World News

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/17414080

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/17418031

ULAANBAATAR, Mongolia (AP) — The ruling party has won Mongolia’s parliamentary election but by only a slim margin as the opposition made major gains, according to tallies by the party and news media based on near-complete results.

Prime Minister Oyun-Erdene Luvsannamsrai told the media early Saturday that the Mongolia People’s Party won 68 to 70 seats in the 126-seat body, based on preliminary results, “meaning we have won the election.”

Although the official results haven’t been announced, that has less to do with the certainty of the ruling Mongolian People’s Party’s victory and more to do with the difficulties of gathering results from far-flung corners of the nation.

These results are a setback from Luvsannamsrai and his party. They had won won 62 of the-then 76 seats in the parliament in 2020. This time, in a parliament expanded to 162 seats — 50 more than in the previous election in 2020 — they are much less dominant.

With 99% of the vote counted, tallies by Mongolian media indicate the opposition Democratic Party won about 40 seats — a big jump from 2020. The results indicate that opposition parties have been able to capitalize on voter discontent and eat into the ruling party’s majority,

BNEI BRAK, Israel (AP) — Hundreds of ultra-Orthodox Jewish men blocked a major highway in central Israel for two hours on Thursday to protest a recent Supreme Court decision ordering young religious men to enlist for military service.

Military service is compulsory for most Jewish men and women in Israel. But politically powerful ultra-Orthodox parties have won draft exemptions for their followers that allow them instead to study in religious seminaries.

This long-standing arrangement has bred widespread resentment among the broader public — a sentiment that has grown stronger during the eight-month war against Hamas in Gaza. Over 600 soldiers have been killed, and tens of thousands of reservists have been activated, straining careers, businesses and family lives.

MEXICO CITY (AP) — Mexico’s incoming President Claudia Sheinbaum on Thursday announced five additional members of her future cabinet, presenting a group of scientists and former colleagues including Luz Elena González, an expert in sustainable development, as the next secretary of energy.

Sheinbaum highlighted González’s experience in renewable energy and in handling finances, an area that will prove useful in the department’s relationship with state-run companies like oil giant Pemex and the Federal Electricity Commission. Previous to her appointment, González was in charge of Mexico City’s finances.

Sheinbaum also appointed Raquel Buenrostro as secretary of public administration. Buenrostro, who served for more than two decades in government tax, treasury and economic agencies, was described by the future president as an “incorruptible woman” with 28 years of experience in public administration.

LA PAZ, Bolivia (AP) — Bolivian officials announced Friday they had arrested four more military officers in connection with Wednesday’s thwarted coup against the government of President Luis Arce, raising to 21 the number of detainees allegedly linked to a rogue general’s mutiny attempt.

In a press conference, senior Cabinet member Eduardo del Castillo said those arrested include the driver of a tank that repeatedly rammed into the doors of the government headquarters and a former infantry captain accused of giving orders to soldiers who took over the capital’s central Plaza Murillo.

“These people commanded the destruction of Bolivian heritage,” del Castillo said.

The coup attempt was led by Juan José Zuñiga, who until his public sacking and arrest Wednesday was the commanding general of the army. Zuñiga has alleged, without providing evidence, that Arce ordered him to carry out the rebellion in a ruse to boost his flagging popularity as he struggles to manage a spiraling economy and bubbling public discontent.

Arce on Thursday night vigorously denied accusations that he had carried out a “self-coup” to garner political support.

Israeli soldiers have destroyed 11 homes and other structures in an isolated community in the occupied West Bank, leaving 50 people homeless, amid a reported uptick in house demolitions and spiralling violence in the Palestinian territory.

Contractors with bulldozers accompanied by Israel Defense Forces (IDF) troops arrived in Umm al-Kheir, a village mostly home to shepherds, on Wednesday morning and demolished six houses, tent residences, an electricity generator, solar cells and water tanks, according to residents and Israeli activists who documented the proceedings. Agricultural land and fences were also damaged and trees uprooted.

The demolition has destroyed about a third of the village’s infrastructure.

BUENOS AIRES, Argentina (AP) — Argentina’s lower house on Friday approved President Javier Milei’s sweeping economic overhaul bills, sealing a much-needed legislative victory for the libertarian leader after six months of bruising battles and raucous protests that had raised questions about his ability to govern.

Milei’s landmark legislation, which seeks to support his “zero fiscal deficit” plan and attract foreign investment, passed a final vote in the lower house to become law on Friday.

The approval — widely expected after the bills squeaked through the Senate earlier this month despite fierce political opposition — strengthens the president’s hand at home and abroad as economic pressures mount. Milei rode to power on a promise to pull Argentina out of a dire economic crisis that has deepened poverty and driven annual inflation near 300%.

Milei’s administration hailed the law’s passing as setting Argentina “on the path toward the free and prosperous country that Argentines chose” in last November’s election. The government blamed the turbulent process on “obstructionism” by Milei’s hard-line opponents.

Milei’s party controls less than 15% of congressional seats and has so far relied on executive powers to slash public spending and impose the president’s radical small-state vision. Analysts have said that only congressional approval could offer Milei the support he needs to boost investor confidence in Argentina, a country with a long history of defaulting on payments and breaching contracts.

In the shopping streets and housing estates of the south London town of Croydon, some once-derelict buildings are slowly coming back to life.

At a former school, peeling walls are getting a fresh coat of paint, and laundry hangs on a line to dry. Over at a disused youth centre, there is laughter in the gymnasium-turned-dormitory, and a vase of purple flowers decorates a scrubbed kitchen counter.

The Reclaim Croydon collective, a squatters’ group, has taken over disused commercial premises to provide beds for the homeless, saying it is providing a community-based solution to a broken housing market.

“The government is failing homeless people,” said one of the youth centre’s new occupants, who goes by the name Leaf.

“If the people in charge actually gave a damn about anyone who was struggling, they would make those houses habitable,” Leaf said. “Homelessness is a direct political choice.”

As Julian Assange enjoys his first weekend of freedom in years, there appeared to be no question in the mind of his wife, Stella, about what the family’s priorities were.

The WikiLeaks co-founder would need time to recover, she told reporters after they were reunited in his native Australia, after a deal with US authorities that allowed him to plead guilty to a single criminal count of conspiring to obtain and disclose classified defence documents.

What comes after that is one of the most intriguing questions for anyone familiar with how the site he founded in 2006 utterly changed the nature of whistleblowing. Will it return to its original mission?

James Harkin, the director of the London-based Centre for Investigative Journalism, (said) “In retrospect, it’s striking that everything WikiLeaks published was true – no small feat in the era of “disinformation” – but the tragedy is that much of its energy and ethos has now passed to blowhards and conspiracy theorists. Perhaps, in the light of our tepid new involvements in the Middle East and Ukraine, we need a new WikiLeaks.”

Smith, who has been to the enclave twice since the war began, most recently worked in Rafah and central Gaza for two months, including at the Al-Aqsa Hospital in Deir al-Balah and Al-Awada Hospital in the Nuseirat refugee camp. “It was carnage,” he says. They were “the most horrific scenes that I have ever seen as an emergency physician.”

“We talk about the media being complicit in Israel's violence… but they also, it would appear, actively obscured the reality of what's happening,” he says, pointing to coverage of Israel’s massacre of more than 270 Palestinians in Nuseirat that occurred just after he left Gaza. Local physicians he worked with described people lying in pools of their own blood in the hospital and patients crammed into an already overcrowded spaces. “The most horrific, unimaginable conditions. And I truly don’t think that any of the major media outlets have captured the barbarity of this violence.”

PARIS (AP) — France’s government on Wednesday ordered the dissolution of multiple extreme right and radical Muslim groups, four days before the first round of high-stakes legislative elections that may see a surge in support for political extremes.

Snap national elections called by pro-business moderate President Emmanuel Macron have plunged the country into a hasty and disorderly electoral race, in which hate speech is becoming a growing concern.

Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin announced Wednesday that the government ordered the shutdown of several groups peddling extremist hatred. A series of decrees announcing the shutdown outlined investigations into the groups and said they posed risks of violence.

The groups affected include GUD, known for violence and antisemitism. Its members have supported far-right political leader Marine Le Pen in the past.

Le Pen’s National Rally party is leading all polls ahead of the two-round elections, June 30 and July 7, while Macron’s centrist alliance is lagging far behind. However, the outcome remains highly uncertain due to the complex, two-stage voting system and potential political alliances.

Iranians are set to go to the polls to cast their ballots in an upcoming vote to replace the late President Ebrahim Raisi. Associated Press news director Jon Gambrell explains how Iran’s foreign policy could be affected by the election this Friday.

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — Two candidates in Iran’s presidential election withdrew from the race as the country on Thursday prepared for the upcoming vote, an effort by hard-liners to coalesce around a unity candidate in the polls to replace the late President Ebrahim Raisi.

Amirhossein Ghazizadeh Hashemi, 53, dropped his candidacy and urged other candidates to do the same “so that the front of the revolution will be strengthened,” the state-run IRNA news agency reported late Wednesday night.

Ghazizadeh Hashemi served as one of Raisi’s vice presidents and as the head of the Foundation of Martyrs and Veterans Affairs. He ran in the 2021 presidential election and received some 1 million votes, coming in last place.

On Thursday, Tehran Mayor Alireza Zakani also withdrew, as he did previously in the 2021 election in which Raisi was voted into office.

Zakani said he withdrew to “block the formation of a third administration” of former President Hassan Rouhani, a reference to reformist candidate Masoud Pezeshkian.

Pezeshkian is running with the support of former Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif, who under Rouhani negotiated and eventually struck the 2015 nuclear deal with world powers. The deal later collapsed and Iran has since stepped up enriching uranium to near weapons-grade levels.

Such withdrawals are common in the final hours of an Iranian presidential election — particularly in the last 24 hours before the vote is held, when campaigns enter a mandatory quiet period without rallies.

ULAANBAATAR, Mongolia (AP) — A parliamentary election will be held in Mongolia on Friday for the first time since the body was expanded to 126 seats, adding some uncertainty to a system that has been monopolized by two political parties and plagued by corruption.

The election in a relatively new democracy — the country was a single-party communist state until 1990 — comes at a time when many Mongolians have soured on the government, which they see as benefiting business interests and the wealthy.

“We have democracy only in appearance,” said Gantamur Dash, who earns money taking photos of tourists at the central square in Ulaanbaatar, the capital. “Only a few are living luxurious lives and the rest of the population is poor.”

Mongolia is a sparsely populated country of 3.4 million people in East Asia squeezed between China and Russia. The government has sought to maintain ties with its much larger neighbors while also building new ones with the United States and its democratic allies — a delicate task since the two sides are increasingly at odds.

The political system is serving the interests of a few instead of the general population, said Sumati Luvsandendev, the director of the Sant Maral polling organization, adding that the United States faces the same problem.

Still, he said, most people want to stick with democracy. “Communism doesn’t work for Mongolia,” he said. “It is a collective system and we are ... individualists.”