“Israeli” police stormed the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood in occupied East Jerusalem late Tuesday and detained four Palestinians. 

“Israel’s” official KAN TV channel reported that police detained four Palestinian teens who they claimed had launched fireworks towards officers.

Palestinians in Sheikh Jarrah face almost daily arrests for their activities against “Israeli” plans to expel Palestinians from their homes.

Some 28 Palestinian families who have resided in Sheikh Jarrah since 1956 are facing threats by Israeli authorities to be expelled from their homes in favor of Israeli extremist groups.

Palestinians in the Silwan neighborhood to the south of the Al-Aqsa Mosque complex in East Jerusalem are facing similar threats, with “Israeli” authorities demolishing a shop Tuesday as part of 17 demolition orders against Palestinian buildings in the neighborhood.

Local officials in Silwan had earlier warned of “Israeli” plans to demolish around 100 homes in the Al-Bustan quarter under the pretext that their owners lacked building permits.

The Palestinian Authority says Israel intends from such demolition orders and expulsion of Palestinians from East Jerusalem to Judaize Jerusalem and to obliterate any Palestinian Arab identity in the city./agencies

Despite a hiatus in face-to-face education last year due to the coronavirus pandemic, 186 incidents of discrimination took place at Austria’s educational institutions, according to a report released Tuesday. 

The annual report on discrimination in the Austrian education system was issued by the Initiative for a Non-Discriminatory Education System (IDB), which has been working for students and educators who have been discriminated against in the education system due to religion, gender, culture, ethnicity and similar reasons for five years.

There was a 54% decrease in the number of incidents compared to last year’s 403 reported incidents, it said, noting that the decrease was directly related to COVID-19 measures.

It recalled that in-person education was halted at universities as of March 2020, while students in primary education were away from classrooms for around 10 weeks. This situation increased the burden on parents and they had to put the issue of discrimination on the back burner as they struggled to cope up with those challenges.

Ethnicity was the main reason behind 74% of the reported incidents, the report revealed, and it was followed by Islamophobia with 15% and other reasons with 11%.

It said that 63% of those who committed the crime were teachers, 20% students and 7% school administrators, while institutional discrimination was around 10%.

Vienna reports most cases

Some 94% of the third persons who witnessed the discrimination did not display the courage to back the victim, it said, adding that only 1% of the discriminators were punished for their crimes while the rest were left unpunished.

Most of the victims refrained from sharing information on the location of the incident. However, the capital Vienna ranked first in terms of the number of incidents that took place, it said.

The report revealed that primary school students were the most victimized group, with 91%, and said this rate was 9% in the group consisting of instructors, university students and interns.

Offering advice on how to get rid of discrimination in the education system, the report highlighted that the issue is not given due care and urged the authorities to work on educating people in that regard.

It said that independent structures where students can convey their problems without any anxiety should be formed and highlighted the importance of increasing the number of individuals from different ethnic and religious backgrounds among teachers and administrators.

The report also called for educating people, starting from primary school, on coexistence and multiculturalism and added that education on anti-racism and anti-discrimination for instructors should be compulsory rather than voluntary.

Sonia Zaafrani, head of the IDB, said in a statement regarding the report that the initiative has been working on a voluntary basis for five years and 1,096 incidents were registered in that time period./agencies

AL-HASAKAH, Syria/ANKARA

The YPG/PKK terrorist organization tortured a civilian to death in the occupied al-Hasakah province of northeastern Syria on June 24, according to local media.

A Kurdish civilian, Amin Issa Amin, who was suffering from thyroid disease, was held by the terror group nearly a month ago in the al-Darbasiyah district, report by local Rebaz News said.

It was reported that Amin was held due to his criticisms towards the YPG/PKK terror group.

His body was delivered to his family on Monday, four days after his demise.

Photos showing scars of torture on Amin's body were also featured in the story reported by the local media.

The YPG/PKK, forcibly recruiting young people in the areas it occupies in Syria, holds civilians by resorting to baseless accusations for ransom or to suppress the rising oppositional voices.

In its more than 35-year terror campaign against Turkey, the PKK -- listed as a terrorist organization by Turkey, the US, and EU -- has been responsible for the deaths of at least 40,000 people, including women, children, and infants. The YPG is the PKK’s Syrian offshoot./aa

The US House of Representatives voted Tuesday to remove all Confederate statues from public display within the Capitol.  

The 285-120 vote saw broad bipartisan support, though all of the holdouts were among Republicans.

Should it be enacted into law, the legislation directs the Capitol Architect to remove and replace any statues bearing the likeness of individuals who voluntarily served with the Confederacy, an insurrectionist movement that fought to secede from the US in order to preserve the right to own Black people as slaves.

The statues are to be kept in storage until their return to home states.

The bill specifically mentions statues of Charles Brantley Aycock, John Caldwell Calhoun and James Paul Clarke -- three men who upheld white supremacy.

The House bill also directs the architect to remove a statue honoring former Supreme Court Chief Justice Roger Brooke Taney, who delivered the 1857 ruling that denied the right of Congress to outlaw slavery and said Black Americans could not be considered citizens.

Taney's statue is to be replaced with one of former Associate Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall, who was the first Black man to sit on America's top court.

Momentum to remove Confederate statues has been building following the May 2020 murder of George Floyd by disgraced former Minneapolis, Minnesota police officer Derek Chauvin. Floyd's death elicited widespread outrage and shined the light again on the US' ongoing reckoning with race.

It is unclear how the bill will fare in the Senate, where the chamber is split 50-50 among Democrats and Republicans./aa

Europe needs a green capital market for investments in clean energy, digital transformation and to meet climate targets, President of the European Central Bank Christine Lagarde said Tuesday.

The pandemic has accelerated pre-existing trends at a pace that we could not have imagined. ... Companies have digitized their activities 20-25 times faster than they previously envisioned," she told in a speech at this year's Brussels Economic Forum via video conference.

"Call for greener lifestyles has become amazing. ... Now 70% of Europeans are in favor of stricter government measures to fight climate change," she said.

Noting that the EU was trying to preserve the economy during the pandemic, Lagarde said it now needs to focus on transforming it, adding this will require to redirect spending by both public and private sectors towards the green and digital sectors of the future.

"If we leverage, if we capitalize on this moment, the pandemic can accelerate labor productivity growth by around 1 percentage point a year by 2024, more than double the rate achieved after the great financial crisis (in 2008)," she explained.

Lagarde said the Next Generation EU fund, the recovery package to support member states hit by the pandemic, will help channel public investment towards transformative sectors, but also added that it is a lot less clear whether the private financial sector can do the same.

She warned that fragmentation across national financial markets in Europe might actually constrain the ability to finance future investments in sufficient volume.

"We need to see investment around €330 billion [nearly $392.9 billion] every year by 2030 to achieve Europe's climate and energy targets, and around €125 billion [$148.8 billion] every year to carry out the digital transformation," she said.

As a solution, Lagarde proposed to match Next Generation EU with what she called a Green Capital Market Union (CMU), "a truly European capital market that focuses on green investments and that transcends national borders."

She listed three reasons for Green CMU necessity: green capital markets would help the digital transformation of economy, the euro is global currency of green finance, and it has the potential to make rapid progress since it does not face the same challenges as conventional capital markets.

Lagarde argued that specific initiatives under the CMU action plan should be fast-tracked.

"We need proper European supervision of green financial products with official EU seals, such as the forthcoming EU Green Bond Standard. We need harmonized tax treatment of investments in sustainable finance products to prevent green investments fragmenting along national lines," she also noted./aa

Turkey has taken all necessary measures related to the drought and there will be no problem in the future, the country’s agriculture and forestry minister said Tuesday. 

Touching on supply problems during the coronavirus pandemic globally, Bekir Pakdemirli said Turkey has never seen this type of problem thanks to its measures.

Speaking at the 1st Farmer’s Summit organized by Turkish media outlet Turkuvaz, Pakdemirli noted that Turkey took measures before the country’s first COVID-19 case was detected.

He recalled that farmers have been excluded from lockdowns and travel bans during the pandemic period to protect agricultural production.

Noting that the volume of precipitation has decreased 25% in 2021 compared with last year, he said there has been a slight effect on the agricultural sector but the problem is manageable

"With Turkey's production, the Turkish Grain Board, the stocks of the market and the foreign trade measures we have taken, Turkey will not experience any shortcomings in food supply," he underlined.

Noting that the country may experience this drought continuously, Pakdemirli said the most important measure against this situation is investing in irrigation systems./aa

Canadian Indigenous leaders will meet with Pope Francis in December in hopes of getting an apology for the Catholic Church's role in Indian residential schools, the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops (CCCB) said Tuesday. 

The meetings, between Dec. 17 and 20, have been long sought as Indigenous leaders have for years pressured the Pope to officially issue an apology for the church's role in running some of the 139 schools where First Nations children were arbitrarily enrolled beginning in the 1820s.

While other churches have officially apologized, including the United, Anglican and Presbyterian churches, the Pope has resisted the move, even as he was urged to do so by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, a Catholic.

But there is hope that the apology will finally come.

"Pope Francis is deeply committed to hearing directly from Indigenous Peoples, expressing his heartfelt closeness, addressing the impact of colonization and the role of the Church in the residential school system, in the hopes of responding to the suffering of Indigenous Peoples and the ongoing effects of intergenerational trauma," the CCCB said in a statement Tuesday.

"The Bishops of Canada are deeply appreciative of the Holy Father’s spirit of openness in generously extending an invitation for personal encounters with each of the three distinct groups of delegates – First Nations, Métis and Inuit – as well as a final audience with all delegates together on 20 December 2021."

Metis are people of mixed European and Indigenous descent, while Inuit are the far north residents that at one time were called Eskimos. First Nations were the original inhabitants of Canada before the arrival of European settlers.

Manitoba Metis Federation President David Chartrand will head a group of Metis and he said he will press the Pope to come to Canada to say sorry on behalf of the church.

“It will have a greater sense of power and truth to his feelings and his pathway to healing if he comes into the soils of Canada and stands here on our lands,” Chartrand said in an interview with The Canadian Press on Tuesday.

Close to 1,000 unmarked graves were recently discovered at two residential schools, one in British Columbia and the other in Saskatchewan. It is estimated that before the last school closed in 1996, at least 4,000 children died and were sometimes unceremoniously buried without their parents ever knowing their fate.

About 150,000 attended the schools, whose goal was to instill white culture in the Indigenous children. Many were subjected to physical, mental and sexual abuse. About 60% of the 139 residential schools were run by the Catholic Church.

Indigenous Services Minister Marc Miller said the time has come to get an official apology from the head of the Catholic Church.

“People expect to see Pope Francis deliver that in a full, complete and comprehensive manner,” said Miller during a news conference Tuesday./aa

Uganda on Tuesday approved a local herbal medicine as a supporting treatment for viral infections including COVID-19. 

The director of National Drug Authority (NDA) in the country said that after various assessments and inspections of the factory manufacturing the product, Covidex, the government approved its use to support treatment of viral infections.

Formulated from herbs traditionally used to alleviate the symptoms of several diseases, the drug was developed by a team of scientists in the southwestern town of Mbarara led by pharmacologist Patrick Ogwang, had generated debate over its efficacy in treating COVID-19.

The NDA had earlier asked the manufacturer of the drug, then costing 3,000 Ugandan shillings per 20 milliliter bottle, to halt sales citing safety concerns, as the medicine had not yet been approved. Just hours after being cleared for use by the authority, the price skyrocketed as pharmacies across the country started selling it at 50,000 shillings ($14) apiece and higher as demand soars.

Many Ugandans have been using "steam," inhaling vapor rising from a boiling concoction of herbs including leaves of oranges, guava, mangos and eucalyptus as virus cases surge in Uganda, making scarce hospital beds even more costly.

Hospitals in different parts of the country report difficulties in procuring oxygen supplies, as many run out of space for COVID-19 patients. Intensive care units are in high demand, with some hospital bills shared by the families of patients amounting to as much as $15,000, a small fortune in a country where annual per capita income is less than $800.

The head of the NDA has said the medicine does not cure COVID-19 but could supplement medicines issued by medical professionals. "After engagements, the innovators have removed unsubstantiated claims that the product treats and prevents COVID-19 and revised it to supportive treatment in management of viral infections," he said.

The drug authority says it will continue to monitor the safety of Covidex through its post-market surveillance activities. Uganda has confirmed 79,434 cases of the coronavirus, along with 989 deaths related to teh disease./aa