Typhoon Mawar pounds Guam with destructive winds

On its current trajectory, Mawar will pass “directly” over the island. (AFP)
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Updated 24 May 2023
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Typhoon Mawar pounds Guam with destructive winds

  • The eye of the storm passed just north of the island, its governor said
  • Forecasters had warned that winds of up to 225kph could cause major damage

LOS ANGELES: Typhoon Mawar roared over the US territory of Guam on Wednesday, bringing destructive winds to the Pacific military outpost.

The eye of the storm passed just north of the island, its governor said, after forecasters had warned that winds of up to 225 kilometers per hour (140 miles per hour) could cause major damage.

“What we are feeling right now is the eye going over the Rota Channel,” Governor Lou Leon Guerrero said in a Facebook video, referring to the body of water between the islands of Guam and Rota.

Local authorities earlier issued evacuation orders and opened temporary shelters, while US President Joe Biden declared a state of emergency for the island of 170,000 people, paving the way for federal aid.

“I am in a concrete-reinforced house and my windows are shuttered. I did go outside briefly and winds are getting very gusty with intermittent rains,” Beckie Merrill, a 46-year-old middle school teacher, said from a southern area of the island.

After predicting a “direct hit” on Guam, forecasters later said the typhoon had moved just north of the island.

“It looks like we are getting a near hit with the eye passing through the Rota Channel. The southern wall of the eye will pass over much of Guam. The worst winds will be in the northern third of Guam,” the US National Weather Service said.

Warnings of extreme winds and flash floods have been issued for the island with wind speeds of 74 miles per hour already recorded, forecasters said.

“I am worried for the safety of our people. This is the first storm of this magnitude for 20 years,” Guerrero said.

Evacuations were ordered for low-lying coastal areas, especially in the flood-prone southern villages.

The NWS warned of the “triple threats” of torrential rain, catastrophic winds and a life-threatening storm surge.

Winds near the eye wall could bring major damage to buildings and homes made of light materials such as non-concrete roofs and walls not made of reinforced concrete.

A calamitous storm surge threatens to wreak havoc on shorelines, and large boats “could be torn from moorings.”

“Surge may reach to between 20 and 25 feet above normal high tide for the most vulnerable storm-surge-prone areas near the eye wall,” the NWS said.

Forecasts predicted Guam will receive rainfall of 10 to 15 inches, with some areas seeing 20 inches or more, the NWS said.

This could trigger landslides in the central and southern parts of the island, the weather service warned.

“Many of us right now are feeling the full strength of Typhoon Mawar, and although it is a frightening experience that hasn’t been felt for over two decades, we want you to know that we are here for you,” Guerrero said in a Facebook post.

“Even as the typhoon makes its initial landfall, we have multiple agencies coordinating response efforts and relaying helpful information to those in need.”

People were told to stay inside and away from windows, and not venture outside during temporary lulls as flying debris can cause serious injury.

Guam’s Office of Civil Defense urged motorists to stay off the roads on Wednesday, saying “winds are expected to intensify to typhoon force winds by midday.”

About 21,700 US military personnel and their families are based at or near several facilities on Guam, which routinely hosts nuclear attack submarines and long-range bombers.

The territory is also home to crucial electronic listening posts.

The US bases have some of the Pacific region’s most significant ammunition and fuel storage facilities.

About 60 flights scheduled to depart or arrive in Guam between Tuesday and Thursday were canceled, A.B. Won Pat International Airport said.

Conditions in Guam are expected to improve on Thursday, but the storm is expected to intensify over the next few days, possibly becoming a super typhoon over the Philippine Sea, the NWS said.


NASA spacecraft around the moon photographs the crash site of a Japanese company’s lunar lander

Updated 5 sec ago
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NASA spacecraft around the moon photographs the crash site of a Japanese company’s lunar lander

  • The crash was the second failure in two years for Tokyo-based ispace

CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida: A NASA spacecraft around the moon has photographed the crash site of a Japanese company’s lunar lander.
NASA released the pictures Friday, two weeks after ispace’s lander slammed into the moon.
The images show a dark smudge where the lander, named Resilience, and its mini rover crashed into Mare Frigoris or Sea of Cold, a volcanic region in the moon’s far north. A faint halo around the area was formed by the lunar dirt kicked up by the impact.
NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter captured the scene last week.
The crash was the second failure in two years for Tokyo-based ispace. Company officials plan to hold a news conference next week to explain what doomed the latest mission, launched from Cape Canaveral in January.


Democrats are at odds over the Israel-Iran war as Trump considers intervening

Updated 32 min 22 sec ago
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Democrats are at odds over the Israel-Iran war as Trump considers intervening

  • Many prominent Democrats with 2028 presidential aspirations are staying silent, so far, on the Israel-Iran war

After nearly two years of stark divisions over the war in Gaza and support for Israel, Democrats are now finding themselves at odds over US policy toward Iran as progressives demand unified opposition to President Donald Trump’s consideration of a strike against Tehran’s nuclear program while party leaders tread more cautiously.
US leaders of all stripes have found common ground for two decades on the position that Iran cannot be allowed to obtain a nuclear weapon. The longtime US foe has supported groups that have killed Americans across the Mideast and threatens to destroy Israel. But Trump’s public flirtation with joining Israel’s offensive against Iran may become the Democratic Party’s latest schism, just as it is sharply dividing Trump’s isolationist “Make America Great Again” base from more hawkish conservatives.
While progressives have staked out clear opposition to Trump’s potential actions, the party leadership is playing the safer ground of demanding a role for Congress before Trump could use force against Iran. Many prominent Democrats with 2028 presidential aspirations are staying silent, so far, on the Israel-Iran war.
“They are sort of hedging their bets,” said Joel Rubin, a former deputy assistant secretary of state who served under Democratic President Barack Obama and is now a strategist on foreign policy. “The beasts of the Democratic Party’s constituencies right now are so hostile to Israel’s war in Gaza that it’s really difficult to come out looking like one would corroborate an unauthorized war that supports Israel without blowback.”
Progressive Democrats use Trump’s ideas and words
Rep. Ro Khanna, D-Calif., has called Trump’s consideration of an attack “a defining moment for our party” and has introduced legislation with Rep. Thomas Massie, R-Kentucky, that calls on the Republican president to “terminate” the use of US armed forces against Iran unless “explicitly authorized” by a declaration of war from Congress.
Khanna used Trump’s own campaign arguments of putting American interests first when the congressman spoke to Theo Von, a comedian who has been supportive of the president and is popular in the “manosphere.”
“That’s going to cost this country a lot of money that should be being spent here at home,” said Khanna, who is said to be among the many Democrats eyeing the party’s 2028 primary.
Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, an independent who twice sought the Democratic presidential nomination, pointed to Trump’s stated goal during his inaugural speech of being known as “a peacemaker and a unifier.”
“Very fine words. Trump should remember them today. Supporting Netanyahu’s war against Iran would be a catastrophic mistake,” Sanders said about Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Sanders has reintroduced legislation prohibiting the use of federal money for force against Iran, insisted that US military intervention would be unwise and illegal and accused Israel of striking unprovoked. Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer of New York signed on to a similar bill from Sanders in 2020, but he is so far holding off this time.
Some believe the party should stake out a clear anti-war stance as Trump weighs whether to launch a military offensive that is seemingly counter to the anti-interventionism he promised during his 2024 campaign.
“The leaders of the Democratic Party need to step up and loudly oppose war with Iran and demand a vote in Congress,” said Tommy Vietor, a former Obama aide, on X.
Mainstream Democrats are cautious, while critical
The staunch support from the Democratic administration of President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris for Israel’s war against Hamas loomed over the party’s White House ticket in 2024, even with the criticism of Israel’s handling of the humanitarian crisis in Gaza. Trump exploited the divisions to make inroads with Arab American voters and Orthodox Jews on his way back to the White House.
Today, the Israel-Iran war is the latest test for a party struggling to repair its coalition before next year’s midterm elections and the quick-to-follow kickoff to the 2028 presidential race. Bridging the divide between an activist base that is skeptical of foreign interventions and already critical of US support for Israel and more traditional Democrats and independents who make up a sizable, if not always vocal, voting bloc.
In a statement after Israel’s first strikes, Schumer said Israel has a right to defend itself and “the United States’ commitment to Israel’s security and defense must be ironclad as they prepare for Iran’s response.”
Sen. Jacky Rosen, D-Nevada, was also cautious in responding to the Israeli action and said “the US must continue to stand with Israel, as it has for decades, at this dangerous moment.”
“It really seems like the Trump and Iran war track is kind of going along like a Formula 1 racetrack, and then the Democrats are in some sort of tricycle or something trying to keep up,” said Ryan Costello, a policy director for the Washington-based National Iranian American Council, which advocates for diplomatic engagement between US and Iran.
Other Democrats have condemned Israel’s strikes and accused Netanyahu of sabotaging nuclear talks with Iran. They are reminding the public that Trump withdrew in 2018 from a nuclear agreement that limited Tehran’s enrichment of uranium in exchange for the lifting of economic sanctions negotiated during the Obama administration.
“Trump created the problem,” said Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Connecticut, on X. “The single reason Iran was so close to obtaining a nuclear weapon is that Trump destroyed the diplomatic agreement that put major, verifiable constraints on their nuclear program.”
The progressives’ pushback
A Pearson Institute/Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research poll from September 2024 found that about half of Democrats said the US was being “too supportive” of Israel and about 4 in 10 said their level support was “about right.” Democrats were more likely than independents and Republicans to say the Israeli government had “a lot” of responsibility for the continuation of the war between Israel and Hamas.
About 6 in 10 Democrats and half of Republicans felt Iran was an adversary with whom the US was in conflict.
Democratic Rep. Yassamin Ansari, an Iranian American from Arizona, said Iranians are unwitting victims in the conflict because there aren’t shelters or infrastructure to protect civilians from targeted missiles as there are in Israel.
“The Iranian people are not the regime, and they should not be punished for its actions,” Ansari posted on X, while criticizing Trump for fomenting fear among the Iranian population. “The Iranian people deserve freedom from the barbaric regime, and Israelis deserve security.”


Pro-Palestinian protest leader defiant despite US deportation threat

Updated 22 June 2025
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Pro-Palestinian protest leader defiant despite US deportation threat

  • Khalil, a legal permanent resident in the United States who is married to a US citizen and has a US-born son, had been in custody since March facing potential deportation

NEWARK, United States: Mahmoud Khalil, one of the most prominent leaders of US pro-Palestinian campus protests, pledged Saturday to keep campaigning after he was released from a federal detention center.
“Even if they would kill me, I would still speak for Palestine,” Khalil said as he was greeted by cheering supporters at Newark airport, just outside New York City.
Khalil, a legal permanent resident in the United States who is married to a US citizen and has a US-born son, had been in custody since March facing potential deportation.
He was freed from a federal immigration detention center in Louisiana on Friday, hours after a judge ordered his release on bail.
The Columbia University graduate was a figurehead of student protests against US ally Israel’s war in Gaza, and the Trump administration labeled him a national security threat.
“Just the fact I am here sends a message — the fact that all these attempts to suppress pro-Palestine voices have failed now,” said Khalil, who is still fighting his potential expulsion from the United States.
He spoke alongside his wife Noor Abdalla, who gave birth to the couple’s first child while Khalil was in detention, as well as Democratic congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.
“Mahmoud Khalil was imprisoned for 104 days by this administration, by the Trump administration, with no grounds and for political reasons, because Mahmoud Khalil is an advocate for Palestinian human rights,” Ocasio-Cortez said.
“This is not over, and we will have to continue to support this case,” she added.
Khalil, who was born in Syria to Palestinian parents, is not allowed to leave the United States except for “self-deportation” under the terms of his release.
He also faces restrictions on where he can travel within the country.
President Donald Trump’s government has justified pushing for Khalil’s deportation by saying his continued presence in the United States could carry “potentially serious adverse foreign policy consequences.”
Beyond his legal case, Khalil’s team fears he could face threats out of detention.
“We are very mindful about his security, and the irony is that he is the one being persecuted,” Baher Azmy, one of his lawyers, told AFP.
“But he is committed to peace and because he is rejecting US government policy he is under threat,” Azmy added, without elaborating on any security measures in place for Khalil and his family.
 

 


Tens of thousands join pro-Palestinian marches across Europe

People attend a pro-Palestinians demonstration in Berlin, Saturday, June 21, 2025. (AP)
Updated 22 June 2025
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Tens of thousands join pro-Palestinian marches across Europe

  • Saturday’s marches comes amid heightened global tensions as the United States mulls joining Israel’s strikes against Iran

LONDON: Tens of thousands of pro-Palestinian protesters marched in European cities Saturday calling for an end to the war in Gaza, amid concerns the Iran-Israel conflict could spark wider regional devastation.
In London, AFP journalists saw tens of thousands of protesters, who waved Palestinian flags as they marched through the British capital clad in keffiyeh scarves.
In Berlin, more than 10,000 people gathered in the center of the city in support of Gaza, according to police figures.
And in the Swiss capital Bern, march organizers estimated that 20,000 people rallied in front of the national parliament, urging the government to back a ceasefire.
There have been monthly protests in the British capital since the start of the 20-month-long war between Israel and Hamas, which has ravaged Gaza.
This Saturday, protesters there carried signs including “Stop arming Israel” and “No war on Iran” as they marched in the sweltering heat.
“It’s important to remember that people are suffering in Gaza. I fear all the focus will be on Iran now,” said 34-year-old Harry Baker.
“I don’t have great love for the Iranian regime, but we are now in a dangerous situation.” This was his third pro-Palestinian protest, he added.

Saturday’s marches comes amid heightened global tensions as the United States mulls joining Israel’s strikes against Iran.
Tehran said Saturday that more than 400 people had been killed in Iran since Israel launched strikes last week claiming its arch-foe was close to acquiring a nuclear weapon, which Iran denies.
Some 25 people have been killed in Israel, according to official figures.
One marcher in London, a 31-year-old Iranian student who did not want to share her name, told AFP she had family in Iran and was “scared.”
“I’m worried about my country. I know the regime is not good but it’s still my country. I’m scared,” she said.
Gaza is suffering from famine-like conditions according to UN agencies in the region following an Israeli aid blockade.
Gaza’s civil defense agency has reported that hundreds have been killed by Israeli forces while trying to reach the US- and Israeli-backed aid distribution sites.
“People need to keep their eyes on Gaza. That’s where the genocide is happening,” said 60-year-old protester Nicky Marcus.

In Berlin, demonstrators gathered mid-afternoon close to the parliament, some chanting “Germany finances, Israel bombs.”
“You can’t sit on the sofa and be silent. Now is the time when we all need to speak up,” said protester Gundula, who did not want to give her second name.
For Marwan Radwan, the point of the protest was to bring attention to the “genocide currently taking place” and the “dirty work” being done by the German government.
In Bern, demonstrators carried banners calling on the federal government to intervene in the war in Gaza, expressing solidarity with Palestinians.
The rally there was called by organizations including Amnesty International, the Social Democratic Party, the Greens and the Swiss Trade Union Federation.
Slogans included “Stop the occupation,” “Stop the starvation, stop the violence,” and “Right to self-determination.”
Some marchers chanted: “We are all the children of Gaza.”
The overall death toll in Gaza since the war broke out has reached at least 55,637 people, according to the health ministry.
Israel has denied it is carrying out a genocide and says it aims to wipe out Hamas after the Islamist group’s October 7, 2023 attack on Israel resulted in the deaths of 1,219 people.

 


Belarus opposition leader freed from jail after US mediation

Updated 21 June 2025
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Belarus opposition leader freed from jail after US mediation

  • His wife Svetlana Tikhanovskaya said the US helped broker the deal and thanked US President Donald Trump
  • Tikhanovsky, 46, had been imprisoned for more than five years

WARSAW: Belarus’s top jailed opposition leader Sergei Tikhanovsky was freed alongside over a dozen other political prisoners on Saturday in a surprise release hailed as a “symbol of hope.”

His wife Svetlana Tikhanovskaya, who took the mantle of the opposition after his jailing, said the United States helped broker the deal and thanked US President Donald Trump.

Tikhanovsky, 46, had been imprisoned for more than five years.

He planned to run against incumbent Belarusian leader Alexander Lukashenko in the August 2020 presidential election, but was arrested and detained weeks before the vote.

Svetlana — a political novice at the time of his arrest — took his place in the polls.

She posted a video on Saturday of her embracing Tikhanovsky after his release with the caption: “FREE.”

“It’s hard to describe the joy in my heart,” she said in a post on X.

Thirteen others were released, including Radio Liberty journalist Igor Karnei, who was arrested in 2023 and jailed for participating in an “extremist” organization.

They have now been transferred from Belarus to Lithuania, where they are receiving “proper care,” Lithuanian foreign minister Kestutis Budrys said.

The announcement came just hours after Lukashenko met US special envoy Keith Kellogg in Minsk, the highest profile visit of a US official to the authoritarian state in years.

Belarus, ruled by Lukashenko since 1994, has outlawed all genuine opposition parties and is the only European country to retain the death penalty as a punishment.

The eastern European country still holds over 1,000 political prisoners in its jails, according to Viasna.

Swedish-Belarusian citizen Galina Krasnyanskaya, arrested in 2023 for allegedly supporting Ukraine, was also freed, Swedish Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson said.

The release comes amid a broader warming of relations between the United States and Belarus’s chief ally Russia under Trump.

Since taking office, the Republican has engaged in direct talks with Vladimir Putin, ending his predecessor’s policy of isolating the Russian president.

Tikhanovsky was for years held incommunicado, and in 2023 his wife was told that he had “died.”

In a video published by Viasna on Saturday, he appeared almost unrecognizable, his head shaven and face emaciated.

Tikhanovsky was sentenced in 2021 to 18 years in prison for “organizing riots” and “inciting hatred” and then to 18 months extra for “insubordination.”

A charismatic activist, Tikhanovsky drew the ire of authorities for describing Lukashenko as a “cockroach” and his campaign slogan was “Stop the cockroach.”

Lukashenko claimed a landslide victory in the 2020 election, a result that sparked massive opposition protests which authorities violently suppressed.

The Belarusian autocrat claimed a record seventh term in elections earlier this year that observers blasted as a farce.

Fellow Belarusian political activists and foreign politicians welcomed the release.

Poland’s foreign minister Radoslaw Sikorski said the “free world” needed Tikhanovsky.

“My sincerest joy goes out to you, Tikhanovskaya and your entire family,” he wrote on X.

Former Belarusian culture minister Pavel Latushko, who supported the 2020 protests against Lukashenko, said all those released had been jailed illegally and hailed Tikhanovsky’s release as an “important moment.”

European Union chief Ursula von der Leyen hailed Tikhanovsky’s release and called for Belarus to free its other political prisoners.

“This is fantastic news and a powerful symbol of hope for all the political prisoners suffering under the brutal Lukashenka regime,” she said on X.

Germany’s Foreign Minister Johann Wadephul said Tikhanovsky’s release was “fantastically good news.”

“At the same time, we must not forget the many other prisoners in Belarus. Lukashenko must finally release them,” he said on X.