Air New Zealand scraps 2030 carbon emissions target
Flag carrier says it is unable to achieve target due to lack of newer fuel-efficient aircraft and alternative jet fuels.
Read MoreWhere Skepticism Meets Insight
Flag carrier says it is unable to achieve target due to lack of newer fuel-efficient aircraft and alternative jet fuels.
Read MoreAs the war enters its 886th day, these are the main developments.
Read MoreUS officials on Monday accused Venezuela of election manipulation and suggested more sanctions could be imposed on the country after President Nicolas Maduro secured a third six-year presidential term.
Venezuela’s election authority said Maduro won 51% of the vote while the leading opposition candidate, Edmundo Gonzalez, received 44%. The opposition is disputing the results, claiming that Gonzalez really won by a wide margin.
Two US officials speaking to reporters called on the election authority to release a detailed breakdown of the vote.
“I think what we would like to see happen next is have the National Electoral Council publish the detailed precinct-level results to see if they do in fact have the receipts that can both verify and justify the electoral results that they announced last night,” one of the officials said.
The officials did not announce any new sanctions but said more could come. “We are faced with potentially a new scenario,” one official said. “We are going to take that into account as we map forward where we may head with respect to sanctions toward Venezuela.”
The US rejected the results of Venezuela’s 2018 election and recognized opposition figure Juan Guaido as the “interim president” in 2019 despite Maduro being in power in Caracas. The Trump administration launched a regime change effort against Maduro that involved a failed coup and a ratcheting up of sanctions to a level that amounted to an economic embargo on Venezuela.
John Bolton, Trump’s former national security advisor, recently acknowledged that the administration knew its sanctions campaign would cause suffering in Venezuela and contribute to migration out of the country.
“There was no doubt the sanctions, along with the general economic deterioration before we imposed them, was driving a lot of people out of the country,” Bolton said. “That, to me, was a way to put pressure on the country.”
The Biden administration recently started engaging with the Maduro government and eased some sanctions on Venezuela’s oil industry, but some have already been re-imposed.
In the wake of Sunday’s elections, some members of Congress are calling for regime change in Venezuela and a repeat of the policies that failed to unseat Maduro. Sen. Rick Scott (R-FL) sent a letter to President Biden urging him to recognize Gonzalez as the president-elect.
Read MoreTEHRAN, Iran: Iran’s new President Masoud Pezeshkian on Monday warned Israel against attacking Lebanon as tensions soar over a deadly rocket strike in the Israeli-annexed Golan Heights blamed on Tehran-backed Hezbollah.
“The Zionist regime (Israel) will make a great mistake with heavy consequences if it attacks Lebanon,” Pezeshkian said during a call with French President Emmanuel Macron, according to the Iranian president’s website.
TEHRAN: Iran said on Monday it has resumed diplomatic ties with The Gambia, according to Tehran’s foreign ministry, almost 14 years after they were severed by Banjul.
“Following the meeting of the high-ranking officials of the Islamic Republic of Iran and the Republic of The Gambia…both sides decided to announce the resumption of diplomatic relations on July 29, 2024 in order to secure the interests of the two countries,” the ministry said in a statement.
The statement came after Iran’s acting foreign minister Ali Bagheri met his Gambian counterpart Mamadou Tangara.
Meta’s AI Studio will let users build virtual characters, with a few limitations.
Read MoreTUNIS: Tunisia’s first presidential hopeful, an unknown 59-year-old laborer, submitted his official candidacy on Monday, kicking off the race for a presidential election set to take place on October 6.
Fethi Krimi submitted his application at the ISIE electoral authority in the capital Tunis, according to local reports and photos posted on social media.
On Monday, Israeli military police detained Israeli soldiers who were suspected of raping a Palestinian prisoner at the notorious Sde Teiman prison in southern Israel.
Israeli media reported that the Palestinian prisoner was transferred from Sde Teiman to a hospital with an injury to his anus that was so severe he could not walk.
When the Israeli military police went to Sde Teiman to detain soldiers suspected of forcibly sodomizing the Palestinian man, they were met with resistance. A security source told Haaretz that Israeli soldiers at the facility refused to leave and barricaded themselves in. They also reportedly used pepper spray on the military police.
The police ended up detaining nine out of 10 of the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) soldiers suspected of abusing the Palestinian detainee. The arrest of the suspected rapists sparked protests from far-right Israeli activists.
Members of the Israeli Knesset joined protesters as they stormed Sede Teiman, including Zvi Sukkot of the Religious Zionism party. At least one member of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s coalition was spotted among the protesters, Heritage Minister Amichai Eliyahu, a member of the Jewish Power party. Later in the day, protesters tried to storm Beit Lid, the base where the Israeli soldiers are being held.
Israeli Minister of National Security Itamar Ben Gvir, leader of the Jewish Power party, praised the detained Israeli soldiers, calling them the “best heroes” and denouncing their arrest as “shameful.”
According to The Telegraph, Ben Gvir said the Israeli security establishment should support the soldiers and “learn from the prison service: light treatment of terrorists is over. Soldiers need to have our full support.”
Israeli whistleblowers have detailed widespread abuse and torture at the Sde Teiman prison, which holds Palestinians detained from Gaza. The New York Times reported last month that Palestinians who made it out of the facility said they were subject to sexual torture.
Younis al-Hamlawi, a senior nurse who was detained by Israeli forces in Gaza after he left Al-Shifa Hospital over allegations that he was tied to Hamas, told the Times that Israeli soldiers penetrated his rectum with a metal stick, causing him to bleed and leaving him in “unbearable pain.”
The Times report said a leaked report from the UN “cited a 41-year-old detainee who said that interrogators ‘made me sit on something like a hot metal stick and it felt like fire,’ and also said that another detainee ‘died after they put the electric stick up’ his anus.”
Read MoreIsraeli military carries out more attacks across the strip, killing at least 33 Palestinians amid mass displacements.
Read MoreDavid Popovici stormed to Olympic gold in the men’s 200m freestyle, while Mollie O’Callaghan won women’s swimming event.
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