Kemi Badenoch's policy on housing asylum seekers questioned
She has given enough money to the hotel's donors; now she is giving to the farmer donors, and no doubt, they will receive tax breaks as well.
Does she know how many police needed to secure the fences? Those with legal intentions would stay, while those who have criminal intentions would roam the English countryside.
Many thanks,
Andrew Nutt,
Bargoed
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Reuters
a minute ago
- Reuters
US charges five members of Mexico's United Cartels, imposes sanctions
WASHINGTON, Aug 14 (Reuters) - The U.S. Justice Department on Thursday charged five high-ranking members of the Carteles Unidos drug gang, known in English as United Cartels, while the Treasury Department announced it was imposing sanctions on the group. United Cartels, which is less widely known than some of its rivals, controls large areas of Michoacan, Mexico. The Justice Department called it one of the "most prolific" methamphetamine producers, and said that the proceeds from its illicit drug sales are used to acquire weapons, hire mercenaries, and bribe local officials. The group's members who are facing charges include its leader Juan Jose Farias Alvarez, also known as El Abuelo, along with Alfonso Fernandez Magallon, Luis Enrique Barragan Chavez, Edgar Orozco Cabadas, and Nicolas Sierra Santana. They are charged with being a part of long-running conspiracies to manufacture and distribute drugs, including methamphetamine, cocaine, and fentanyl, to be unlawfully imported into the United States. The State Department said it is offering collectively up to $26 million in reward money for information leading to the arrest of the five men. The U.S. Treasury Department on Thursday said it was imposing sanctions against United Cartels as well as another cartel known as Los Viagras and against seven affiliated individuals. Earlier this week, Mexico sent more than two dozen suspected cartel members to the United States who were wanted for ties to drug-trafficking groups. The transfer of the 26 prisoners was the second of its kind this year. In February, Mexico also sent another 29 alleged cartel leaders. Federal prosecutors in New York City separately announced criminal charges against a number of cartel leaders, including Servando Gomez-Martinez of the cartel La Familia Michoacana and three leaders of the Sinaloa cartel. In February, President Donald Trump designated United Cartels, along with seven other different criminal gangs and cartels, including the Sinaloa Cartel, Jalisco Nueva Generacion, Cartel del Noreste, Nueva Familia Michoacana and Cartel del Golfo, as foreign terrorist organizations.
Sky News
11 minutes ago
- Sky News
West Bank: The city locked down by armed troops - where what was law now has no place in reality
The first Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) soldiers emerge on to the streets of Hebron, through the pedestrian entrance to an Israeli settlement that has taken over a section of the old town. They are heavily armed and pass me sitting in the doorway of a shop where I had been sheltering from the burning hot West Bank sun. I murmur a greeting, but they ignore me and head inside, climbing to an upper balcony of the building to oversee the city's market area. 29:15 Within the hour, they're joined by dozens of military units of the IDF, on foot and in armoured jeeps, fanning out across the busy streets – ordering shops to shut and market traders to wheel away their stalls of fruit and vegetables. Groups of Palestinian journalists are shouted at and told to move back, and we are as well after I ask to be told in English what they want. While soldiers continue to close down stalls and shops around us, we are moved three times by them and then finally led away from an area where a green cloth screen is being unfurled by the soldiers. They're closing the whole area down, forcing cars to move on, and clearing the streets. Anyone trying to pass their lines is turned around. A young man in a motorised wheelchair approaches a group of three soldiers - two men and a woman - all heavily armed and imposing. He, too, is told he cannot pass; he's told to go back. An elderly woman attempts to retrieve cardboard boxes and the meagre goods she sells on the roadside, but she is shooed away. An agitated soldier stamps on the cardboard boxes she was trying to rescue, flattens them, and kicks them against a wall. It felt to me that everyone looking on, the press and public alike, collectively sighed "really?" It seemed so pointless to destroy her boxes. The green cloth screen the soldiers had strung up along a side street billowed in the wind so we could easily see beyond it. The army realised this and manoeuvred vehicles in front of the most exposed areas. This part of Hebron, a Palestinian city, was locked down. Some hours later though, groups of Orthodox Jews and Israeli settlers emerged from a settlement and made their way past the screen, staring occasionally into Hebron's streets, walking towards a tomb about 500 metres away. The tomb, they say, is a holy site for them, and they wanted to see it. 'I was born here' A young Palestinian man who runs his family's souvenir shop told me that settlers guarded by the military pass by his shop in Hebron weekly. Waseem Jabari told me he has many Jewish friends, but says when the settlers come, they do it to show the whole city of Hebron belongs to them. "But for me as a Palestinian who lives in Hebron, and I was born here, I grew up here, I don't like violence, I don't like the problem, because it's not a solution," he told me. Read more: Inside the West Bank conflict What are settlements and who are settlers? "For us, too many Palestinians have died, many Palestinians have been killed, many arrested, we are so tired of that, and for us, it's enough." 'We need justice' I told Waseem I had heard the settlers think the Palestinians want to kill them. He shook his head and told me what he wants is peace, that he doesn't like violence. "We need our justice, we need rights, and we need freedom, the same as other people and the same as other countries, we don't need any problems — Jewish, Christian, Muslim, we are all human people," he said. Hebron's city centre is classified as Area A in the West Bank, where under Israeli law it is stated that no Israelis are allowed. What I witnessed shows that the classification seems to have no place in reality any more. The military and the settlers it enables to enter places like Hebron simply ride roughshod over accepted norms. It's not normal here any more - for Palestinians in the West Bank, life has certainly got worse. The October 7th Hamas attack on Israel changed everything.
The Guardian
24 minutes ago
- The Guardian
These rural radio stations are a lifeline for their communities. Trump's cuts threaten their future
Since Republicans last month slashed over $1bn in funds designated for public broadcasting, non-commercial TV and radio stations around the country have been reeling. The cuts led the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB), the nearly 60-year-old organization that has long supported local TV and radio stations across the US, to shut down operations entirely, leaving more than 1,500 local stations nationwide without a critical source of income. For rural radio stations that rely heavily on federal grant and matching funds – and that are often the only sources of free and reliable programming in their regions – the consequences are especially dire. Often, these stations are residents' only reliable avenue for not only news and cultural programming, but also local health and public safety information, including emergency alerts. To understand what this programming means to rural Americans and the hardships communities could face if broadcasts went quiet, the Guardian spoke to two radio stations that serve distinct populations. Here is what they shared. Wildfires are a frequent threat in Yakima county, Washington. Rural, hot and dry, the agricultural region can face days on end of poor air quality – an occupational hazard to the thousands of farm workers who work outside, many of whom exclusively speak Spanish. National broadcasters like NPR put out emergency announcements in English, but their information, about an evacuation or unsafe breathing conditions, may go unheard by a Spanish speaker. The local public radio station Radio KDNA has found a way to combat that gap. Built specifically for the region's Spanish-speaking farm workers in this county where more than half of the population identifies as Latino, the station has developed a system in which DJs translate the English emergency notices into Spanish – live on the air. It's one of many ways the station, which its director of operations, Elizabeth Torres, says is the only 24-hour Spanish-language public broadcaster in the region, meets the needs of its unique listener base. 'Over the years, it has developed a sense of trust with the community,' Torres said. It's not the only public service Radio KDNA provides. In operation since 1979, the station runs programs focused on public health, highlighting Spanish-language clinics and vaccine drives; occupational health, with guests speaking to the specific concerns of people who work outside and on farms; education, featuring presenters from the local community college; and children's entertainment, designed explicitly for the many parents in the community juggling work and childrearing. Every week, the Yakima Valley Farmworkers' Clinic goes on the air for an hour to discuss the services they provide, Torres said. Community health workers will share diabetes prevention information. Sometimes, doctors come on as guests to discuss heart disease, or the importance of maintaining regular flu and Covid vaccinations. They even ran a Spanish-language special on long Covid. 'We're focused on information that will help our community make better decisions,' Torres said. The station produces its own news segments three times a day – two of which are entirely live. In today's dynamic political environment, these broadcasts are especially valuable for immigrants, who face a daily barrage of information and misinformation about raids and deportations and need help deciphering fact from rumor. KDNA has also partnered with an immigrant services organization that provides legal advice and detention tracking services. 'We don't put out any information on Ice until it's verified,' Torres said. 'We're trying to minimize misinformation.' Considering the lifestyle and literacy rates of its listener base, KDNA's broadcasts – and audio as a medium – are designed to be accessible. 'You can tune in and out as you're working or as you're driving,' she said. 'All of our programming is developed in a way that people will understand.' Running such an operation is not cheap, and Torres says that federal funding has played a huge part in the station's ability to do this work, with 40% of KDNA's revenue coming from the CPB on average every year. The station already operates on a tight budget, Torres said, with staff members wearing multiple hats. The news director moonlights as the audio tech if the regular engineer is unavailable; the underwriter (who coordinates paid sponsorships) is also the building manager. She fears that the funding cuts could dramatically restrict what is feasible in terms of output. KDNA will probably need to reduce staffing, cut back on community events, and limit the external broadcasts they pay to air, like NPR's Spanish-language shows, she said. Her biggest concern is if live programming is limited, there may not be an on-air DJ to translate critical alerts. 'Families that need to evacuate, they might not get the message,' she said. 'That is going to have a real impact.' Listening to the radio was a big part of Richard Grey's 1960s childhood. He remembers the voices of AM DJs traveling through his house as he got ready for school in the mornings and listening to the BBC when it came on the air every evening. Not many people who lived on Arizona's rural Navajo nation had television. Radio was how they got information about their community – and beyond. 'It brought the world to us,' Grey said. Today, between limited broadband access and the vast distances residents drive to reach brick-and-mortar resources like libraries or post offices, public radio remains a vital resource for the Navajo nation, which, at over 27,000 square miles spread across three states, is the country's largest Indian reservation. Since 1989, residents have tuned into KGHR Navajo Public Radio to access everything from Indigenous cultural programming to political commentary to world news. Broadcasting with more than 100,000 watts of power, the station is able to reach almost all residents on the western side of the reservation, which is no small feat in a region defined by challenging geography. Grey, who has worked with the station since 2011, says that makes it an invaluable service: 'Phones can't go down into a canyon or around a mesa, but radio does.' In terms of infrastructure, KGHR is bare bones. It shares its facilities with Greyhills Academy, a high school in Tuba City, and is primarily run by part-time contractors. Its only full-time staff member, announcer Keri Blackrock, came onboard a little over one year ago. But the station's output is robust. KGHR offers Indigenous cultural programming, including music curated by audio engineer Michael Begay and a Navajo Word of the Day show coordinated by students at the school. It syndicates a wide range of national and international news programs, like Native Voice 1, NPR and the BBC World Service. And it produces its own coverage of local sports games, parades and community events. 'Hearing a community member – and a tribal member – go live on the air is very meaningful,' said Begay, noting that announcer Blackstone is herself Navajo. 'The audience can go, 'It's one of us, a familiar face, a familiar voice.'' By his own account, Begay was a floundering high schooler at Greyhills Academy in the mid-1990s when he wandered into the station. Working as a student DJ gave him a sense of purpose, and when he realized that he couldn't go on the air if he wasn't at school, his grades started to improve. He suggests that without KGHR, his life would have taken a very different path – and perhaps even been cut short. 'I would be a statistic,' he said. The station also protects public safety. As part of the country's emergency alert system, it broadcasts vital information about heatwaves, wildfires and floods. For many people on the reservation, KGHR is their only avenue to learn about an evacuation order – like last month, when a wildfire swept across 100,000 acres near the New Mexico border. Knowing rural residents may not have reliable internet or cell service, Blackrock broadcast updates from local tribal police and shared information residents were posting on Facebook on the air. 'It's our job to broadcast incidents so that the community is kept informed and safe,' said Begay. Now, this crucial service is under threat. Almost all of the station's funding comes from federal sources, said Grey, and CPB is KGHR's main source of revenue. Going forward, they might need to venture into new territory entirely, like hosting live events, airing paid advertisements for sponsors, or creating digital content for paid subscribers. 'I don't believe we've ever really asked for donations,' said Blackrock. Without KGHR, the airwaves will lack Native perspectives on politics and culture, and issues that are underrepresented in the mainstream media, like missing and murdered Indigenous people, will get even less attention. For those reasons, they don't plan to go off the air – at least, not without a fight. 'Tribal radio stations will continue to serve as vital platforms for preserving Indigenous language and cultural traditions,' said Begay. 'Our job is ensuring these aspects remain vital and present for future generations.'
