LONDON: King Charles traveled to northern England on Tuesday to pay tribute to victims and families of those affected by a mass stabbing last month which sparked riots and racist attacks targeting Muslims and migrants.
On a visit to Southport, the town where the attack took place, Charles met some of the surviving children and their families, before later meeting representatives from local emergency services and community groups.
He also looked at flowers and toys that had been left in memory of the victims of the attack, to cheers and applause from the gathered crowds.
Three young girls were killed and others were wounded in the July 29 attack at a Taylor Swift-themed dance class, which sparked the riots after online misinformation wrongly said it had been committed by an Islamist migrant.
A 17-year-old male, who the police said was born in Britain, was charged with three counts of murder, 10 counts of attempted murder and one of possession of a bladed article.
Charles has praised the community spirit, compassion and resilience that countered aggression and criminality from the rioters, and said he hoped mutual respect and understanding would continue to unite the nation.
Charles has taken a keen interest in helping young people, setting up the Princes Trust charity in the 1970s. It has helped a million young people to find work or create community projects and has worked in areas impacted by riots and unrest over the years. It has continued to operate, including in locations hit by the riots, since his coronation.
King Charles visits Southport to pay tribute to stabbing victims
https://arab.news/6xes2
King Charles visits Southport to pay tribute to stabbing victims
- On a visit to Southport, the town where the attack took place, Charles met some of the surviving children and their families
- He also looked at flowers and toys that had been left in memory of the victims of the attack, to cheers and applause from the gathered crowds
Woman arrested after 12 injured in stabbing at Hamburg station
Some of the injured sustained life-threatening injuries in the stabbing, emergency services said, although the exact number remained unclear.
Around 6:30 p.m. (1600 GMT), Hamburg police said on X they were carrying out a major operation at the main train station in Germany’s second-largest city.
“A person injured several people with a knife at the main train station” and a suspect had been arrested, they said.
The suspect, police subsequently said, was a 39-year-old woman who was thought to have “acted alone.”
Investigations into the incident were “running at full speed,” police said, without giving an indication of a possible motive.
A spokesman for the Hamburg fire department told AFP that 12 people had been injured in the knife attack.
Among them were “six people with life-threatening injuries,” the spokesman said. German media however reported the number of people with very severe injuries was lower.
The attack took place around 6:00 p.m. in the middle of rush hour at the end of the working week, according to German media.
The suspect was thought to have carried out the attack “against passengers” at the station, a spokeswoman for the Hanover federal police directorate, which also covers Hamburg, told AFP.
Images of the scene showed access to the platforms at one end of the station blocked off by police and people being loaded into waiting ambulances.
Some of the victims in the attack were being treated onboard waiting trains in the station, Bild reported.
German rail operator Deutsche Bahn said on X that four platforms at the station had been closed.
The incident would lead to “delays and diversions in long-distance services,” Deutsche Bahn said in a post on X.
Germany has been rocked in recent months by a series of violent attacks with often jihadist or far-right extremist motivations that have put security at the top of the agenda.
The most recent, on Sunday, saw four people were injured in a stabbing at a bar in the city of Bielefeld.
The investigation into the attack had been handed over to federal prosecutors after the Syrian suspect in the attack told the police officers who arrested him that he had jihadist beliefs.
The question of security — and the immigrant origin of many of the attackers — was a major topic during Germany’s recent election campaign.
The vote at the end of February saw the conservative CDU/CSU top the polls and a record score of over 20 percent for the far-right, anti-immigration Alternative for Germany.
Single UK Special Forces officer rejected 1,585 Afghan resettlement applications
- UKSF member blocked numerous former Triples soldiers and their families from being resettled despite threats from Taliban
- Some may have been eyewitnesses to alleged war crimes in Afghanistan; more than 600 cases since overturned
LONDON: A court has been told a UK Special Forces officer personally rejected 1,585 applications from Afghans for resettlement in Britain.
The applications were all from people with credible links to UKSF personnel, the Ministry of Defense told the court, amid an ongoing investigation into alleged war crimes by the Special Air Service in Afghanistan.
The BBC revealed last week that the individual in question may have rejected applications from people with eye-witness testimony relating to the allegations.
Numerous former Afghan special forces soldiers, known as Triples due to their regiment numbers, served alongside UK forces until the fall of Afghanistan to the Taliban in 2021.
Thousands of them and their relatives have subsequently struggled to obtain permission to travel to the UK.
The public inquiry into the conduct of UKSF soldiers in Afghanistan, meanwhile, lacks the power to compel former Triples soldiers to testify unless they are in the UK.
In October 2022 Natalie Moore, the head of the Ministry of Defense’s Afghan resettlement team, voiced concern that UKSF involved in applications for resettlement were giving the “appearance of an unpublished mass rejection policy.”
In January last year, former Veterans Minister Johnny Mercer told senior government officials there was a “significant conflict of interest that should be obvious to all” in the processing of resettlement applications by UKSF personnel.
“Decision-making power,” Mercer claimed, over “potential witnesses to the inquiry,” was “deeply inappropriate.”
Mercer also noted that a number of former Triples soldiers had been killed by the Taliban after being left to wait in Afghanistan, including one whose application was rejected having “previously confronted UKSF leadership about EJKs (extrajudicial killings) in Afghanistan.”
The MoD initially denied UKSF personnel had a veto over the applications of former Triples soldiers, who having been armed, trained and funded by the UK, were deemed at risk of reprisals if left in Afghanistan after the withdrawal of coalition forces.
However, more than 2,000 applications deemed credible by caseworkers have been rejected by the UKSF. The MoD subsequently announced a review of the applications over fears the process was not “robust.”
An additional 2,500 rejected applications were placed under review this week by the government. So far, more than 600 of the 1,585 rejections attributed to the single UKSF officer have been overturned.
The revelations about the UKSF member who rejected the 1,585 applications were made at a judicial review hearing brought by former Triples soldiers over the conflict of interest in resettlement decision-making, which also heard the MoD had launched two investigations into UKSF practices.
One investigation, known as Operation X, said that it “did not obtain any evidence of hidden motives on the part of the UKSF liaison officer.”
It added it found “no evidence of automatic/instant/mass rejections,” but failed to provide evidence in its conclusion, instead suggesting the decisions were made as a result of “slack and unprofessional verification processes” by the UKSF officer and “lax procedures followed by the officer in not following up on all lines of enquiry before issuing rejections.”
Tom de la Mare KC, representing the Afghan Triple soldier who brought the case, accused the MoD of failing to disclose evidence of blanket application rejections, and of “providing misleading responses to requests for information,” the BBC said.
Cathryn McGahey KC, acting for the MoD, said “there might have been a better way of doing (the applications process), but that doesn’t make it unlawful.”
Daniel Carey, partner at law firm DPG, acting for the former Triples soldier, told the BBC: “My client spent years asking the MoD to rectify the blanket refusals of Triples personnel and has seen many killed and harmed by the Taliban in that time.
“He is pleased that the MoD have agreed to inform everyone of the decisions in their cases and to tell the persons affected whether their cases are under review or not, but it should not have required litigation to achieve basic fairness.”
Harvard sues Trump over block on foreign students
- “It is the latest act by the government in clear retaliation for Harvard exercising its First Amendment rights,” said the lawsuit
NEW YORK: Harvard sued the Trump administration on Friday over its move to block the prestigious university from enrolling and hosting foreign students in a broadening dispute, a court filing showed.
“It is the latest act by the government in clear retaliation for Harvard exercising its First Amendment rights to reject the government’s demands to control Harvard’s governance, curriculum, and the ‘ideology’ of its faculty and students,” said the lawsuit filed in Massachusetts federal court.
Greek court charges 17 coast guard officers over 2023 migrant shipwreck, say sources
- The 17 coast guard officers would be summoned by a judge to respond to accusations
- A Greek coast guard official said the service had not been officially informed about the charges
ATHENS: A Greek naval court has charged 17 coast guard officers over one of the Mediterranean’s worst shipwrecks two years ago, in which hundreds of people are believed to have drowned, three sources said on Friday.
The shipwreck of an overloaded migrant boat in international waters off the southwestern Greek town of Pylos on June 14, 2023, sent shockwaves across Europe and beyond. The naval court is still investigating the circumstances around the incident.
A coast guard vessel had been monitoring the boat, named Adriana, for 15 hours before it capsized and sank. It had left Libya for Italy with about 750 people on board. Only 104 of them are known to have survived.
Greek coast guard authorities have repeatedly denied any wrongdoing over the handling of the case.
Three legal sources said the 17 coast guard officers would be summoned by a judge to respond to accusations ranging from obstructing transport to causing or helping cause a shipwreck.
Contacted by Reuters, a Greek coast guard official said the service had not been officially informed about the charges and had asked to be briefed by the naval court.
Greece’s judicial system has several preparatory stages and the compilation of charges does not necessarily mean that an individual will face trial.
Human rights activists and other protesters plan rallies across Greece on June 21 to mark the second anniversary of the Pylos shipwreck.
In February, the Greek Ombudsman recommended disciplinary action against eight coast guard officers, the first national probe into the incident to conclude.
Greece says that the coast guard operates with respect to human rights and that it has rescued more than 250,000 people since 2015, when the country was at the frontline of Europe’s migration crisis.
Russia, Ukraine each free first 390 prisoners in start of war's biggest swap
- Kyiv and Moscow are due to swap 1,000 people each in a deal agreed at talks in Istanbul
- Trump said on his Truth Social platform that the swap had been “completed,” but an official said the exchange was ongoing
CHERNIHIV REGION, Ukraine: Russia and Ukraine each released 390 prisoners on Friday and said they would free more in the coming days, in what is expected to be the biggest prisoner swap of the war so far.
The agreement to exchange 1,000 prisoners each was the only concrete step toward peace to emerge last week from the first direct talks between the warring sides in more than three years, when they failed to agree a ceasefire.
Both sides said they had each released 270 soldiers and 120 civilians so far, with more due to be released on Saturday and Sunday.
The freed Russians are currently in Belarus, which neighbors Ukraine, receiving psychological and medical assistance before being moved to Russia for further care, the Russian Defense Ministry said. They include civilians captured inside Russia’s Kursk region during a Ukrainian incursion.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky posted photographs of released captives, all with shaven heads, celebrating their release and wrapped in Ukrainian flags.
Ukrainian media outlet Espreso TV published a video of the wife of a prisoner crying tears of joy, wrapped in a flag on Kyiv’s Independence Square. She said she had been waiting for her husband’s release since 2022, and had just received the call from Ukrainian authorities confirming the good news.
“We waited, hoped and fought,” said the woman, whose name was given as Victoria.
Earlier, Ukrainian authorities told reporters to assemble at a location in the northern Chernihiv region in anticipation that some freed prisoners could be brought there.
Referring to the prisoner swap earlier on Friday, US President Donald Trump, who had pressed the sides to meet last week, wrote on Truth Social: “Congratulations to both sides on this negotiation. This could lead to something big???“
Hundreds of thousands of soldiers on both sides are believed to have been wounded or killed in Europe’s deadliest war since World War Two, although neither side publishes accurate casualty figures. Tens of thousands of Ukrainian civilians have also died as Russian forces have besieged and bombarded Ukrainian cities.
CEASEFIRE?
Ukraine says it is ready for a 30-day ceasefire immediately.
Russia, which launched the war by invading its neighbor in 2022 and now occupies about a fifth of Ukraine, says it will not pause its assaults until conditions are met first. A member of the Ukrainian delegation called those conditions “non-starters.”
Trump, who has shifted US policy from supporting Ukraine toward accepting some of Russia’s account of the war, had said he could tighten sanctions on Moscow if it blocked peace. But after speaking to Putin on Monday he decided to take no action for now.
Moscow says it is ready for talks while the fighting goes on, and wants to discuss what it calls the war’s “root causes,” including its demands Ukraine cede more territory, and be disarmed and barred from military alliances with the West. Kyiv says that is tantamount to surrender and would leave it defenseless in the face of future Russian attacks.
Russia claimed on Friday to have captured a settlement called Rakivka in Ukraine’s northeastern Kharkiv region.
The governor of Ukraine’s Odesa region, Oleh Kiper, said Russia had struck port infrastructure there with two missiles on Friday afternoon, killing one person and wounding eight.
