,700 journalists have been killed worldwide over the past 20 years, an average of more than 80 a year, according to an analysis published by Reporters Without Borders.

The two decades between 2003 and 2022 were “especially deadly decades for those in the service of the right to inform”, said the Paris-based media rights campaigners.

“Behind the figures, there are the faces, personalities, talent and commitment of those who have paid with their lives for their information gathering, their search for the truth and their passion for journalism,” RSF secretary-general Christophe Deloire said.

Iraq and Syria were the most dangerous countries to work as a journalist, accounting for “a combined total of 578 journalists killed in the past 20 years, or more than a third of the worldwide total”, RSF said.

They are followed by Mexico (125 killed), the Philippines (107), Pakistan (93), Afghanistan (81) and Somalia (78).

The “darkest years” were 2012 and 2013, “due in large measure to the war in Syria”. There were 144 killings in 2012 and 142 the year after, the report said.

This peak was “followed by a gradual fall and then historically low figures from 2019 onwards”.

A magnitude 6.4 earthquake jolted the extreme northern coast of California before dawn on Tuesday, injuring at least two people, damaging roads, bridges and power lines and leaving tens of thousands of homes and businesses without electricity.

The tremor, which struck at 2:30 am PST and was followed by more than three dozen aftershocks, was centered 215 miles (350 km) north of San Francisco offshore of Humboldt County, a largely rural area known for its redwood forests, local seafood, lumber industry and dairy farms.

The region also is known for relatively frequent seismic activity, although the latest quake appeared to cause more disruption than others in recent years.

Tuesday’s temblor set off one structure fire, which was quickly extinguished, and caused two other buildings to collapse, according to the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection (CalFire).

The department said its dispatchers fielded 70 emergency calls after the quake, including one report of a person left trapped who needed rescuing, spokesperson Tran Beyea said.

The county sheriff’s office reported two people injured near the quake’s epicenter, where damage to homes and roads was widespread. One of those victims was a child with a head injury and the other an older person with a broken hip, according to local media reports citing the sheriff’s office.

There were no immediate official reports of fatalities.

Police closed the main bridge crossing the Eel River into Ferndale, a picturesque town notable for its gingerbread-style Victorian storefronts and homes, after four large cracks were discovered in the span. The California Highway Patrol also said the roadway foundation there was at risk of sliding.

The highway patrol reported at least four other roads in Humboldt County closed due to earthquake damage, and a possible gas line rupture under investigation. One section of roadway was reportedly sinking, the agency said.

“The shaking was really intense,” said Daniel Holsapple, 33, a resident of nearby Arcata, who recounted grabbing his pet cat and running outside after he was jostled awake in pitch darkness by the motion of the house and an emergency alert from his cellphone.

“There was no seeing what was going on. It was just the sensation and that general low rumbling sound of the foundation of the whole house vibrating,” he said.

Janet Calderon, 32, who lives in the adjacent town of Eureka, said she was already awake and noticed her two cats seemed agitated moments before the quake struck, shaking her second-flood bedroom “really hard.”

“Everything on my desk fell over,” she said.

While earthquakes producing noticeable shaking are routine in California, tremors at a magnitude 6.4 are less commonplace and potentially dangerous, capable of causing substantial damage to buildings, such as a partial collapse or the shifting of structures off their foundations.

Weak shaking from Tuesday’s quake, which occurred at the relatively shallow depth of 11.1 miles (17.9 km) was felt as far away as San Francisco, the US Geological Survey reported.

About five earthquakes of magnitudes ranging from 6.0 to 7.0 are recorded annually in California and Nevada, according to recent data cited by the Los Angeles Times.

Caroline Titus, editor and publisher of the Ferndale Enterprise, posted video on Twitter of toppled furniture and household items scattered on the floor of her Ferndale home.

“Sorry for dark video,” she wrote. “Power still out.”

Some 79,000 homes and businesses were without power in Ferndale and surrounding Humboldt County, according to the electric grid tracking website PowerOutage.us.

PG&E crews were out assessing the utility’s gas and electric system for any damage and hazards, which could take several days, company spokesperson Karly Hernandez said.

Source: REUTERS

US President Joe Biden said last month that the multi-state deal with Iran to limit its nuclear program was “dead,” but he would not announce that publicly, according to a video that surfaced Tuesday.

The video, which appears genuine and was apparently taken on November 3 during Biden’s visit to California, shows him being asked by a woman to announce that the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) is no longer in effect.

“President Biden, could you please announce that the JCPOA is dead,” the woman, who appears to wear a hair ribbon in Iran’s flag colors, asks as Biden passes by shaking hands.

“No,” Biden replies.

“Why not?” the woman retorts.

“It is dead, but we are not going to announce it,” the US leader said. “Long story,” he adds.

The woman, and others next to her, urge him to not make deals with the Tehran government.

“They don’t represent us,” she said. “They are not our government,” another added.

“I know they don’t represent you. But they will have a nuclear weapon,” Biden says, as the video clip ends.

Biden’s comments, which the White House did not deny, came as Iran has not bowed to months of pressure to accept the final stipulations of an agreement to revive the JCPOA, which was abandoned by his predecessor Donald Trump in 2018.

Talks to revive the deal have been ongoing in Vienna since April 2021, and at one point early this year Iran and Washington appeared extremely close to a deal.

Since then there has not been any progress, and the European Union’s foreign policy chief Josep Borrell warned in September that the parties were actually “diverging.”

Asked about the video, White House national security spokesman John Kirby said nobody was questioning its authenticity.

He said Washington still wants to restore the JCPOA, but that doing so is not priority, given the Ukraine war.

“The president’s comments are very much in line with everything we’ve been saying about the JCPOA, which is just not our focus right now,” Kirby told reporters.

“There is no progress happening with respect to the Iran deal now. We don’t anticipate any progress anytime in the near future,” he said.

“We simply don’t see a deal coming together anytime soon, while Iran continues to kill its own citizens and is selling UAVs to Russia,” he said, making references to Tehran’s campaign to repress months-long demonstrations over its treatment of women, and to Tehran’s supplying attack drones to Russia for use in Ukraine.

Source: AFP

U.S. President Joe Biden joked during a meeting with African leaders, saying he plans to visit their continent but may greedily eat their food, NYP reported.

The 80-year-old president said he is a poor relation who abuses his hospitality, but elicited heavy sighs from those in attendance over food insecurity in Africa.

“I’m grateful that all of you have made the journey to Washington for this summit, and I’m eager to visit your continent,” Biden told the representatives of 50 African nations at DC’s convention center after hosting them for a White House dinner Wednesday night.

“As I told some of you — you invited me to your countries. I said, ‘Be careful what you wish for because I may show up.’ The poor relatives always show up. The wealthy ones never show up. The poor come and they eat your food and stay longer than they should.”

Biden added, “Well, I’m looking forward to seeing many of you in your home countries.”

The president, who used to call himself middle-class Joe, often jokes about being a poor relation, despite the fact that he and First Lady Jill Biden earned a surprise $15.6 million in income in 2017 and 2018 after he left the vice presidency.

Biden previously had much more modest net worth, though members of his family earned huge salaries because of their association with him, including his son Hunter, who earned up to $1 million a year serving on the board of directors of the Ukrainian gas company Burisma, while his father headed the Obama administration’s policy on Ukraine.

Hours after his humorous remark, Biden addressed the summit again, this time detailing U.S. efforts to help poor countries in Africa with rising food prices.

“We’re facing a global food crisis, and nowhere is it felt more keenly than on the African continent. Last year, nearly 120 million people in Africa faced acute food insecurity and only halfway through 2022 as drought struck and the food costs soared… the number increased to 140 million people,” Biden said.

Biden added that Africa has “enormous potential” to use its “significant unused arable land” to feed its people and also help feed the world. He said the U.S. Department of Agriculture would assist in this effort.

The U.S. president has summoned African leaders, many of whom are fabulously wealthy thanks to stealing from their own people, as the U.S. government seeks to counter Chinese influence in the region.

Mini-corteges escorted by police cars with flashing sirens escorted African leaders to and from their luxury hotels near the White House this week, causing a traffic jam in D.C.

Only Eritrea and the leaders of the four countries ousted by the African Union for recent coups — Burkina Faso, Guinea, Mali and Sudan — were not represented.

Equatorial Guinea’s President Teodoro Obiang Nguema, who has held office for 43 years, was present even as U.S. authorities work to confiscate $70 million in assets allegedly stolen by his son as two-thirds of his country’s citizens live in poverty.

President Paul Biya of Cameroon, who has been in power for 40 years, also attended the Washington summit, as did President Denis Sassou Nguesso of the Republic of Congo, who has been in power a total of 38 years, and President Ali Bongo Ondimba of Gabon, who is known to have bought a $129 million house in Paris in 2010, a year after he succeeded his father, who ruled for 42 years.

Source: News Armenia

A base in northeastern Syria used jointly by Kurdish forces and the US-led coalition was hit in a Turkish drone strike on Tuesday, according to a Syrian Kurdish group and independent monitoring agency. The strike came as the US and Russia urged Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan to call off a planned ground invasion into northern Syria.

“A joint base north of Hasakeh used for planning and executing joint operations against the Islamic State group has been hit by a Turkish drone,” a spokesman for the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces, Farhad Shami, told AFP, adding that two SDF fighters had been killed.

A British-based monitoring group, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, confirmed the joint base had come under attack but was not immediately in a position to say whether coalition forces had been present at the time.

Turkey launched a series of air strikes under “Operation Claw-Sword” on Sunday – hitting dozens of Kurdish militant targets across Iraq and Syria.

Tuesday’s strike in Hasakeh came hours before Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said his country would “soon” launch a ground operation in Syria against Kurdish militants.

“We have been on top of terrorists for a few days with our planes, cannons and drones,” Erdogan said in a televised address on Tuesday. “God willing, we will root out all of them soon with our tanks, artillery and soldiers.”

Erdogan’s address came despite US and Russian warnings against a ground offensive in Syria.

US, Russian calls for de-escalation

Russia on Tuesday called for Turkey to exercise “restraint” and warned against “destabilising” Syria.

“We understand and respect Turkey’s concerns regarding its own security. We believe this is the legal right of Turkey,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters.

“We still call on all parties to refrain from steps that could lead to seriously destabilising the situation,” he said.

He added that it could “boomerang back and further complicate the security situation”.

The US on Monday also called for a de-escalation

“We urge de-escalation in Syria to protect civilian life and support the common goal of defeating ISIS,” US State Department spokesperson Ned Price said in a statement, referring to the fight against the jihadist Islamic State (IS) group.

Violence rises after Istanbul attack

Turkey’s latest escalation of its longstanding conflict against Kurdish militants follows a November 13 attack in Istanbul that killed six people and wounded 81. Ankara blamed the attack on the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), which is blacklisted as a terror group by the EU and the US.

The PKK – which was involved in peace talks with the Turkish state before Erdogan scrapped negotiations in 2016  – has denied involvement in the November 13 Istanbul attack.

Erdogan has threatened a new military operation into northern Syria since May and upped those threats in the wake of this month’s bomb attack.

Turkey has launched three offensives into Syria since 2016 aimed at crushing Syrian Kurdish fighters, whom it charges are allied to the PKK.

Erdogan has repeatedly called for a 30-kilometre (19-mile) “safe zone” to protect southern Turkey against cross-border attacks from Syrian territory.

At least three people, including a child, were killed in a Turkish border town on Monday by a rocket strike fired from Syria.

Source: AFP

At least five people were killed and 18 wounded, police said Sunday, in a mass shooting at an LGBTQ nightclub in the US city of Colorado Springs.

“It’s with a heavy heart I have to tell you that we had a shooting at a local club this evening,” said police spokesperson Pamela Castro.

“We have 18 injured and five deceased. That number is subject to change as the investigation continues,” she said.

Castro said police received an emergency call just before midnight on Saturday (0657 GMT Sunday) saying that there was an active shooting at a local club known as Club Q.

She said medical teams and officers responded and “they did locate one individual who we believe to be the suspect inside.”

Club Q responded by saying it “is devastated by the senseless attack on our community.”

“We thank the quick reactions of heroic customers that subdued the gunman and ended this hate attack,” it posted on Facebook Sunday.

The club had posted earlier on Saturday about an LGBTQ event starting at 8 pm.

“We’re celebrating Transgender Day of Remembrance with a variety of gender identities and performance styles,” the post read.

The Colorado Springs Police Department said there would be an 8:00 am news conference on the shooting.

The US Gun Violence Archive defines a mass shooting as a single incident in which at least four people are wounded or killed.

On June 12, 2016, a gunman opened fire inside the Pulse Nightclub in Orlando, Florida, killing 49 people and wounding more than 50 in what was then the deadliest mass shooting in modern US history.

US President Joe Biden marked the fifth anniversary of the Orlando shooting last year, taking the rare step of saying he would designate the club as a national memorial.

Source: AFP

A shooting on the campus of the University of Virginia late Sunday left three people dead and two wounded, university police said in a tweet, adding that the suspect was still at large and “armed and dangerous”.

The university police identified a student, Christopher Darnell Jones as the suspect, and said multiple agencies were engaged in an active search.

Jones was described as wearing a “burgundy jacket, blue jeans and red shoes”, and may have been driving a black SUV, according to the authorities.

An email sent to the student body by the university’s vice president recommended that all students seek safety and follow shelter-in-place commands as the situation remained active.

The shooting is the latest in a wave of gun violence on US college and high school campuses in recent years. The bloodshed has fueled the debate over tighter restrictions on access to guns in the United States, where the Second Amendment of the Constitution guarantees the right to bear arms.

(Source: Reuters)

Former Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan was shot in the shin on Thursday when his anti-government protest convoy came under attack in the east of the country in what his aides said was a clear assassination attempt.

Several others in the convoy were wounded and the information minister said a suspect had been arrested. One party member said there were reports one person had been killed.

“It was a clear assassination attempt. Khan was hit but he’s stable. There was a lot of bleeding,” Fawad Chaudhry, a spokesperson for Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) party, told Reuters.

“If the shooter had not been stopped by people there, the entire PTI leadership would have been wiped out.”

Local media showed pictures of Khan, 70, waving to the crowd after being evacuated from his vehicle following the shooting.

He was taken to hospital in Lahore after the attack in Wazirabad, nearly 200 km (120 miles) from the capital, Islamabad.

Protesters poured out on to streets in some parts of the country as PTI leaders demanded justice.

Pakistan has a long history of political violence. Former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto was assassinated in December 2007 in a gun and bomb attack after holding an election rally in the city of Rawalpindi, next to Islamabad.

Her father and former prime minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto was hanged in the same city in 1979 after being deposed by a military coup.

Former cricketer Khan was leading a protest march on Islamabad to demand snap elections. There were hundreds of people in the convoy. Party colleague Faisal Javed, who was also wounded and had blood stains on his clothes, told Geo TV from the hospital: “Several of our colleagues are wounded. We heard that one of them is dead.”

Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif condemned the shooting and ordered an immediate investigation.

Since being ousted in April through a parliamentary vote, Khan has held rallies across Pakistan, stirring opposition against a government that is struggling to bring the economy out of the crisis that Khan’s administration left it in.

Khan had planned to lead the motorised caravan slowly northwards up the Grand Trunk Road to Islamabad, drawing more support along the way before entering the capital.

“I want that all of you participate. This is not for politics or personal gain, or to topple the government… this is to bring genuine freedom to the country,” Khan said in a video message on the eve of the march.

Source: REUTERS

The White House said Wednesday it was increasingly concerned over Moscow’s talk of using a nuclear weapon in Ukraine, after a media report said top Russian military officials had discussed how and when to use such a weapon.

“We have grown increasingly concerned about the potential as these months have gone on,” said White House national security spokesman John Kirby.

Kirby did not confirm a New York Times report that said high-level Russian military officials recently discussed when and how they might use tactical nuclear weapons on the battlefield.

The report, which cited unnamed US officials, said Russian President Vladimir Putin did not take part in the discussions, and there was no indication that the Russian military had decided to deploy the weapons.

But Kirby said any comments on the use of nuclear weapons by Russia are “deeply concerning,” and said the United States takes them seriously.

He pointed to recent Putin comments talking about nuclear weapons and referencing the bombs US forces dropped on the Japanese cities Hiroshima and Nagasaki near the end of World War II.

“We take note of that,” Kirby said.

“It increasingly is unsettling in terms of the degree to which he feels he has to continue to stretch to prosecute this war,” he said.

At the same time, Kirby reiterated, Washington sees no indications that Russia is making preparations to use nuclear weapons, adding that US intelligence does not necessarily see or know everything.

The United States has been warning Moscow for weeks over public comments from top Russian officials that they could use nuclear weapons in Ukraine in certain cases, particularly if they felt there was a threat to Russian territorial integrity.

The most recent threat came from former Russian president and senior security council official Dmitry Medvedev.

Medvedev said on Tuesday that Ukraine’s objective to reclaim all its territories occupied by Russia, which include the Donbas region and Crimea, would be a “threat to the existence of our state.”

That, Medvedev said, would be “a direct reason” to invoke nuclear deterrence.

However, early Wednesday Putin’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov said that Western media was “deliberately pumping up the topic of the use of nuclear weapons.”

Moscow does “not have the slightest intention to take part in this,” he said, calling the Times report “very irresponsible.”

In September, Jake Sullivan, President Joe Biden’s national security advisor, said that the United States has warned Russia at “very high levels” of “catastrophic consequences” for using nuclear arms.

EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell warned on October 13 that Russian forces would be “annihilated” by the West if Putin uses nuclear weapons against Ukraine.

Source: AFP