Day: September 11, 2023

Rescuers contrinued their search for survivors in the rubble after Morocco’s deadliest earthquake in over six decades. On Monday, the US marked the 22nd Anniversary of the 9//11 attacks. A recent UN report says that Al Qaeda has established itself back in Afghanistan and it’s recruiting new members.

CAIRO — Mediterranean storm Daniel caused devastating floods in Libya that broke dams and swept away entire neighborhoods in multiple coastal towns in the east of the North African nation. As many as 2,000 people were feared dead, one of the country’s leaders said Monday.

The destruction appeared greatest in Derna, a city formerly held by Islamic extremists in the chaos that has gripped Libya for more than a decade and left it with crumbling and inadequate infrastructure. Libya remains divided between two rival administrations, one in the east and one in the west, each backed by militias and foreign governments.

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The confirmed death toll from the weekend flooding stood at 61 as of late Monday, according to health authorities. But the tally did not include Derna, which had become inaccessible, and many of the thousands missing there were believed carried away by waters after two upstream dams burst.

Video by residents of the city posted online showed major devastation. Entire residential areas were erased along a river that runs down from the mountains through the city center. Multistory apartment buildings that once stood well back from the river were partially collapsed into the mud.

In a phone interview with station Monday, Prime Minister Ossama Hamad of the east Libyan government said 2,000 were feared dead in Derna and thousands were believed missing. He said Derna has been declared a disaster zone.

Ahmed al-Mosmari, a spokesman for the country’s armed forces based in the east, told a news conference that the death toll in Derna had surpassed 2,000. He said there were between 5,000 and 6,000 reported missing. Al-Mosmari attributed the catastrophe to the collapse of two nearby dams, causing a lethal flash flood.

Since a 2011 uprising that toppled and later killed long-time ruler Moammar Gadhafi, Libya has lacked a central government and the resulting lawlessness has meant dwindling investment in the country’s roads and public services and also minimal regulation of private building. The country is now split between rival governments in the east and west, each backed by an array of militias.

Read More: ‘Our Hearts Are Dead.’ After 9 Years of Civil War, Libyans Are Tired of Being Pawns in a Geopolitical Game of Chess

Derna itself, along with the city of Sirte, was controlled by extremist groups for years, at one point by those who pledged allegiance to the Islamic State group, until forces loyal to the east-based government expelled them in 2018.

At least 46 people were reported dead in the eastern town of Bayda, Abdel-Rahim Mazek, head of the town’s main medical center said. Another seven people were reported dead in the coastal town of Susa in northeastern Libya, according to the Ambulance and Emergency Authority. Seven others were reported dead in the towns of Shahatt and Omar al-Mokhtar, said Ossama Abduljaleel, health minister. One person was reported dead Sunday in the town of Marj.

The Libyan Red Crescent said three of its workers had died while helping families in Derna. Earlier, the group said it lost contact with one of its workers as he attempted to help a stuck family in Bayda. Dozens of others were reported missing, and authorities fear they could have died in the floods that destroyed homes and other properties in several towns in eastern Libya, according to local media.

In Derna, local media said the situation was catastrophic with no electricity or communications.

Essam Abu Zeriba, the interior minister of the east Libya government, said more than 5,000 people were expected to be missing in Derna. He said many of the victims were swept away towards the Mediterranean.

“The situation is tragic,” he declared in a telephone interview on the Saudi-owned satellite news channel Al-Arabiya. He urged urged local and international agencies to rush to help the city.

Georgette Gagnon, the U.N. humanitarian coordinator for Libya, said early reports showed that dozens of villages and towns were “severely affected … with widespread flooding, damage to infrastructure, and loss of life.”

“I am deeply saddened by the severe impact of (storm) Daniel on the country … I call on all local, national, and international partners to join hands to provide urgent humanitarian assistance to the people in eastern Libya,” she wrote on X platform, formerly known as Twitter.

In a post on X, the U.S. Embassy in Libya said it was in contact with both the U.N. and Libyan authorities and was determining how to deliver aid to the most affected areas.

Over the weekend, Libyans shared footage on social media showing flooded houses and roads in many areas across eastern Libya. They pleaded for help as floods besieged people inside their homes and in their vehicles.

Ossama Hamad, the prime minister of the east Libya government, declared Derna a disaster zone after heavy rainfall and floods destroyed much of the city which is located in the delta of the small Wadi Derna on Libya’s east coast. The prime minister also announced three days of mourning and ordered flags across the country to be lowered to half-staff.

Controlling eastern and western Libya, Cmdr. Khalifa Hifter deployed troops to help residents in Benghazi and other eastern towns. Ahmed al-Mosmari, a spokesperson for Hifter’s forces, said they lost contact with five troops who were helping besieged families in Bayda.

Foreign governments sent messages of support on Monday evening. Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, the president of the United Arab Emirates, said his country would send humanitarian assistance and search-and-rescue teams to eastern Libya, according to the UAE’s state-run WAM news agency.

Turkey, which supports the country’s Tripoli-based government in the west, also expressed condolences, along with neighboring Algeria and Egypt, and also Iraq.

Storm Daniel is expected to arrive in parts of west Egypt on Monday, and the country’s meteorological authorities warned about possible rain and bad weather.

(NewsNation) — As Utah mother Ruby Franke faces charges of child abuse, a former member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints who met the Frankes says they were “not the Mormon family they were portraying themselves to be.”

Carl Andreasen, a YouTube content creator, doubts the sincerity of claims from Ruby Franke’s sister Bonnie Hoellein that the family did “as much as we could” to protect Franke’s kids from alleged abuse.

“I know that Bonnie herself was criticized heavily … back in 2018, 2019 … because she was constantly portraying her children with split lips and bloody noses,” Andreasen said Monday on “CUOMO.”

Hoellein made the comments in a YouTube video posted Aug. 31 that has since been made private, Page Six reported.

“My sisters and I, we are on the very same page. … and for the last three years we have truly clung onto each other, offering support to one another, and I don’t think any of us could have ever seen this coming,” Hoellein said in the video. “We all did as much as we could legally, and you don’t know what you don’t know.”

Franke was arrested and charged with six felony counts of aggravated child abuse after her 12-year-old son escaped the home of Franke’s business partner, Jodi Hildebrandt, and sought help from neighbors. They reported to a 911 dispatcher that the child had duct tape on his ankles and abrasions that appeared to be from some sort of bindings.

Another of Franke’s children was found inside Hildebrandt’s home in a malnourished state, police said.

Franke is a Mormon mother of six from Utah. She and her husband, Kevin Franke, ran a YouTube channel called “8 Passengers” about life with their six children, who currently range in age from 10 to 20. At the peak of the channel’s popularity, the family had more than two million followers.

8 Passengers garnered controversy for showing the children in vulnerable moments and for what Franke called her strict parenting style. Those who spoke out against the channel said she was openly abusing her children. The channel was removed from YouTube this year.

A former Mormon and YouTube content creator, Andreasen said he first met the Franke family at various conventions that would be attended by what he described in a recent video as “Mormon influencer families.” Later, both his family and some of the Franke family moved to southern Utah.

“Ever since we got to know the family behind the scenes, they were not the Mormon family that they were portraying themselves to be on their YouTube channels,” Andreasen said.

Franke and Hildebrandt were ordered held without bail at their first court appearance. The attorney for Franke’s husband Kevin has denied the father was involved in the alleged abuse.

Franke’s four minor children have been placed under the custody of the state.

Hoellein and her two other sisters wrote in a joint statement Aug. 31 that they had “kept quiet” about Ruby Franke for the past three years “for the sake of the children.”

“Behind the public scene we have done everything we could to try and make sure the kids were safe,” Hoellein, Ellie Mecham, and Julie Deru wrote on Instagram. “Ruby was arrested which needed to happen. Jodi was arrested which needed to happen. The kids are now safe, which is the number one priority.”

NewsNation producer Stephanie Whiteside contributed to this report.

Norwegian intelligence officials said Monday that the case of a 25-year-old unidentified foreign student, who was arrested in Norway on suspicion of illegally eavesdropping by using various technical devices, is “serious and complicated.”

The case was shrouded in secrecy.

The man, whose identity and nationality have not been disclosed, was arrested on Friday. A court in Oslo on Sunday ordered that he be held in pre-trial custody for four weeks, on suspicion of espionage and intelligence operations against the NATO-member Nordic country.

In an email to The Associated Press, a prosecutor for Norway’s domestic security agency, known by its acronym PST, said the investigation was in “a critical and initial phase” and would take time.

During the arrest, police seized from the man a number of data-carrying electronic devices. The suspect is a student — though not enrolled in an educational institution in Norway — and has been living in Norway for a relatively short time, Norwegian media said.

Norwegian broadcaster NRK said the suspect had allegedly been caught conducting illegal signal surveillance in a rental car near the Norwegian prime minister’s office and the defense ministry.

The suspect, who authorities say was not operating alone, was banned from receiving letters and visits. According to prosecutor Thomas Blom, the suspect “has not yet wanted to be questioned.”

Blom declined to comment further.

In previous assessments, the security agency has singled out Russia, China and North Korea as states that pose a significant intelligence threat to Norway, a nation of 5.4 million people.

In October, Norway detained a man who had entered the country as a Brazilian citizen but is suspected of being a Russian spy. He was detained in the Arctic city of Tromso, where he worked at the Arctic University of Norway.

Norwegian media have said the man called himself Jose Assis Giammaria. Norwegian authorities said he was 44, born in Russia in 1978 and was likely named Mikhail Mikushin.

Christopher Worrell was found guilty of spraying pepper spray gel on police officers during Capitol riot.

Alabama officials on Monday asked the U.S. Supreme Court to temporarily halt a lower court’s ruling that rejected a Republican-crafted electoral map for diminishing the clout of Black voters, escalating a legal dispute with potentially broad implications for the 2024 congressional elections.

The state’s request concerned Tuesday’s decision by three federal judges in Birmingham who found that the map approved by the Republican-led state legislature to set the boundaries of Alabama’s seven U.S. House districts was unlawfully biased against Black voters and must be redrawn.

That map was devised after the Supreme Court in June blocked a previous version, also for weakening the voting power of Black Alabamians.

Villagers in parts of Morocco devastated by the country’s biggest earthquake in over a century camped outside for a fourth night on Monday, as the death toll rose to more than 2,800 people.

Search teams from Spain, Britain and Qatar joined Moroccan efforts to find survivors from the 6.8 magnitude quake that struck in the High Atlas Mountains late on Friday, flattening the traditional mud brick houses ubiquitous in the region.

State TV reported late on Monday that the death toll had risen to 2,862, with 2,562 people injured. With much of the quake zone in hard-to-reach areas, authorities have not issued any estimates for the number of missing.

In the village of Tinmel, almost every house was pulverised and the entire community has been left homeless. The stench of death from dozens of animals buried under the rubble wafts through parts of the village.

Mouhamad Elhasan, 59, said he had been eating dinner with his family when the earthquake struck. His 31-year-old son fled outside and was hit as their neighbour’s roof collapsed, trapping him under the rubble.

Elhasan said he searched for his son as he cried for help. But eventually the cries stopped, and by the time he reached his son he was dead. Elhasan and his wife and daughter remained inside their home and survived.

“If he had stayed inside the house he would have been ok,” Elhasan said.

In Tinmel and in other villages residents said they had pulled people out of the rubble with their bare hands.

In Tikekhte, where few buildings have been left standing, 66-year-old Mohamed Ouchen described how residents rescued 25 people – one of whom was his sister.

“We were busy rescuing. Because we didn’t have tools, we used our hands,” he said. “Her head was visible and we kept digging by hand.”

Footage from the remote village of Imi N’Tala, filmed by Spanish rescuer Antonio Nogales of the aid group Bomberos Unidos Sin Fronteras (United Firefighters Without Borders), showed men and dogs clambering over steep slopes covered in rubble.

“The level of destruction is … absolute,” said Nogales on Monday, struggling to find the right word to describe what he was seeing. “Not a single house has stayed upright.”

Despite the scale of the damage, he said rescuers searching with dogs still hoped to find survivors.

The epicentre of the quake was about 72 km (45 miles) southwest of Marrakech, where some historical buildings in the old city, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, were damaged. The quake also did major damage to the historically significant 12th-century Tinmel Mosque.

More modern parts of Marrakech largely escaped unscathed, including a site near the airport earmarked for IMF and World Bank meetings, due to be held next month.

Over 10,000 people are expected at the meetings, which the Moroccan government wants to proceed, sources said.

After an initial response that was described as too slow by some survivors, tent camps appeared in some locations by Monday night as people spent a fourth night outdoors.

The army said it was reinforcing search-and-rescue teams, providing drinking water, and distributing food, tents and blankets.

A major road connecting the High Atlas Mountains to Marrakech was gridlocked on Monday evening as heavy vehicles and volunteers carrying relief supplies headed towards some of the hardest-hit communities.

Moroccan volunteers and civilians, aided by some foreigners, helped direct traffic and clear the road of rock debris.

Morocco has accepted offers of aid from Spain and Britain, which both sent search-and-rescue specialists with sniffer dogs, and from the United Arab Emirates and Qatar. Algeria said it had allocated three planes to transport rescue personnel and aid. State TV said the Moroccan government might accept relief offers from other countries later.

The Biden administration is reportedly considering supplying Ukraine with longer-range missiles that are packed with cluster bombs and that could cause significant damage deeper within Russian-occupied territory, according to four U.S. officials.

After seeing the success of cluster munitions delivered in 155 mm artillery rounds in recent months, the U.S. is considering shipping Army Tactical Missile Systems (ATACMS) that can fly up to 306 kilometers and Guided Multiple Launch Rocket System (GMLRS) missiles that have a 72-kilometer range and are packed with cluster bombs, according to Reuters news agency. The GMLRS rocket system would be able to disperse up to 404 cluster munitions. Ukraine has had a version of the GMLRS system in its arsenal for months.

The Biden administration has for months been mulling over the supply of ATACMS, fearing their shipment to Ukraine would be perceived as an overly aggressive move against Russia.

With Ukraine’s counteroffensive against Russian forces showing signs of progress, however, Washington is keen to boost the Ukrainian military at a vital moment, two sources told Reuters.

Ukraine’s military intelligence said Monday that Ukrainian forces had retaken control of several offshore gas and oil drilling platforms near Crimea.

It said on Telegram that the operation included Ukrainian special forces on boats who damaged a Russian Su-30 fighter jet and captured helicopter ammunition and radar equipment.

Ukraine’s Ministry of Defense said Russia had occupied the platforms since 2015 and had used them for military purposes.

More territory gained

Ukraine also said on Monday that its troops had regained more territory on the eastern and southern fronts in the past week of its counteroffensive against Russian forces. 

Washington continues to assess the progress Ukrainian forces are making on the ground, and Russia’s overall strategic goals have failed in Ukraine, said State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller during a press briefing Monday,

“Their goals were to take Kyiv, to take the majority, if not all of the country, to overthrow the democratically elected government of Ukraine. In all of those things they have failed,” he said.

Miller noted that the Ukrainians have taken back around 50% of the country that Russia occupied at the height of its full-scale invasion.

The State Department spokesman said that one indication of Russia’s difficulties in sustaining its military effort is [Russian President Vladimir] Putin “traveling across his own country, hat in hand, to beg [North Korean leader] Kim Jong Un for military assistance.”

The meeting between the two leaders is expected to take place as early as Tuesday in Vladivostok, Russia.

“We are going to monitor very closely the outcome of this meeting,” Miller said. “I would remind both countries that any transfer of arms from North Korea to Russia would be in violation of multiple United Nations Security Council resolutions, and we aggressively, of course, have enforced our sanctions against entities that fund Russia’s war effort. We will continue to enforce those sanctions and will not hesitate to enforce new sanctions if appropriate.”

German aid

German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius said Monday that Berlin would not necessarily supply Kyiv with Taurus cruise missiles simply because the U.S. might decide to send ATACMS long-range missiles to the war-torn country.

“There is no automatism in this war,” Pistorius told reporters on the sidelines of a visit to Cologne, adding that Germany was not yet able to decide whether to provide Ukraine with Taurus missiles.

Kyiv has been pushing Berlin to supply it with the missiles, which are launched by fighter jets and have a range of more than 500 kilometers.

During a Monday meeting with his German counterpart, Annalena Baerbock, Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba announced that he requested the delivery of Taurus cruise missiles from Germany as soon as possible.

“You will do it anyway — it’s just a matter of time — and I don’t understand why we are wasting time,” Kuleba said in response to a question at a joint press conference with Baerbock in Kyiv.

Kuleba noted that Ukraine, a major grain producer and exporter, needed more protection for its ports after Russia stepped up airstrikes on grain export infrastructure. 

The German foreign minister said that Germany would provide an additional $21.44 million in humanitarian aid, bringing Berlin’s additional aid to $408 million this year.

“Russia’s perfidious goal is to starve the people again this winter and to let them freeze to death,” she warned. 

Baerbock also expressed her country’s support for Ukraine’s entrance into the European Union but added that Kyiv has to do more to combat graft.

“Reform results in the areas of judicial reform and media legislation are already impressive. But there is still a long way to go in the implementation of the anti-oligarch law and the fight against corruption,” Baerbock said. 

Some information was provided by The Associated Press, Agence France-Presse and Reuters.

North Korea’s Kim Jong-un set to meet Vladimir Putin; Ukraine recaptures gas and oil rigs in Black Sea

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North Korean leader Kim Jong-un was travelling to Russia by armoured train to meet President Vladimir Putin, Pyongyang said, with face-to-face talks potentially focused on weapon sales. Experts suggest Putin is seeking artillery shells and anti-tank missiles from North Korea, while Kim is reportedly in search of advanced technology for satellites and nuclear-powered submarines, as well as food aid for his impoverished nation.

A US spokesman said the meeting indicated Putin was desperate over the Ukraine conflict and renewed warnings that any arms deal could trigger US sanctions. “Having to travel across the length of his own country to meet with an international pariah to ask for assistance in a war that he expected to win in the opening month, I would characterise it as him begging for assistance,” state department spokesman Matthew Miller told reporters.

The Ukrainian military said it had recaptured strategic Black Sea gas and oil drilling platforms, the so-called Boyko Towers, that were seized by Russia in 2015. “Russia has been deprived of the ability to fully control the waters of the Black Sea, and this makes Ukraine many steps closer to regaining Crimea,” the Main Intelligence Directorate said.

Ukraine said its troops had regained more territory on the eastern and southern fronts in the past week of its counteroffensive. Deputy defence minister Hanna Maliar said in televised comments that Ukraine had retaken nearly 2 square km (0.77 square mile) of land around the eastern city of Bakhmut, captured by Russia in May. She later added on the Telegram messaging app that the Ukrainian army had in the past week also recaptured 4.8 square km in the southern Tavria sector.

The Biden administration is close to approving the shipment of longer-range missiles packed with cluster bombs to Ukraine, giving Kyiv the ability to cause significant damage deeper within Russian-occupied territory, Reuters reported citing four US officials.

The “decision-making process in Germany is moving forward” regarding the supply of Taurus missiles to Kyiv, president Volodymyr Zelenskiy said after a meeting with the country’s foreign minister, Annalena Baerbock. Earlier on Monday, Ukraine’s foreign minister, Dmytro Kuleba, had urged Berlin to send Taurus missiles to Ukraine as soon as possible.

Baerbock said Ukraine’s place was in the EU during her unannounced visit to Kyiv on Monday morning. Ukraine can “rely on us and on our understanding of EU enlargement as a necessary geopolitical consequence of Russia’s war,” Baerbock said upon arrival. Ukraine already has candidate status, said Baerbock. “And now we are preparing to take a decision on opening EU accession talks.”

Russia’s Central Election Commission said that the country’s ruling party had won the most votes in elections held in occupied Ukrainian regions, as Kyiv and the west denounced the ballots as a sham. The votes in Donetsk, Kherson, Luhansk and Zaporizhzhia and on the Crimean peninsula were held as Russian authorities attempt to tighten their grip on territories Moscow illegally annexed a year ago and still does not fully control.

Russia’s military targeted a civilian cargo ship in the Black Sea with “multiple missiles” last month but they were successfully intercepted by Ukrainian forces, Britain said citing intelligence. A vessel in Russia’s Black Sea fleet fired the missiles, which included two Kalibr cruise missiles, towards the southern Ukrainian port of Odessa on 24 August, according to the UK government.

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A New Mexico sheriff on Monday refused to enforce Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham’s ban on the right to carry firearms in the state’s largest city and the surrounding county, saying it was unconstitutional and could spark political violence.

In response to the recent shooting deaths of children, Lujan Grisham, a Democrat, on Friday imposed the 30-day suspension of the right to carry guns, either concealed or openly, in Albuquerque and Bernalillo County in a bid to curb shootings.

The move enraged gun-rights proponents across the United States. At a rally on Sunday in downtown Albuquerque, protesters openly carried rifles and pistols.

Bernalillo County Sheriff John Allen said he did not want to endanger his deputies by making them enforce the ban.

“This order will not do anything to curb gun violence other than punish law-abiding citizens who have a constitutional right to self defense,” Allen said at a press briefing.

Some Democrats, including U.S. Representative Ted Lieu of California, also voiced opposition to the order as a violation of the Second Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, which guarantees the right to bear firearms.

Lujan Grisham last week declared gun violence a public health emergency after an 11-year-old boy was shot dead in Albuquerque, apparently in an act of road rage. Albuquerque has suffered record numbers of homicides two years running.

The second-term governor said concealed and open carry of firearms were state laws she had jurisdiction over, giving her the right to issue a civil order to address a rise in gun violence across the state. Her order was immediately challenged in U.S. district court by a Colorado gun rights group.

Albuquerque police chief Harold Medina said state police, rather than his officers, would be responsible for civil violations of the order which carry a fine of up to $5,000.

New Mexico State Police has not issued any citations, spokesman Ray Wilson said.

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