New Zealand politician removed from Parliament after comments in Palestinian debate
Ms Chloe Swarbrick was ordered to leave Parliament during a heated debate over the government's response to Palestine.
WELLINGTON - New Zealand parliamentarian Chloe Swarbrick was ordered to leave Parliament on Aug 12 during a heated debate over the government's response to Palestine.
An urgent debate was called after the centre-right government said on Aug 11 it was weighing up its position on
whether to recognise a Palestinian state .
Close ally Australia on Aug 11 joined Canada, the UK and France in announcing it would recognise a Palestinian state at a UN conference in September.
Ms Swarbrick, who is co-leader of the Green Party, said New Zealand was a 'laggard' and an 'outlier' and the lack of decision was appalling before calling on some government members to support a Bill to 'sanction Israel for its war crimes.'
The Bill was proposed by her party in March and is supported by all opposition parties.
'If we find six of 68 Government MPs with a spine, we can stand on the right side of history,' said Ms Swarbrick.
Speaker Gerry Brownlee said that statement was 'completely unacceptable' and she had to withdraw it and apologise.
Top stories
Swipe. Select. Stay informed.
Singapore Power fault downs MRT service on stretch of North East Line; recovery may take 2-3 hours
Singapore Live: NEL MRT service between Farrer Park and Buangkok stations restored
Singapore Plan to base Singapore's F-15 fighter jets in Guam cancelled
Business Singapore raises 2025 economic growth forecast but warns of uncertainty from US tariffs
Singapore Circle Line to close early most Fridays and Saturdays, start late most weekends from Sept 5-Dec 28
Business Goh Cheng Liang, Nippon Paint billionaire and richest Singaporean, dies aged 98
Business StarHub buys rest of MyRepublic's broadband business in $105m deal; comes after Simba buys M1
World After tariff truce extended, a Trump-Xi summit in China?
When she refused, Ms Swarbrick was ordered to leave Parliament.
Mr Brownlee later clarified Ms Swarbrick could return on Aug 13 but if she still refused to apologise she would again be removed from Parliament.
New Zealand has said it will make a decision in September about whether it would recognise Palestine as a state.
Foreign Minister Winston Peters told Parliament that over the next month the government would gather information and talk to partners, which would inform cabinet's decision.
'We'll be weighing this decision carefully rather than rushing to judgement,' Mr Peters said.
Along with the Green Party, opposition parties Labour and Te Pati Maori support recognition of a Palestinian state.
Labour parliamentarian Peeni Henare said New Zealand had a history of standing strong on its principles and values and in this case 'was being left behind.' REUTERS
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Straits Times
42 minutes ago
- Straits Times
US embeds trackers in AI chip shipments to catch diversions to China, sources say
The US has sought to limit exports of chips and other technology to China in recent years to restrain its military modernisation. - The US authorities have secretly placed location-tracking devices in targeted shipments of advanced chips they see as being at high risk of illegal diversion to China, according to two people with direct knowledge of the previously unreported law enforcement tactic. The measures aim to detect artificial intelligence (AI) chips being diverted to destinations that are under US export restrictions, and apply only to select shipments under investigation, the people said. They show the lengths to which the US has gone to enforce its chip export restrictions on China, even as the Trump administration has sought to relax some curbs on Chinese access to advanced American semiconductors. The trackers can help build cases against people and companies who profit from violating US export controls, said the people, who declined to be named because of the sensitivity of the issue. Location trackers are a decades-old investigative tool used by US law enforcement agencies to track products subject to export restrictions, such as airplane parts. They have been used to combat the illegal diversion of semiconductors in recent years, one source said. Five other people actively involved in the AI server supply chain said they were aware of the use of the trackers in shipments of servers from manufacturers such as Dell and Super Micro, which include chips from Nvidia and AMD. Those people said the trackers are typically hidden in the packaging of the server shipments. They did not know which parties were involved in installing them, or where along the shipping route they were put in. Top stories Swipe. Select. Stay informed. Singapore 2 dead after fire in Jalan Bukit Merah flat, about 60 evacuated Singapore How the SAF's drone push for recruits reflects new battlefield realities Singapore HSA seeks Kpod investigators to arrest abusers, conduct anti-trafficking ops Opinion The 30s are heavy: Understanding suicide among Singapore's young adults Singapore Lawyer who sent misleading letters to 22 doctors fails in bid to quash $18,000 penalty Singapore Jail, caning for recalcitrant drug offender who assaulted 2 cops with stun device Singapore 4 taken to hospital after accident near Sports Hub, including 2 rescued with hydraulic tools Singapore SG60: Many hands behind Singapore's success story Reuters was not able to determine how often the trackers have been used in chip-related investigations, or when the US authorities started using them to investigate chip smuggling. The US started restricting the sale of advanced chips by Nvidia, AMD and other manufacturers to China in 2022. In one 2024 case described by two of the people involved in the server supply chain, a shipment of Dell servers with Nvidia chips included both large trackers on the shipping boxes and smaller, more discreet devices hidden inside the packaging – and even within the servers themselves. A third person said they had seen images and videos of trackers being removed by other chip resellers from Dell and Super Micro servers. The person said some of the larger trackers were roughly the size of a smartphone. The US Department of Commerce's Bureau of Industry and Security, which oversees export controls and enforcement, is typically involved, and Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) may take part too, said the sources. The HSI and FBI both declined to comment. The commerce department did not respond to requests for comment. The Chinese Foreign Ministry said it was not aware of the matter. Super Micro said in a statement that it does not disclose its 'security practices and policies in place to protect our worldwide operations, partners and customers'. It declined to comment on any tracking actions by the US authorities. Dell said it is 'not aware of a US government initiative to place trackers in its product shipments'. Nvidia declined to comment, while AMD did not answer a request for comment. Chip restrictions The US, which dominates the global AI chip supply chain, has sought to limit exports of chips and other technology to China in recent years to restrain its military modernisation. It has also put restrictions on the sale of chips to Russia to undercut war efforts against Ukraine. The White House and both houses of Congress have proposed requiring US chip firms to include location verification technology with their chips to prevent them from being diverted to countries where US export regulations restrict sales. China has slammed the US exports curbs as part of a campaign to suppress its rise and criticised the location tracking proposal. In July, the country's powerful cyberspace regulator summoned Nvidia to a meeting to express its concerns over the risks of its chips containing 'backdoors' that would allow remote access or control, which the company has strongly denied. In January, Reuters reported the US had traced organised AI chip smuggling to China via countries such as Malaysia, Singapore and the United Arab Emirates – but it is unclear if tracking devices were involved. The use of trackers by US law enforcement goes back decades. In 1985, Hughes Aircraft shipped equipment subject to US export controls, according to a court decision reviewed by Reuters. Executing a search warrant, the US customs service intercepted the crate at a Houston airport and installed a tracking device, the decision noted. US export enforcement agents sometimes install trackers after getting administrative approval. Other times, they get a judge to issue a warrant authorising use of the device, one source said. With a warrant, it is easier to use the information as evidence in a criminal case. A company may be told about the tracker, if it is not a subject of the investigation, and may consent to the government's installation of the trackers, the source added. But the devices can also be installed without its knowledge. People involved in diverting export-controlled chip and server shipments to China said they were aware of the devices. Two of the supply chain sources, who are China-based resellers of export-controlled chips, said they regularly took care to inspect diverted shipments of AI chip servers for the trackers due to the risks of the devices being embedded. An affidavit filed with a US Department of Justice complaint – regarding the arrests of two Chinese nationals charged with illegally shipping tens of millions of dollars' worth of AI chips to China earlier in August – describes one co-conspirator instructing another to check for trackers on Quanta H200 servers, which contain Nvidia chips. It said the English-language text was sent by a co-conspirator, whose name was redacted, to one of the defendants, Mr Yang Shiwei. 'Pay attention to see if there is a tracker on it, you must look for it carefully,' said the person, who went on to call the Trump administration by an obscenity. 'Who knows what they will do.' REUTERS
Business Times
an hour ago
- Business Times
How scared should you be of ‘the China squeeze'?
'CHINA beats you with trade, Russia beats you with war,' mused US President Donald Trump on Aug 11. His reflection came mere hours before he extended a fragile trade truce with China for another 90 days. After months of tit-for-tat tariffs, the Sino-American trade war has settled into uneasy stasis. But China is using the time to hone a sophisticated arsenal of devastating economic weaponry. Even as the sides contemplate a broader deal to stabilise the planet's most important trading relationship – worth US$659 billion (S$843.7 billion) each year – China knows that its power is not in what it buys, but in what it sells. That is a far cry from the last time Chinese President Xi Jinping and Trump went head-to-head on trade in 2019. Xi agreed to buy more American goods in a deal much criticised in China. It fitted a clumsy pattern. Back then, China tended to punish transgressions by cutting access to its consumer market, such as for Australian wine or Lithuanian beef. No longer. Now Xi's economic weaponry squeezes supply chains and the foreign industries which depend on them. Victories piling up Chinese victories have piled up in recent months. First came Xi's masterstroke in April: retaliating against US tariffs by choking off supplies of Chinese-refined rare earth minerals and magnets critical to American industry. Within weeks, the US' US$1.5 trillion carmaking industry, among others, panicked and Trump sought peace. In July, the European Union squealed in the lead-up to an EU-Chinese summit after flows of rare earth minerals and battery technology to Europe slowed without explanation. Speeding them up then became a subject of negotiation. BT in your inbox Start and end each day with the latest news stories and analyses delivered straight to your inbox. Sign Up Sign Up It all appears in line with Xi's very careful plan. In 2020, he called for China to create asymmetric dependencies, by ridding its own supply chains of foreign inputs, while seeking to 'tighten international production chains' dependence on China'. At a meeting held in secret in April that year, Xi told a powerful Communist Party body that such dependencies are 'a powerful countermeasure and deterrent capability against foreigners who would artificially cut off supply (to China).' It wants other countries to depend on it without it depending on them. China's use of economic sanctions of all sorts has reached an all-time high in 2025, according to data collected by Viking Bohman of Tufts University and co-authors. Like US export controls on which China's new regime is modelled, Xi's weapons are hard to resist using, even at the risk of blowback. 'Beijing was not surprised to find it has leverage, but it must be used discreetly,' says Xiang Lanxin of the National University of Singapore. So how does China's economic weaponry work? In recent years, Xi's officials have been drawing up a list of goods that China makes and the world needs. After Trump's election last year, China's government steeled itself. It implemented a long-expected export-licensing scheme for more than 700 products, many of which are relied upon by Western armed forces, including advanced manufacturing machines, battery inputs, biotechnology, sensors and critical minerals. The listed items are not limited to inputs for weaponry, however. Many are also critical to industries that officials view as strategic, such as electric vehicles and solar technology. For some of the items, such as minerals and chemical precursors for medicines, Chinese producers hold a near-monopoly over global supply. That is partly a result of market forces concentrating production in China, where it is cheap, scalable and often subsidised, and partly a deliberate strategy to control industrial inputs. Crucially, the rules formalise officials' ability to switch off exports by revoking licences. Chinese producers applying for them must know who is the end user of their goods and report as much. This has allowed China to continue choking supplies of rare earths to specific Western defence firms, even as it has resumed the flow into America as part of the trade truce. A shortage of heat-resistant magnets, for example, is pushing up costs for such things as jet-fighter engines. The legislation also includes so-called long-arm jurisdiction. It gives officials the ability to mandate that goods manufactured in third countries using Chinese-made inputs cannot be sold to specific end users. When China's policymakers consider which industries to target through such rules, they do not appear to focus on what will cause the most pain, but rather on what will be good for their own firms. Export controls follow a pattern of keeping high-value-added supply chains inside China, says Rebecca Arcesati of Merics, a Berlin-based think tank. If officials were to ban exports of finished goods, such as batteries or drones, it could hurt the strength of domestic producers. But by restricting the flow of industrial inputs needed to make those goods, policymakers in fact lower prices on domestic markets, and give their exporters a cost advantage against foreign competition in important sectors. This playbook appears to be in use in India today to prevent it from helping others break free of China's grip. Licences have stopped being approved for advanced manufacturing machines for India, where Apple is creating alternative supply chains. The restricted flow of machine tools and dysprosium, a rare earth element, have apparently slowed production of iPhones and AirPods respectively. And in June, Apple's in-country manufacturer, Foxconn, withdrew more than 300 Chinese engineers from India, suggesting that the recent moves were coordinated. Giving the game away China's use of its economic weapons this year has mainly been defensive – in response to American trade policies. But it all comes at a cost. Foreign officials and firms now fret about being suddenly cut off from Chinese suppliers, say, in a conflict over Taiwan. Chinese policymakers have done themselves 'enormous reputational damage', laments a foreign business leader in Beijing. Officials in Brussels, Tokyo and Washington are spooked and a flurry of deal-making is under way. That means Xi is likely to confront a drawback that America knows well: the more sanctions are used, the less effective they risk becoming. For a chokehold to be effective, a country must have a near-monopoly on supplying a particular good or service, says Matteo Maggiori of Stanford University. 'Sanctioning power is non-linear, which means that the difference between controlling 95 per cent and 85 per cent of a market is the difference between whether the targets of sanctions can find alternative suppliers or not,' says Maggiori. He notes that whereas tariffs cause firms to increase prices, export controls tend to spur them to invest in alternatives. Some Chinese officials quietly understand. Certain senior ones have even indicated to European businesses that urgent cases of rare earth shortages, such as those that would cause a plant to shutter, should be raised with the Ministry of Commerce to find informal work-arounds to keep supplies flowing. Such deft management of the controls by officials may help dull the desire of foreign firms focused on short-term profits to invest in alternatives. Wu Xinbo of the Centre for American Studies at Fudan University told CNN in June that the flow of exports could be dynamically managed. 'If the bilateral relationship is good, then I'll go a bit faster; if not, I'll slow down.' Ultimately, China finds itself in a delicate position. It is simultaneously assuring foreigners that its supply chains are reliable while warning them off seeking alternatives. And its diplomats badger trade partners not to give in to American demands that would isolate China from global trade. 'Attempting to decouple and disrupt supply chains,' Xi told foreign bosses in March, 'will only harm others and not benefit oneself.' Wise advice indeed. ©2025 The Economist Newspaper Limited. All rights reserved
Straits Times
3 hours ago
- Straits Times
123 killed as Israel pounds Gaza City and ceasefire talks grind on
Sign up now: Get ST's newsletters delivered to your inbox Smoke rises after an Israeli air strike in north Gaza, as seen from Israel's border with Gaza, Israel August 12, 2025. REUTERS/Ammar Awad JERUSALEM – Israel's military pounded Gaza City on June 13 prior to a planned takeover, with 123 more people killed in the last day, as the Palestinian militant group Hamas held further talks with Egyptian mediators. The 24-hour death toll was the worst in a week and added to the massive fatalities from the nearly two-year war that has shattered the enclave housing more than 2 million Palestinians. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu reiterated an idea – also enthusiastically floated by US President Donald Trump – that Palestinians should simply leave. 'They're not being pushed out. They'll be allowed to exit,' he told Israeli television channel i24NEWS. 'All those who are concerned for the Palestinians and say they want to help the Palestinians should open their gates and stop lecturing us.' Arabs and many world leaders are aghast at the idea of displacing the Gaza population, which Palestinians say would be like another 'Nakba' (catastrophe) when hundreds of thousands fled or were forced out during a 1948 war. Israel's planned re-seizure of Gaza City, which it took in the early days of the war before withdrawing, is probably weeks away, officials say. That means a ceasefire is still possible, though talks have been floundering and conflict still rages. Israeli planes and tanks bombed eastern areas of Gaza City heavily, residents said, with many homes destroyed in the Zeitoun and Shejaia neighbourhoods overnight. Al-Ahli hospital said 12 people were killed in an airstrike on a home in Zeitoun. Top stories Swipe. Select. Stay informed. Singapore NEL, SPLRT disruption: Electricity surge shut down backup power switchboard, says LTA Singapore At least 1 dead after fire in Jalan Bukit Merah flat, about 60 evacuated Singapore HSA seeks Kpod investigators to arrest abusers, conduct anti-trafficking ops Opinion The 30s are heavy: Understanding suicide among Singapore's young adults Singapore Lawyer who sent misleading letters to 22 doctors fails in bid to quash $18,000 penalty Singapore Jail, caning for recalcitrant drug offender who assaulted 2 cops with stun device Singapore 4 taken to hospital after accident near Sports Hub, including 2 rescued with hydraulic tools Singapore SG60: Many hands behind Singapore's success story Tanks also destroyed several houses in the east of Khan Younis in southern Gaza too, while in the centre Israeli gunfire killed nine aid-seekers in two separate incidents, Palestinian medics said. Eight more people, including three children, have died of starvation and malnutrition in Gaza in the past 24 hours, the territory's Health Ministry said. That took the total to 235, including 106 children, since the war began. Hamas chief negotiator Khalil Al-Hayya's meetings with Egyptian officials in Cairo on Aug 13 were to focus on stopping the war, delivering aid and 'ending the suffering of our people in Gaza', Hamas official Taher al-Nono said in a statement. Ceasefire possibilities Egyptian security sources said the talks would also discuss the possibility of a comprehensive ceasefire that would see Hamas relinquish governance in Gaza and concede its weapons. A Hamas official told Reuters the group was open to all ideas if Israel ends the war and pulls out. However, 'laying down arms before the occupation is dismissed is impossible', the official, who asked not to be named, told Reuters. Mr Netanyahu's plan to expand military control over Gaza, which Israeli sources said could be launched in October, has heightened global outcry over the widespread devastation, displacement and hunger in the enclave. About half of Gaza's residents live in the Gaza City area. Foreign ministers of 24 countries, including Britain, Canada, Australia, France and Japan, said this week the humanitarian crisis in Gaza has reached 'unimaginable levels' and urged Israel to allow unrestricted aid. Israel denies responsibility for hunger, accusing Hamas of stealing aid. It says it has taken steps to increase deliveries, including daily combat pauses in some areas and protected routes for aid convoys. The Israeli military on Aug 13 said nearly 320 trucks entered Gaza through the Kerem Shalom and Zikim crossings, and that a further nearly 320 trucks were collected and distributed by the UN and international organisations in the past 24 hours along with three tankers of fuel and 97 pallets of air-dropped aid. The United Nations and Palestinians say aid entering Gaza remains far from sufficient. The war began on Oct 7, 2023, when Hamas-led militants stormed into southern Israel, killing 1,200 people and taking 251 hostages, according to Israeli figures. Israel's offensive against Hamas in Gaza since then has killed more than 61,000 Palestinians, according to local health officials. REUTERS
