Day: May 1, 2024

Lise Christoffersen (Norway, SOC) and Ian Liddell-Grainger (United Kingdom, EC/DA), Council of Europe Parliamentary Assembly (PACE) rapporteurs for the monitoring of Azerbaijan, and Hannah Bardell (United Kingdom, NR), PACE rapporteur on “Threats to life and safety of journalists and human rights defenders in Azerbaijan”, have expressed deep concern over the…

Kazakh President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev said that he welcomes the agreement of Azerbaijan and Armenia to hold negotiations at the level of foreign ministers in Almaty

Trump threatened with jail time in hush-money trial  BBC.com

Binoculars in hand, reporters go Trump-spotting at New York trial  NBC News

Trump Struggles to Cite a Source for His Exaggerated Crime Claim  The Daily Beast

Beijing Braces for a Rematch of Trump vs. China  The Wall Street Journal

Trump fined $9000 over gag order violations as judge warns of jail time  The Guardian US

SYDNEY — The leaders of Australia’s state, territory and federal governments met Wednesday to combat gender-based abuse.  

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has described violence against women in Australia as an “epidemic,” and campaigners say gender-based violence in Australia must be declared a national emergency.  

The Canberra government has said statistically, a woman has been killed in Australia every four days this year. 

 

Officials at the Wendesday’s meeting in Canberra said they want to find immediate, effective and practical ways to address family violence and the abuse of women.

Various measures have been agreed, including a five-year $650 million plan to help vulnerable women who have been unable to leave a violent relationship because of a lack of money.

The federal government says it will look at ways to reduce people’s exposure to “violent pornography” and measures to combat male extremist views as well as violent and misogynistic content.  

Authorities are proposing serious penalties for sharing sexually explicit material using technology like artificial intelligence. Legislation will also be introduced in early August to outlaw the release of private information online with an intent to cause harm – an abusive practice also known as doxxing.

Albanese told reporters in Canberra Wednesday that all jurisdictions were working together.

“This is indeed a national crisis, and it is a national challenge, and we are facing this with a spirit of national unity,” he said. “Today is about who we are as a nation and as a society. We recognize that governments need to act but we also recognize that this is an issue for the whole of society.”

Thousands of people attended rallies in major towns and cities across Australia over the weekend. The protests followed a mass stabbing earlier this month in Sydney in which six people, including five women, were murdered at a shopping center.

Demonstrators demanded not only tougher laws to protect women, but also a cultural change in men’s treatment of women and attitudes toward them.

Rosalind Dixon, a law professor at the University of New South Wales, told the Australian Broadcasting Corp. that remanding suspected abusers in custody pending court hearings and electronic monitoring for those who are released would be positive steps.

“There are global models and precedents; France, Spain, (the) United States – they’ve all experimented in this area,” she said. “There’s a lot to learn. I think we should be looking first and foremost at how we can limit bail and add tracking in addition fairness and civil rights protections around those measures as a lesson from overseas.”

Concern over gender violence in Australia isn’t new.  

In 2021, there were nationwide rallies against sexual misconduct and harassment in the federal Parliament and in Australian society more broadly.

I would feel deeply uncomfortable if patients ‘chose’ to die because care that would make life worth living was unavailable

• Rachel Clarke is a palliative care doctor

Which is worse? Being driven to end your life prematurely to avoid future suffering, or because the suffering you experience is unbearable now? Which form of preventable anguish is the most unacceptable? The kind we could avoid by giving patients the right to an assisted death, or the kind we could avoid with half-decent palliative care? Who suffers more?

The correct answer to these questions – and I write with the authority of two decades of medical training and practice, eight years of which have been exclusively in palliative medicine – is that I really, truly don’t know. Matters of dying – when, how, and by whose hand – are as ethically complex as they come. This week’s parliamentary debate of a petition demanding a change in the law – signed by more than 200,000 people and spearheaded by Esther Rantzen, who has terminal lung cancer – was, then, reassuringly measured, with thoughtful contributions from all sides. For if ever a topic demanded nuance and gravity, it is surely that of state-sanctioned killing, albeit on merciful grounds. What we absolutely don’t need, if we want to get this right, is for the debate around assisted dying to become yet another example of entrenched, polarised, pick-a-side-politics in which “pro” and “anti” camps shriek dogma in each other’s faces.

Rachel Clarke is a palliative care doctor and the author of Breathtaking: Inside the NHS in a Time of Pandemic

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(New York Jewish Week) — Police stormed the Columbia University building occupied by pro-Palestinian students on Tuesday night, arresting dozens, as the school’s Jewish center was placed on lockdown with students sheltering inside.

The scenes at Hamilton Hall saw protesters lying prone as they were cuffed and loaded onto NYPD vans. The arrests took place after the students broke into the building on Monday night and barricaded it with couches, chairs and vending machines, draping a banner reading “Intifada” from one of the windows.

Police in riot gear entered Columbia en masse on Tuesday evening at the university’s invitation, encircling the area around the Morningside Heights campus and ordering students to shelter in place. Police vans blocked off intersections, officers told students to remain in their dorms and the subway stop at the campus gates was closed as the NYPD attempted to curb protests in support of the activists in Hamilton Hall.

It was an escalation of the pro-Palestinian protests rocking Columbia, which began as an encampment nearly two weeks ago and have since spread to campuses nationwide. Students at those universities have set up their own encampments, leading to hundreds of arrests across the country and, in two cases, agreements with university administrators to discuss divestment from Israel along with other measures.

This was the second time in the past two weeks that the NYPD had arrested protesters on Columbia’s campus. On April 18, police entered the encampment and detained more than 100 students. Since then, the protesters have maintained a constant presence on the school grounds while engaging in negotiations with the administration.

In a statement on Tuesday, Columbia’s president, Minouche Shafik, said those talks had reached an “impasse” and that students who had not cleared out of the encampment by Monday afternoon were suspended. She asked the NYPD to come onto campus and maintain a presence there until May 17, after commencement ceremonies.

“The events on campus last night have left us no choice,” she wrote. “With the support of the University’s Trustees, I have determined that the building occupation, the encampments, and related disruptions pose a clear and present danger to persons, property, and the substantial functioning of the University and require the use of emergency authority to protect persons and property.”

The crackdown took place on the anniversary of a previous university decision to evict students who had taken over Hamilton Hall, against those protesting Columbia’s ties to the Vietnam War in 1968. Then, more than 700 students were arrested.

Despite the NYPD’s attempts at crowd control on Tuesday, hundreds gathered to protest at an intersection adjacent to Columbia, chanting “Students hold your ground, NYPD will back down” and “Resistance is glorious, we will be victorious.” Others gathered at other points near the campus, and some students joined in the chanting from their dorm room windows.

Less than a block away from the main protest, the Kraft Center for Jewish Life instructed students who were present to remain in place while the university’s security advisory was in effect. At 11 p.m., the building was still closed off, but the NYPD had declared the campus clear.

Yakira Galler, a first-year student at Barnard, Columbia’s affiliated women’s college, was headed back to campus on Tuesday night after spending the Passover holiday with her family. As they were pulling out of the driveway, she received a text alert from Barnard notifying her of the shelter-in-place order.

Instead of returning to campus, she decided to stay with cousins nearby because she said she does not feel safe returning to her dorm.

Galler said the final exam for a class she had been taking in Hamilton Hall — Yiddish — had been canceled. She said she had been watching updates about the police crackdown with mixed feelings.

“I’ve seen pictures of how many officers are there and I can understand how that’s frightening,” she said. “But it baffles me that people aren’t able to understand why that would be necessary, why this is a safety issue and why there’s a threat.”

This article originally appeared on JTA.org.

The post Police raid Columbia U building occupied by anti-Israel protesters, arresting dozens appeared first on The Forward.