The UN Human Rights Office said Tuesday the reported execution of nine people accused of killing a Houthi leader in Yemen without due process is a violation of international law can amount to a war crime.

Marta Hurtado, a spokeswoman for the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, said at a news conference in Geneva the office is "very concerned" that all the conflicting parties in Yemen are violating the basic principles of international law.

She cited the public execution on Sept. 18 by the Houthis of nine men, including one who reportedly was a minor when he was detained.

The nine were accused of having participated three years ago in the assassination of Saleh Ali Al-Samad, president of the group’s Supreme Political Council, who was killed in an airstrike.

The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights spokeswoman said that the defendants were sentenced to death “in a judicial process that violated their constitutional rights and did not comply with fair trial standards under international law.”

Hurtado said that international law establishes strict conditions for applying capital punishment, including compliance with fair trial and due process standards.

She said the execution of juvenile offenders is strictly prohibited under international law, regardless of the circumstances and nature of the crime committed.

“In the context of an armed conflict, carrying out the execution without affording judicial guarantees is also a violation of international humanitarian law and amounts to a war crime,” she added.

Yemen has been beset by violence and chaos since 2014, when Houthis overran much of the country, including the capital, Sanaa. The crisis escalated in 2015 when a Saudi-led coalition launched a devastating air campaign aimed at rolling back Houthi territorial gains.

According to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, the conflict has claimed more than 233,000 lives./agencies

Russia was responsible for the 2006 poisoning death of Aleksandr Litvinenko, a former spy who took asylum in the UK, the European Court of Human Rights ruled on Tuesday.

In a 6-1 ruling, the Strasbourg-based court found that the Russian government had violated Article 2 of the European Convention on Human Rights – the right to life.

Russia has consistently denied it was involved in Litvinenko’s death.

Litvinenko had worked for the Russian security services before defecting to and being granted asylum in the UK in 2001. On Nov. 2, 2006, he fell ill and was found to have been poisoned by the radioactive substance polonium 210. He died on Nov. 23.

The widely publicized case has been in the pipeline since 2007 when his widow filed an application, but proceedings were suspended for over a year pending the outcome of a UK inquiry which found Russian President Vladimir Putin "probably approved" the killing.

Litvinenko had worked for Russia’s Committee for State Security, popularly known as the KGB, and was later an officer of Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB).

In 1998, he went public with allegations of having been asked to possibly assassinate a wealthy businessman. Litvinenko was fired and fled Russia.

Asylum and poisoning

He and his family were granted asylum in the UK in 2001, gaining British citizenship five years later and changing their names, but continuing to act as a whistleblower on allegations of wrongdoing by Russian intelligence.

A string of public investigations into Litvinenko’s death led to Andrey Lugovoy, a former member of Russia’s Federal Protective Service (FSO), and Dmitry Kovtun, both said to have acted as agents of the Russian state.

In 2016 the rights court found strong evidence that Litvinenko had been poisoned, tracing the event to an October 2006 dinner he had had with Lugovoy and Kovtun in London. Litvinenko vomited after the dinner and remained ill for two days. Lugovoy and Kovtun then checked out of their hotel room a day early, a room investigators found to be full of polonium contamination.

Further contamination was also found in the restaurant where the three dined and other associated sites. On Nov. 2, 2006, Litvinenko fell ill, was admitted to hospital, and died a few weeks later. The cause of death was ruled to be acute radiation syndrome caused by polonium 210.

The rights court ruled that the Russian government had “failed to provide any other satisfactory and convincing explanation of events, or counter the findings of the UK inquiry” and that Russian authorities had “not carried out an effective domestic investigation capable of leading to the establishment of the facts.”

The Russian Prosecutor General launched an investigation in December 2006, evidence for which is not available. Although initially charged in May 2007, Lugovoy is presently a member of the Russian parliament and so has parliamentary immunity. An arrest warrant was issued in 2011 for Kovtun. Both remain wanted for the murder./agencies

Global financial markets have been rattled by risks surrounding China's second-largest property developer Evergrande Real Estate Group on Monday, and the upcoming US Federal Reserve meeting that will conclude on Wednesday.

Having $300 billion in liabilities, Evergrande was in danger of being unable to issue payments on loan interest due Monday, which could cause millions of its customers to lose their deposits.

Investors are worried whether Evergrande would default on its debt, which could then spill over to other Asian financial and real estate markets before turning to a global event, just like the US subprime mortgage crisis in 2007 led to a global financial meltdown a year after.

Evergrande is likely to default without seeing any direct support from the Chinese government, S&P Global Ratings said Monday.

"We believe Beijing would only be compelled to step in if there is a far-reaching contagion causing multiple major developers to fail and posing systemic risks to the economy," the global rating agency said in a note. "Evergrande failing alone would unlikely result in such a scenario."

Amid fear and uncertainty, Tokyo's Nikkei 225 stock exchange posted its largest single-day decline, 660.34 points, in the last three months, as it shed 2.17% to close Tuesday at 29,839 points -- its lowest level since Sept. 6.

Asia Dow, which includes blue-chip companies in the region, slid 1.54% from Monday through Tuesday.

The Hang Seng, the benchmark for blue-chip stocks trading on the Hong Kong stock exchange, posted the most decline in Asia by diving 821 points, or 3.3%, to 24,099 on Monday. The index showed some recovery Tuesday by climbing 0.51%.

Singapore index fell by 0.96% and the Indian Sensex benchmark lost 0.9% on Monday, as they also bounced back on Tuesday by gaining 0.71% and 0.88%, respectively.

Risks and fears have also hit the cryptocurrency market on Monday.

Bitcoin, the world's largest crypto by market cap, plummeted a whopping 9%, while some altcoins dove as much as 30%. The total market value of the global crypto market lost around $200 billion in a single day.

Fed rate hike, tapering fears

Risks in global financial markets were coupled with the upcoming meeting of the US Federal Reserve that will start on Tuesday and end late Wednesday. ​​​​​​​

The Fed signaled on June 16 that it can make two rate hikes, by 0.25% each, in 2023. The central bank, however, may carry one of those to late 2022, and possibly signal two or three more rate hikes for 2023.

The bank's decision of tapering, the process to reduce accumulating new assets on its balance sheet, is a much more heated topic in the near term.

The Fed Chair Jerome Powell said on Aug. 17 that the bank is in the process of putting away its emergency tools, and this was viewed as a hint that the bank would soon decide to begin unrolling its massive $120 billion monthly asset purchase program.

While some experts believe tapering would start in early 2022, when the bank would unroll $15 billion in each of its eight meetings, some analysts warn that the process could start as early as next month.

An earlier start of tapering would result in less liquidity, which global markets had an abundance in the past 18 months since COVID-19 was declared a pandemic by the World Health Organization.

The risk and worries surrounding less liquidity, however, caused massive losses in European and American markets on Monday.

The STOXX Europe 600, which includes around 90% of the market capitalization of the European market in 17 countries, fell 1.67%.

London's FTSE 100 lost 0.86%, and Germany's DAX index fell 2.3%. While the French CAC 40 lost 1.7%, Spain's IBEX was down 1.2%, and Italy's FTSE MIB was the worst performer of Monday with a decline of almost 2.6%.

All European indices were on a positive territory with more than 1% daily gains each, as they were trying to recover from their losses in the previous session.

Major indices in US stock exchanges also had daily losses of around 2% apiece on Monday.

The blue-chip Dow Jones industrial average dove 614.41 points, or 1.8%, to 33,970.47 and marked its biggest single-day loss since July 19, according to official figures.

The S&P 500 plummeted 1.7%, or 75.26 points, to 4,357.73 -- its worst one-day performance since May 12.

The tech-heavy Nasdaq declined the most by falling 330 points, or 2.19%, to 14,713.90 by the final bell.

US futures were pointing out to a strong opening for the three indices later Tuesday.

Global financial markets, however, will await the Evergrande crisis to resolve and the Fed meeting to conclude before settling down and reaching their previous high levels./agencies

A German policewoman was suspended after an investigation found that she sent love letters to a neo-Nazi terrorist, local media reported on Tuesday.

The young police officer posted several romantic letters and also praised the xenophobic and anti-Semitic views of the neo-Nazi terrorist Stephan Balliet, who is serving a prison sentence, according to newsweekly Stern.

The officer, who was reportedly in her 20s, was working at a police station in the Bitterfeld district of the eastern state of Saxony-Anhalt and used a fictitious name to conceal her identity while posting letters to the prison, according to the report.

An internal investigation was ongoing to reveal whether the young police officer had ties to far-right and neo-Nazi groups.

Balliet was sentenced to life in prison last year, for the terrorist attacks he carried out in 2019 in the eastern city of Halle, which claimed the lives of two people and injured several others.

The 29-year-old right-wing extremist originally planned a mass shooting at a mosque but later changed his mind, according to a manifesto he posted online before the attack.

He failed to enter the synagogue in Halle due to tight security, then fired randomly at people on the street, and later stormed a nearby Turkish doner restaurant.

Germany has witnessed growing racism and xenophobia in recent years, fueled by the propaganda of far-right, anti-Semitic, and anti-Muslim groups, including the main opposition party Alternative for Germany, or the AfD./agencies

Head of the World Health Organization Tuesday met with the Taliban leadership in Afghanistan to explore ways and means to support the country grappling with frozen funds and mounting humanitarian needs.

After landing in Kabul a day earlier, WHO Director-General Tedros Ghebreyesus Tuesday met with the Taliban’s acting Foreign Minister Amir Khan Mutaqi to discuss the humanitarian situation in the country.

“Delays in humanitarian aid and the creation of ‘similar barriers’ undermine the status and reputation of the international community,” the acting foreign minister told the WHO chief, according to the group’s spokesman Ahmadullah Mutaqi.

“Sanctions and pressures show that international humanitarian aid is in the hands of the ‘powerful few’,” the acting minister added.

Tedros also met with the Taliban’s head of cabinet ministers, Mohammad Hassan Akhund, and his deputies Monday to get an overview of the situation in the country.

According to the state-run Bakhtar news agency, Tedros said the World Health Organization was working to increase its assistance to Afghanistan to prevent a humanitarian “catastrophe”.

“The previous administration was corrupt, but the international community was helping it extensively. Now that the Islamic Emirate system is in place and free from corruption, the international community needs to provide more assistance,” Akhund told the WHO chief, according to Bakhtar.

The Taliban leaders have promised to remove “impediments” to aid, to protect humanitarian workers, and to safeguard aid offices, according to a 15-point proposal addressed to the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), and signed by the Taliban’s acting minister of foreign affairs. The Sept. 10 statement, which has circulated among aid groups this week, also echoed previous pledges to commit to “all rights of women … in the light of religion and culture”.

A humanitarian catastrophe looms in Afghanistan amid a freeze on aid and funds, said several aid agencies earlier this month.

As per the OCHA estimates, the country has the second-highest number of people facing emergency levels of hunger in the world, with an estimated 5.5 million children projected to face crisis levels of hunger in the second half of this year./agencies

Hundreds of anti-lockdown protesters clashed with police in Melbourne on Tuesday, leaving at least four people injured and more than five dozen in custody.

Police fired tear gas and rubber bullets to disperse more than 2,000 people – many of whom identified themselves as construction workers – who roamed along busy thoroughfares in Australia’s second-largest city, ABC News reported.

The protests were sparked by the Victoria state government’s decision this week to shut down the construction industry for two weeks in Melbourne and some regional areas.

The government has also made it mandatory for construction workers to get vaccinated.

“Any police force would have been challenged by the spontaneity and the sheer mass of numbers we saw from this group, and the tactics they employed throughout the day,” said Shane Patton, police chief in the southeastern state of Victoria.

The four people wounded in clashes were three cops and a journalist, while at least 62 protesters have been arrested, the report said.

The anti-virus measures have been implemented amid a spike in COVID-19 infections ongoing since last month.

Victoria reported 39 new cases over the past day, raising the state’s total to 6,000, including 833 fatalities, according to the Health Ministry.

Australia’s overall tally currently stands at 88,710, with a death toll of 1,178./aa

US President Joe Biden is moving to significantly increase the number of refugees his country will resettle annually for the 2022 fiscal year, fulfilling a pledge he made on the campaign trail. 

Biden informed Congress that he is raising the admissions target from its current level of 62,500 to 125,000 for the fiscal year that begins in October, the State Department said in a statement.

The decision to raise the cap came after Biden faced significant blowback from his fellow Democrats for failing to hit the higher level. At the time, the administration maintained it was unable to do so because former US President Donald Trump decimated the required bureaucratic infrastructure.

Trump established a limit of some 15,000 refugees during his final months in office, a record low.


State Department spokesman Ned Price said that by raising the resettlement level, the US is "reaffirming our commitment to refugee resettlement in line with our long tradition of providing a safe haven and opportunity to individuals fleeing persecution."

"With the world facing unprecedented global displacement and humanitarian needs, the United States is committed to leading efforts to provide protection and promote durable solutions to humanitarian crises, to include providing resettlement for the most vulnerable," he said in a statement.

The US is in the midst of a mass resettlement of some 60,000 Afghans who fled the country in the wake of its takeover by the Taliban. But due to the rapid nature of the evacuation, they are not legally classified as refugees and do not go toward the cap established by Biden./agencies