Foreign News
Risk of nuclear war rising amid global conflicts, Nobel peace laureate says
Conflicts raging around the world, including in Gaza, are heightening the possibility of a nuclear war, the winner of this year’s Nobel Peace Prize warned, renewing calls for the abolition of nuclear weapons.
Nihon Hidankyo the grassroots group of Japanese atomic bomb survivors, won the prize on Friday for its “efforts to achieve a world free of nuclear weapons”.
On Saturday, Shigemitsu Tanaka, a survivor of the 1945 bombing of Nagasaki by the United States and co-leader of the group, said the “international situation is getting progressively worse, and now wars are being waged as countries threaten the use of nuclear weapons”.
“I fear that we as humankind are on the path to self-destruction. The only way to stop that is to abolish nuclear,” the resident of Nagasaki told reporters.
Nagasaki was the second Japanese city that was hit by a US nuclear bomb on August 9, 1945, killing at least 74,000 people. Three days earlier, the US bombing of Hiroshima had killed 140,000 people.
Hiroshima residents said on Saturday they hoped the world never forgets the bombings of 1945 – now more than ever.
Susumu Ogawa, 84, was five when the bomb all but obliterated Hiroshima 79 years ago, and many of his family members were among the tens of thousands killed.
“My mother, my aunt, my grandfather, and my grandmother all died,” Ogawa told the AFP news agency.
“All nuclear weapons in the world have to be abandoned,” Ogawa said. “We know the horror of nuclear weapons, because we know what happened in Hiroshima.”
Russian President Vladimir Putin signalled in September that Moscow would consider responding with nuclear weapons if the US and its allies allow Ukraine to strike deep inside Russia with long-range Western missiles.
“Why do people fight each other?… Hurting each other won’t bring anything good,” Ogawa said.
On Saturday, Japanese demonstrators rallied in support of Palestinians in Gaza, at the preserved Atomic Bomb Dome in the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park.
Toshiyuki Mimaki, the co-chief of the group and a survivor of the Hiroshima bombing, said on Friday that the situation for children in Gaza is similar to that of Japan at the end of World War II.
“In Gaza, bleeding children are being held [by their parents]. It’s like in Japan 80 years ago,” Mimaki told a news conference in Tokyo.
Nihon Hidankyo was formed in 1956, tasked with telling the stories of hibakusha as the survivors are known, and pressing for a world without nuclear weapons.
With the average age among the roughly 105,000 hibakusha still alive now 85, it is vital that young people continue to be taught about what happened, residents said.
Visiting the Hiroshima memorial, Kiyoharu Bajo, 69, said he hoped the Nobel prize would help “further spread the experiences of atomic bomb survivors around the world” and persuade others to visit.
“I was born 10 years after the atom bomb was dropped, so there were many atom bomb survivors around me. I felt the incident as something familiar to me,” he said.
“But for the future, it will be an issue.”
(Aljazeera)
US authorities have found debris from a medical transport aircraft that went missing with six people on board.
The Federal Aviation Administration told the BBC it had lost contact with the Gulfstream G-100 plane just after 01:00 local time (05:00 GMT) on Saturday, while it was travelling from Bermuda to Boston, Massachusetts.
The search for survivors continues off the coast of Nantucket, a Massachusetts island, the US Coast Guard said.
Authorities have notified the next of kin of those on the flight, four Canadian nationals and two Bermudian nationals.
“Search crews located a debris field confirmed to be from the aircraft off the coast of Nantucket,” the US Coast Guard said in an update on Saturday night. It added that ships, helicopters and planes were involved in searches that would through continue the night.
The plane departed from Bermuda’s L.F. Wade International Airport at 23:40 local time, according to flight data from FlightAware, and was due to land at Boston’s Logan International at 01:30 EDT (05:30 GMT).
According to the tail number released by the Coast Guard, the plane belonged to Latitude Air Ambulances, a company that provides international medical flights for patients returning home.
Among those on board were two pilots and two medical staff, both Canadian, Clarence Togeretz, director of flight operations at Latitude, told CBC News.
The crew flew to Bermuda to collect a patient and their relative, who are not Canadian, Togeretz said.
FlightAware’s tracker shows the aircraft significantly dropped in altitude before its communications went dark, plummeting from around 7,300m (24,000ft) to 3,300m (11,000ft).
Radio transmissions shows trouble with communications between the air traffic controller and the pilot, the Boston Globe reported based on transmissions provided by LiveATC.net.
“You’re coming in blind? Is that what you said?,” the air traffic controller asked. “Are you declaring an emergency, or no?”
The pilot’s response was inaudible.
“You’re coming in a little weak so I didn’t hear what your response was, if you were declaring an emergency or not,” the air traffic controller said, according to the Globe.
The air traffic controller later confirmed the pilot had declared an emergency.
An area fire dispatcher asked emergency crews just after 01:00 EDT to prepare to meet a plane with an “electrical issue”.
The dispatcher later said “the aircraft has lost radio and radar”.
The Coast Guard said it would provide an update on Sunday morning local time.
[BBC]
A car has crashed into a crowd of rugby league supporters in the eastern Australian city of Newcastle, injuring 10 people, including three children.
New South Wales police said on Saturday that two of the injured – a five-year-old girl and a 67-year-old man – were in a critical condition and the other eight were in stable condition in hospital.
Police said they had arrested the 18-year-old man driving the vehicle and were investigating what happened. They said the crash was not believed to be related to “terrorism”.
The crowd had gathered to farewell the local rugby league side, the Newcastle Knights, ahead of their grand final against the Sydney Roosters on Sunday.
Newcastle Lord Mayor Gavin Morris said the driver, a rugby league fan, had lost control of his vehicle and had been taken into custody.
“He was revving the car, he was excited, he was a supporter, he was there for the joy of the moment,” Morris told the national broadcaster ABC.
“Somehow he lost control of the car … and he’s gone into the crowd,” he added.
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said: “My thoughts are with everyone injured or involved in the horrible incident this morning in Newcastle.”
“Rugby league brings people together, and this should have been a weekend of excitement and pride for Newcastle fans,” he wrote in a social media post.
[Aljazeera]
Polls have opened in Latvia for an election taking place against the backdrop of perceived security threats from Russia and a nationwide cost-of-living squeeze.
Saturday’s vote is the first electoral test for Prime Minister Andris Kulbergs after coming to power in May this year when his predecessor resigned due to a backlash from stray drone incursions from Ukraine.
Kulbergs, whose right-wing United List party is currently polling at about 20 percent, is expected to hold onto his position, but the decline of two allies in his current coalition means he is set for a complicated negotiation over the makeup of any future government.
Polls opened at 05:00 GMT and will close at 17:00 GMT. The results are not expected to change Latvia’s pro-European and pro-Ukrainian course.
About 1.5 million people are eligible to vote in the country’s 11th parliamentary election since independence from the Soviet Union in 1991.
Latvian politics are highly fragmented, with parties rarely seeing above 20 percent vote share and coalitions being the norm.
This year, 14 electoral lists are contesting the election, but polls indicate only seven are likely to enter parliament, with the rest expected to fail to meet the minimum 5 percent vote threshold.
Rising living costs, low wages, strains on the healthcare system and long-term population decline have all featured prominently in campaign debates.
Most parties in Latvia are pro-Ukraine; however, the populist Sovereign Power party – which says it wants Ukraine to win but argues money spent supporting Kyiv would be better spent at home – looks likely to become the country’s second-biggest party, with more than 9 percent of the vote. Most other parties have ruled out forming a coalition with Sovereign Power.
Latvia First, a pro-Ukraine and populist nationalist party currently polling at about 9 percent, could be a potential coalition partner for PM Kulbergs.
The Progressives, a pro-European social democratic party, are polling at 6 percent.
Ethnic Russians make up roughly one in four Latvian citizens, but their vote, which has traditionally been cast along identity-based lines, looks set to be made according to economic and social issues.
Latvia is the poorest of the Baltic states, and it has sharply increased its defence spending since Russia invaded Ukraine, now allocating nearly 5 percent of its gross domestic product (GDP) to defence.
[Aljazeera]
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