Syrian families are settling into the 901 briquette houses built by the Turkish Red Crescent (Kızılay) in the war-torn country's northwestern Idlib province.

Kızılay has finished constructing 901 houses in the town of Kafr Lusin as it continues its efforts to build 5,000 briquette houses in Idlib.

Hatay Deputy Governor Oğuzhan Bingöl, Kızılay General Director Ibrahim Altan and Emine Taş, head of the For Children Smile Foundation, were among those present at the opening of the housing development.

Altan noted that so far, 2,461 houses have been handed over to families, with 2,189 of the houses in the Idlib region and 272 in the Azaz region.

He added that beside the houses, a school was also opened so the children who have been victims of war can continue their education. Furthermore, efforts for additional infrastructure, including clean drinking water, are also ongoing.

Taş from For Children Smile told Anadolu Agency (AA) that 22 classrooms have been opened for the children.

“We departed on this road with the slogan that education changes the world. We gifted the children a smile. We succeeded. Another dream was made true,” Taş said.

Thanks to the briquette houses built in the countryside of Idlib with the support of Turkish nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) and international aid associations under the coordination of Turkey's Disaster and Emergency Management Authority (AFAD) and Hatay governorate, families no longer have to live in tent camps where they are vulnerable to the elements, especially during the winter months.

Since launching several operations in northern Syria to fight terrorism, Turkey has been supporting every aspect of life in the region, from health to education, security and agriculture. In this respect, efforts to clear bombs and improvised explosive devices were launched and administration duties were given to local councils. The country also rolled up its sleeves to reconstruct hospitals, schools, mosques and roads destroyed by the terror groups. Within the scope of ameliorating the region's social infrastructure, people were given food and clothing by several NGOs while roads and buildings were rebuilt. These efforts paid off as hundreds of displaced Syrians started to return to the liberated areas.

In line with its goal to rejuvenate the region, Turkey is also building briquette houses for Syrians in the northwestern Idlib province, the last opposition bastion.

President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan announced in May that Ankara is planning to build 200,000 homes in northern Syria for a quarter of all refugees to resettle voluntarily.

"With financing from international aid groups, we've been working on a project to construct 200,000 homes at 13 different locations in Syria to relocate 1 million Syrian refugees living in Turkey, including schools and hospitals," Erdoğan said.

The briquette houses in safe areas provide a secure shelter for Syrian fleeing the oppression of the Bashar Assad regime and its backer Russia.

For years, the Assad regime has ignored the needs and safety of the Syrian people, only eyeing further gains of territory and crushing the opposition. With this aim, the regime has for years bombed vital facilities like schools, hospitals and residential areas, causing the displacement of almost half of the country’s population while adopting policies to make their lives more difficult.

Incarceration horror in regime prisons

Apart from the bombing of vital facilities and displacing Syrians, the regime also systematically uses the practice of torture.

With pain and fear writ large on his face, a former inmate of Syrian prisons run by the Assad regime recounted the torture and abuse he faced during incarceration.

In an interview with AA on the occasion of the International Day in Support of Victims of Torture observed on June 26, Muhammed Salih Assaf, who was released on June 9, recalled the inhumane torture and cruelties he witnessed during his imprisonment.

In 2017, Assaf was detained by YPG terrorists, the Syrian offshoot of the PKK, during a family visit in Afrin at the age of 17 and was handed over to the regime's security units.

Assaf spent about five years in regime prisons.

After footage of the "Tadamon Massacre" carried out by the Assad regime forces surfaced in April, the regime passed a "repentance law."

Syria's military intelligence service conducted the massacre in the Tadamon neighborhood of Damascus in April 2013, with Palestinians among the 41 victims, according to a report by British daily The Guardian. Members of military intelligence Branch 227 made civilians run toward a mass grave while shooting at them.

According to the latest figures released by the Syrian Network for Human Rights (SNHR), the Assad regime released only 539 people under the amnesty law. The organization said that at least 151,462 people are still held in regime prisons.

Assaf said he was handed over to regime forces by PKK/YPG terrorists during Operation Olive Branch launched by Turkey in the northwestern district of Afrin in early 2018.

"They were inflicting all kinds of torture. They tortured (inmates) with plastic water pipes and sticks. I had wounds all over my body. They enjoyed the torture they inflicted on us."

Underlining that he was randomly selected under the so-called amnesty law, Assaf said fellow prisoners asked him to inform their families of their whereabouts. "All I want is for everyone to be released and their torture to end," he said./aa

Thousands affected by a deadly earthquake in eastern Afghanistan are in need of clean water and food and are at risk of disease, an Afghan health ministry official said on Sunday, days after a U.N. agency warned of a cholera outbreak in the region.

At least 1,000 people were killed, 2,000 injured and 10,000 homes destroyed in Wednesday's earthquake, after which the U.N. humanitarian office (OCHA) warned that cholera outbreaks in the aftermath are of particular and serious concern.

"The people are extremely needy for food and clean water," Afghanistan's health ministry spokesperson Sharafat Zaman told Reuters, adding officials had managed medicines for now but handling those who had lost their homes would be a challenge.

"We ask the international community, humanitarian organisations to help us for food and medicine, the survivor might catch diseases because they don’t have proper houses and shelters for living," he said.

The disaster is a major test for Afghanistan's hardline Taliban rulers, who have been shunned by many foreign governments due to concerns about human rights since they seized control of the country last year.

Helping thousands of Afghans is also a challenge for countries that had imposed sanctions on Afghan government bodies and banks, cutting off direct assistance, leading to a humanitarian crisis even before the earthquake.

The United Nations and several other countries have rushed aid to the affected areas, with more due to arrive over the coming days.

Afghanistan's Taliban administration called for a rolling back of sanctions and lifting a freeze on billions of dollars in central bank assets stashed in Western financial institutions.

In Kabul, hospitals more used to treating victims of war have opened their wards to earthquake victims, but a majority of people remain in the areas destroyed by the earthquake.

"Our houses were destroyed, we have no tent... there are lots of children with us. We have nothing. Our food and clothes...everything is under rubble," Hazrat Ali, 18, told a Reuters team in Wor Kali, a village of the hardest-hit Barmal district.

"I have lost my brothers, my heart is broken. Now we are just two. I loved them a lot," he said./Reuters

The mayor of Milan signed an ordinance Saturday turning off the spigots of public decorative fountains, and the city's archbishop prayed for rain in a tour of churches as northern Italy endures one of its worst droughts in decades.

The city ordinance follows the declaration Friday of a state of emergency in the surrounding Lombardy region, which has endured an unusually early heat wave and months without significant rainfall. Neighboring Emilia Romagna and Piemonte have undertaken similar crisis measures.

Milan Mayor Giuseppe Sala said the ordinance would turn off decorative fountains except those holding flora and fauna that need fresh water. It further limits use of water sprinklers except for new-growth trees.

The mayor also decreed that shops in Italy's business and fashion capital can't set thermostats under 26 degrees Celsius (79 degrees Fahrenheit) and must keep their doors closed to avoid overtaxing the power grid.

In a Facebook post, Sala invited Milanese to do their part and reduce water use as much as possible at home, in private gardens and even when cleaning terraces and courtyards.

Separately, Archbishop Mario Delpini made a pilgrimage Saturday to pray for "the gift of rain," visiting three churches that serve the farming communities on the outskirts of Milan. He recited the Rosary and used holy water to bless a field in front of the St. Martin Olearo di Mediglia church.

Italy's drought has dried up rivers crucial for irrigation, including the Po, threatening some 3 billion euros ($3.1 billion) in agriculture, Italian farm lobby Coldiretti said this week. Italy's confederation of agricultural producers, Copagri, estimates the loss of 30%-40% of the seasonal harvest.

While unusual heat and lack of rainfall are to blame for the current crisis, Italy has a notoriously wasteful water infrastructure that the national statistics agency ISTAT estimates loses 42% of drinking water from distribution networks each year, in large part due to old and poorly maintained pipes.

Italy's civil protection agency is gathering information from regions and various national ministries to propose a broader state of emergency for affected regions. Hundreds of towns and cities across the north have already passed various ordinances calling for responsible water use to avoid the possibility of rationing./AP

With the U.S. Supreme Court’s majority ruling on Friday, abortion is no longer a constitutional right in the country. What made the development even more significant was that the decision coincided with one of the most polarized moments in American society. 

Five of the Court's six judges nominated by Republican U.S. Presidents decided that abortion is not a constitutional right. Three judges nominated by the Democratic Presidents expressed opposition to the decision.

In 2018, the Jackson Women's Health Organization, the only clinic in Mississippi to perform abortion, sued the State government for restricting abortion. The case moved to the Supreme Court in 2020. The Supreme Court upheld the state administration's restriction order and overturned the 1973 "Roe v. Wade" decision, which had made abortion a Constitutional right. Chief Justice John Roberts, known as the moderate conservative, agreed with the State of Mississippi's restraining order, but disagreed with the decision overturning  "Roe v. Wade." 

Christian conservatives have fought for the overturning of the “Roe v. Wade” decision for nearly 50 years. Abortion was an element of the struggle between Democrats and Republicans, between liberals and conservatives. One side wants “fewer restrictions” and the other wants “more curbs.” In a process where the American identity was deconstructed, this issue has always been at the heart of the "culture wars" between the two parties. However, the pro-abortion rhetoric was more on the agenda of the mainstream wing of the Democrats in the mid-2000s.

Republican conservatives had handed over the initiative to an organization called the Federalist Society in their attempts to repeal the "Roe v. Wade" decision. Controlled by Catholic jurists, the Federalist Society played a central role in appointments to Federal Courts, including the Supreme Court. This undertaking is described as the holy alliance of Evangelical-Protestant Conservatives and Catholic Conservatives. The Federalist Society created a "personnel pool" for the Republican Party. Almost all conservative members of the Supreme Court were referred by the Federalist Society. These members are known as Catholic conservatives. Meanwhile, 2 out of 3 liberal Judges recommended by Democratic U.S. Presidents are of Jewish descent.

Three of the Supreme Court Judges were nominated by Trump. The most distinctive feature of the candidates who were referred by the Federalist Society was that they were purely anti-abortion. The Senate Majority Leader at the time, Mitch McConnell, played an important role in the confirmation of the candidates in the Senate. Conservatives applaud Trump, McConnell and the Federalist Society for the case won.

For conservatives, this case is considered even more important than winning the Presidential election. Lawyers backed by the Federalist Society made frequent attempts to overturn the "Roe v. Wade" decision. Yet, they were unable to make any significant progress until the Trump era. Thanks to the appointments made to the Supreme Court during the Trump era, they were finally able to get tangible results.

With the decision, state legislatures will now decide on abortion. So the "abortion wars" on the federal scale will now continue in the states. Republicans are calling for abortion to be banned in all states, while Democrats are calling for it to be legalized.

It's almost impossible for the Democrats to pass a "pro-abortion" bill in the Senate. The Senate is split 50 to 50. Democrats need 60 votes to pass a pro-abortion bill. They are unlikely to find 10 or 12 Republicans who would side with them. That's why the Supreme Court decision made the November elections much more important for both sides. In November, the House of Representatives will be renewed in its entirety and the Senate by one-third. Likewise, the administration of 36 states will be determined in the November elections.

No matter how the elections pan out, this issue doesn’t look like it will be resolved any time soon. It's about "American identity." The two sides have diametrically opposed views on what that means. Of course, the final solution may be a popular vote for the constitutional amendment, but this requires a "two-party compromise". Except for one or two issues, reconciliation does not seem to be among the characteristics of current politics these days. In short, the abortion wars will continue for many more years to come./agencies

Central banks are looking to escape the high inflation swamp amid the ongoing Russia-Ukraine war and related issues, such as increasing energy and food prices.

The war that began Feb. 24 has disrupted the global economic recovery after two years of the coronavirus pandemic, triggering significant increases in the prices of commodities such as wheat, corn and sunflower seed oil.

Data from the UN's Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) in May showed food prices rose 22.9% annually, with 31.1% for vegetable oil, 29.7% for cereal, 16.9% for dairy, 15.4% for sugar and 13.6% for meat.

And energy prices continued to contribute to historically high levels of annual inflation.

A barrel of Brent crude oil was around $93 in January and hit $100 after the war began the following month. It hovered between $102 and $114 in May.

Natural gas on the New York Stock Exchange almost tripled in May, compared to the same month last year.

Central banks and economic institutions have been trying to dampen inflation amid the frightening price developments.

- Inflation rates

The European Union's annual inflation rate hit a historical high of 8.8% in May, up from 8.1% in April.

The rate was 8.1%, up from 7.4% in April, in the eurozone.

Among European countries, Estonia posted the highest annual inflation rate at 20.1%, followed by Lithuania at 18.5%, Latvia stood at 16.8%, Czechia with 15.2% and Bulgaria came in at 13.4%.

The lowest in the EU were in Malta and France at 5.8% apiece, and Finland at 7.1%.

Among major European economies, Germany posted its highest inflation rates since 1974 at 7.9%, while France's rate was its highest since September 1985.

Italy's was its highest since November 1990.

Other European countries also posted historical high rates, such as Belgium at a 40-year-high and Portugal soaring to a 29-year-high.

The UK posted a huge inflation rate in May at 9.1%, the highest in the last 40 years.

In the US, consumer prices increased 8.6% in May on an annual basis, the highest increase since December 1981.

The annual inflation rate in Canada was 7.7%.

In Asia, China posted an annual inflation rate of 2.1% in May, while the rate was 7.04% in India and 2.5% in Japan.

Singapore's annual core inflation rate was 3.6% in May, its highest since December 2008.

The annual inflation rate was 17.1% in Russia last month and 18% in Ukraine.

Türkiye's was 73.5% in May.

- Measures

The US Federal Reserve raised its benchmark interest rate by 75 basis points in May, its biggest rate hike in 28 years, to raise the target range for the federal funds rate to 1.5% - 1.75%.

The Bank of England raised rates for the fifth consecutive month to 1.25%, from 1%, in May.

The Bank of Canada raised its policy interest rate by 50 basis points.

Australia’s central bank raised the cash rate by 50 basis points to 85.

Norway's central bank raised rates by 50 basis points, marking the biggest single rate hike since 2002.

But some banks decided to keep rates unchanged such as Türkiye, Japan and the European Central Bank.

Despite expectations, the European Central Bank kept interest rates constant but gave a strong signal of a rate hike in July.

Japan’s central bank decided to maintain its ultra-low interest rates, at minus 0.1% for short-term and 0% for the long-term.

The Turkish Central Bank kept its one-week repo rate unchanged at 14% in line with market expectations.

Meanwhile, Russia's central bank cut its key interest rate by 150 basis points to 9.5%./aa

The UK's anti-terrorism strategy, dubbed Prevent, is facing criticism from a UN special rapporteur for "targeting Muslim communities" ahead of a controversial independent review.

Fionnuala Ni Aolain, the UN special rapporteur on the promotion and protection of human rights while countering terrorism, said the strategy has had a "negative and discriminatory effect on Muslim communities" and its implementation is "inconsistent" with the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child.

While the effect of the initiative "has not been felt equally by all children," Ni Aolain said, "minority ethnic or religious communities" were impacted in particular.

She said the UN "has a number of concerns about the Prevent strategy" and that she addressed these kinds of government strategies used by the UK and other countries with the organization's Human Rights Council.

Since becoming law in 2011, the strategy has been criticized by equality and rights groups for the challenge that it is believed to pose to liberties and the justice system's foundations.

There have been regular calls for the strategy's removal due to its discriminatory nature against Muslims and because the UK government has failed to provide any evidence that it prevents terrorism.

"In fact, we know of at least 13 people who have gone on to commit terrorist attacks and they were known to Prevent prior to their attacks and Prevent did not stop them," said Layla Aitlhadj, the director of Prevent Watch, a campaign group that supports people affected by the strategy.

Under Prevent, public authorities such as schools, colleges, universities, and health services are ordered to monitor students, patients, and clients for potential signs of radicalization in children as young as four.

Thousands of referrals are made each year, and the highest proportion of Prevent referrals comes from within the education sector.

One such case was that of a 12-year-old who wishes to remain anonymous.

Among several others, she was reported by her school to counter-terrorism police after showing sympathy towards Palestinians.

"An assistant teacher took me out of my lesson and she led me to an empty room with a long table, and there was a policewoman sitting on one end of the table and I was advised to sit on the other end before the teacher walked out and closed the door behind her.

"I was so scared to the point, I was trying to hold in tears," she said, recounting that the policewoman "didn't even explain what was happening and sounded like she was threatening me."

She was told by the officer that she would be taken to the police station for further interrogation. But in the end, the decision was made that they would question her at school.

"I thought it meant I would be going to prison. But overall, it was my first experience face to face with the police at 12 years old," she said.

After the interrogation, she called her father while crying, thinking that he knew what happened.

"I found out I was being put in a room with a police officer with no warning and no explanation without any of my parents' permission," she said.

Her father was equally taken aback by the incident.

"Just imagine the amount of fear, stress and frustration you can go through when as a parent, you receive a call from a police officer telling you that your 12-year-old daughter was interrogated in her school.

"No consent was given by us. No information was given to us. We had no idea about what happened to her," he said.

Prevent, as part of the UK's counter-terrorism strategy, operates in pre-crime space, well before any intention, planning, or preparation for criminal action has ever been committed.

This means that individuals singled out by Prevent have often never even considered committing any such crime.

The logic is that "you can stop somebody at age four or five, when they're just displaying certain ideas or beliefs, because in 10- or 20-years’ time, they may go on to be a terrorist, which is quite an extraordinary claim," said Aitlhadj.

"If anybody came to you and said: 'Oh, I can predict your future,' you would probably laugh them out of the room.

"And yet, the UK government has convinced not only its citizens, but it's convinced other countries around the world that Prevent works and they can essentially predict the future who can go on to commit future crime," she asserted.

Unlike counter-terrorism legislation, there is no independent reviewer with a statutory duty to report on any extensions of the Prevent strategy or problems with its implementation.

The UK government recently came under scrutiny when it appointed William Shawcross, a former chairman of the Charity Commission well-known for his neoconservative views and Islamophobic rhetoric, to chair an independent review of Prevent.

British newspaper The Guardian recently published a leaked draft which exposed Shawcross's plans to state in the landmark Prevent review that the government's counterterrorism program has been too focused on right-wing extremism and should now refocus on what he calls "Islamic terrorism" and "Islamist extremism."

Shawcross believes Prevent is treating "mainstream, right-wing-leaning commentary" as far-right, while what he refers to as "Islamist propaganda" is "being ignored."

Sir Peter Fahy, the former police lead for Prevent, said the review extracts suggested that Shawcross's findings were an unwarranted attempt to "politicize counter-terrorism policing."

Many civil rights organizations, Muslim community groups, and researchers declared a boycott amid Shawcross's new role.

Two leading experts on Prevent, Aitlhadj and John Holmwood, as an alternative to the government’s review, chaired the largest ever study of Prevent, called "The People's Review of Prevent," and have found that it is not preventing terrorism but instead wrongly targeting and traumatizing hundreds of innocent people, some young children.

However, the UK government continues to ignore this criticism, and Shawcross, who was a fellow at Policy Exchange, a UK think tank known for its Islamophobic stances, published a report that was endorsed by former Prime Minister David Cameron suggesting that those who criticize Prevent as a law are enabling terrorism.

"So it's part of how Prevent works. If you criticize it, you too are somehow extreme or enabling terrorism.

"I myself was mentioned over 33 times in that report, and only Muslim organizations and individuals were focused on in that report," Aitlhadj said.

In defense of Prevent, the government recently cited figures for 2021 which showed that less than a quarter of those who have been referred were done so due to what they called "Islamic extremism."

But, Aitlhadj said, this is all part of the government's repackaging of the clearly discriminatory law to convince the public that it targets all forms of extremism.

The reality is that Prevent disproportionally targets Muslims, "as they only make up 5% of the UK population," she added.

Ni Aolain, the UN rapporteur, clarified that public evidence suggests that Prevent "has been primarily used to target minority Muslim communities" and that this issue was not just raised by her mandate but also by the mandate of the UN special rapporteur on contemporary forms of racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance, Tendayi Achiume.

Ni Aolain said the best way to fight terrorism and fight violent extremism was to do so in a way that complies with international law and human rights.

"When we ignore our human rights obligations in doing this work, what we often do, governments often end up doing, is being in a vicious cycle where you reproduce the conditions conducive to violence precisely by alienating communities and those that you most definitely need to be in partnership with," she added./aa