Police in two Indian states have registered cases after an app shared photos of more than 100 Muslim women saying they were on "sale".

The accused include developers of the app and Twitter handles that shared the images and content.

The open source app - Bulli Bai - was hosted on web platform GitHub, which has since taken it down.

This was the second attempt in months to harass Muslim women in India by "auctioning" them online.

In July, an app and website called "Sulli Deals" created profiles of more than 80 Muslim women - using photos they uploaded online - and described them as "deals of the day".

In both cases, there was no real sale of any kind - the purpose is to degrade and humiliate Muslim women by sharing their personal images.

Sulli is a derogatory Hindi slang term right-wing Hindu trolls use for Muslim women, and "bulli" is also pejorative.

Journalist Ismat Ara, whose name and photo appeared on the Bulli Bai app, filed a police complaint over the weekend in Delhi. It was against unidentified people and charges included sexual harassment and promoting enmity on grounds of religion.

Police in Mumbai filed a second case against several Twitter handles and the developers of the app based on a complaint from another woman on the Bulli Bai list.

It included several journalists, activists, an award-winning Bollywood actor and even the mother of a university student who went missing in 2016.

Many of the women whose photos were uploaded on the Bulli Bai app tweeted over the weekend that they felt "traumatised" and "horrified".

Almost six months later, the police haven't made any arrests in the Sulli Deals case.

Ms Asra told Al Jazeera that the lack of progress in the investigation didn't inspire much confidence.

"It is indeed disappointing to see the impunity with which such hate-mongers continue to target Muslims women, without fear of any sanction whatsoever," she wrote in her complaint.

Information and technology minister Ashwini Vaishnaw said on Saturday that GitHub had blocked the user who uploaded the app, and police were co-ordinating with cyber agencies for "further action".

Priyanka Chaturvedi, a lawmaker from the Shiv Sena party, tweeted in response: "Besides blocking the platform punishing the offenders creating such sites is important."

She told ANI news agency that the new app was created because the makers of Sulli Deals hadn't been punished yet.

The National Commission for Women tweeted that its chairperson had asked the Delhi Police commissioner to inform it "at the earliest" about the action taken in the case.

Satej Patil, home minister of Maharashtra state, criticised digital platforms such as GitHub for being "rife with misogyny and communal hatred".

He also tweeted asking the federal government about the progress of the investigation into the Sulli Deals case.

A 2018 Amnesty International report on online harassment in India showed that the more vocal a woman was, the more likely she was to be targeted - the scale of this increased for women from religious minorities and disadvantaged castes.

"It sent chills down my spine," one of the women whose name was on the Sulli Deals list told the BBC's Geeta Pandey at the time.

Critics say trolling against Muslim women has worsened in recent years in India's polarised political climate.

"This targeted and planned attack is an attempt to take away the mic from the educated Muslim women who express their opinion and speak out against Islamophobia," Nazia Erum, author and former spokesperson of Amnesty in India, told the BBC after the Sulli Deals story last summer./bbc

The targeting of Muslim women is not just a one-off thing; it is well ideated and deliberated. This is not just an attack on Muslim women alone; it’s an attack on a religious identity, a normalisation of the ‘othering’ and dehumanisation of Muslims.

Saira Shah Halim

Muslim women are being auctioned online for the second time in the past one year in a new avatar of Bulli Bai.

Let’s just say it’s not the best time to be a Muslim in India. Particularly a vocal, politically active Muslim woman.

In the run-up to year 2022, Indian Muslims witnessed calls for genocide of the community. No action. Then Muslim women are being auctioned online for the second time in the past one year in a new avatar of Bulli Bai. No action yet.

It is said that morning shows the day. 2022 should have been a year of peace and amity, yet calls for genocides for minorities are happening right under the nose of the establishment.

There leaves no shadow of doubt in anyone’s mind that a sinister holocaust is brewing in India; you feel it in the bones.

The targeting of Muslim women is not just a one-off thing; it is well ideated and deliberated. This is not just an attack on Muslim women alone; it’s an attack on a religious identity, a normalisation of the ‘othering’ and dehumanisation of Muslims.

The whole generalisation during the abolition of ‘Triple Talaq’ about Muslim women being weak and hapless is a warped perspective of Muslim women.

Can anyone forget the resistance at ‘Shaheen Bagh’? The sight of Muslim women camping for months in biting cold fighting to safeguard their homes, territories and their nationality that was under threat of being snatched away was truly inspirational as the world watched.

In 2019, the United Nations official, Adama Dieng, spoke on the dangers of hate speech and intolerance. We all have to remember that hate crimes are preceded by hate speech, he emphasised.

The holocaust did not start with gas chambers; it started long before with hate speech. Words kill, words kill as bullets.

Today, what we are witnessing around the world, with the rise of extremists, when we see the growing number of neo-Nazi groups, neo-fascist groups, when we see the way migrants and refugees are being vilified, we need, therefore, to make every effort to address this hate speech.

December 9 was declared as the annual international day of commemoration and dignity of the victims of the crime of genocide and of the prevention of this crime in September 2015 by the United Nations.

The signs of an impending genocide are omnipresent everywhere. How else can one negate the fact that spiteful and bigoted programmes are aired repeatedly on national media with complete impunity and these destructive views are amplified further on social media leading to radicalisation of society?

The Sangh umbrella for long has been engineering this hate through its foot soldiers and getting away with it. For instance, if the criminals who launched the ‘Sulli Deals” online were brought to task some time ago, we would not be witnessing the horrors of the “Bulli Bai” unfurling before our eyes today.

The holocaust was long pending in India when BJP won just two seats in Parliament in 1984 and began ideating a campaign of hate which saw the demolition of the Babri Masjid in 1992 by the right-wing radicals in India.

As kids we quickly got accustomed to the term ‘riots’; it was commonplace to have regular riots in the Hindi heartland like Meerut where my roots are. The Army used to be called in those days for relief work when curfew used to be imposed upon the city. But these things were always kept in check as the ruling dispensation was accountable to the people.

The irony is that today the erstwhile alleged rioters and genociders of 1992 and 2002 are in power, so who does one go to when war cries of a ‘Muslim genocide’ is taking place at public functions with complete impunity.

At times when there is a surge of Covid cases amid the fear of an impending third wave, we haven’t learnt our lessons from the first and second wave.

The priority of the ruling dispensation should have been a complete overhaul of the public healthcare system in preparation for the third wave. Instead, what appears as evident is that the government is least interested in that. Since its winning plank happens to be ‘polarisation’ and engineering a tsunami of hate for electoral benefits.

A few days ago, in Haridwar, right-wing radicals openly said that the real danger is from churches and mosques. They also added that Islam is a fast poison and Christianity a slow poison and demanded that both Muslims and Hindus get wiped out from the face of this earth.

Recently, former Indian armed forces veterans wrote an open letter to PM Modi, criticising hate speech on minorities.

This won’t stop until the silent majority speaks up and condemns these gory incidents.

In December, a church was allegedly vandalised by unidentified miscreants in Karnataka’s southern district Chikkaballapur. This attack comes on the heels of several other similar incidents, targeting the Christian community ahead of the controversial anti-conversion bill in the Karnataka Assembly. The Bishop made a statement to the effect that elected leaders are challenging the constitution, and the government is doing nothing to protect minorities.

Later, Bishops, Nuns and religious leaders of the Christian community were out on the roads in Bengaluru to protest the recent attacks and vandalisation of churches.

The latest in systematic targeting of minorities is the Union government going after the ‘Missionaries of Charity’, Mother Teresa’s organisation, by cancelling its FCRA. The fact that the government chose the date 25th December to freeze all bank accounts of MOC, leaving 22,000 patients and employees in the dock without food and medicine exposes its empty claim about mainstreaming the minorities.

Communalism was earlier relegated to the fringes; now it’s become mainstream and it is not surprising anymore. The rot was setting in for some time.

Last year saw the auctioning of Muslim women online on an app called Sulli Deals. Even Najeeb’s mother was not spared. This is just a reflection of India’s broken justice system. Definitely, there must be some truth in stories when surveys say we are becoming one of the most unsafe countries for women.

Repeated complaints from women politicians made to IT minister Ashwini Vaishnav fell on deaf ears. Priyanka Chaturvedi from the Shiv Sena tweeted: “I have repeatedly asked Hon.IT Minister Ashwini Vaishnav ji to take stern action against such rampant misogyny and communal targeting of women through Sulli deals like platforms. A shame that it continues to be ignored.”

Can we ignore the fact that today’s Bulli Deals auction targeting Indian Muslim women is a direct result of the government agencies taking zero cognizance of complaints filed by many vocal Muslim women? The perpetrators of gross cyber crimes have gone unpunished, unchecked which has emboldened the criminals further.

A few days ago, Yati Narasinghanand had called on Hindu youth to become Prabhakaran and Bhindranwale and provoked Hindus to pick up arms against the Muslims, promising to give them Rs one crore for it.

Yati Narasinghanand happens to be one of the organisers of the event. He faces criminal cases in Uttar Pradesh and Delhi as well.

Another speaker at the event, Sagar Sindhu Maharaj, whose name was added, had asked Hindus to have more children and spare Muslims only if they converted to Hinduism.

Since the Haridwar event, a spate of similar incidents of hate speech also took place across the country.

In a viral video of a similar event in Delhi on 19th December, right-wing Hindu groups could be seen taking the following oath: “We take an oath and make a resolution that till our last breath, we will fight, die for and if need be, kill, to make this country a Hindu Rashtra and keep this country a Hindu Rashtra.”

On 30th December, Chhattisgarh police also booked religious leader Kalicharan for allegedly using derogatory language against Mahatma Gandhi at an event in Madhya Pradesh’s Khajuraho.

It’s not surprising that BJP leaders feign ignorance when asked about hate speeches in their states. Take for example Uttarakhand CM Pushkar Singh Dhami who completely feigned amnesia when asked about the Haridwar Hate Assembly after ten days had lapsed.

However, as far as the ‘dharam sansad’ is concerned, Dhami said that the government did not organise it.

As India gets caught up in the intersection of hegemony, misogyny, bigotry, casteism, violence, impunity, there should be a collective action around the complete breakdown of a healthy, bustling, thriving democracy.

The punch in the gut fear of being Muslims in Modi-fied India is as real as it can be. Muslims have been a resilient lot since 2014. Many have chosen to be apolitical, many are keeping silent, many are watching the events unfold with dread and fear, but one thing is certain they will not get cowed down or bullied into becoming second-class citizens in their own country.

It’s now up to the ruling dispensation to decide which path to choose and a gentle reminder that notoriety doesn’t equal fame.

Would they like to be remembered as another fascist movement, a totalitarian regime that pushed its citizenry into civil war or a government that walked the talk of ‘Sabka Saath, Sabka Vikaas’? Honorable PM Narendra Modi Si, the ball is in your court now.

---------------------

*Saira Shah Halim is an educator and a civil rights activist.

**All views are personal 

A dedicated COVID-19 isolation center at Rohingya refugee camp in Bangladesh was gutted in a fire Sunday night, but the patients there were apparently unharmed, according to official sources.

“The fire broke out at around 7 pm local time [1300 GMT] and we doused it after two hour-long hectic efforts along with Rohingya refugees and locals,” a Ukhiya Fire Service and Civil Defense officer in Cox’s Bazar told Anadolu Agency.

All 12 Rohingya isolated at the center – though the center has 70 isolation beds – were reportedly safely transferred to another location.

He added that the incident would be investigated by the fire service, adding that according to eyewitness and evidence so far, “We are predicting that the fire may have originated from an electric short circuit.”

A major fire at the world’s largest refugee camp last March killed at least 15 members of the community and burned to ashes more than 10,000 shanties, including a Turkish field hospital.

Since late 2017, the camps have housed some one million Rohingya Muslims who fled an organized persecution campaign in neighboring Myanmar./aa

All domestic flights in Denmark will be green by 2030, Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen said Saturday, as the government has set an ambitious target.

"Will it be difficult? Yes. Can it be done? Yes, I think so. We're already on it. Talented researchers and businesses are working on solutions," Frederiksen said in her New Year's Day address to the nation.

"If we succeed, it will be a green breakthrough. Not just for Denmark, but the whole world. If there's anything we have learned in recent years when it comes to handling big crises, it's that we must never hesitate," she said.

Frederiksen provided no details about how the lofty goal would be accomplished, but did say her government was open to the introduction of a tax on carbon dioxide gas emissions, after having previously been opposed.

The aviation industry is one of the biggest emitters of greenhouse gases, and airlines are developing new and cleaner technologies, including those that reduce fuel use and emissions.

The International Air Transport Association (IATA), which represents 290 airlines accounting for 83% of global air traffic, in October made a pledge of net zero carbon emissions by 2050./FP

Abandoned shops and mostly empty streets offer few signs of life in North Macedonia's Valandovo, where young people are fleeing in large numbers hoping to find a better life abroad.

Like much of this impoverished corner of southeastern Europe, this tiny Balkan nation is sitting on a demographic time bomb fueled by an aging population, sinking birth rate and mass migration.

North Macedonia has shed 10% of its population in the last 20 years. Around 600,000 Macedonian citizens now live abroad, according to World Bank and government data.

Abysmal economic growth and a lack of investment have clobbered the country, now home to just 1.8 million people, in its 30 years of independence.

"If you have a little over 2.4 million citizens and more than a quarter have left, then you have to seriously be worried about what is happening," says Apostol Simovski, director of the country's statistics office.

Villages and small towns such as Valandovo, 146 kilometers (90 miles) from the capital, offer few jobs, pushing the ambitious and able to search elsewhere.

"The spirit of young people has been systematically destroyed," Pero Kostadinov, the newly elected 33-year-old mayor tells Agence France-Presse (AFP). "The enthusiasm to fight and stay home has been lost."

In Valandovo alone, nearly 90% of people's income is linked to agriculture, a common denominator across North Macedonia.

"Five of my friends from our class of 20 students have already moved abroad with their families," said Bojan Nikolov, 24, a member of the youth municipal council in Valandovo.

The anecdote offers a stark picture of where the country's future is headed.

‘Better to slave abroad’

Initial results from North Macedonia's most recent census conducted in September estimate that the population has declined by more than 200,000 since 2002.

Since independence and the dissolution of Yugoslavia in 1991, many hoped integration into the European Union would provide a life raft and promises of a brighter future.

But North Macedonia's path to EU membership has been repeatedly blocked, first by Greece and later Bulgaria, ushering in fresh doubts that the country will ever join and pushing many to jump ship.

For those who stay, monthly salaries average 470 euros ($530).

"It is better to be a slave for 2,000 euros in some foreign country, than to be a slave with 300 euros at home," goes a popular refrain in North Macedonia.

It is a picture replicated across the Balkans.

In Albania, about 1.7 million people, or roughly 37% of the population, have left the country in the past three decades, according to government figures.

Hundreds of thousands left Serbia to resettle abroad after wars in the 1990s that pummeled the economy, with estimates suggesting up to 10,000 doctors left in the last 20 years.

"All the countries of the Western Balkans are affected to varying degrees by emigration," said Ilir Gedeshi, a professor of economics based in the Albanian capital Tirana.

"The main reasons are economic, but apart from that, social reasons occupy an increasingly important place."

‘Last train leaving’

But for Albania, Kosovo, Montenegro, North Macedonia and Serbia – all hoping that EU membership will reverse their fortunes – Croatia provides a stern warning.

Since joining the bloc in 2013, its population of just over four million has shrunk nearly 10% in a decade, according to preliminary census findings.

The United Nations projects that Croatia will have just 2.5 million people by the end of the century. Demographers warn that the country's tiny population may lack the resilience to weather further losses.

In December, Zagreb sought to reverse some of the brain drain by promising Croatian expatriates in the European Union up to 26,000 euros ($29,000) to return and start a business.

But for some areas, it may already be too late.

"For sale" signs litter the eastern region of Pozega, one of those hardest-hit by war in the 1990s. More than 16% of the area's population of nearly 80,000 have left in the past decade, official figures show.

"In my street one-third of the houses are empty," said Igor Cancar, 39, from nearby Brestovac.

They include his sister who moved to Austria with her husband and two children, along with most of his close friends.

"If we want young people to stay, we need a kindergarten and help them build a house," Cancar added.

"The last train is leaving, and we are doing nothing but standing on the platform and waving."/FPA

Turkey is considering a range of new financial products that would offer guarantees against inflation losses, according to a senior official.

It would follow a scheme unveiled last month to protect Turkish lira deposits against currency volatility, a measure designed to make citizens feel safer about holding their savings in the bank.

The scheme effectively ties the value of special new deposits to the United States dollar by promising to compensate for losses incurred from swings in the exchange rate.

The government is working on various new financial products to put the nation back on track and help it ultimately reach its current account surplus goal, Göksel Aşan, head of the Presidency Finance Office, told an interview with Nikkei Asia.

“The Treasury and Finance Ministry is working on inflation-indexed instruments,” Aşan said. “I do not think that it will be another bank deposit instrument, which would mean competing with the new forex-indexed lira deposits,” he said, hinting at bonds without specifying.

The scheme announced by President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan on Dec. 20 had reversed a slide in the lira and triggered a historic 50% surge in the currency’s value in the week through Dec. 24.

Deposits surge

Deposits increased by over TL 60 billion after the anti-dollarization plan announcement, Aşan said, expressing expectations that the new deposit instruments would collect TL 150 billion to forex-indexed lira accounts within a month.

"I also expect an additional $5 billion to be exchanged back to the lira from standard forex deposit accounts in the same period," he said, suggesting a total sum of $16 billion at the current exchange rate.

The lira had fallen to an all-time low of 18.40 per U.S. dollar on Dec. 20, before recording the historic rebound on the same day. The currency on Friday traded at around 13.4 per dollar and closed 2021 down over 40%.

The depreciation had made imports more expensive and followed a series of interest rate cuts, as the Central Bank of the Republic of Turkey (CBRT) slashed its key policy rates by 500 basis points to 14% since September.

The annual inflation rose to more than 21% in November, the highest reading since November 2018, driven by rising food and import prices. It is expected to have exceeded 30% in December, breaching the level for the first time since 2003, according to surveys.

Among other initiatives, work is also underway to bring part of an estimated 5,000 tons of “under-the-mattress” gold into the financial system by introducing gold certificates to be exchanged with physical gold, Aşan told Nikkei.

These gold items are estimated by the government to be worth some $280 billion.

Aşan’s remarks followed an announcement by the country’s central bank, which said it would also extend an incentive program to people who keep their savings in gold.

Erdoğan on Friday called on citizens to keep all their savings in lira and shift gold savings into banks, saying the recent exchange market volatility was largely under control.

Aşan said he also expected a high inflation reading to come for December when the Turkish Statistical Institute (TurkStat) announces the data on Monday, given the sharp lira slide last month. He expects inflation to peak in March and close the year below 17%.

Energy, electricity prices hiked

Ahead of the new inflation reading, Turkey on Saturday sharply raised nationwide electricity and natural gas prices for the new year. Prices also jumped for petrol, car insurance and some bridge tolls.

The Energy Market Regulatory Authority (EPDK), citing high global energy inflation, said electricity prices were raised by as much as 125% for high-demand commercial users and by around 50% for lower-demand households for 2022.

Natural gas prices jumped 25% for residential use and 50% for industrial use in January, national distributor BOTAŞ said. The price rise was 15% for power generators.

In Istanbul, home to around a fifth of Turkey’s population of 84 million, retail prices jumped 9.65% month-over-month in December for an annual rise of 34.18%, the most in at least a decade, the Istanbul Chamber of Commerce (ITO) said. Home appliance prices were up more than 20% while food rose by nearly 15%.

Wholesale prices in the city jumped 11.96% from November for an annual rise of 47.10%, ITO said.

Other adjustments included the maximum compulsory traffic insurance premium being increased by 20%, effective as of Feb. 1.

Petrol prices rose by more than half a lira per liter, while diesel prices increased by TL 1.29, the Energy, Petroleum, Gas Stations Employers Union (EPGIS) said on Friday.

The inflation-indexed bonds can make some contribution if introduced, Piri Reis University economics professor Erhan Aslanoğlu told Nikkei.

Aslanoğlu said it would depend on their maturity, and they can absorb some of the demand for dollar-buying./DS

Thousands gathered Sunday on a central square before marching toward a park in Amsterdam to protest a ban on assembling by the Dutch government as part of coronavirus lockdown measures.

A small group of demonstrators briefly clashed with riot police as officers worked to clear the crowd from Museum Square based on an order from Amsterdam Mayor Femke Halsema. Reporters at the scene saw at least one person being detained.

The local government had outlawed the protest, saying police had indications some demonstrators might be planning to attend "prepared for violence.” The municipality later issued an emergency order for people to leave the square, and riot police marched across the grass to clear the area, sending the demonstrators into nearby streets.

Before officers moved in, some participants unfurled a banner that read, "Less repression, more care” near the Van Gogh Museum. A group of people in white overalls and white masks held up signs, including one that said: "It's not about a virus, it's about control” on one side and "Freedom" on the other. One person walked through the crowd carrying a "Trump 2024” flag.

There was a heavy police presence in the square and in nearby streets. The municipality designated the area as a security risk region, giving police the authority to frisk people preventatively.

After marching through the city, demonstrators began gathering at a western Amsterdam park for a rally of the populist Forum for Democracy party.

The demonstration came on the same day Dutch police said they would take action to protest the increasing demands of their work. Union representatives have said riot police would continue to work, if necessary.

Coronavirus infection rates have been gradually decreasing for weeks in the Netherlands, which re-introduced lockdown measures in November and tightened them further during the holiday season.

The 7-day rolling average of new daily cases edged slightly lower over the past week to 85.55 new cases per 100,000 people even as the omicron mutation became the nation's dominant variant.

Under the lockdown, all non-essential shops are closed along with bars, restaurants and venues such as museums, theaters and cinemas.

In November, a coronavirus demonstration erupted into violent rioting in Rotterdam, and previous demonstrations on Museum Square have ended in confrontations between police and protesters who ignored orders to leave the area./AP

A jaguar named Jatobazinho has been released back into the wild at a national park in Argentina as part of a program to boost the numbers of the endangered species, which faces significant hurdles after it has suffered a marked decline in recent years.

This was the eighth jaguar freed in the past year into Ibera National Park but the first adult male, said the environmental group Rewilding Argentina, which is behind the project.

Jatobazinho weighs about 90 kilograms (200 pounds) and has brown fur peppered with black spots.

He first appeared at a rural school in 2018 in Brazil, looking skinny and weak after crossing a river from Paraguay.

The big cat spent a year in an animal refuge in Brazil until he was sent to a jaguar reintroduction center operating since 2012 in Argentina's northeast Corrientes province, where the species had been extinct for 70 years.

Sebastian Di Martino, a biologist with Rewilding Argentina, said that the jaguar needed to be nice and relaxed as it left its enclosure and entered the wild.

"If the animal is stressed it can become disoriented and end up anywhere," he said.

He said these jaguars were fed live prey while in captivity because they have to know how to hunt.

In the Ibera park, there is plenty of wildlife for them to feed on such as deer.

The jaguars are tracked with a GPS device they wear.

There are plans now to release a female that was born at the reintroduction center.

The park is also awaiting the arrival of three wild jaguars from Paraguay, and two more raised in captivity in Uruguay and Brazil.

Jaguars are native to the Americas.

It is estimated there were more than 100,000 jaguars when Europeans arrived in the 15th century, their habitat ranging from semi-desert areas of North America to the tropical forests of South America.

Conservation groups say the jaguar population of South America has fallen by up to 25% over the past 20 years as deforestation eats up their habitat./FPA

French customers will be encouraged to adopt more environmentally friendly habits in 2022 under a series of new regulations, including a ban on the use of plastic packaging around a range of fruits and vegetables.

Environmentalists have long campaigned against single-use plastics as pollution worsens globally while President Emmanuel Macron has backed the move defending a “pragmatic” approach.

Beginning Saturday, leeks, carrots, tomatoes, potatoes, apples, pears and about 30 other items will no longer be sold in plastic, to the dismay of the sector's packaging industry. Instead, they should be wrapped in other recyclable materials.

Plastic will still be allowed for more fragile fruits such as berries and peaches but is to be gradually banned in the coming years.

The October decree covers for example the sale of apples under 1.5 kilograms (3.3 lbs).

However, the full legislation will not be applied until 2026, allowing firms to adapt, including on the sale of red fruits considered fragile. Six months has also been granted to use up existing plastic packaging stocks.

"We were never consulted," complained Laurent Grandin, head of the fruit and vegetable sector's Interfel association.

He told the Agence France-Presse (AFP) the costs were "insurmountable" for small companies who would have to keep using plastic to protect exports, notably to Britain, a major client for apples.

Pomanjou produces up to 40,000 tons of apples annually in the Loire valley and has over the last three years introduced 100% cardboard packing.

However, packing costs have as a result soared 20% to 30%, said company representative Arnaud de Puineuf.

Big supermarket group Casino said it will now sell tomatoes in cardboard packaging and provide customers with paper or cellulose bags.

The packaging companies say the Oct. 8 decree caught them by surprise, particularly the ban on recycled plastics.

"We have client firms ... who will have to stop their fruit and vegetable packing activity, even though they have been working on alternatives using less plastic or recycled plastic for several years," said a statement from the Elipso association that represents manufacturers.

The government said the new regulation is expected to eliminate about 1 billion items of plastic waste per year.

Magazines and other publications will also need to be shipped without plastic wrapping, and fast-food restaurants will no longer be allowed to offer free plastic toys to children.

'Market distortion'

Elipso and Polyvia, a union representing 3,500 firms making packaging, have appealed to France's State Council, which has jurisdiction over administrative disputes, against what they say is a distortion of European markets as the ban applies solely to France.

But Armand Chaigne, director of industrial markets at packaging firm DS Smith, sees the benefits, notably for cardboard manufacturers.

"It is estimated that in Europe, out of the 8 million tons of plastic produced per year for single-use packaging, 1.5 million tons could already be removed," he said.

"That represents about 70 billion units of single-use plastic packaging,", or "about 7 billion euros ($7.9 billion) of additional turnover potential for cardboard," he added.

Walking, cycling instead of driving

In the coming year, among others, French car ads will be required to include a message encouraging people to consider greener transportation.

Starting from March, they will have to mention one of three messages: “For short trips, prefer walking or cycling,” “Think about carpooling” or "On a daily basis, take public transport."

According to a decree published last week, the new regulation will apply to ads on television, radio, newspapers, billboards and online. Advertisers who do not comply will face a fine of up to 50,000 euros ($56,652) per run.

Similar mandatory messages have already been part of ads for processed foods since 2007 in France, like “For your health, avoid eating too fatty, too sweet, too salty.”

The transport sector in France is responsible for about 31% of greenhouse gas emissions, half of that generated by private cars.

Also in 2022, French phone operators and internet providers will be requested to communicate to their customers an estimate of greenhouse gas emissions generated by their activity online and usage of mobile phones.

The move is meant to raise greater public awareness of the environmental impact of digital technology. Emissions are notably generated by data centers, which use energy to create data clouds. A Senate report last year found that the sector accounted for 2% of greenhouse gases in 2019 in France./agencies

An ex-“Israeli” minister called for the assassination of Palestinian resistance group Hamas' leaders in response to rocket fire from the Gaza Strip.

"It is time to send “Ismail” Haniyeh and Yahya Sinwar to meet (former Hamas leader Abdul Aziz) al-Rantisi and (Hamas founder Ahmad) Yasin," former Communications Minister Ayoob Kara told the “Israeli” Channel 14.

“Israel” assassinated al-Rantisi and Yasin in 2004.

Kara, who is a member of the right-wing Likud Party, said if “Israel” did not respond to the rocket fire by Hamas, "it will be a fatal blow to Israel's deterrence force."

"This will encourage Hamas and other groups in Gaza to continue firing at “Israeli” citizens," Kara said.

“Israeli” warplanes carried out airstrikes on several Hamas positions in Gaza late Saturday. “Israeli” tanks also shelled four observation towers of the Hamas-run Interior Ministry in northern Gaza.

No injuries were reported in the attacks, which the “Israeli” army said were in response to rocket fire from Gaza.

“Israel” launched an 11-day military offensive in Gaza in May 2021, in which more than 260 Palestinians were killed and thousands of others injured. Thirteen Israelis were also killed by rocket fire from Gaza.

The violence, the worst in years, came to a halt under an Egyptian-brokered truce on May 21./aa