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Israeli government passes law to limit Supreme Court power, defying mass protests - CNN
1. Israeli government passes law to limit Supreme Court power, defying mass protests CNN
2. Israel Protests LIVE : Protests rage in Tel Aviv over Israeli judicial overhaul | WION LIVE WION
3. Israel passes law to limit Supreme Court power: Live updates CNN
4. Daily Briefing July 24: Lack of trust has brought Israel to crisis. Who’s to blame? The Times of Israel
5. For a Solution to Israel's Turmoil, Go Back to the Beginning | Opinion Newsweek
6. View Full Coverage on Google News
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C. Notes: Newly inducted Hall of Famer Scott Rolen still influencing Reds - The Athletic
1. C. Notes: Newly inducted Hall of Famer Scott Rolen still influencing Reds The Athletic
2. Fred McGriff, Scott Rolen officially inducted into Baseball Hall of Fame: 'Never give up' Yahoo Sports
3. Scott Rolen delivers emotional Baseball Hall of Fame Induction speech Bally Sports Midwest
4. The Baseball Hall of Fame Weekend Atmosphere | News | wktv.com WKTV
5. Former Phillies Star Inducted into Hall of Fame Sports Illustrated
6. View Full Coverage on Google News
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Greta Gerwig Explains ‘Barbie’s “Mic Drop” Final Line - Deadline
1. Greta Gerwig Explains ‘Barbie’s “Mic Drop” Final Line Deadline
2. The Ending of 'Barbie' Is a Joke (and the Film's Most Meaningful Lesson) ELLE
3. Barbie Review: Pink, Fun, And Surprisingly Emotional Giant Freakin Robot
4. The 'Barbie' Movie's Best Moments Romper
5. It's Kind of Amazing That Barbie Manages to Be as Good as It Is Jacobin magazine
6. View Full Coverage on Google News
Voice of America
VOA Newscasts
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VOA Newscasts
Voice of America
What Can a Hit Netflix Show Teach Us About Elite College Admissions?
Voice of America
Lukashenko Whitewashes His Involvement in Abducting Ukrainian Children
Lukashenko has gone far beyond providing financial support and allowed the Russian government to expand its abduction of Ukrainian children into Belarus.
Voice of America
North Korea Fires Ballistic Missile
North Korea fired a ballistic missile into the sea off its east coast late on Monday, South Korea's Joint Chiefs of Staff said.
Japan's defense ministry also reported the launch of what it said could be a ballistic missile by North Korea.
The reports come amid heightened tensions on the Korean peninsula as South Korea and the United States take steps to boost military readiness against North Korea's weapons program with the deployment of U.S. strategic military assets.
North Korea has reacted angrily, saying such deployment could meet the criteria for its use of nuclear weapons.
North Korea conducted ballistic missile tests last week, hours after a U.S. nuclear-armed ballistic missile submarine arrived at a South Korean port for the first time since the 1980s.
On Monday, another nuclear-powered U.S. submarine arrived in South Korea.
Over the weekend, the North fired a barrage of cruise missiles into the sea off its west coast.
Voice of America
No, Mr. Putin, Europe Didn’t Ban RT for Telling the Truth
The EU and the U.K. banned Russian broadcasters for using systematic bias and disinformation as an “operational tool” in Moscow’s war against Ukraine.
Voice of America
VOA Newscasts
Give us 5 minutes, and we'll give you the world. Around the clock, Voice of America keeps you in touch with the latest news. We bring you reports from our correspondents and interviews with newsmakers from across the world.
Voice of America
VOA Newscasts
Give us 5 minutes, and we'll give you the world. Around the clock, Voice of America keeps you in touch with the latest news. We bring you reports from our correspondents and interviews with newsmakers from across the world.
Voice of America
2023 Comic-Con Showcases Diverse Voices
Comic books have often been about tackling social issues and protecting the underdog. That may be why they are attracting a wide variety of unique voices, from comic creators to cosplayers. Genia Dulot reports from Comic-Con 2023 in San Diego, California.
Voice of America
Wildfires Kill 25 in Algeria as Heatwave Sweeps North Africa
Twenty-five people including 10 soldiers were killed in forest fires in Algeria on Monday, in the mountainous regions of Bejaia and Bouira, Algerian authorities said, as a heatwave spreads across north Africa and southern Europe.
Some 7,500 firefighters were battling to bring the flames under control, authorities said.
The interior ministry said that it is continuing its firefighting operations in the Boumerdes, Bouira, Tizi Ouzou, Jijel, Bejaia and Skikda regions.
About 1,500 people have been evacuated so far.
A major heatwave is sweeping across North Africa, with temperatures of 49 Celsius (120 Fahrenheit) recorded in some cities in neighboring Tunisia.
In Tunisia, wildfires swept through the border town of Melloula. Witnesses told Reuters that fires that had begun in mountainous areas had reached some people's homes in the town and forced hundreds of families to flee.
A civil protection official said that they had evacuated hundreds of the town's residents by land and by sea, in fishermen's boats and coastguard vessels.
TIME
Greta Thunberg Isn’t Backing Down After Swedish Court Fine For Disobeying Police During Climate Protest
(MALMÖ, Sweden) — A Swedish court on Monday fined climate activist Greta Thunberg for disobeying police during an environmental protest at an oil facility last month.
Thunberg, 20, admitted to the facts but denied guilt, saying the fight against the fossil fuel industry was a form of self-defense due to the existential and global threat of the climate crisis.
“We cannot save the world by playing by the rules,” she told journalists after hearing the verdict, vowing she would “definitely not” back down.
The court rejected her argument and fined her 2,500 kronor (about $240).
Charges were brought against Thunberg and several other youth activists from the Reclaim the Future movement for refusing a police order to disperse after blocking road access to an oil terminal in the southern Swedish city of Malmö on June 19.
“If the court sees our actions of self-defense as a crime, that’s how it is,” said Irma Kjellström, a spokesperson for Reclaim the Future who was also present at the June protest. She added that activists “have to be exactly where the harm is being done.”
The sentencing appeared to have little effect on the youths’ determination — just a few hours later, Thunberg and Reclaim the Future activists returned to the oil terminal to stage to another roadblock.
t organizations. It started to gain speed and we were going out on the streets to show that we are still here even though the main discussion at this moment was that people are going to leave Israel from the liberal and left camp. The main discussion was of fear.
Two days before the first demonstration, the Minister of Justice Yariv Levin held a press conference and he declared the new judicial reform and then a lot more forces from the political center joined this movement. And that’s how the first demonstration exploded, with 30,000 people on the street. But honestly, it also had a lot of tension because the main organizer of it was a movement that also addressed the occupation. Many who decided to join the protests after Levin’s press conference announcing the judicial reform said, “Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. Don’t mix the reform and the settlers. We don’t want to talk about the occupation now.” Still, the first protest had four Palestinians on the main stage during that night of demonstration. It also had a woman from the strictly Orthodox Haredi community on the stage, and it was very clear about anti-racism, anti-occupation. And then, starting from the second protest, those messages were no longer the mainstream messages of the protest. Read More: Why Israel’s Democratic Reckoning Has Barely BegunThis is one of the biggest protests in Israel’s history. It has people in the tens of thousands and sometimes more than 150,000 people week after week after week. At some moments of the protests—like the night of the firing of Defense Minister Yoav Gallant because he demanded Netanyahu to stop with the judicial overhaul—people started flooding the streets, shouting, “Go out of your houses, there is a demonstration, go to the Kaplan Street, go to Kaplan!” And you saw that from every building on the street. I was one of those people. I left my house, I saw from the next building people leaving and then from the other building and the other. And it started to be like literal rivers of people that were connecting in the bigger streets to a bigger river and then we got to Kaplan and we were tens of thousands of people in a spontaneous moment that felt electrifying. We blocked one of the main highways of Israel and we stood there the entire night. It will be remembered as a historic moment in Israel.
The government has a lot to lose if they will not take advantage of their lottery win, the election results. It does feel for the government, for a lot of MPs and the parties of the coalition, that it’s not something to waste; it’s not something to let go of. I think that is driving them very strongly forward and it’s very scary to see.
Things have come to a head in the last four days in Israel. Last Monday, the government voted on a law that bans students in Israel that are coming from the Palestinian minority in Israel to wave a Palestinian flag. If you are a student and you wave a Palestinian flag, you’re not entitled to study in any academic institute in Israel. You are not entitled to receive an academic degree in Israel. And if you studied abroad, your degree from abroad will not be acknowledged by the Israeli state. And that was voted on on Monday and it passed two days ago in Parliament with the support of the government. That’s the preliminary voting—there’s still two more votes to go, but they actually pushed it forward.
Then, the other day, it was declared by the government that Arab teachers are going to get the supervision of the secret service and also they’re going to extend this program now so that every person who wants to become a teacher in Israel will have to undergo supervision of the secret service of Israel.
Another thing they did this week is to say that any request for child support from a woman to a man has to go through the rabbinical court, which means that if you want to get divorced, the man has the power to tell you to drop the request for child support. You cannot divorce without it in Israel; you need to get the support of [...]
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Bills' Nyheim Hines set to miss 2023 season after jet ski accident results in ACL injury, per report - CBS Sports
1. Bills' Nyheim Hines set to miss 2023 season after jet ski accident results in ACL injury, per report CBS Sports
2. Source - Bills RB Nyheim Hines (knee) expected to miss season - ESPN ESPN
3. Bills' Nyheim Hines will miss entire season after freak Jet Ski accident New York Post
4. NFL News: Nyheim Hines, Chauncey Gardner-Johnson in danger of missing 2023 season Turf Show Times
5. Bills expect Nyheim Hines to miss entire 2023 season NBC Sports
6. View Full Coverage on Google News
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From Twitter to X: Elon Musk Begins Erasing an Iconic Internet Brand - The New York Times
1. From Twitter to X: Elon Musk Begins Erasing an Iconic Internet Brand The New York Times
2. Twitter begins its transition to 'X' | Engadget Engadget
3. Elon Musk to replace Twitter's bird logo with an 'X' - BBC News BBC News
4. Opinion | X marks the spot: Twitter will see a big logo change Poynter
5. Twitter Rebrand: Elon Musk's X Misses the Spot Bloomberg
6. View Full Coverage on Google News
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Miami-Dade Police Chief Suffers 'Critical' Injury - The New York Times
1. Miami-Dade Police Chief Suffers 'Critical' Injury The New York Times
2. Sources: Miami-Dade police director shoots himself following spat with wife WPLG Local 10
3. Miami-Dade Police Director Ramirez’s ‘critical injury’ a sad and shocking event | Opinion Miami Herald
4. Miami-Dade's police director shot himself after domestic dispute at Tampa hotel, police say Yahoo! Voices
5. View Full Coverage on Google News
Voice of America
Navalny Associate Jailed as Russian Opposition Crackdown Continues
An associate of imprisoned Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny was convicted on extremism charges Monday as the Kremlin continues to crack down on political activists.
Vadim Ostanin, who previously headed Navalny's office in the southern Siberian city of Barnaul, was sentenced to nine years in a penal colony after being found guilty of organizing an extremist community and belonging to a nonprofit that "infringes on citizens' rights," Navalny's team wrote on social media.
Prosecutors had previously asked for the 46-year-old to be imprisoned for 11 years.
Ostanin was detained in November 2021, several months after Navalny's Foundation for Fighting Corruption and his regional offices were labeled as "extremist organizations" by the Russian government.
Ostanin's case is the latest in a string of recent convictions against regional activists linked to Navalny's work.
Lilia Chanysheva, who headed Navalny's headquarters in the central Russian city of Ufa, was sentenced to 7½ years in prison on similar charges on June 14. Chanysheva described her case as politically motivated.
Navalny himself is also facing a new trial on extremism charges that could keep him in prison for decades. It is due to begin next week at a maximum-security prison 250 kilometers (150 miles) east of Moscow where the 47-year-old politician is already serving time on two different convictions.
Navalny, who exposed official corruption and organized massive anti-Kremlin protests, was arrested in January 2021 upon returning to Moscow after recuperating in Germany from nerve-agent poisoning that he blamed on the Kremlin. He initially received a 2½-year prison sentence for a parole violation. Last year, he was sentenced to a nine-year term on fraud and contempt of court charges.
The new charges relate to the activities of Navalny's anti-corruption foundation and statements by his top associates. His allies said the charges retroactively criminalize all the foundation's activities since its creation in 2011.
Navalny has rejected all the charges against him as politically motivated and has accused the Kremlin of seeking to keep him behind bars for life.
Voice of America
Russia Falsely Denies Using Crimean Bridge for Military Purposes
The Russian military began using the Crimean Bridge after it was opened for automobile traffic in 2018. Since February 2022, the bridge has become the Russian military’s main transport corridor for troops heading to southern Ukraine.
Voice of America
Amid Speculation About His Absence, Qin Gang Still Listed as China’s Foreign Minister
As China's minister of foreign affairs, Qin Gang has a separate page devoted to him on the website of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the People's Republic of China. The page Newtalk referred to lists the ministry's other principal officials, but not the foreign minister.
Voice of America
Radical British Preacher Anjem Choudary Charged in Terrorism Case
High-profile British radical preacher Anjem Choudary appeared in a London court Monday, charged with leading a terrorist organization.
Choudary, 56, was charged Sunday with three counts under the Terrorism Act: directing a terrorist organization, membership in a banned organization and addressing meetings to encourage support for the organization between June 2022 and this month.
Prosecutors say the charges relate to the group al-Muhajiroun, which was outlawed by the British government in 2010. It has since operated “under many names and guises,” including the Islamic Thinkers Society, prosecutors say.
Choudary is alleged to have provided lectures to the Islamic Thinkers Society.
He was arrested at his home in London on July 17. He was charged alongside with Canadian national Khaled Hussein, 28, who was arrested at Heathrow Airport the same day after arriving on a flight.
Hussein, from Edmonton, Alberta, is charged with membership in a proscribed organization. Prosecutors say he worked with Choudary to provide “a platform” for the group's views.
Neither man entered a plea during separate hearings at Westminster Magistrates’ Court. Both were ordered detained until their next hearing at the Central Criminal Court on Aug. 4.
Nick Price, from the Crown Prosecution Service Counter Terrorism Division, said that "criminal proceedings against Mr. Choudary and Mr. Hussein are now active and they each have the right to a fair trial.”
Voice of America
July 24, 2023
A look at the best news photos from around the world.
Voice of America
Palestinians Seek Reassurance as Turkish-Israeli Rapprochement Accelerates
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas visits Turkey in a move that analysts say is aimed at getting reassurance as Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan pushes to improve ties with Israel. For VOA, Dorian Jones reports from Istanbul
Voice of America
Putin Signs Bill Marking Final Step Outlawing Gender-Affirming Procedures
Russian President Vladimir Putin Monday signed new legislation which marked the final step in outlawing gender-affirming procedures, a crippling blow to Russia’s already embattled LGBTQ+ community.
The bill, which was approved unanimously by both houses of parliament, bans any “medical interventions aimed at changing the sex of a person,” as well as changing one’s gender in official documents and public records. The only exception will be medical intervention to treat congenital anomalies.
It also annuls marriages in which one person has “changed gender” and bars transgender people from becoming foster or adoptive parents.
The ban is said to stem from the Kremlin’s crusade to protect what it views as the country’s “traditional values.” Lawmakers say the legislation is to safeguard Russia against “Western anti-family ideology,” with some describing gender transitioning as “pure satanism.”
Russia’s crackdown on LGBTQ+ people started a decade ago when Putin first proclaimed a focus on “traditional family values,” supported by the Russian Orthodox Church.
In 2013, the Kremlin adopted legislation that banned any public endorsement of “nontraditional sexual relations” among minors. In 2020, Putin pushed through constitutional reform that outlawed same-sex marriage, and last year signed a law banning “propaganda of nontraditional sexual relations” among adults as well.
Voice of America
FLASHPOINT UKRAINE: Moscow Attacked By Drones
Moscow attacked by drones as Russia steps up it’s attacks on southern Ukraine striking an orthodox cathedral in Odessa and ports on the Danube. African leaders prepare for a summit with Vladimir Putin and we learn about the the production and testing of drones for the Ukrainian military.
the man. It’s a very bad law.
This is just one week in Israel. So if the government will see that they have the power to push through this judicial reform, despite hundreds of thousands of people on the street, the economic and financial elite fighting against them, they will feel that they have a lot of power to push the other things that they want to do. It’s a very scary moment.
It feels as though Israel stands at a historic crossroads. It feels like the very basic agreement between the state and its citizens has been broken. On Friday, we saw that 1,200 pilots from the Air Force of Israel declared that they refuse to continue their service. And what they described is that the very basic agreement; the very basic feeling that what they give and what they get in return has been broken.
The general feeling is that there is a very big thing that has been broken and cannot be restored.
TIME
After 29 Weeks of Protest, Israel Passes Landmark Legislation That Will Test Its Democracy
Thousands of Israeli protesters descended on the streets of Jerusalem for a third consecutive day on Monday as the country braced for a crucial vote on legislation that would significantly weaken the authority of its Supreme Court. The legislation, which passed 64-0 after the opposition lawmakers left the Knesset in protest, marks the government’s first victory in its seven-month effort to enact the controversial legislation, which critics say could bring Israel to the brink of autocracy.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s efforts to curb the power of the judiciary—and, in turn, remove the sole administrative check on his far-right government’s power—has been the subject of 29 consecutive weeks of mass protest. As many as hundreds of thousands of demonstrators converged on Jerusalem and Tel Aviv over the weekend to voice their opposition to the upcoming vote. Their calls for Netanyahu to halt his judicial overhaul plans were echoed by military reservists, businesses, and even U.S. President Joe Biden. Netanyahu, who spent the weekend in the hospital following a pacemaker operation, refused to back down.
[time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”]
Alon-Lee Green, the national co-director of the Arab-Jewish grassroots movement Standing Together, has been among the demonstrators ever since he helped launch the inaugural protest on Jan. 7. He spoke with TIME on Friday about how the protest movement came to life and why Monday’s vote is a decisive moment for Israeli democracy. His account of the last 29 weeks has been edited for length and clarity.
The movement I am part of is called Standing Together, which is a Jewish and Arab movement in Israel fighting for democracy and equality and peace and social justice. It’s very much on the left side of the political spectrum. More from TIME[video id=u4AMY1JG autostart="viewable"]
And we’ve been very much involved in different struggles in the last few years, mainly for equality inside Israel, a deeper democracy also for the Palestinian Arab citizens of Israel, and all around the question of the occupation and peace and settlements.
During the five cycles of elections that we witnessed and participated in these last three years, we took the role of encouraging the Arab Palestinian minority to get out and vote. And we also pushed the political system to be more inclusive.
Then we came to this last election in November, and we couldn’t expect results this bad. It’s like the right wing—not even the right wing, but the extremeright wing in Israel—won the lottery. They managed to get out so many of their base to vote and to really increase their voting percentage Meanwhile, the left-wing Jewish parties, Meretz, did not pass the electoral threshold. The Arab national movement, Balad, also did not pass.
So eight full seats of the left-wing side of Parliament have been erased and that gave more proportional representation to the right. It led to the result that some people like Zvi Sukkot, a new MP who is one of the most extreme settlers in Israel, got into Parliament. The party of Itamar Ben-Gvir got five seats and the most extreme fascist settlers have 14 seats together in the Parliament. That was scary.
We saw that negotiations in December between Netanyahu’s ruling Likud and the far right over forming a new coalition, a new government, involved more and more scary demands like annexing part of the West Bank, like putting secret supervision on Arab teachers in Israel, and attacking the rights of the Palestinians living in Israel, the rights of women, the rights of the LGBTQ community. When the government reached a coalition agreement, we said “this is scary, we need to resist the new settler government,” and we called a demonstration on the seventh of January.
That was the first demonstration. We cooperated with a lot of differen[...]