Rescuers in Turkey and Syria braved frigid weather, aftershocks and collapsing buildings Tuesday, as they dug for survivors buried by an earthquake that killed more than 5,000 people.

Disaster agencies said several thousand buildings were flattened in cities across a vast border region — pouring misery on an area already plagued by war, insurgency, refugee crises and a recent cholera outbreak.

Through the night, survivors used their bare hands to pick over the twisted ruins of multi-storey apartment blocks — trying to save family, friends and anyone else sleeping inside when the first massive 7.8-magnitude quake struck early Monday.

“Where is my mum?” asked a distraught seven-year-old girl who was pulled — her face, hair and pyjamas covered in dust — from a collapsed building in Hatay, on the Turkish side of the border.

The sense of disbelief was widespread, as residents struggled to comprehend the scale of the disaster.

Disaster agencies said several thousand buildings were flattened across a vast Turkey-Syria border region

Some of the heaviest devastation occurred near the quake’s epicentre between Kahramanmaras and Gaziantep, a city of two million where entire blocks now lie in ruins under gathering snow.

As residents tried to clear a mountain of masonry, plasterboard and furniture that had been a multi-story building, another collapsed nearby — sending crowds screaming and clamouring for safety.

With aftershocks rattling the area, many terrified and exhausted survivors spent the night outdoors, too afraid to go home.

Source: AFP

At least 50 people have been killed across Syria as buildings collapsed after a 7.8-magnitude earthquake that had its epicentre in southeastern Turkey, state media and a local hospital said.

Forty-two people were killed in government-controlled parts of Syria, state media said, while a local hospital told AFP that eight others were killed in northern areas controlled by pro-Turkish factions.

“Forty-two deaths and 200 injuries have been reported in Aleppo, Hama and Latakia as a result of the earthquake in a preliminary toll,” state news agency SANA said quoting a health ministry official.

Rescuers have been rushing to search for survivors under the rubble of collapsed buildings since the earthquake hit Syria at dawn.

AFP correspondents in northern Syria said terrified residents ran out of their homes after the ground shook.

SANA had reported earlier that the earthquake was felt from the western coast of Latakia to Damascus.

“This earthquake is the strongest since the National Earthquake Centre was founded in 1995,” Raed Ahmed, who heads the centre, told SANA.

In northern Syrian areas controlled by pro-Turkish factions, at least eight people were killed “in the regions of Azaz and al-Bab,” a source at a local hospital told AFP, adding that the number is likely to rise as search and rescue operations are ongoing.

In the neighbouring rebel-held Idlib region bordering Turkey, civil defence said there were “dozens of victims and hundreds of people injured and stuck under the rubble”.

“Our teams are in a state of emergency to rescue survivors,” the White Helmets rescue group said on Twitter.

The 7.8-magnitude earthquake hit near Gaziantep in southeastern Turkey on Monday at 04:17 am local time (0117 GMT) at a depth of about 17.9 kilometres (11 miles), the US Geological Survey said.

The tremors were felt in Lebanon, Syria and Cyprus, according to AFP correspondents.

Source: AFP

China’s new Foreign Minister Qin Gang wrapped up his first international tour to Africa this week, during which he visited five diverse countries — Ethiopia, Gabon, Benin, Angola and Egypt — and stressed that China does not see the continent as an arena for a power struggle between the West and Beijing.

“Africa should be a big stage for the international cooperation, not an arena for major-force rivalry,” Qin, who was previously ambassador to the United States, said at a press conference on his first stop, in Addis Ababa.

“The China-United States relationship should not be about a competitive one or a zero-sum game that enlarges one’s own gain at the expense of the other,” he said. “Otherwise, it will only hurt both sides and even the world.”

For more than three decades it’s been a tradition that the top Chinese diplomat’s first foreign trip is to Africa. President Xi Jinping, who’s entering his second decade in power, has invested heavily in the continent through his Belt and Road infrastructure initiative, which has expanded since its initial inception and includes Chinese investments in projects that build land and sea trade routes to continents around the world.

Some analysts say the U.S. is now playing catch-up with China in Africa, a resource-rich region with a growing population. In December, U.S. President Joe Biden hosted a summit of African leaders in Washington, and the past year has seen a flurry of visits to the continent by top U.S. officials.

“I think America has politically prioritized Africa at a later stage in the contemporary game than what China has. … Is America late to the game? It’s certainly later than China,” said Lauren Johnston, a China-Africa researcher at the South African Institute of International Affairs.

Ethiopia

In Addis Ababa, the seat of the African Union, Qin opened the new Chinese-built $80 million African Centers for Disease Control — part of China’s “health silk road” — to great fanfare.

It was originally envisioned as a collaboration between the U.S., China and Africa. But relations between Washington and Beijing soured under the Trump administration, with the U.S. voicing concerns about the risk of China spying and stealing genomic data. Beijing called the allegations “ridiculous.”

The Trump administration also pulled the U.S. out of the World Health Organization. The three-country partnership for the African CDC collapsed and the agreement was recrafted as one between China and the African Union.

Paul Nantulya, research associate at the Africa Center for Strategic Studies, told VOA the inauguration of the building was “a very important message that China was sending about China’s commitment to infectious-disease control on the continent — so a big diplomatic win there.”

Ethiopia was also an important stop for the ambassador, Nantulya noted, because the two-year war in Tigray has been detrimental to Chinese business interests and hundreds of Chinese workers had to be evacuated. Beijing had even tried its hand at a peacemaker role, though it was the African Union that eventually secured a cease-fire late last year. During his trip, Qin pledged support for reconstruction efforts now underway in the region.

Ethiopia is highly indebted to China, owing $13.7 billion, and it was reported during the visit that Qin announced a partial forgiveness of the debt. The amount of forgiven debt was undisclosed.

“There was no publication of what was agreed in terms of debt relief. There was just talk of debt relief, and China has a tradition of having only offered debt relief for non-interest-paying loans, which are very small,” Johnston said. “If it’s something much more than just interest-free loans, then it could be much bigger and important.”

The West has frequently accused China of practicing “debt trap diplomacy” by trying to gain leverage over indebted developing countries. Qin rejected that in Addis Ababa, asserting that “China has always been committed to helping Africa ease its debt burden.”

He said China actively participated in the Group of 20 Debt Service Suspension Initiative, signed agreements or reached agreements with 19 African countries on debt relief and suspended the most debt service payments among G-20 members.

Increasing engagement

Qin’s visit to Gabon and Benin surprised some China watchers, but Nantulya said it was part of China’s increasing engagement with Francophone West Africa.

He noted that China is currently building — as it did for the African Union in Addis Ababa — the new Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) headquarters.

In Benin, Qin said, “My proposal is that we work together to promote synergy between Benin’s strategic development plan and the Belt and Road Initiative … in order to identify more fields of action and growth rates for our cooperation. I am thinking for example of infrastructure, agriculture, human resources training, manufacturing, and peace and security.”

In Luanda, Qin marked the 40th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic relations between China and Angola.

“Angola is a critically important security partner of China, but at the same time also highly indebted. About 40% of Angola’s debt is owed to China, so the source of discussions that Ambassador Qin must have had in Ethiopia, he must have had the same discussions with the Angolan government,” surmised Nantulya.

Egypt is strategically important to China because of the Suez Canal and its numerous investments there, including in the new administrative capital being built outside Cairo. Besides meeting with Egyptian government officials, Qin held meetings with the Arab League.

At a press conference afterward, he addressed the Israel-Palestinian conflict, saying Israel should “stop all incitements and provocations, and should refrain from any unilateral action that may lead to the deterioration of the situation.”

Johnston said the hard tone of Qin’s comments was somewhat surprising and may signal that he’ll be a different kind of foreign minister than his predecessors.

“When he was ambassador to the U.S., he was known for being somewhat strident in some of his statements,” said Johnston. “Maybe’s he’s come away from the U.S. with his own perspective from engaging in those policy circles … maybe he has some quite different angles and views on global diplomacy based even on that.”

Source: VOA

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