Iranian protesters – The anti-government protests sweeping Iran are now in their eighth week, with no sign of ending, despite a bloody crackdown. The rest of the world has watched with alarm, with some countries taking steps in support of the protests.

What do Iranians want?

The protesters first want to be heard and get news coverage by the world’s media. The Iranian government has taken steps to minimise this as much as possible. For instance, foreign correspondents there (the BBC and others are banned) are not permitted to report the protests, film them or even take pictures.

As a result, citizen journalism and posting videos of protests on social media are key to getting the news out. But the government tries to stop this also. According to internet monitoring group NetBlocks, during the last seven weeks, the internet in Iran has often been shut down or massively interrupted.

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At the same time, 32 journalists have been arrested, according to the International Federation of Journalists, and the two remaining social media apps, Instagram and WhatsApp, have been blocked.

Opposition figures and civil society activists continuously call for more pressure on the regime to stop the violence and to hold it accountable. According to rights groups, more than 300 people, including at least 41 children, have been killed since the protests started.

Last month, 43 international human rights organisations urged the United Nations Human Rights Council to hold an emergency session about Iran, investigate the crackdown and take legal action against those responsible.

Prince Reza Pahlavi, the son of the last Shah, or king, of Iran and a central figure for opposition outside the country, wrote to UN Secretary-General António Guterres and the UN’s children’s charity Unicef. He asked for multinational investigations into the killing of children in Iran. Along with other well-known opposition figures, Prince Reza has repeatedly called on Western leaders to condemn the violence by the Iranian government openly.

Many activists and opponents of the Iranian regime have also called for Iranian diplomats to be expelled from other countries and for the recall of foreign diplomats from Tehran.

Figures such as Hamed Esmaeilion, Prince Reza or Masih Alinejad, who has campaigned against the compulsory hijab (headscarf) rule in Iran, have for years tried to push the Iranian government into even deeper international isolation. To this end, Masih Alinejad has also been trying to get the Iranian football team banned from the 2022 Fifa World Cup.

Source – https://www.bbc.co.uk/

Iranian protesters look to outside world for help
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Ukraine War – The UK will provide an additional £1 billion in military aid for Ukraine, a near-doubling in its support for the fight against the Russian invasion.

The new funding takes the military aid given to Kyiv to £2.3bn – and the UK has also spent £1.5bn in humanitarian and economic support for Ukraine.

Boris Johnson said British spending was “transforming Ukraine’s defences”.

The pledge came after President Zelensky urged Nato leaders to do more to help Ukraine’s war effort.

Mr Zelensky told Nato leaders the monthly cost of defence for Ukraine was around $5bn (£4.12bn).

The UK is second only to the US in terms of military aid for Ukraine – the US recently approved a $40bn (£33bn) package of support.

The new British aid will go towards paying for “sophisticated air defence systems”, drones, electronic warfare equipment, and “thousands of pieces of vital kit”, the UK government said.

The new £1bn is set to come from departmental underspends, the UK government said, plus £95 million from the Welsh and Scottish governments’ budgets.

An “underspend” means departments spent less than anticipated, not that government finances were in surplus overall. Public sector borrowing was £151.8bn in the year ending March 2022, according to the Office for National Statistics.

Announcing the extra support, the government claimed the equipment was the first step to helping Ukraine recover territory lost to Russia, on top of their “valiant defence”.

But questions remain about whether the aid will be sufficient.

Addressing Nato leaders at their summit in Madrid on Wednesday via video link, Mr Zelensky said they needed more modern weapons systems and artillery to “break the Russian artillery advantage”.

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“Russia still receives billions every day and spends them on war. We have a multibillion-dollar deficit, we don’t have oil and gas to cover it,” Mr Zelensky said.

Also speaking in the Spanish capital, Mr Johnson said: “Putin’s brutality continues to take Ukrainian lives and threaten peace and security across Europe.

“As Putin fails to make the gains he had anticipated and hoped for and the futility of this war becomes clear to all, his attacks against the Ukrainian people are increasingly barbaric.

“UK weapons, equipment and training are transforming Ukraine’s defences against this onslaught.”

Source – https://www.bbc.co.uk/

Ukraine War: UK pledges an extra £1bn in military support
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India – Police used batons and tear gas to break up demonstrations in Bihar, Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan states after young people took to the streets and damaged government buildings.

Trains have been set on fire as thousands of people took part in protests in India against a new military recruitment system.

Police used batons and tear gas to break up demonstrations in Bihar, Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan states after young people took to the streets and damaged government buildings.

In Bihar, the worst-hit area in the east of the country, almost 25,000 police were deployed after demonstrations spread to a dozen towns in eight districts.

Protesters blocked roads and attacked railway property, as trains were set alight, rail tracks damaged and a station was vandalised.

Also, an office of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) was set on fire in Nawada city, in the state.

The government is planning a new jobs programme which would allow the armed forces to recruit 46,000 men and women aged 17-and-a-half to 21 at non-officer level but only for four years.

After that, just 25% of them will be retained, and the other 75% will not be entitled to pension benefits.

Previously, soldiers have been recruited by the army, navy and air force separately and typically enter service for up to 17 years for the lowest ranks.

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The shorter tenure has led to worries among potential recruits.

“Where will we go after working for only four years?” said one young man, surrounded by fellow protesters in Bihar’s Jehanabad district. “We will be homeless after four years of service. So we have jammed the roads.”

But defence minister Rajnath Singh defended the plans, saying they aim to “strengthen the security of the country”.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his government are facing pressure to create jobs in India as the economy recovers from the pandemic.

One idea behind the short-term military recruitment is that those trained in the forces can later seek private-sector jobs or employment in the police force.

Source – https://news.sky.com/

India: Protesters set fire to trains over plans for new short-term military jobs
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War in Ukraine – Is the Russian military having to change its plans? Perhaps even reduce the scale of Moscow’s ambitions in Ukraine?

It’s probably too early to tell, but there’s definitely a shift in emphasis.

A top Russian general – Sergey Rudskoy – says the “first stage” of what President Vladimir Putin calls Russia’s “special military operation” has been mostly accomplished and that Russian forces will now concentrate on “the complete liberation of the Donbas”.

This is likely to mean a more concerted effort to push beyond the “line of contact” that separates Ukrainian government-held territory in the east of the country from the Russian-backed separatist “people’s republics” of Donetsk and Luhansk.

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The pace of Russia’s advance in other areas of the War in Ukraine remains glacial. Its forces have been pushed back from positions around the capital, Kyiv, and are said to have started digging defensive positions to avoid losing more or prepare for some kind of pause.

It’s probably way too early to conclude that Russia has given up on capturing Kyiv, but Western officials say that Russia continues to experience setback after setback.

On Friday, they said Russia had lost another general – the seventh – and that morale was at rock bottom in some units.

They believe General Rudskoy’s announcement implies that Moscow knows that its ambitious pre-war strategy has failed.

“Russia is recognising that it can’t pursue its operations on multiple axes simultaneously,” one official said.

As many as 10 new Russian battalion tactical groups are being generated, officials say and are heading for the Donbas.

Even before the War in Ukraine began last month, they voiced the fear that Russia would make a concerted effort to encircle and envelop Ukraine’s best fighting units which make up the Joint Forces Operation (JFO), stationed along the line of contact.

Retreat may not mean tame ambitions

A renewed push now could see Russian troops pushing out into so-far unconquered areas of Donetsk and Luhansk, possibly aiming to link up with forces moving south from Kharkiv and Izyum.

And if Russia can succeed in finally pacifying the port of Mariupol, on the Sea of Azov, then other forces could move north and complete the encirclement of the JFO.

Some of these objectives still seem out of reach. Mariupol’s defenders are putting up a ferocious fight, preventing Russia from fully achieving another of its pre-war ambitions – a land bridge from the Crimean Peninsula to the Donbas.

But if Moscow has concluded that it makes more sense to concentrate, for the time being, on achieving one objective at a time, it’s likely to concentrate its firepower, especially from the air.

The Ukrainian military, disciplined and motivated as it is, will need all the help it can get to withstand the pressure.

“I hope that’s where the Western supply of arms will make a significant contribution to Ukrainian forces,” one Western official said.

If the coming days do see a shift of focus to the Donbas, that doesn’t yet mean that Moscow has abandoned its wider ambitions.

“We don’t see a re-evaluation of the invasion as a whole,” a senior US defence official said.

Source – https://www.bbc.co.uk/

War in Ukraine: Change of emphasis or admission of failure by Moscow
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Grindr – A man from north London who raped two men he met on a dating app has been jailed for 14 years.

Aaron Goodey, 23, met his victims on Grindr before going to their houses and raping them.

He then took them to a cashpoint and forced them to withdraw cash while threatening further violence.

Both attacks took place in the Enfield area.

Further enquiries resulted in Goodey being linked to a third offence that occurred in Lambeth in January 2020 where a man was assaulted and forced to withdraw money by a man who he had met for consensual sex.

Forensic evidence taken from the victim of the first offence led to scientists identifying Goodey as a potential suspect. Officers carried out further enquiries, including reviewing CCTV footage and phone work, which linked him to the three incidents.

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Goodey was arrested and interviewed about the attacks. He denied any involvement, but the evidence collected by scientists and officers was overwhelming and led to the Crown Prosecution Service authorising charges against him.

Goodey was found guilty of three counts of rape, two counts of robbery and one count of blackmail.

He was sentenced at Wood Green Crown Court on Friday, 17 September.

Detective Superintendent Seb Adjei-Addoh, from the local policing team in Enfield, said:“Aaron Goodey is a dangerous sexual attacker and posed a significant risk to men across London.

“He gained access to the victim’s houses before subjecting them to significant sexual attacks, while using and threatening further violence, to extort money.

“This sentence sends a clear message that sexual violence towards any person will not be tolerated in London and I acknowledge the bravery shown by the victims in this case who provided crucial evidence to ensure Goodey cannot offend again.

“I would urge anyone who had been the victim of such an offence to contact police immediately on 101. Any reports will be dealt with sensitively and your identity will be kept confidential. Always call 999 in an emergency.”

Source – https://www.standard.co.uk/

Londoner jailed for raping two men he met on Grindr
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Taliban – The new Taliban mayor of Afghanistan’s capital Kabul has told female municipal employees to stay home unless their jobs cannot be filled by a man.

Hamdullah Nomany said the Taliban “found it necessary to stop women from working for a while”.

It is the latest restriction imposed on Afghanistan’s women by the country’s hard-line new Islamist government.

During their previous rule in the 1990s women were barred from education and the workplace.

After seizing the country last month following the withdrawal of US forces, the Taliban said women’s rights would be respected “within the framework of Islamic law”.

But the Taliban favour a strict interpretation of Islam’s legal system, Sharia law.

Since taking power working women have been told to stay at home until the security situation improves, and Taliban fighters have beaten women protesting against the all-male interim government.

The Islamist group appears to have shut down the women’s affairs ministry and replaced it with a department that once enforced strict religious doctrines.

And this weekend secondary schools reopened, but with only boys and male teachers allowed back into classrooms. The Taliban said it was working on reopening schools for girls.

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According to the Kabul mayor about a third of the municipality’s 3,000 employees are women. He said some would carry on working.

“For example, women work in the women’s toilets in the city where men cannot go,” he said.

“But for the positions that others [men] can fill, we have told them [women] to stay at home until the situation is normalised. Their salaries will be paid,” he added.

On Sunday, there were small protests outside the women’s affairs ministry while another group of women held a press conference to demand their rights.

One of those protesting at the ministry said “we do not want this ministry to be removed. The removal of women [means] the removal of human beings.”

In a separate development, the Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission said it had been unable to fulfil its duties since the Taliban’s takeover.

The organisation said in a statement that its buildings, vehicles and computers had all been taken over by the Taliban.

Source – https://www.bbc.co.uk/

Taliban: Stay home, female Kabul government workers told
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South Africa – Two weeks after South Africa was gripped by a frenzy of looting and arson – the worst scenes of violence since the advent of democracy in 1994 – the makeshift road blocks and mounds of rubbish in the port city of Durban have been cleared away.

But soldiers continue to patrol tense neighbourhoods devastated by a week of anarchy that left more than 300 people dead.

“Everything is gone. I have no insurance. I’m worried about the future of South Africa. I’m worried about the future of my kids,” said entrepreneur Dawn Shabalala, whose four small shops were looted – down to the last water pipe and electrical fitting.

She recalled watching in horror and frustration as overstretched local police made no attempt to stop the destruction.

“I fear it can happen again. But where do I go? What do I do? I had 12 staff that I can’t afford to pay. The government didn’t take any notice of this,” she said, standing in her ransacked hair salon on a street where every shop appeared to have been cleared out, with several set on fire too.

Mr Zikalala had earlier faced criticism for suggesting that in order to calm the situation, the authorities should release former President Jacob Zuma from prison.

It was Zuma’s arrest, for contempt of court, which sparked the unrest, leading to claims that his allies were seeking to overthrow South Africa’s young democracy.

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But later Mr Zikalala was toeing the official government line, acknowledging that the violence in his province and in the economic heartland of Gauteng “started as a mobilisation around the former president, but then became something uncontrollable”.

“It was deliberately started and orchestrated… and had an element of undermining the state – an insurrection,” Mr Zikalala added.

Although “many, many people are very unhappy about [Zuma’s] incarceration,” Mr Zikalala said, “anyone involved in instigating or planning or supporting disruption must be arrested and prosecuted”.

In one of the worst affected neighbourhoods, Phoenix, members of the large community of Indian origin expressed concern that racial tensions had been deliberately enflamed by those orchestrating the violence, and the security forces had failed to protect communities.

Source – https://www.bbc.co.uk/

South Africa riots – The inside story of Durban’s week of anarchy
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Knife crime – The general degree of knife crime in London has fallen by almost a third to the least absolute in five years in spite of the new flood in teen cutting edge killings, official figures displayed on Thursday.

The Office for National Statistics said that there were 10,150 offenses completed with an edge in the capital in the a year to the furthest limit of March this year in the most recent delineation of the effect of the lockdown.

The count was 31% down on the same time frame a year sooner.

The fundamental explanation was a 42 percent fall in knife-point burglaries, which dropped from 9,570 to 5,495, as less individuals on the roads on account of the Covid limitations allowed muggers less opportunity to strike.

There was likewise a 15 percent fall in knife killings, which were down to 75 in the most recent yearly figures from 88 every year sooner and 535 less edge attacks causing injury or pointed toward causing hurt.

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The quantity of knifepoint assaults just four lower, notwithstanding, giving another yearly all out of 109 such offenses.

Thursday’s figures mean the absolute number of cutting edge offenses, which as of late has crested at more than 15,000 in a year, is currently down to levels last seen in 2016.

However, the achievement will be dominated by the 19 adolescent edge passings so far this year and fears that the finish of limitations will permit strains that rotted during lockdown to provoke proceeded with viciousness in spite of police endeavors to forestall it.

Source – https://www.standard.co.uk/

Knife crime in London has fallen to the lowest total in five years
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Nigeria – A tree trunk, some quick thinking and crawling several miles through the forest helped a Nigerian schoolboy escape from kidnappers.

The 17-year-old student (whose name we can’t reveal) was abducted alongside more than 500 others from Government Science Secondary School in the north-western Katsina state on Friday night.

“We were being pushed and beaten, we spent the night marching, sometimes walking on thorns. Thirty minutes before dawn we were told to sleep,” he told BBC Hausa.

He said that while the group was resting, he found a tree under which he sat down.

“After we sat down, I leaned back a little. I found the side of a tree which I hid behind. I lay down and stretched out my legs.”

When the gunmen ordered the rest of the group to move on, they didn’t notice him behind the tree.

“After everyone left, I started crawling and looking round, until I entered a nearby village, and it is by the special grace of God that I was able to escape,” he said.

Katsina State governor Aminu Bello Masari said 333 students were still missing but it is not clear how many of them are with their abductors, as many may have run away and not yet been found. He also said that the kidnappers had made contact and that negotiations were under way.

However, Garba Shehu, a spokesman for the Nigerian president, had told the BBC that students who had fled said only 10 of their colleagues remained with the gunmen.

‘They said they were security men’

The student who escaped said the armed men came to the school around 21:30 local time (20:30 GMT) on Friday and that many students jumped the school fence and fled when they heard gunshots.

However they were tracked by the gunmen who had flashlights and who told tricked them into believing that they were security personnel and asked them to return.

The students would later realise that the men were not who they said they were.

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At this point it is believed that the students were rounded up and forced to walk into the forest by the armed men.

“After we were taken into the forest, one of them ordered us to stop and count our belongings before continuing our journey,” he said.

He said that 520 students were counted and that he did not see anyone else while he was escaping.

The government has blamed the attack on bandits, a loose term for gangs operating in the area, often kidnapping people for ransom.

Source – https://www.bbc.co.uk/

Nigeria Katsina school abduction: ‘How I escaped my kidnappers’
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Vienna shooting – Austrian police are still searching for at least one suspect after a multiple gun attack in the capital, Vienna, that left three people dead.

About 14 other people have been wounded – some seriously – after several gunmen opened fire at six different locations in the city centre on Monday evening.

One suspect was shot dead by police, officials said.

Interior Minister Karl Nehammer described the assailant killed by police as an “Islamist terrorist”.

Addressing a news conference, he said the attacker had been wearing an explosive belt and was an Islamic State (IS) sympathiser. He said the suspect’s home had been searched and video material seized.

Earlier, Mr Nehammer said at least one “heavily armed and dangerous” attacker was believed to be still at large. He urged people to avoid central Vienna and told parents not to take their children to school on Tuesday.

The shootings broke out near Vienna’s central synagogue but it is not yet clear if that was the target. Austrian Chancellor Sebastian Kurz called it a “repulsive terror attack”.

The attack happened just hours before Austria imposed new national restrictions to try to stem rising cases of coronavirus. Many people were out enjoying bars and restaurants before they closed at midnight.

European leaders strongly condemned the shooting. British Prime Minister Boris Johnson said he was “deeply shocked by the terrible attacks”.

What do we know about the attack?

Police said the incident began at about 20:00 (19:00 GMT), near the Seitenstettengasse synagogue, when a heavily armed man opened fire on people outside cafes and restaurants.

Members of the special forces quickly arrived at the scene. One policeman suffered a gunshot wound before other officers shot the perpetrator, who was armed with an automatic rifle, a pistol and a machete.

Jewish community leader Oskar Deutsch tweeted that the synagogue was closed at the time the attack began. An officer guarding the building was among the wounded, newspaper Kronen Zeitung reported.

It was not immediately clear how many attackers took part in the shooting. The city’s police chief said two men and a woman were killed.

Footage posted on social media showed scenes of chaos as people ran through the streets with gunshots ringing out in the background.

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Earlier reports suggested one suspect had been arrested, but the interior minister has not confirmed it.

Witness Chris Zhao was in a nearby restaurant when the shooting started.

He told the BBC: “We heard noises that sounded like firecrackers. We heard about 20 to 30 and we thought that to be actually gunfire. We saw the ambulances… lining up. There were victims. Sadly, we also saw a body lying down the street next to us.”

Source https://thebritishherald.com/

Vienna shooting: Austria launches manhunt after deadly ‘terror’ attack
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