Racism against people of African descent remains systemic in many parts of the world, the U.N. human rights chief said on Monday, calling for states to dismantle discrimination and prosecute law enforcement officials for unlawful killings.

Michelle Bachelet, in a global report sparked by the murder of George Floyd by a police officer in Minneapolis in May 2020, said that police use of racial profiling and excessive force is entrenched in much of North America, Europe and Latin America.

Structural racism creates barriers to minorities’ access to jobs, healthcare, housing, education and justice, she said.

“I am calling on all states to stop denying, and start dismantling, racism; to end impunity and build trust; to listen to the voices of people of African descent; and to confront past legacies and deliver redress,” she said in the report to the Human Rights Council.

Bachelet welcomed a “promising initiative” by U.S. President Joe Biden in signing an executive order in January to address racial inequity across the United States.

Her report cited 190 deaths of Africans and people of African descent worldwide at the hands of law enforcement officials in the past decade – most in the United States.

“With the exception of the case of George Floyd, no one was held accountable,” Mona Rishmawi, head of the rule of law branch who led the report, told a news conference.

It selected seven “emblematic cases”, including that of Floyd. A judge sentenced former police officer Derek Chauvin on Friday to 22-1/2 years for his murder, video of which galvanised the national Black Lives Matter protest movement.

Other victims include an Afro-Brazilian boy, 14, shot dead in an anti-drug police operation in Sao Paulo in May 2020 and a Frenchman of Malian origin, 24, who died in police custody in July 2016.

“One (Brazilian) mother in particular said to us ‘you always talk about George Floyd. Every day we have a George Floyd here and nobody talks about it’,” Rishmawi said. “We realised that we were only touching the tip of the iceberg.”

The scourge is most prevalent in countries with a legacy of slavery, the transatlantic trade in enslaved Africans, or colonialism resulting in large communities of people of African descent, the report said.

“Systemic racism needs a systemic response,” Bachelet said. “There is today a momentous opportunity to achieve a turning point for racial equality and justice.”

Source: REUTERS

Top diplomats said Sunday that further progress had been made at talks between Iran and global powers to try to restore a landmark 2015 agreement to contain Iranian nuclear development that was abandoned by the Trump administration. They said it was now up to the governments involved in the negotiations to make political decisions.

It was the first official meeting since Iran’s hard-line judiciary chief won a landslide victory in the country’s presidential election last week.

Some diplomats expressed concern that Iran’s election of Ebrahim Raisi as president could complicate a possible return to the nuclear agreement.

Enrique Mora, the European Union official who chaired the final meeting of the sixth round of talks between Russia, China, Germany, France, Britain and Iran, told reporters that “we are closer to a deal, but we are not still there.”

“We have made progress on a number of technical issues,” Mora added. ”We have now more clarity on technical documents – all of them quite complex – and that clarity allows us to have also a great idea of what the political problems are.”

He did not elaborate.

Top Russian representative Mikhail Ulyanov said the members of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, or JCPOA, “took stock of the significant progress made at the Vienna talks, including at the sixth round, and decided to make a break to allow participants to consult with their capitals in preparation for what is supposed to be the final round of negotiations.”

“There are a few controversial points which require political decisions. Apparently diplomatic efforts to find common language have been almost fully exhausted. So the time has come for political decisions,” Ulyanov added.

The nations involved in the negotiations have been trying to resolve the major outstanding issues on how to return the U.S. into the landmark agreement, which then-U.S. President Donald Trump pulled Washington out of unilaterally in 2018. Trump also restored and augmented sanctions to try to force Iran into renegotiating the pact with more concessions.

Ulyanov said after heading back to report on the talks’ results to their respective governments, he expected the diplomats to return for the final round of talks in Vienna in about 10 days and said they could finalize negotiations by mid-July.

“I believe we have all chances to arrive at the final point of our negotiations, maybe even by mid-July, unless something extraordinary and negative happens,” he said.

In a written statement after the talks Sunday, the E3 European senior diplomats urged speedy decision-making in the capitals involved in the talks.

“Delegations will now travel to capitals in order to consult with their leadership,” the diplomats wrote without giving their names, as is customary. “We urge all sides to return to Vienna and be ready to conclude a deal. The time for decision is fast approaching.”

Iran’s deputy foreign minister for political affairs said Sunday before the meeting that “we think almost all the agreement documents are ready,” according to semi-official Iranian news agency Mehr.

“Of the main issues that remain disputed, some have been resolved and some remain, but it has taken on a very precise form and it is quite clear what the dimensions of these disputes are,” Seyyed Abbas Araghchi said.

The U.S. did not have a representative at the table in Vienna. However, President Joe Biden’s administration has signaled willingness to rejoin the Iran deal under terms that would broadly see the United States scale back sanctions and Iran return to its 2015 nuclear commitments. A U.S. delegation in Vienna is taking part in indirect talks with Iran, with diplomats from the other world powers acting as go-betweens.

Sunday’s meeting was overshadowed by the election of Raisi in Iran, which puts hard-liners firmly in control of the government at a time when Tehran is enriching uranium at its highest levels ever, though still short of weapons-grade levels. Tensions remain high with Iran and both the U.S. and Israel, which is believed to have carried out a series of attacks targeting Iranian nuclear sites as well as assassinating the scientist who created its military atomic program decades earlier.

Raisi is the first Iranian president sanctioned by the U.S. government even before entering office, over his involvement in the 1988 mass executions, as well as his time as the head of Iran’s internationally criticized judiciary – one of the world’s top executioners.

In Jerusalem, new Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett warned Sunday that Raisi’s election as Iranian president was “the last chance for the world powers to wake up before returning to the nuclear agreement and to understand who they’re doing business with.”

“These guys are murderers, mass murderers: a regime of brutal hangmen must never be allowed to have weapons of mass destruction that will enable it to not kill thousands, but millions,” he said.

Israel has long stated that it opposes arch-enemy Iran’s nuclear program and said it would prevent Tehran from obtaining nuclear weapons. Iran insists its nuclear program is intended for peaceful purposes.

The European Union’s foreign policy chief, Josep Borrell, said Sunday he hoped the election of the new Iranian president would not be an obstacle to reaching a deal in Vienna.

“We are very close. We have been working for two months,” Borrell told reporters during a visit in the Lebanese capital of Beirut. “So I hope that the results of the elections is not going to be the last obstacle that will ruin the negotiation process.”

(AP)

The U.N. General Assembly unanimously elected Antonio Guterres to a second term as secretary-general on Friday, giving him another five years at the helm of the 193-member organization at a time a deeply divided world faces numerous conflicts, the growing impact of climate change, and a pandemic still circling the globe.

Ambassadors in the assembly chamber burst into applause as Assembly President Volkan Bozkir announced Guterres’ re-election by “acclamation,” without a vote. Just before the announcement, Estonia’s U.N. Ambassador Sven Jurgenson, the current Security Council president, read a resolution adopted by the 15-member council recommending Guterres for a second term.

Under the U.N. Charter, the General Assembly elects the secretary-general on the recommendation of the Security Council.

Guterres was the only candidate nominated by a U.N. member state, his home country Portugal where he previously served as prime minister, and the country’s current president was in the assembly chamber to watch the event.

Immediately after his re-election, Guterres took the oath of office and delivered an address urging U.N. member nations “to do everything we can to overcome current geostrategic divides and dysfunctional power relations.”

“There are too many asymmetrics and paradoxes,” he said. “They need to be addressed head on.”

Guterres expressed hope that “what we are living through today in terms of mistrust is, I hope, an aberration but it cannot become the norm.”

Traditionally, candidates for the U.N.’s top job have been nominated by a U.N. member state, but that is not a requirement in the U.N. Charter or in a resolution adopted by the General Assembly in 2015.

That measure made the previously largely secretive selection of the secretary-general more open and transparent, allowing member states for the first time to see basic information about all candidates, including their resumes, and to question them at open sessions.

Guterres, a former U.N. refugee chief, was elected by the assembly to succeed Ban Ki-moon after a hotly contested and transparent race in October 2016 that initially included 13 candidates — seven women and six men. Guterres took office on Jan. 1, 2017.

This year, seven individuals submitted applications to be secretary-general without backing from any government, including most recently former Ecuadorian President Rosalia Arteaga.

Source: AP

A top official from the Chinese county that hosted a fatal ultramarathon last month has been found dead, authorities said Friday, as 27 people face punishment over the incident.

In May, extreme weather at an ultramarathon in northwestern Gansu province killed 21 runners when freezing rain, high winds and hail hit competitors.

The deadly incident sparked calls for more regulation and raised questions over why organisers had apparently ignored the incoming weather.

On Friday, provincial authorities told a press conference that the Communist Party secretary of Jingtai county — which hosted the event — had been found dead.

Li Zuobi was confirmed to have died after falling from the building where he lived. Police received the incident report on Wednesday, and have since ruled out homicide.

27 people, including municipal government officials, face criminal charges or disciplinary actions over the deadly ultramarathon.

Among those punished include the party secretary and mayor of Baiyin city — which holds jurisdiction over Jingtai — as well as the magistrate of the county, the state-run Xinhua news agency reported.

Last month’s incident also led to a suspension of sports competitions that lacked national safety standards, including events such as mountain trail running and ultra-long distance running.

Source: AFP

U.S. President Joe Biden will bring a grave Brexit warning to his first meeting with British Prime Minister Boris Johnson: Prevent a row with the European Union from imperilling the delicate peace in Northern Ireland.

On his first trip abroad since taking office in January, Biden meets Johnson on Thursday in the English seaside resort of Carbis Bay ahead of a Friday-Sunday G7 summit, a NATO summit on Monday, a U.S.-EU summit on Tuesday and a meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Geneva the following day.

Biden will try to use the trip to burnish his multilateral credentials after the tumult of Donald Trump’s presidency, which left many U.S. allies in Europe and Asia bewildered and some alienated.

Biden, though, has an uncomfortable message for Johnson, one of the leaders of the 2016 Brexit campaign: Stop heated EU divorce negotiations from undermining a 1998 U.S.-brokered peace deal known as the Good Friday Agreement that ended three decades of bloodshed in Northern Ireland.

“President Biden has been crystal clear about his rock-solid belief in the Good Friday Agreement as the foundation for peaceful co-existence in Northern Ireland,” White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan told reporters aboard Air Force One.

“Any steps that imperil it or undermine it would not be welcomed by the United States,” said Sullivan, who declined to characterise Johnson’s actions as imperilling the peace.

Britain’s exit from the European Union strained the peace in Northern Ireland to breaking point because the 27-nation bloc wants to protect its markets, yet a border in the Irish Sea cuts off the British province from the rest of the United Kingdom. Northern Ireland shares a border with EU member Ireland.

Such is Biden’s concern over Northern Ireland that Yael Lempert, the top U.S. diplomat in Britain, issued London with a demarche – a formal diplomatic reprimand – for “inflaming” tensions, the Times newspaper reported.

Biden will also speak on Thursday about donating more COVID-19 vaccines to poor countries.

End of the ‘Troubles’

The 1998 peace deal largely brought an end to the “Troubles” – three decades of conflict between Irish Catholic nationalist militants and pro-British Protestant “loyalist” paramilitaries that killed 3,600 people.

Biden, who is proud of his Irish heritage, will make a statement of principle about the importance of that peace deal, Sullivan said.

“He’s not issuing threats or ultimatums, he’s going to simply convey his deep-seated belief that we need to stand behind and protect this protocol,” Sullivan said.

Although Britain formally left the EU in 2020, the two sides are still trading threats over the Brexit deal after London unilaterally delayed the implementation of the Northern Irish clauses of the deal.

The EU and Britain tried to solve the border riddle with the Northern Ireland Protocol of the Brexit agreement, which keeps the province in both the United Kingdom’s customs territory and the EU’s single market.

Pro-British unionists say the Brexit deal that Johnson signed contravenes the 1998 peace deal and London has said the protocol is unsustainable in its current form after supplies of everyday goods to Northern Ireland were disrupted.

Britain, home to a large Airbus facility, and the European Union are hoping to resolve a nearly 17-year old dispute with the United States over aircraft subsidies to Boeing and Airbus.

U.S., British and EU officials have expressed optimism that a settlement can be reached before July 11, when currently suspended tariffs will come back into force on all sides.

One source close to the negotiations said the discussions were progressing well but a deal was unlikely to be reached before the U.S.-EU summit next week.

Johnson, who wrote a biography of British wartime leader Winston Churchill, will agree with Biden an “Atlantic Charter”, modelled on the 1941 deal struck by Churchill and President Franklin D. Roosevelt.

The two leaders will agree to a task force to look at resuming UK-U.S. travel as soon as possible.

(REUTERS)

China has relaxed its family planning policy to allow couples to have a maximum of three children after a census showed its population is rapidly ageing, state media Xinhua reported Monday.

For almost 40 years, China enforced a controversial “one-child policy” — one of the strictest family planning regulations worldwide — which was lifted in 2016 due to widespread concerns over an ageing workforce and economic stagnation.

“To actively respond to the ageing of the population … a couple can have three children,” Xinhua said, citing a Monday meeting of China’s elite Politburo leadership committee hosted by President Xi Jinping.

Despite government efforts to encourage childbirths, China’s annual births have continued to plummet to a record low of 12 million in 2020, the National Bureau of Statistics said last month.

China’s fertility rate stands at 1.3 — below the level needed to maintain a stable population, the bureau revealed.

The once-in-a-decade 2020 census results published last month also showed that China’s population grew at its slowest rate since the 1960s, reaching 1.41 billion.

It comes alongside a sharp drop in the number of working-age people, once again raising fears of a looming demographic crisis.

China’s gender balance has also been skewed by decades of the one-child policy, and a traditional social preference for boys which prompted a generation of sex-selective abortions and abandoned baby girls.

(AFP)

Police in the Peel region near Toronto said on Saturday one person was killed and four were transported to hospitals in the Toronto area “in various conditions” after a shooting.

Police said in a statement on Twitter they had no information on suspects in the shooting, adding that the homicide bureau would take over the investigation. There were no further details.

Local reports said the shooting took place inside Chicken Land, a family-run take-out restaurant in a small strip mall.

(Source: Reuters)

New York prosecutors have convened a grand jury that is expected to decide whether to indict former president Donald Trump, suggesting they may have found evidence of a crime, US media reported Tuesday.

The development is the latest step towards the 74-year-old Trump, who left the White House in January, possibly becoming the first ever ex-US leader to face criminal charges.

The grand jury was set up recently and will sit three days a week for six months, reported The Washington Post, citing two unnamed people familiar with the case.

The panel is also hearing several matters unrelated to Trump’s case, the paper added.

ABC also reported the move.

The Washington Post said it suggests that Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance may have found evidence of a crime, if not by Trump then somebody close to him.

A spokesman for Vance refused to comment when contacted by AFP.

In the United States, prosecutors typically refer important cases to grand juries made up of citizens who examine the prosecution’s case in secret. They hear evidence and can request additional documents before deciding whether criminal charges should be brought.

Vance and New York state Attorney General Letitia James, both Democrats, are investigating Trump’s business dealings.

They are probing whether the Trump Organization committed tax evasion, insurance and bank fraud.

Trump denies wrongdoing and has called the investigations “a continuation of the greatest political witch hunt in the history of the United States.”

Vance’s probe initially focused on hush payments made to two women who allege they had affairs with Trump — but the investigation has since been expanded.

Investigators suspect the Trump Organization may have artificially inflated and reduced the value of assets, particularly several properties in New York state, to either get bank loans or reduce their taxes.

Last week, James said her office was investigating the Trump Organization in a “criminal capacity” and was working with Vance’s team.

Vance, who leaves his post at the end of December, acquired eight years of Trump’s tax returns in February after a years-long legal battle that went to the Supreme Court.

Source: AFP

US, UK, Egyptian and UN leaders on Thursday welcomed a ceasefire announced by Israel and Hamas after 11 days of bombing and rocket strikes that killed nearly 250 people.

“I believe we have a genuine opportunity to make progress and I’m committed to working towards it,” Biden said at the White House, highlighting Egypt’s role in brokering the truce.

He said he had spoken Thursday with both Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi.

Biden, who has come under criticism from many within his own Democratic party for not pushing US ally Israel more publicly to call a ceasefire, touted his administration’s “quiet, relentless diplomacy”.

Echoing a line taken by the White House throughout the 11-day conflict, Biden indicated that the US goal, involving “incredible efforts”, was above all to limit the duration of the bloodshed.

The aim was “avoiding the sort of prolonged conflict we’ve seen in previous years”, he said.

Biden referred to the casualties on both sides, and said, “Palestinians and Israelis equally deserve to live safely and securely and enjoy equal measures of freedom, prosperity and democracy.”

He also pledged US humanitarian aid, while emphasizing that this would be channeled through the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank, not Hamas so that the organisation could not “simply restock its military arsenal”.

Biden put particular weight on a pledge to back “Israel’s right to defend itself against indiscriminate rocket attacks from Hamas and other Gaza-based terrorist groups.”

In a rejection of some Democratic members of Congress who are pushing to stop an imminent US arms sale to Israel, Biden said he had assured Netanyahu of his “full support” in replenishing the Iron Dome anti-missile system used to shoot down Hamas’ projectiles.

Biden also had notable words of thanks for Sisi, whose authoritarian rule has complicated the long close US-Egyptian relationship.

“I extend my sincere gratitude to President al-Sisi and the senior Egyptian officials who have played such a critical role in this diplomacy,” Biden said.

Sisi reciprocated with a series of tweets thanking Biden for his role in making the Egyptian ceasefire initiative succeed.

Sisi said he and President Biden both saw the urgency of managing the conflict between all parties with diplomacy.

‘Unacceptable cycle of violence’

Britain on Thursday welcomed a ceasefire announced by Israel and Hamas and called on all sides to work to make it durable and “end the unacceptable cycle of violence” in the region.

“All sides must work to make the ceasefire durable and end the unacceptable cycle of violence and loss of civilian life,” UK Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab said on Twitter, adding that Britain supports “efforts to bring about peace”.

United Nations pleads for ‘real national reconciliation’

The ceasefire was also welcomed at the UN, with Secretary-General Antonio Guterres adding a warning.

“I stress that Israeli and Palestinian leaders have a responsibility beyond the restoration of calm to start a serious dialogue to address the root causes of the conflict,” Guterres said.

“Gaza is an integral part of the future Palestinian state and no effort should be spared to bring about real national reconciliation that ends the division.”

UN Middle East Peace Envoy Tor Wennesland wrote on Twitter: “I welcome the ceasefire between #Gaza & #Israel. I extend my deepest condolences to the victims of the violence & their loved ones. I commend #Egypt & #Qatar for the efforts carried out, in close contact w/ the @UN, to help restore calm. The work of building #Palestine can start.”

Israel, Hamas claim victory

Both Israel and Hamas, meanwhile, claimed significant gains from the fighting.

“This is the euphoria of victory,” said Khalil al-Hayya, the second most senior member of Hamas’s political bureau in the Gaza Strip, in a speech to thousands of people celebrating in Gaza City after the ceasefire came into place. He also promised to reconstruct homes destroyed by Israeli air strikes.

Al-Hayya claims Israel failed to destroy Hamas’ military infrastructure, and says the group’s fighters are still “striding proudly” in the underground tunnels.

He did not reveal the terms of the deal.

Separately, another senior Hamas member warned that the group remained ready to take up arms at a moment’s notice.

“It is true the battle ends today but Netanyahu and the whole world should know that our hands are on the trigger and we will continue to grow the capabilities of this resistance,” said Ezzat El-Reshiq, a member of the Hamas political bureau, in an interview with Reuters.

Israeli Defence Minister Benny Gantz said on Twitter that the Gaza offensive had yielded “unprecedented military gains”.

Speaking to his US counterpart Lloyd Austin, Gantz said Israel’s defence establishment would “continue to work closely and in full cooperation with the Pentagon and the US administration to stabilise the region”, Gantz’s office said.

Since the fighting began on May 10, health officials in Gaza said 232 Palestinians, including 65 children, had been killed and more than 1,900 wounded in aerial bombardments. Israel said it had killed at least 160 combatants in Gaza.

(FRANCE 24 with AFP, AP and REUTERS)

Secretary-General Antonio Guterres laid out his vision for a second term as U.N. chief on Friday, calling for a “surge in diplomacy for peace,” urging the world’s nations to avoid a new type of Cold War, and stressing that in the 21st century everything from the climate crisis to nuclear proliferation and the pushback on human rights is inter-linked.

Guterres is the only candidate in the race so far, and he won support during a three-hour question-and-answer session in the 193-member General Assembly from two major groups — the 120-member Nonaligned Movement of mainly developing nations and the 27-member European Union — as well as smaller groups and individual countries.

In his opening presentation, Guterres painted a grim picture of a world where “more and more people live within their own echo chambers … (and) are lured by misinformation, populism, extremism, xenophobia and racism.” He called it “a kind of post-enlightenment era that has nurtured irrational, even nihilistic belief systems, spreading fear, denying science and truth.” And he reiterated his warning about “the new geostrategic divide and dysfunctional power relations, making international co-operation infinitely more difficult at a time when we need it most.”

Guterres stressed his strong belief in nations working together to solve the world’s crises and conflicts but said multilateralism “depends a lot on the establishment of trust among member states, and on making functional relationship among the biggest powers.”

“If there is no trust among member states and if the relationship among the biggest powers remains dysfunctional, then there’s not much the multilateral system can do,” he said. “If those two things are properly addressed, then I think there is a chance for multilateralism to be more effective.”

While the General Assembly elects the secretary-general, it is on the recommendation of the 15-member Security Council where the five permanent members — the U.S., Russia, China, Britain and France — have veto power. So their support is crucial.

Before Guterres was elected, the assembly adopted a resolution in 2015 that made the previously largely secretive selection of the secretary-general more open and transparent. It allowed the world body’s member states for the first time to see basic information about all candidates, including their resumes, and to meet and question them at open sessions.

Traditionally, candidates have been nominated by a U.N. member state, but that is not a requirement in the U.N. Charter or the resolution.

Guterres, whose current 5-year term ends on Dec. 31, was nominated by Portugal, his home country. But this year has also seen seven individuals submit applications to be secretary-general without backing from any government including most recently former Ecuadorean president Rosalia Arteaga.

General Assembly President Volkan Bozkir told a news conference on Tuesday “the rule” is that an applicant can only become a candidate when a letter signed jointly by the presidents of the assembly and the Security Council is sent to all member states.

“It looks like the Security Council has the opinion that, traditionally, only applicants supported by a country can become a candidate,” he said, so the only joint letter has been sent on behalf of Guterres. An email request to China, the current council president, seeking comment was not answered.

Arteaga, whose candidacy has been pushed by the global political movement Forward, indicated earlier this week that she would have support from the government of Ecuador.

Source: The Associated Press