Kremlin says Ukraine has yet to answer Russian proposal for June 2 talks
Previous talks on May 16 failed to reach an agreement on a ceasefire - which Moscow has said is impossible to achieve before certain conditions are met.
Developing
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Arab News
16 minutes ago
- Arab News
Syrian charged over Berlin Holocaust memorial stabbing
FRANKFURT: A Syrian man who allegedly supports the Daesh group has been charged with attempted murder over the stabbing of a Spanish tourist at Berlin's Holocaust Memorial, prosecutors said Tuesday. The suspect, a refugee partially identified as Wassim Al M., is said to have seriously injured the 30-year-old man at the landmark in the German capital in February. It was one of a series of attacks blamed on foreign nationals that fueled a bitter debate about immigration in the run-up to Germany's general election. The suspect 'shares the ideology of the foreign terrorist organization Islamic State (IS)' and has 'radical Islamist and antisemitic views,' federal prosecutors said in a statement. He had traveled from the eastern city of Leipzig, where he had been living, to Berlin to target 'alleged infidels, whom he regarded as representatives of a Western form of society that he rejected,' prosecutors said. Shortly before the stabbing, the suspect, who was 19 at the time, sent a photo of himself to IS members so the group could claim responsibility for the attack, they said. The tourist, from the Basque Country in northern Spain, was wounded in the neck during the attack at Berlin's Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe, a somber grid of concrete steles located near the Brandenburg Gate and the US embassy. The suspect, who was arrested shortly after the attack and is in pre-trial detention, has also been charged with causing serious bodily harm and attempted membership of a foreign terrorist organization. Officials said previously he had arrived in Germany in 2023. The attack was one of several which shocked Germany ahead of the general election, which saw a doubling in the vote-share for the far-right, anti-immigration Alternative for Germany (AfD). The election was won by the center-right CDU/CSU, which has since taken power at the head of a coalition and moved swiftly to introduce stricter curbs on immigration. The new government under Chancellor Friedrich Merz has signalled it is trying to resume deportations to Syria, which have been suspended since 2012.
Arab News
an hour ago
- Arab News
Violent videos draw more French teens into ‘terror' plots, say prosecutors
PARIS: One 14-year-old was allegedly planning to blow up an Israeli embassy, while a 16-year-old was convicted of having plotted to attack far-right bars incensed by 'injustice.' French prosecutors are alarmed at an increasing number of young teenage boys seemingly plotting 'terror' attacks, and say they all share an addiction to violent videos online. As communities worldwide worry about boys being exposed to toxic and misogynistic influences on social media, French magistrates say they are looking into what draws young teens into 'terrorism.' 'Just a few years ago, there were just a handful of minors charged with terror offenses,' France's National Anti-Terror Prosecutor's Office (PNAT) said. 'But we had 15 in 2013, 18 in 2024 and we already had 11 by July 1' this year. They are aged 13 to 18 and hail from all over France, the PNAT said. Lawyers and magistrates told AFP these teens are usually boys with no delinquent past, many of whom are introverts or have had family trouble. The PNAT opened a special branch in May to better examine the profiles of minors drawn into 'terrorism,' but it said it has already noticed they are all 'great users of social media.' 'Most are fans of ultra-violent, war or pornographic content,' it said. In France, 'terrorism' is largely synonymous with extremist Islamist ideas such as those of the Islamic State militant group. Only in recent months has the PNAT taken on cases different in nature — one an adult suspected of a racist far-right killing, and the other an 18-year-old charged with developing a misogynist plot to kill women. A 14-year-old schoolboy who stabbed to death a teaching assistant in June was a fan of 'violent video games,' although his case was not deemed 'terrorist' in nature. In the case of France's youngest 'terror' suspects, a judicial source told AFP, social media provides them with a flow of violent videos that are 'not necessarily linked to terrorism,' such as from Latin American cartels. 'They think they're proving themselves as men by watching them,' the source said. Sociologist Farhad Khosrokhavar said the teens were 'neither children nor adults.' This 'leads them to violence in order to be recognized as adults — even if it's a negative adult,' he said. Laurene Renaut, a researcher looking into militant circles online, said social media algorithms could suck adolescents in fast. 'In less that three hours on TikTok, you can find yourself in an algorithm bubble dedicated to the Islamic State' group, she said. You can be bathing in 'war chants, decapitations, AI reconstructions of glorious (according to IS) past actions or even simulations of actions to come,' she said. The algorithms feed users 'melancholic' content to boost their 'feeling of loneliness, with ravaged landscapes, supposed to reflect the soul,' she said. One such teenager said he was motivated by a sense of 'injustice' after seeing a video online of an attack on a mosque in New Zealand. White supremacist Brenton Tarrant went on a rampage, killing 51 worshippers at mosques around Christchurch in March 2019 in the country's deadliest modern-day mass shooting. The French suspect was convicted last year for planning 'terror' attacks on far-right bars. He told investigators it started when he was 13 and playing Minecraft, a video game, on gamer social media platform Discord. 'Someone sent Tarrant's video,' he said. 'I thought it was unjust to see the men, women and children be massacred.' 'I then watched the videos of imams telling people to stay calm and those of terrorists from the far right, and I thought it was unjust,' he added. 'Then I saw those of jihadists urging help,' he said. 'I thought that by defending this cause, my life would make sense.' A French appeals court in July 2024 sentenced him to four years in jail, including two suspended, after he contacted an undercover agent to find out about weapons. The court justified the sentence with the 'gravity' of his planned actions, but noted he lacked signs of 'deeply rooted ideological radicalization.' Rather, it said, the defendant was the child of fighting parents from a very violent neighborhood, who had been 'significantly deprived of affection' and had sought to 'fit in' with Internet users. His lawyer Jean-Baptiste Riolacci told AFP he was an 'essentially lonely, sad and good kid, whose only occupation beyond his computer was gliding around on his scooter.' The judicial source, who spoke anonymously due to the sensitivity of the issue, said the French system favored early intervention through charging youth for associating with 'terrorist' criminals, and then adapting their punishment according to the severity of the accusations. But attorney Pierre-Henri Baert, who defended another teenager, said the system did not work. His client was handed three years behind bars in May for sharing an IS propaganda post calling for attacks against Jewish people as a 16-year-old. 'It's a very harsh sentence considering his very young age, the fact he had no (criminal) record, and was really in the end just accused of statements online,' he said. Another lawyer, who worked on similar cases but asked to remain anonymous due to the sensitivity of the issue, agreed. 'When the judiciary goes after people for terrorist criminal association, it's basically doing guesswork,' she said, adding that the 'terrorist' label could be very stigmatising. 'There's no differentiation between a kid who sent aggressive messages and a suspect who actually bought weapons,' she added. Two judicial sources said teens prosecuted for alleged 'terrorism' are usually only spotted through their behavior on social media. They are then charged over other actions, such as moving to an encrypted messaging app, sharing recipes to make explosives or looking for funding, the sources said. A Paris court will in September try three teenagers who, aged 14 and 15, allegedly planned to blow up a truck outside the Israeli embassy in Belgium. They had been spotted at high school for their 'radical remarks,' but were then found in a park with 'bottles of hydrochloric acid' containing 'aluminum foil,' a homemade type of explosive, the PNAT said. Their telephones showed they had watched videos of massacres. Jennifer Cambla, a lawyer who represents one of the defendants, said accusations against her client were disproportionate. 'My client may have had the behavior of a radicalized person by consulting jihadist websites, which is forbidden. But he is far from having plotted an attack,' she said. But another lawyer, speaking anonymously, said arresting teenagers 'fantasizing about jihadism' could be an opportunity to turn their lives around — even if it involved 'a monstruous shock.' 'The arrests are tough,' with specialized forces in ski masks pulling sacks over the suspect's head, they said. But 'as minors, they are followed closely, they see therapists. They are not allowed on social media, and they do sport again,' the lawyer said. One of the judicial sources warned it was not clear that this worked. It 'makes it look like they are being rapidly deradicalized, but we do not know if these youth could again be drawn in by extremist ideas,' they said.
Arab News
2 hours ago
- Arab News
Dutch to ban far-right Israeli ministers over Gaza
THE HAGUE: The Netherlands will ban two far-right Israeli ministers from entering the country, in the latest European response to the rapidly deteriorating situation in Gaza, the country's foreign minister ban and other measures were announced in a letter Foreign Minister Caspar Veldkamp sent to lawmakers late Monday evening, declaring 'The war in Gaza must stop.'The ban targets hardline National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir and Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, key partners in Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's pair are champions of the Israeli settlement movement who support continuing the war in Gaza, facilitating what they call the voluntary emigration of its Palestinian population and the building of Jewish settlements Australia, Canada, New Zealand and Norway imposed financial sanctions on the two men last on Tuesday, leaders will meet in Brussels to discuss a European Union response, including evaluating a trade agreement between the bloc and Israel. The Netherlands wants part of that agreement to be and Smotrich remained defiant. In a statement on social media, Smotrich said European leaders were surrendering to 'the lies of radical Islam' and that Jews may not be able to live safely in Europe in the said he will 'continue to act' and said that in Europe 'a Jewish minister from Israel is unwanted, terrorists are free, and Jews are boycotted.'Pressure has been mounting on the Dutch government, which is gearing up for elections in October, to change course on Israeli policy. Last week, thousands demonstrated at train stations across the country, carrying pots and pans to signify the food shortage in government will also summon the Israeli ambassador to the Netherlands to urge Netanyahu to change course and 'immediately take measures that lead to a substantial and rapid improvement in the humanitarian situation throughout the Gaza Strip,' Veldkamp international pressure, Israel over the weekend announced humanitarian pauses, airdrops and other measures meant to allow more aid to Palestinians in Gaza. But people there say little or nothing has changed on the ground. The UN has described it as a one-week scale-up of aid, and Israel has not said how long these latest measures would asserts that Hamas is the reason aid isn't reaching Palestinians in Gaza and accuses its militants of siphoning off aid to support its rule in the territory. The UN denies that looting of aid is systematic and says it lessens or ends entirely when enough aid is allowed to enter and his former defense minister, Yoav Gallant, are currently wanted by the International Criminal Court for crimes against humanity. The men are accused of using 'starvation as a method of warfare' by restricting humanitarian aid, and of intentionally targeting civilians in Israel's campaign against Hamas in Gaza. Member states of the ICC are obliged to arrest the men if they arrive on their territory.
