👋 Sziasztok!*
Welcome to Thursday, where Pakistan retaliatory strikes into Iran kill nine, students lead anti-government protests in Sri Lanka, and Peregrine is set to safely crash back to Earth after failing to land on the Moon. Meanwhile, Rola Khaled for Arabic-language independent digital media platform Daraj writes about the harrowing conditions faced by Palestinian prisoners in Israeli prisons and in the West Bank.
[*Hungarian]
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🌎 7 THINGS TO KNOW RIGHT NOW
• Pakistan launches retaliatory strikes into Iran, at least nine dead: Pakistan carried out missile strikes inside Iran's borders on Thursday, killing at least nine people, after Tehran's attack on Pakistani soil earlier this week. Pakistan’s foreign ministry said the strikes targeted the hideouts of separatist Baloch militants in Iran's Sistan-Baluchestan province. Tehran strongly condemned the attack and has summoned Pakistan's charge d'affaires to give an explanation.
• U.S. targets Houthis in Yemen on day 4: U.S. forces targeted 14 Houthi missiles “that were loaded to be fired” in Yemen, the U.S. military said, in the fourth day of direct attacks on the Iran-aligned group in less than a week. This comes after Washington re-designated the Iran-backed group as a "terrorist" entity for their attacks on vessels in the Red Sea.
• Ecuador prosecutor probing gang attack on TV station killed: César Suárez, the public prosecutor who was investigating the live-broadcast armed assault last week on an Ecuadorian television station, was shot and killed in Guayaquil on Wednesday. The murder comes amid a surge in violence in the South American country, which has become a hub for the global export of cocaine from neighbors Colombia and Peru. Read more in this analysis translated into English by Worldcrunch: Ecuador's Chaos May Trace Back To The Demise Of FARC In Colombia.
• Singapore minister charged with corruption resigns: Singapore’s Transport Minister S. Iswaran has resigned after being charged with corruption on Thursday, in a first that has shocked the city state. Iswaran has pleaded not guilty to 27 charges including “obtaining gratification as a public servant.”
• Comoros imposes curfew after president’s fourth-term win sparks protests: The Comoros declared a curfew on Wednesday after violent protests against President Azali Assoumani’s re-election rocked the East African island nation. Assoumani, an ex-military officer who first came to power in a 1999 coup, won a fourth five-year term with 62.97% of the vote at last week’s elections, which opposition leaders denounced as fraudulent.
• Woman freed after abortion conviction in El Salvador: A 28-year-old Salvadoran woman has been released from prison more than seven years after she was convicted for having an abortion in a country which has one of the world's strictest anti-abortion laws. The woman had been sentenced to 30 years in prison in 2015 after being charged with negligence and aggravated murder. Read more about how the issue of abortion rights is moving in different directions around the world in this Worldcrunch article.
• Peregrine Moon lander set to crash back to Earth: The Moon-landing vehicle Peregrine is expected to re-enter the Earth's atmosphere and burn up after failing to reach the lunar surface because of a propellant leak. The spacecraft, built by U.S. company Astrobotic, should crash “over a remote area of the South Pacific” on Thursday 21:00 GMT. Had Peregrine’s landing been successful, it would have become the first American mission in half a century to do so.
🗞️ FRONT PAGE
French daily newspaper Libération dedicates its front page to French President Emmanuel Macron’s plan to boost France's declining birth rate. Macron promised to overhaul parental leave and said he wanted to boost access to fertility treatments, as well as create a new and more generous system of parental leave. But the French newspaper criticizes Macron’s plan as he offers no concrete solutions to “facilitate the arrival of a newborn.”
📰 STORY OF THE DAY
Palestinians accuse Israeli prisons of “systematic torture”
Since Oct. 7, Israel has launched a crackdown on Palestinians, in both Gaza and the West Bank. Once the new detainees are taken to jail, they allege that authorities regularly take an extra hard line, including a disturbingly high number of prisoners killed, reports Rola Khaled for Arabic-language independent digital media platform Daraj.
🇵🇸 On the first day of the new year, Abdul Rahman al-Bahsh’s mother was scrolling through her phone when news began circulating on social media that her son, detained in the Israel's Megiddo prison, had been killed. He had been detained in May 2022 and sentenced to 35 months in prison on charges of shooting at military vehicles. According to his family, the 23-year-old was in good health, and did not die from natural causes or an accident. They accuse Israeli prison authorities of “torturing him to death.”
⛓ Al-Bahsh is hardly the only Palestinian prisoner to have died in Israeli prisons in recent months, says the Prisoners and Ex-Prisoners’ Affairs Authority and the Palestinian Prisoners’ Club. The two organizations issued a joint statement on Jan. 1, on the death of al-Bahsh in Megiddo prison, saying he was “assassinated” by Israel’s prisons administration.
📑 Documented reports show that more than 5,500 Palestinians, including 355 children and 184 women, have been detained in the occupied West Bank since the war began on Oct. 7. The detentions over the past three months accounted for half of the whole detentions in 2023.
➡️ Read more on Worldcrunch.com
📹 THIS HAPPENED VIDEO — TODAY IN HISTORY, IN ONE ICONIC PHOTO
➡️ Watch the video: THIS HAPPENED
#️⃣ BY THE NUMBERS
+37%
New car sales in Europe saw a major increase in 2023, rising by 13.9% as electric vehicles overtook diesel for the first time. Sales of new electric cars shot up by 37% over the last year according to the European Automobile Manufacturers' Association. In particular, sales in France, Italy and Spain posted double-digit increases, compared to 2022.
📣 VERBATIM
“Mr. Trump, I hope I don't have to consider excluding you from the trial.”
— Donald Trump appeared at the civil trial of E Jean Carroll, who accuses the former president of sexual assault in the 1990s. But during the second day of the civil defamation trial, the judge threatened to kick Trump out of court after he was overheard criticizing her testimony calling it a “witch hunt.” Judge Lewis Kaplan fired back at Trump saying, “I hope I don't have to consider excluding you from the trial. I understand you're probably eager for me to do that.”
👉 MORE FROM WORLDCRUNCH
• U.S.-Iran: Here's How The Escalation Could Spiral Out Of Control — FRANCE INTER
• Frontline, Kharkiv: How Ukraine's Second Largest City Resists Shelling And Despair — UKRAINSKA PRAVDA
• What's Driving Houthi Escalation? Inside A Yemen War That Was Always Fueled From Abroad — DARAJ
✍️ Newsletter by Emma Albright and Anne-Sophie Goninet
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