Important Takeaways:
- Berlin said it intends to give convicted criminals from the South Asian country “travel money” in an effort to clear the legal hurdles preventing deportations.
- Since a police officer was killed by an Afghan migrant in June, Germany has been pursuing a more hardline policy on deportations.
- Germany’s interior ministry said that it was “examining how to create the operational and legal conditions for deportations to Afghanistan”, adding that “the payment of financial travel assistance can serve to create such legal conditions”.
- How much cash will be offered will be determined by state authorities, under whose jurisdiction deportations usually fall.
- Berlin has said it would only deport criminals convicted of violence or those considered a terror threat.
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Important Takeaways:
- It’s a landmark ruling when it comes to gender identity, and at the very heart of the case was the ever more contentious question: what is a woman?
- A transgender woman from Australia has won a discrimination case against a women-only social media app, after she was denied access on the basis of being male.
- The Federal Court found that although Roxanne Tickle had not been directly discriminated against, she was a victim of indirect discrimination – which refers to when a decision disadvantages a person with a particular attribute – and ordered the app to pay her A$10,000 ($6,700; £5,100) plus costs.
- In 2021, Tickle downloaded “Giggle for Girls”, an app marketed as an online refuge where women could share their experiences in a safe space, and where men were not allowed.
- In order to gain access, she had to upload a selfie to prove she was a woman, which was assessed by gender recognition software designed to screen out men.
- However, seven months later – after successfully joining the platform – her membership was revoked.
- Giggle’s legal team argued throughout the case that sex is a biological concept.
- But Justice Robert Bromwich said in his decision on Friday that case law has consistently found sex is “changeable and not necessarily binary”, ultimately dismissing Giggle’s argument.
- Tickle said the ruling “shows that all women are protected from discrimination” and that she hoped the case would be “healing for trans and gender diverse people”.
- The outcome of this case could set a legal precedent for the resolution of conflicts between gender identity rights and sex-based rights in other countries.
- When it comes to interpreting international treaties, national courts often look at how other countries have done it.
- Australia’s interpretation of the law in a case that got this level of media attention is likely to have global repercussions.
- If over time a growing number of courts rule in favor of gender identity claims – it is more likely that other countries will follow suit.
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Important Takeaways:
- Panama’s government announced on Thursday additional deportation flights for migrants apprehended in the Central American nation to Ecuador, India and China, in a bid to reduce the flow of mostly U.S.-bound migration.
- Financed by Washington, the deportation flights kicked off earlier this week with a first planeload of Colombian migrants.
- The flights come less than three months before November’s U.S. presidential election, where unlawful migration has emerged as a major issue.
- Mulino did not specify the legal status of the migrants who will be flown to Ecuador or the two Asian countries, or if they have criminal records.
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Important Takeaways:
- Dozens of people were arrested after clashing with police at an un-permitted protest outside the Israeli Consulate Tuesday night.
- A crowd of about 200 protesters attempted to break through a police bike line. Hundreds of Chicago police officers with riot gear, face shields and batons held the line and boxed the group in.
- Protesters again tried to engage with police, but were instead funneled through the downtown area by bike blockades.
- One said she and her fellow protesters are critical of the current administration’s handling of the war in Gaza, and want Democratic leaders over at the Democratic National Convention to hear their concerns.
- “We want an end to the genocide, not a new person leading the genocide,” she said.
- Chicago Deputy Mayor Garien Gatewood called the rally a danger to the city and its residents, and said those arrested were specifically looking to cause harm and havoc.
- “Look, I know everyone wants to believe that we can deescalate every single situation, and we can walk away. And everybody is going to be fine. There are those people who are out there right now. It’s a non starter for them. They don’t want to talk; they don’t want to negotiate. They don’t want to cooperate. They want what they want, and that’s it,” Snelling said.
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Important Takeaways:
- United States border agents have intercepted a truck carrying more than $5m-worth of methamphetamine at the US-Mexico border hidden inside a shipment of watermelons.
- The drugs were wrapped in plastic painted in two shades of green to resemble the fruit and placed among real watermelons.
- More than two tonnes (2204 lbs.) of methamphetamine – in a total of 1,220 packages – was seized by officers.
- Stashing drugs among produce is a common way to smuggle the illicit substances across borders – banana shipments are the most popular but officers have recently found narcotics in Gouda cheese and avocados.
- The seizure came a week after officials at the same border crossing discovered almost 300kg of meth in a shipment of celery.
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Important Takeaways:
- Tensions over immigration have roiled local politics as funding to care for new arrivals strained public finances
- In Democrat-run Chicago, where the party is gathered to nominate Kamala Harris for president, a fight over migration has roiled local politics — pointing to a key vulnerability for her campaign.
- In Chicago, a different kind of tension is brewing in Black communities over migration. It’s focused not on job markets but on strained public finances — as neighborhoods unable to win enough funds for their own projects balk at the checks written to shelter new arrivals.
- Chicago is estimating funding plans of more than $400 million on the migrant crisis. That’s piling pressure on the city’s budget. The shortfall is projected to widen to almost $1 billion next year, exacerbating a decades-old fight over resources.
- Local leaders — beset with demands for cash to address other issues like homelessness, crime and economic development — are having to make tough choices.
- Alderperson Desmon Yancy, who represents the city’s fifth ward, described voting for a $70 million measure to care for migrants as a necessary but painful decision.
- Research by Kyle Moore, an economist with the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute, shows that Illinois has one of the highest Black unemployment levels in the nation. He says those issues, however, are linked to longstanding problems, not a consequence of recent migration.
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Important Takeaways:
- Israel’s military reported an airstrike hitting a weapons warehouse near a Hamas military site in Gaza City, as well as strikes that killed militants in central Gaza.
- Another round of airstrikes targeted more than 10 areas in southern Lebanon overnight, the Israel Defense Forces said Thursday. Those attacks were aimed at locations used by the Hezbollah militant group, the IDF said.
- U.S. President Joe Biden and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu spoke Wednesday about efforts by the United States to support Israel “against all threats from Iran, including its proxy terrorist groups Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Houthis, to include ongoing defensive U.S. military deployments,” according to a White House statement.
- Negotiators from the United States, Egypt, Qatar and Israel are expected to meet in the coming days in Cairo to try to push forward the process of achieving a cease-fire that would include a halt in fighting and the release of hostages still held by Hamas.
- Netanyahu’s office said Wednesday that Israel insists on achieving all of its goals for the war, including ensuring that Hamas cannot pose a security threat to Israel.
- Hamas on Wednesday reiterated its core demands, which include Israel fully withdrawing from Gaza.
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Important Takeaways:
- Hezbollah has launched dozens of rockets at the occupied Golan Heights after Israeli aircraft struck deep inside Lebanon, as fears of an all-out war grow.
- The Israeli military said it hit Hezbollah weapons storage facilities in the Bekaa Valley overnight. The Lebanese health ministry said one person was killed and 30 others injured.
- In response, Hezbollah, which is backed by Iran, said it targeted Israeli military positions in the Golan with a rocket barrage. Israeli authorities said two homes were hit and one person was injured.
- Meanwhile, the Palestinian Fatah movement accused Israel of assassinating a senior member of its armed wing in Lebanon in an effort to ignite a regional conflict.
- The Israeli military said it had killed Khalil al-Makdah in a strike in the southern port city of Sidon because he was operating on behalf of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards and was involved in directing attacks in and smuggling weapons to the occupied West Bank.
- Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant told troops on Tuesday that the military’s “center of gravity” was gradually shifting from Gaza and to the Lebanese border.
- “Attacking munitions warehouses in Lebanon is preparation for anything that might happen,” he noted.
- In response to the strikes, Hezbollah said it had launched a barrage of rockets towards an IDF logistics base in the Golan Heights.
- The IDF said about 50 projectiles had been launched from Lebanon and that some had fallen in the settlement of Katzrin.
- “The IDF and ISA will constantly continue to take action to monitor and thwart activity that endangers the safety of the State of Israel and its citizens, in order to expose and impair Iranian attempts to carry out terrorist activity,” they added.
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Important Takeaways:
- Ukraine attacked Moscow on Wednesday with at least 11 drones that were shot down by air defenses in what Russian officials called one of the biggest drone strikes on the capital since the war in Ukraine began in February 2022.
- The war, largely a grinding artillery and drone battle across the fields, forests and villages of eastern Ukraine, escalated on Aug. 6 when Ukraine sent thousands of soldiers over the border into Russia’s western Kursk region.
- Two Russian citizens who spoke to Reuters on condition of anonymity said the foiled drone attack simply showed how well defended Moscow now was, and that Ukraine was “playing with fire” by attacking Russia both in Kursk and in Moscow.
- Russia meanwhile is advancing in eastern Ukraine, where it controls about 18% of the territory, and battling to repel Ukraine’s incursion into the Kursk region, the biggest foreign attack on Russian territory since World War Two.
- In Kursk, Russian war bloggers said intense battles were ongoing along the front in the region where Ukraine has carved out at least 450 square km (175 square miles) of Russian territory.
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Important Takeaways:
- U.S. Customs and Border Protection said on Wednesday that its officers at the El Paso port of entry confiscated 92,000 rounds of large-caliber ammunition leaving the United States over the weekend.
- The seized ammunition nearly tripled the amount of ammunition agents seized in outward bound inspections at the El Paso field office over the past three fiscal years combined, CBP said.
- Border Patrol said the ammunition was found on a commercial bus leaving the United States for Mexico at the Bridge of America port of entry in El Paso.
- “CBP’s primary mission is to inspect all goods and people entering the U.S. from abroad but the agency will also perform outbound inspections as part of our overall enforcement portfolio,” said Hector Mancha, CBP El Paso director of field operations, in a statement.
- “The magnitude of this seizure is impactful. Had this ammunition fallen into the hands of traditional criminal organizations the impact could have been devastating.”
- One of the 16 passengers on the bus was found to be in the United States illegally and processed as such.
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