https://arab.news/6wu24
CASTEL GANDOLFO, Italy: Pope Leo XIV slammed the “barbarity” of the war in Gaza on Sunday and urged against the “indiscriminate use of force,” just days after a deadly strike by Israel’s military on a Catholic church.
“I once again ask for an immediate end to the barbarity of the war and for a peaceful resolution to the conflict,” Leo said at the end of the Angelus prayer, after three people were killed on Thursday at the territory’s only Catholic church.
MADRID: The Spanish government on Tuesday introduced a bill to automatically declassify all secret government files older than 45 years, including documents from Francisco Franco’s dictatorship and the transition to democracy.
If approved by parliament, the proposed law could shed light on some of Spain’s darkest chapters, including Franco’s ties to Adolf Hitler, the locations of mass graves where victims of his 1939-75 rule were buried, and details of the 1966 Palomares nuclear accident caused by the mid-air collision of two US Air Force planes over a fishing village in southern Spain.
“With this law we will overcome an obstacle in our legislation to put us in line with European standards,” Justice Minister Felix Bolanos told reporters.
“Citizens have the right to know. Administrations have the obligation to provide documentation that is important for history,” he added.
The bill seeks to replace the existing law governing official secrets, enacted during Franco’s rule, which lacks provisions for automatic declassification based on the amount of time that has passed.
The law would automatically declassify all documents older than 45 years unless they constituted a justified threat to national security, Bolanos said.
For documents created after that period, the draft law outlines a tiered system: “highly classified” documents would remain secret for up to 60 years; “classified” files for up to 45 years; “confidential” material for up to nine years; and “restricted” documents for up to five years.
The government should not restrict access to documents related to the Catholic Church or former King Juan Carlos, said the Association for the Recovery of Historical Memory (ARHM), a volunteer group dedicated to identifying victims of political violence during Spain’s Civil War and Franco’s dictatorship.
It also warned that some documents may have already been removed or redacted, and it called for the immediate digitization of records to ensure public access.
Bolanos said that declassifying Franco-era files would be a gradual process given their volumes.
The draft law must now pass through parliament, where Socialist Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez’s minority government struggles to garner sufficient votes as it weighs concessions to disparate political factions.
ABIDJIAN: Ivory Coast has sentenced a nurse to three years in jail for saying Africa would have been saved if President Alassane Ouattara had not been born.
The sentence comes months before the west African country’s presidential election at the end of October, with the opposition accusing Ouattara’s government of attempting to stifle dissent in the run-up.
Six youth leaders from the main opposition Democratic Party of Ivory Coast (PDCI) have been arrested since June over a social media post calling for mobilization against the government.
PDCI party leader Tidjane Thiam is among several prominent opposition figures to have been excluded from the October 25 vote.
Tokpa Flan Japhet, a 43-year-old nurse, “was tried and sentenced on July 18 to 36 months in prison” and fined $8,500 “despite his request for a pardon,” Abidjan’s public prosecutor Oumar Braman Kone said in a statement on Monday.
Japhet had in a Facebook post said if Ouattara’s mother had “had an abortion” she “would have saved Africa.”
“Neither repentance... nor a request for forgiveness has any effect on the reality of the offenses,” Kone said.
Another man, Moussa Diakate, was arrested after posting a video in which he “made death threats against supporters of a political group,” the prosecutor said.
Ivory Coast, a former beacon of stability in troubled west Africa, has repeatedly experienced violence during elections after the country’s first coup in 1999.
In late 2010 and early 2011, poll-related violence claimed some 3,000 lives after then-president Laurent Gbagbo refused to recognize Ouattara’s election victory.
Ouattara, 83, has not confirmed whether he will run for a fourth term, although he has been
tapped by his party to do so.
MANILA: Torrential rains brought the Philippine capital Manila to a standstill on Tuesday, as heavy flooding displaced tens of thousands of people across the country.
Monsoon downpours that began last week and intensified due to Typhoon Wipha have killed at least six people, displaced over 82,000, and affected more than 1.2 million others.
Government offices and schools are suspended until at least Wednesday, as the heavy rain submerged around 500 areas in the Philippine capital region alone.
“The flooding varies in depth — from gutter-level to much deeper waters,” Don Artes, chairman of Metro Manila Development Authority, said at a briefing on Tuesday.
The severe floods in Manila were partly triggered by the city’s old drainage system.
“Our drainage system is also outdated — more than 50 years old — and too small for today’s rainfall volume,” Artes said.
Around 17,000 people remain in evacuation centers, as President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. ordered state agencies to focus on disaster relief operations.
“The OCD (Office of Civil Defense) is now on red alert … The most heavily affected areas are Metro Manila, as well as the provinces of Bulacan, Pampanga, Cavite, Batangas, and Rizal,” OCD Assistant Secretary Raffy Alejandro IV said.
Philippine authorities are bracing for more heavy rain, with the southwest monsoon expected to “bring moderate to intense rains of up to 200mm within the next few days,” the Interior Ministry said in a statement, adding that preemptive evacuation has started in some areas.
The national weather bureau, PAGASA, said it expects “widespread incidents of severe flooding” with landslides until at least Wednesday in the Manila capital region, as well as the provinces of Zambales, Bataan, Cavite and Batangas.
The Philippines is one of the most vulnerable countries to extreme weather events, with an average of 20 tropical storms passing through the country every year.
“Flooding, especially during the southwest monsoon season, is getting frustrating and tiring,” Ryan Reyes Soriano, a 47-year-old resident of Malabon city, told Arab News.
“Formerly floods during the 80s up to the 90s were a cause for concern if they go up waist level. Now floods often go as high as a story if storms are bad, and that is a difference of 10 to 15 feet (3 to 4.5 meters).”
Malabon, a coastal city located north of Manila, was one of the most severely affected areas in the capital region. Almost all of its 21 districts were submerged in floods, with some regions still inundated as of Tuesday afternoon.
“In some cases it’s deep enough for a person to drown. Lucky if it’s only knee-deep,” Soriano said. “I went outside earlier, the water is still above my waist.”
Dhaka: When Fatema Akter went to school in the morning, she was supposed to be back home in the early afternoon. She never returned, along with at least 28 other children who were killed when a Bangladeshi military jet crashed into their classroom in Dhaka.
Bangladesh observed a day of national mourning on Tuesday, a day after the Air Force F-7 BGI aircraft went down during class hours at Milestone School and College in the capital’s Diabari area.
The jet struck the building, killing many of the children on the spot and causing fatal burn injuries to others, health authorities said, as at least 165 victims remained hospitalized.
“My niece, Fatema Akter, was a student of class three of that school. The school is actually five minutes walking from our home,” Leon Mir, a TV reporter who witnessed the crash that killed his sister’s eldest daughter, told Arab News.
“I saw a huge smoke and the roads were blocked after the plane crashed on the school. Immediately, I rushed to the school ... somehow, I managed to enter. Seeing the situation on the ground, I was lost.”
As he reached the site, he could not see Akter and started to search for her at emergency units of local hospitals. He eventually found her at the Combined Military Hospital in another part of the city.
“She died on the spot, and her body was transported to the CMH by helicopter. I first found her school ID card and later on recognized her face,” Mir said.
Bangladeshi authorities have mobilized burn specialists and pediatricians from across the country to treat patients injured in the Dhaka disaster.
Sayedur Rahman, special assistant to the government on health, told reporters that 30 patients admitted to the National Institute of Burn and Plastic Surgery in Dhaka remain in serious condition, and at least 10 are critical. Most are students.
Rahman said that among the 31 people killed in the crash were the pilot and two teachers. One of them, Maherin Chowdhury, sustained 100 percent burns while rescuing at least 20 students from the burning primary school building.
As bereaved families began to bury their children, at least five of them were from the families of Mir’s neighbors.
“This morning, another one died at the hospital,” he said.
“Since the accident, I haven’t been able to look at my sister’s face ... it’s unimaginable — you send your child to school in the morning and receive their burnt body in the afternoon.”
WASHINGTON: The United States announced Tuesday it will again pull out of the UN’s educational, scientific and cultural agency because it believes that its involvement is not in the country’s national interest, and that the agency promotes anti-Israel speech.
This decision comes only two years after the United States rejoined UNESCO after leaving in 2018, during US President Donald Trump’s first administration.
State Department spokesperson Tammy Bruce said the withdrawal was linked to UNESCO’s perceived agenda to “advance divisive social and cultural causes.”
She added in a statement that UNESCO’s decision “to admit the ‘State of Palestine’ as a Member State is highly problematic, contrary to US policy, and contributed to the proliferation of anti-Israel rhetoric within the organization.”
The decision, first reported by the New York Post, will take effect at the end of December 2026.
This will be the third time that the United States has left UNESCO, which is based in Paris, and the second time during a Trump administration. It last rejoined the agency in 2023, under the Biden administration.
UNESCO’s Director General Audrey Azoulay said she “deeply” regrets the US decision but insisted that it was expected, and that the agency “has prepared for it.” She also denied accusations of anti-Israel bias.
“These claims ... contradict the reality of UNESCO’s efforts, particularly in the field of Holocaust education and the fight against antisemitism,” she said.
The Trump administration in 2017 announced that the US would withdraw from UNESCO, citing anti-Israel bias. That decision took effect a year later. The US and Israel stopped financing UNESCO after it voted to include Palestine as a member state in 2011.
“The reasons put forward by the United States of America are the same as seven years ago, even though the situation has changed profoundly, political tensions have receded, and UNESCO today constitutes a rare forum for consensus on concrete and action-oriented multilateralism,” Azoulay added.
The decision came as no surprise to UNESCO officials, who had anticipated such a move following the specific review ordered by the Trump administration earlier this year. They also expected that Trump would pull out again since the return of the US in 2023 had been promoted by a political rival, former President Joe Biden.
The USwithdrawal is likely to affect UNESCO because the US provides a notable share of the agency’s budget. But the organization should be able to cope. UNESCO has diversified its funding sources in recent years and the US contribution has decreased, representing only 8 percent of the agency’s total budget.
Azoulay pledged that UNESCO will carry out its missions despite “inevitably reduced resources.” The agency is not considering any staff layoffs at this stage.
“UNESCO’s purpose is to welcome all the nations of the world, and the United States of America is and always will be welcome,” she said. “We will continue to work hand in hand with all our American partners in the private sector, academia and non-profit organizations, and will pursue our political dialogue with the US administration and Congress.”
The United States previously pulled out of UNESCO under the Reagan administration in 1984 because it viewed the agency as mismanaged, corrupt and used to advance the interests of the Soviet Union. It rejoined in 2003 during George W. Bush’s presidency.
