NEWS OF THE DAY
From Around the World
1 _ Afghan air strikes: A U. S. based institute warned on Tuesday that there has been a dramatic increase in air strikes conducted by Afghan government forces from July to September this year, attacks that have led to a sharp rise in civilian casualties. The Watson Institute of International and Public Affairs, a research center at Brown University, said in its report that 70 Afghan civilians have been killed in the third quarter of this year, compared to 86 killed in the first six months of 2020. The institute also said that from 2017 through 2019, civilian deaths due to U. S. and allied forces’ air strikes dramatically increased. In 2019, air strikes killed 700 civilians — more civilians than in any other year since the beginning of the war in 2001 and 2002.
2 _ Armenia protests: Protesters took to the streets of Armenia’s capital, Yerevan, on Tuesday, demanding the resignation of the prime minister over his handling of the conflict with Azerbaijan over NagornoKarabakh. Opposition politicians and their supporters have been calling for Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan to step down ever since he signed a peace deal that halted 44 days of deadly fighting over the separatist region, but called for territorial concessions to Azerbaijan. NagornoKarabakh lies within Azerbaijan but has been under the control of ethnic Armenian forces backed by Armenia since a separatist war there ended in 1994. A Russianbrokered peace deal last month ended the violence.
3 _ China sanctions: The United States imposed travel bans and other sanctions on 14 highlevel Chinese officials over the continuing crackdown on the opposition in Hong Kong, as police in the Chinese territory arrested more prodemocracy figures Tuesday. The U. S. State Department took aim at members of the Standing Committee of China’s National People’s Congress, citing the Beijing officials’ role last month in authorizing the Hong Kong government to disqualify four opposition lawmakers from the city’s legislature. The ousting of the lawmakers prompted the rest of the city’s prodemocracy camp to resign from the legislature in protest.
4 _ AntiSemitic sculptures: Authorities, churches and Jewish communities in Germany’s southern state of Bavaria have agreed that antiSemitic statues and carvings dating back to the Middle Ages shouldn’t be removed from churches, an official said Tuesday. The Bavarian government’s point man against antiSemitism, Ludwig Spaenle, said that relics such as the “Judensau,” or “Jew pig,” sculptures that still adorn some churches should be explained “visibly and easily recognizably” where they stand. Earlier this year, an appeals court rejected a Jewish man’s bid to force the removal of the 700yearold relic, which depicts people identifiable as Jews suckling the teats of a sow while a rabbi lifts the animal’s tail, from a church in the eastern city of Wittenberg where Martin Luther once preached.
5 _ Al Qaeda attack: Suspected al Qaeda militants targeted a checkpoint in Yemen’s southern Abyan province, killing at least six Yemeni troops, officials said Tuesday. The officials said the attack, which took place late on Monday in the district of Lawdar, also wounded four troops. The militants used automatic rifles and rocketpropelled grenades in their assault, the officials said. The United States considers al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, as the world’s most dangerous offshoot of the terror network. Islamic militants — both Yemen’s al Qaeda branch and the Islamic State’s affiliate in the country — have exploited the chaos of the civil war to carry out bombings, shootings and assassinations in an effort to expand their footprints in Yemen, the Arab world’s most impoverished country.