cross-posted from: https://news.abolish.capital/post/69464

An Israeli court has temporarily blocked a plan, cooked up by far right minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, to construct a moat full of crocodiles around a notoriously abusive prison that holds Palestinians. The injunction was issued on Sunday against the transfer of crocodiles to the facility in response to a petition filed over concerns that the crocodiles would be harmed or mistreated.

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A video shared by Ukraine’s police shows a Russian drone deliberately tracking a man at a market in Kherson. President Zelenskyy said the footage is evidence of Moscow’s “drone safari” against civilians.

In a social media post, Prince Ali said that during the World Cup — where Jordan made its debut in June — he was told if he endorsed FIFA President Gianni Infantino “it would go a long way to helping our FA out.”

Disaster management agency Conred issued a nationwide orange alert, the second highest, and warned locals to be prepared as the eruptions could create further pyroclastic flows and billowing ash clouds.

Conred urged people to keep their windows and doors closed and lessons have been cancelled in schools close to the volcano.

Fuego is located just 16km (10 miles) west of Antigua, a city popular with tourists, who travel to the Unesco World Heritage Site to admire its colonial-era architecture.

More than 200 people were killed when Fuego erupted in 2018, many of them caught in the fast-flowing pyroclastic flows which raced down the Las Lajas ravine.

The US Supreme Court has refused to freeze a $656m judgement against the Palestinian Authority (PA) and the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) after the two groups said they were too cash-strapped to compensate Americans for attacks in Israel during the Second Intifada.

This comes 22 years after the lawsuit was first launched, and it means the collection of the funds can begin immediately.

In 2015, the plaintiffs, who said they were victims of attacks between 2002 and 2004, won the damages. Then in 2016, the US Circuit Court of Appeals tossed out the judgment on the grounds that US courts cannot consider lawsuits against foreign groups if the violence was not aimed at American citizens.

"Congress passed special laws to make the Palestinian Authority submit to US jurisdiction against its will if it continued to provide families of martyred Palestinians with salaries," Raed Jarrar, advocacy director with Democracy for the Arab World Now (Dawn), told Middle East Eye.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.zip/post/69118949

England Withdraws Support for Infantino As Opposition Grows
https://frontofficesports.com/infantino-presidency-fifa-support/

More European countries’ FAs withdraw support for Infantino as pressure intensifies
https://www.theguardian.com/football/2026/aug/03/wales-become-first-nation-to-drop-support-for-fifa-president-gianni-infantino

Mayor-President of Spain's North African enclave of Melilla Juan Jose Imbroda has called on Morocco to establish a 500-meter-wide neutral zone along the borders of both Melilla and the nearby Spanish North African enclave of Ceuta following a severe migrant surge targeting Ceuta

U.S.-brokered peace efforts for Sudan have encountered new obstacles after the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) rejected demands to withdraw from cities under their control and the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) insisted that any agreement must begin with the RSF's withdrawa

cross-posted from: https://mander.xyz/post/56198376

cross-posted from: https://mander.xyz/post/56197808

Former Canadian Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland on Tuesday urged democratic countries to publicly oppose China's "Ethnic Unity and Progress Promotion Law," warning that it mirrors tactics Russia used before launching its full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

Freeland, who served as Canada's 10th deputy prime minister from 2019 to 2024, told a security forum in Taipei that parts of the law targeting individuals and organizations outside China's borders for undermining ethnic unity were "particularly sinister."

These bore a "dark kinship with Russia's malign use of linguistic, cultural, and ethnic ties to justify illegal encroachment on the sovereignty of its neighbors," Freeland said.

Freeland noted that in July 2021, Russian President Vladimir Putin published his essay, "On the Historical Unity of Russians and Ukrainians," arguing that Russians and Ukrainians shared a common ethnic and historical heritage. "Seven months later, he sent in the tanks. The lesson of history is clear."

...

Freeland praised the Taiwanese people for their courage and determination in defending freedom and democracy, noting that this year marks the 30th anniversary of Taiwan's first direct presidential election in 1996.

She said preserving peace and stability across the Taiwan Strait was important, as was supporting Taiwan's inclusion in the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP), a regional trade bloc of which Canada is a member.

Freeland was speaking at the 10th Ketagalan Forum, a one-day event jointly hosted by Taiwan's Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Taiwan Institute of Economic Research focusing on Indo-Pacific security issues.

Web Archive link

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.zip/post/69106788

cross-posted from: https://scribe.disroot.org/post/10526454

Opinion piece by Stefan Wolff, Professor of International Security, University of Birmingham, UK; Elīna Šteinerte, Visiting fellow, Human Rights Implementation Centre, University of Bristol, UK; Hervé Ascensio, Professor of international law at the Sorbonne Law School, Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne, France.

It is based on their research of Russian indoctrination of Ukrainian children in Russia-occupied Ukrainian territory.

The full report can be downloaded here: Report on Violations and Abuses of International Humanitarian, Human Rights and Criminal Law related to Militarization and Indoctrination of Ukrainian Children by the Russian Federation - (pdf)

...

Two of us [researchers] grew up in what was then Soviet-occupied Latvia and East Germany. We were already familiar with the Soviet approach to “upbringing”.

But when we went to Ukraine, what we found still shocked us. There was plenty of evidence of the systematic and coercive nature of the Russian federation’s policies attempting to erase the identity of the Ukrainian children under its control.

...

The witness explained how the headteacher of the local school, accompanied by heavily armed soldiers, went from house to house to question parents who do not send their children to school and had not yet applied for Russian passports. He threatened them with the removal of their parental rights. He also said their children would be placed in institutions if they didn’t yield to the pressure to do so. In the face of such a display of government power, the parents eventually gave in.

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The coercion of Ukrainians in the occupied territories to take Russian passports is also significant when it comes to what we refer to in our report as the “conscription pipeline”. Children are being systematically prepared for future armed service. By being forced into Russian citizenship, boys also become eligible for conscription as soon as they turn 18.

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The use of the Ukrainian language is prohibited in schools and significantly obstructed in public and private life. Ukrainian children are subject to education under the Russian state curriculum. This now involves high levels of historical falsification and ideological indoctrination.

To give just one striking example, the history textbook for Grade 11 devotes 29 pages to the so-called “special military operation”. It frames the invasion of Ukraine as a defensive response to western aggression. Versions of this textbook for lower grades, starting in grade five, have been used across schools in the occupied territories since the beginning of academic year 2025-26.

...

Ukrainian children are exposed to the full toolkit of Russian militarisation techniques. For example, since the beginning of the 2023–24 academic year, the course entitled “Fundamentals of Security and Defence of the Motherland” has been compulsory in all schools in the occupied territories.

Russian media reports say this means the “return [of] initial military training as part of life safety lessons”.

...

The patriotic youth organisation Movement of the First, created in December 2022 by Vladimir Putin, has revived a Soviet-era military war game, which has been rolled out into the occupied territories since the beginning of the 2024 school year.

As part of the game’s simulated military activities children are divided into armies. They are trained in assembling weapons, operating drones, acting as “storm troopers” and completing “military-tactical” obstacle courses. They also practice cyber warfare and information operations.

The Institute for the Study of War describes this game as part of “a wider Russian ecosystem operating throughout occupied Ukraine with the explicit purpose of militarising Ukrainian children, indoctrinating them against their Ukrainian identities, and training them to fight for the Russian military”.

Russia does not deny this is being done. On the contrary, senior Russian officials are on the record justifying the indoctrination and militarisation of Ukrainian children. For example, Yana Lantratova, formerly deputy chair of the State Duma’s committee on education, now Russia’s human rights commissioner, noted – with specific reference to children in Russian-occupied Ukraine – that the Russian Federation “must first of all take care of the main thing – our children. To develop and enlighten them, to instil in them a sense of the Motherland”.

Except that these are not Russian children, they are Ukrainian. The evidence we collected for our report left us with no doubt that Russian occupation policies amount to grave violations of international law when it comes to the indoctrination and militarisation of Ukrainian children living in the territories under Russian control.

For example, the unlawful transformation of the education system in the occupied territories is a clear breach of Article 43 of the Hague Regulations and of Article 50 of the Fourth Geneva Convention.

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This led us to call on all parties to immediately and meaningfully recognise the plight of Ukrainian children for their safety, identity and family life in the ongoing war and in all negotiations. In the words of one of the interviewees we spoke to in Kyiv: “Any deal to end the war cannot just be about kilometres.”

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Archived

The Danish Armed Forces have launched an expanded conscription of young people amid actions by the United States and Russia.

Ghana's parliament passed a bill that could send cocoa farmers to prison for up to 20 years if they convert their farms to other uses without government approval.