Welcoem to posts!!
in the future - u will be able to do some more stuff here,,,!! like pat catgirl- i mean um yeah... for now u can only see others's posts :c
US President Joe Biden overrode warnings from his staffers in approving a floating pier off the Gaza coast, meant to facilitate aid deliveries but which was repeatedly met with disaster, according to a watchdog report.
Multiple officials within the US’s humanitarian aid agency, USAID, raised concerns that the pier would detract from diplomatic efforts to push Israel to lift its restrictions on overland aid deliveries, USAID’s Office of the Inspector General said in the scathing report published on August 27.
It said “multiple USAID staff expressed concerns” that focusing on the pier, known as Joint Logistics Over-the-Shore (JLOTS), “would detract from the Agency’s advocacy to open land crossings in Israel and Egypt” deemed to be “more efficient and proven avenues for delivering aid to Gaza.”
The US military announced the end of the pier’s mission on July 17, declaring it “complete,” after a series of disasters since its construction in May led to the pier being repeatedly towed to an Israeli port for repairs.
The pier was functional for just 20 of the planned 90 days it was to be in use, the watchdog said, noting the pier fell “short of meeting the US government’s goal of providing enough aid to feed 500,000 people per month, or 1.5 million people over 3 months.”
Ultimately, only enough food to feed 450,000 people for one month was delivered.
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The Israeli government will, for the first time, finance the storming of the Al Aqsa Mosque by illegal Jewish settlers in occupied East Jerusalem, Israeli media reported on August 26.
According to the Israeli public broadcaster KAN, the office of Heritage Minister Amichai Eliyahu — an extremist minister known with anti-Palestinian stance — will allocate $545,000 for the project which is expected to be implemented in the coming weeks.
KAN also reported that the Heritage Ministry was in contact with far-right minister Itamar Ben-Gvir’s National Security Ministry to obtain Israeli police permission for the settlers’ funded tours to Al Aqsa.
Earlier on the same day, Ben-Gvir declared that Jews have the right to pray at Al Aqsa Mosque, saying that he would build a synagogue at the flashpoint site.
In response, Palestinian resistance group Hamas warned that Israel’s decision to fund storms to the third holiest site in Islam represents a “dangerous escalation” that could provoke a “religious war.”
“This extremist fascist government is playing with fire, as it does not care about the repercussions of its Zionist behaviour in violating the sanctity, status and identity of the blessed Al Aqsa Mosque in our Arab and Islamic nation,” the Hamas statement said.
The group had launched the Oct 7 attack on Israel in response to Israel's violations at the Al-Aqsa Mosque.
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At least ten people have been killed in a large-scale ground and air attack by Israel on the northern occupied West Bank, targeting Jenin, Tulkarem and the Jordan Valley.
Palestinian health officials reported casualties and injuries, but Israeli forces blocked ambulances from entering affected areas.
Israeli forces described it as their biggest operation in the area since 2002, the year the second intifada began.
Since the start of Israel’s genocidal war on Palestine’s Gaza, the number of raids in the West Bank has tripled, with the past few weeks seeing occupation air strikes on the territory.
Nightly raids in towns and villages by Israeli soldiers and settlers have killed over 646 Palestinians, including 148 children, and injured more than 5.400. Meanwhile, over 10,000 Palestinians have been arrested.
1,432 homes and structures have been demolished, resulting in the displacement of 3,270 Palestinians.
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Telegram founder Pavel Durov’s arrest in France has fueled discussions on free speech in the digital world as the messaging app has 800 million monthly users around the world.
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New York University has updated its student code around hate speech to add the criticism of Zionism as a discriminatory act.
“The new guidance sets a dangerous precedent by extending protections to anyone who adheres to Zionism, a nationalist political ideology, and troublingly equates criticism of Zionism with discrimination against Jewish people, “Faculty & Staff for Justice in Palestine said in a press release.
“The new guidance represents an intensification of NYU’s year-long effort to censor criticism and criminalise protest of Israel’s ongoing genocide in Gaza,” the group added.
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Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg stated in a letter dated August 26, that the Biden administration had pushed the company to “censor” COVID-19 content during the pandemic.
“In 2021, senior officials from the Biden Administration, including the White House, repeatedly pressured our teams for months to censor certain COVID-19 content, including humour and satire, and expressed a lot of frustration with our teams when we didn’t agree,” Zuckerberg said in the letter.
In the letter to the US House of Representatives Judiciary Committee, Zuckerberg also expressed regret for not speaking up sooner about the pressure he faced and for some decisions he made as the owner of Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp regarding the removal of certain content.
He said it ultimately decided to remove the content and accept responsibility for revising the COVID-19 policies due to external pressure.
“I believe the government pressure was wrong, and I regret that we were not more outspoken about it,” Zuckerberg said.
“I feel strongly that we should not compromise our content standards due to pressure from any administration in either direction — and we’re ready to push back if something like this happens again,” he added.
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Ride-hailing app Uber has been fined $324 million in the Netherlands for sending the personal data of drivers to the United States in violation of EU rules.
“Uber transferred personal data of European taxi drivers to the US and failed to appropriately safeguard the data with regard to these transfers,” the Dutch Data Protection Authority (DPA) said on August 26.
For a period of over two years, Uber collected and sent personal data including account details and taxi licences, location data, photos, payment details, identity documents and in some cases even criminal and medical data of drivers to its headquarters in the US, the DPA found.
“Uber did not meet the requirements of the GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation) to ensure the level of protection to the data with regard to transfers to the US. That is very serious,” DPA Chairman Aleid Wolfsen said
This is the third fine that the Dutch DPA imposed on Uber, following fines of $670,000 in 2018 and $11.2 million in 2023.
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#Paris2024 Paralympic Games are set to begin on August 28, with 94 para athletes from 15 sports representing Türkiye in the quest for gold.
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In Gaza’s hospitals, mobile phone torches are now as essential as stethoscopes for doctors doing rounds without functioning generators amid widespread fuel shortages in the besieged territory.
In northern Gaza, Kamal Adwan Hospital has “stopped taking in patients” altogether, says doctor Mahmoud Abu Amsha, noting that “international organisations no longer supply it with the fuel needed for the generators.”
Not only do fuel shortages restrict the hospital’s services, but they could soon prove deadly to infants needing medical attention.
“Children in the incubators are threatened with cardiac arrest and death, and there are also seven cases in the intensive care unit, and they will die due to the fuel shortage,” Abu Amsha adds.
To respond to a major emergency, medics at Kamal Adwan can still turn to solar energy, but it does not prove useful to patients needing uninterrupted electrical equipment all hours of the day.
Gaza’s 2.3 million people, nearly all of whom have been displaced at least once, have only 16 hospitals still serving them – all of them partially.
In the first days of the war, Gaza’s only power plant stopped working and Israel cut off the electricity supply. Fuel has since trickled in along with other humanitarian aid through Israeli-controlled checkpoints.
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After 12 evacuation orders issued by Israel in August alone, over 2 million Palestinians in Gaza are now confined to an ever-shrinking “safe zone” — just two-thirds the size of Manhattan.
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