Category: World

VATICAN CITY (AP) — Pope Francis was hospitalized with a respiratory infection Wednesday after experiencing difficulty breathing in recent days and will remain in the Rome hospital for several days of treatment, the Vatican said.

The 86-year-old pope, who had part of one lung removed as a young man, doesn’t have COVID-19, spokesman Matteo Bruni said in a statement late Wednesday.

The hospitalization was the first since Francis spent 10 days at the Gemelli hospital in July 2021 to have 33 centimeters (13 inches) of his colon removed.

It immediately raised questions about Francis’ overall health, and his ability to celebrate the busy Holy Week events that are due to begin this weekend with Palm Sunday.

Bruni said Francis had had trouble breathing in recent days and went to the Gemelli hospital Wednesday for tests.

“The tests showed a respiratory infection (COVID-19 infection excluded) that will require some days of medical treatment in the hospital,” Bruni’s statement said.

Francis appeared in relatively good form during his regularly scheduled general audience earlier Wednesday, though he grimaced strongly while getting in and out of the “popemobile.” He nevertheless rode around the square as usual, kissing babies and greeting the faithful.

Bruni said Francis, an Argentine Jesuit, was grateful for the prayers and messages wishing him a speedy recovery, including from the Italian bishops conference.

President Joe Biden, at the start of an Oval Office meeting with President Alberto Fernández of Argentina, told reporters he had just learned of Francis’s health problems and said he was concerned about his dear “friend.”

Francis had part of one lung removed when he was a young man due to a respiratory infection, and he often speaks in a whisper. But he got through the worst phases of the COVID-19 pandemic without at least any public word of ever testing positive.

Francis was scheduled to celebrate Palm Sunday this weekend, kicking off the Vatican’s Holy Week observances: Holy Thursday, Good Friday, the Easter Vigil and finally Easter Sunday on April 9. He has canceled all audiences through Friday, but it wasn’t clear whether he could keep the Holy Week plans.

Francis has used a wheelchair for over a year due to strained ligaments in his right knee and a small knee fracture. He has said the injury was healing and been walking more with a cane of late.

Francis also has said he resisted having surgery for the knee problems because he didn’t respond well to general anesthesia during the 2021 intestinal surgery.

He said soon after the surgery that he had recovered fully and could eat normally. But in a Jan. 24 interview with The Associated Press, Francis said his diverticulosis, or bulges in the intestinal wall, had “returned.”

(Reuters) – President Vladimir Putin, who rules the world’s biggest nuclear power, has repeatedly cautioned the West that any attack on Russia could provoke a nuclear response.

Will Putin use nuclear weapons, how many such weapons does he command and how might the United States and the U.S.-led NATO military alliance respond?

WILL PUTIN GO NUCLEAR?

Much depends on how Putin perceives the threat to the Russian state and his rule.

Putin casts the war in Ukraine as an existential battle between Russia and the West, which he says wants to destroy Russia and grab control its vast natural resources.

Putin warned the West he was not bluffingwhen he said he’d be ready to use nuclear weapons to defend Russia. Some analysts say Putin is bluffing but Washington is taking Putin seriously.

By claiming 18% of Ukraine as part of Russia, the room for nuclear threats increases as Putin could cast any attack on these territories as an attack on Russia itself.

Russia’s nuclear doctrine allows for a nuclear strike after “aggression against the Russian Federation with conventional weapons when the very existence of the state is threatened”.

Many Russians live in Ukrainian territory that Putin has proclaimed as Russian, and breaking the post-World War Two nuclear taboo would not necessarily change the tactical situation on the ground.

“He is bluffing right now,” said Yuri Fyodorov, a military analyst based in Prague. “But what will happen in a week or a month from now is difficult to say – when he understands the war is lost.”

Asked if Putin was moving towards a nuclear attack, CIA Director William Burns told CBS: “We have to take very seriously his kind of threats given everything that’s at stake.”

Burns, though, said U.S. intelligence had no “practical evidence” that Putin was moving towards using tactical nuclear weapons imminently.

WHAT NUCLEAR WEAPONS COULD BE USED?

No Russian official has called for a strategic nuclear weapons strike with the weapons that were designed to destroy cities in the United States, Russia, Europe and Asia.

Ramzan Kadyrov, head of Russia’s Chechnya region, said Moscow should consider using a low-yield tactical nuclear weapon in Ukraine.

Tactical nuclear weapons are essentially nuclear weapons used on the battlefield for a “tactical” purpose and which are much less powerful than the big bombs that would be needed to destroy large cities such as Moscow, Washington or London.

Such weapons can be dropped from planes, fired on missiles from the ground, ships or submarines, or detonated by ground forces.

Although Russia has specialised nuclear forces trained to fight in such an apocalyptic battlefield, it is unclear how its army of regular troops, mercenaries, drafted reservists and local militias would cope.

WHAT WOULD THE UNITED STATES DO?

As the dominant global superpower, the United States would in effect decide the response to any Russian nuclear strike.

Russia and the United States control 90% of the world’s nuclear warheads. Their arsenals were built up during the Cold War, and the Soviet Union bequeathed its nuclear assets to modern Russia.

U.S. President Joe Biden’s option would include a non-military response, responding with another nuclear strike that would risk escalation, and responding with a conventional attack that could involve Washington in a direct war with Moscow.

U.S. National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan said Washington had warned Moscow of specific “catastrophic consequences” if it used nuclear arms.

Retired General and former CIA chief David Petraeus said that if Moscow used nuclear weapons, then the United States and its NATO allies would destroy Russian troops and equipment in Ukraine – and sink its entire Black Sea fleet.

Putin reminded Washington that only the United States had so far used nuclear weapons in battle – in the 1945 attacks on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

WHO HAS THE MOST NUCLEAR WEAPONS?

Russia is the world’s biggest nuclear power based on the number of nuclear warheads: it has 5,977 warheads while the United States has 5,428, according to the Federation of American Scientists.

Those figures include stockpiled and retired warheads, but both Moscow and Washington have enough firepower to destroy the world many times over.

Russia has 1,458 strategic nuclear warheads deployed – or ready to fire – and the United States has 1,389 deployed, according to the latest publicly declared data. These warheads are on intercontinental ballistic missiles, ballistic missiles on submarines and strategic bombers.

When it comes to tactical nuclear weapons, Russia has about 10 times the number the United States has. Around half of the 200 U.S. tactical nuclear weapons are deployed at bases in Europe.

The U.S. tactical nuclear weapons have adjustable yields of 0.3 to 170 kilotons (the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima was equivalent to about 15 kilotons of dynamite).

The US Department of Justice on Friday unsealed a heavily redacted version of the document that led to the FBI search of former President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence earlier this month.

The search warrant affidavit offers new glances into the ongoing federal investigation, while blacking out large swathes of information that federal prosecutors maintain could jeopardize the life and safety of relevant individuals and the investigation itself.

An FBI agent whose identity was not disclosed said the federal government was “conducting a criminal investigation concerning the improper removal and storage of classified information in unauthorized spaces, as well as the unlawful concealment or removal of government records.”

The affidavit notes that the inquiry began upon a Feb. 9 referral from the US National Archives and Records Administration (NARA).

The NARA informed the Justice Department that it had retrieved 15 boxes of classified documents mixed in with other official records from Mar-a-Lago in January. After the Justice Department was notified, the FBI opened a probe into how the records were removed from the White House and stored at the ex-presidential estate and beach club.

In all, 184 classified documents were included in the January tranche, including some that appeared to include Trump’s handwritten notes on them, with 25 documents marked “top secret,” 92 “secret,” and 67 “confidential.”

Some of the documents included markings that indicate they included information on clandestine human sources, special intelligence and information covered by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. Other documents bore markings indicating they are not to be seen by foreign nationals.

“Based upon this investigation, I do not believe that any spaces within the PREMISES have been authorized for the storage of classified information at least since the end of FPOTUS ‘s Presidential Administration on January 20, 2021,” the agent wrote, using an acronym to refer to the former president of the United States.

The 32-page affidavit stated there was “probable cause” to believe that other classified information, including on national defense, remained at Mar-a-Lago, as well as evidence of obstruction of justice.

The FBI seized 11 sets of classified information during its Aug. 8 raid, as well as other official government records, according to court documents.

The affidavit in its complete form convinced Magistrate Judge Bruce Reinhart to authorize the FBI’s search.

It includes a letter from Trump attorney Evan Corcoran to the Justice Department that asked the department to consider certain “principles” it said applied to the case, including their claim that the president “has absolute authority to declassify documents.”

US Attorney for the Southern District of Florida Juan Antonio Gonzalez said in a supporting document that the redactions to the search warrant affidavit were “narrowly tailored” to protect the identities of witnesses and law enforcement personnel, the integrity of the ongoing investigation, and ensure compliance with federal law.

Gonzalez further said there are a “significant number of civilian witnesses” involved in the investigation.

Reinhart, the judge overseeing the case, gave the Justice Department until noon on Friday to unseal the redacted affidavit, overriding the department’s efforts to keep the entire document under wraps while the investigation continues.

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A Russian gas field partly owned by France’s TotalEnergies is being used to produce fuel for bombers striking targets in Ukraine, Le Monde daily reported Wednesday.

“Le Monde was able to track the supply chain from the Termokarstovoye gas field in Siberia to two military airbases, each hosting a squadron of multirole aircraft,” the journalists wrote.

They added that “these squadrons are accused… of having struck Ukraine’s civilian population, including the bombing of the theatre in Mariupol” on March 16, where hundreds of people are believed to have died in what Amnesty International has described as a “war crime”.

TotalEnergies — formerly Total — owns 49 percent of Terneftegaz, the company that extracts gas from the Termokarstovoye field, according to its 2021 annual report.

The other 51 percent is held by Russian company Novatek, in which the French firm also holds a 19.4 percent stake.

Le Monde wrote that natural gas condensates — a liquid hydrocarbon recovered when extracting the gas itself — are sent by pipeline for processing at a Novatek plant in Purovsky.

They are then sent by rail for further refining into jet fuel in the southern Siberian city of Omsk.

Since early 2022 shipments from there have reached airbases near the Ukrainian border, the newspaper reported, citing data from financial information firm Refinitiv — the first such deliveries since 2017.

Beginning days before the war started in late February and through July, 42,700 tonnes of fuel were sent to the airbases at Morozovsk and Malshevo, the data showed.

“That’s enough to fill 3,400 Sukhoi Su-34 fuel tanks,” the investigative nonprofit Global Witness told Le Monde, referring to a particular model of Russian fighter-bomber.

While most global energy giants have quit operating in Russia since its invasion of Ukraine — often at great cost — TotalEnergies has said it will stop purchases of Russian oil by the end of 2022, but has proved reluctant to abandon its gas business there.

Chief executive Patrick Pouyanne said in March that gas fields exploited by the company’s joint ventures “are going to operate whether I leave or not” and remain vital for supplying energy to Europe.

The company told Le Monde that it “does not operate the Terneftegaz facilities” and “has no role in decisions about how the natural gas condensates are used”.

But it did acknowledge that “depending on the type of decision” its 49 percent stake in the company did give it a say in some choices.-(AFP)

Russia’s top counterintelligence agency on Monday blamed Ukrainian spy agencies have organized the killing of the daughter of a Russian nationalist ideologue.

Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB), the main KGB successor agency, said that the killing of Darya Dugina has been “prepared and perpetrated by the Ukrainian special services.”

Dugina was the daughter of Alexander Dugin, a Russian nationalist ideologist who was described by some in the West as “Putin’s brain.”

It charged that the killing was perpetrated by a Ukrainian citizen, who left Russia for Estonia after the killing.

The FSB said that the suspect, Natalya Vovk, rented an apartment in the building where Dugina lived and shadowed her. Vovk and her daughter were at a nationalist festival, which Alexander Dugin and his daughter attended just before the killing.

Ukraine has previously denied any involvement in the killing.

(Reuters) – Al Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri was killed in a U.S. strike in Afghanistan over the weekend, the biggest blow to the militant group since its founder Osama bin Laden was killed in 2011.

Zawahiri had been in hiding for years and the operation to locate and kill him was the result of “careful patient and persistent” work by the counter-terrorism and intelligence community, a senior administration official told reporters.

Until the U.S. announcement, Zawahiri had been rumored variously to be in Pakistan’s tribal area or inside Afghanistan.

Speaking on the condition of anonymity, the official provided the following details on the operation:

* For several years, the U.S. government had been aware of a network that it assessed supported Zawahiri, and over the past year, following the United States’ withdrawal from Afghanistan, officials had been watching for indications of Al Qaeda’s presence in the country.

This year, officials identified that Zawahiri’s family – his wife, his daughter and her children – had relocated to a safe house in Kabul and subsequently identified Zawahiri at the same location.

* Over several months, intelligence officials grew more confident that they had correctly identified Zawahiri at the Kabul safe house and in early April started briefing senior administration officials. Jake Sullivan, National Security Advisor, subsequently briefed President Joe Biden.

“We were able to build a pattern of life through multiple independent sources of information to inform the operation,” the official said.

Once Zawahiri arrived at the Kabul safe house, officials were not aware of him leaving it and they identified him on its balcony – where he was ultimately struck – on multiple occasions, the official said.

* Officials investigated the construction and nature of the safe house and scrutinized its occupants to ensure the United States could confidently conduct an operation to kill Zawahiri without threatening the structural integrity of the building and minimizing the risk to civilians and Zawahiri’s family, the official said.

* In recent weeks, the president convened meetings with key advisors and Cabinet members to scrutinize the intelligence and evaluate the best course of action. On July 1, Biden was briefed on a proposed operation in the White House Situation Room by members of his cabinet including CIA Director William Burns

Biden “asked detailed questions about what we knew and how we knew it” and closely examined a model of the safe house the intelligence community had built and brought to the meeting.

He asked about lighting, weather, construction materials, and other factors that could affect the success of the operation, the official said. The president also requested analysis of the potential ramifications of a strike in Kabul.

* A tight circle of senior inter-agency lawyers examined the intelligence reporting and confirmed that Zawahiri was a lawful target based on his continuing leadership of Al Qaeda.

On July 25, the president convened his key Cabinet members and advisors to receive a final briefing and discuss how killing Zawahiri would affect America’s relationship with the Taliban, among other issues, the official said. After soliciting views from others in the room, Biden authorized “a precise tailored air strike” on the condition that it minimize the risk of civilian casualties.

* The strike was ultimately carried out at 9:48 p.m. ET (0148 GMT) on July 30 by a drone firing so-called “hellfire” missiles.

Veteran Al Jazeera journalist Shireen Abu Aqleh was shot dead by Israeli troops Wednesday as she covered a raid on Jenin refugee camp in the occupied West Bank, an AFP photographer reported.

Al Jazeera and the Palestinian health ministry confirmed the death of Abu Aqleh, 51, a prominent figure in the channel’s Arabic news service.

The Israeli army confirmed that it had conducted an operation early Wednesday in Jenin refugee camp, a stronghold of Palestinian armed groups in the northern West Bank.

It added that there was an exchange of fire between suspects and security forces and that it is investigating whether “journalists were wounded, possibly by Palestinian gunfire.”

Tensions have risen in recent months as Israel has grappled with a wave of attacks which killed at least 18 people since March 22, including an Arab-Israeli police officer and two Ukrainians.

The Israeli army has blamed some of the attacks on residents of Jenin and has stepped up operations in the area in recent weeks.

A total of 30 Palestinians and three Israeli Arabs have died during the same period, according to an AFP tally, among them perpetrators of attacks and those killed by Israeli security forces in West Bank operations.-AFP.

(Reuters) – South Korea’s military has said North Korea’s largest missile test yet used an older, smaller intercontinental ballistic missile, and not the massive new Hwasong-17 ICBM, in part to try to head off negative domestic reaction to a failed launch.

South Korean and U.S. officials have concluded that the March 24 launch appears to have been a Hwasong-15 ICBM, a defence ministry official said, speaking on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the matter.

(AP)-WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has wed his fiancée at a small ceremony in the London prison where he is held.

Assange, 50, has been held in the high security Belmarsh prison in southeast London since 2019 on a series of charges related to WikiLeaks’ publication of a huge trove of classified documents more than a decade ago.

Supporters said Assange and Stella Moris were allowed four guests and two witnesses in attendance for Wednesday’s ceremony.

Moris posed for photos with her and Assange’s two young sons as they arrived outside the prison. She wore a wedding dress and veil embroidered with messages from friends and family. The dress was designed by British designer Vivienne Westwood, who is among Assange’s more vocal and high-profile supporters.

Westwood also designed a tartan kilt for Assange, who was not pictured.

“Every part of this private event is being intensely policed, from our guest list to the wedding picture,” Moris wrote in the Guardian newspaper on Wednesday ahead of the wedding.

“This is not a prison wedding, it is a declaration of love and resilience in spite of the prison walls, in spite of the political persecution, in spite of the arbitrary detention, in spite of the harm and harassment inflicted on Julian and our family,” she wrote.

Last week Britain’s Supreme Court refused Assange’s appeal against a High Court decision to extradite him to the U.S. to face spying charges.

That development narrows Assange’s options, but his defense team may still seek to take his case to the European Court of Human Rights or challenge the original judge’s other findings. They could write to the British Home Secretary in the coming weeks before she makes a decision on his extradition.

Assange denies wrongdoing and his supporters, including Amnesty International, argue that his extradition is politically motivated. They maintain he was entitled to First Amendment protections of freedom of speech for publishing documents that exposed U.S. military wrongdoing in Iraq and Afghanistan.

(AP) — No survivors have been found as the search continued Tuesday of the scattered wreckage of a China Eastern plane carrying 132 people that crashed a day earlier in a forested mountainous area in China’s worst air disaster in a decade.

“Wreckage of the plane was found at the scene, but up until now, none of those aboard the plane with whom contact was lost have been found,” state broadcaster CCTV said Tuesday morning, more than 18 hours after the crash.

The Boeing 737-800 crashed near the city of Wuzhou in the Guangxi region while flying from Kunming in the southwestern province of Yunnan to the industrial center of Guangzhou along the east coast. It ignited a fire big enough to be seen on NASA satellite images.

The crash created a deep pit in the mountainside, Xinhua news agency reported, citing rescuers. The report said drones and a manual search would be used to try to find the black boxes, which hold the flight data and cockpit voice recorders essential to crash investigations.

China Eastern Flight 5735 was traveling 455 knots (523 mph, 842 kph) at around 29,000 feet when it entered a steep and fast dive around 2:20 p.m. local time, according to data from flight-tracking website FlightRadar24.com. The plane plunged to 7,400 feet before briefly regaining about 1,200 feel in altitude, then dove again. The plane stopped transmitting data 96 seconds after starting to fall.

The plane was carrying 123 passengers and nine crew members, the Civil Aviation Administration of China said. It was about an hour into the flight, and nearing the point at which it would begin descending into Guangzhou, when it pitched downward.

Chinese President Xi Jinping called for an “all-out” rescue operation, as well as for an investigation into the crash and to ensure complete civil aviation safety.

At a hotel near the Kunming airport where the plane took off, about a dozen people, some in jackets identifying them as members of China’s aviation agency, huddled around tables and read documents. Police and security guards at an airline office near the airport ordered journalists to leave.

State media reported all 737-800s in China Eastern’s fleet were ordered grounded. Aviation experts said it is unusual to ground an entire fleet of planes unless there is evidence of a problem with the model. China has more 737-800s than any other country — nearly 1,200 — and if identical planes at other Chinese airlines are grounded, it “could have a significant impact on domestic travel,” said aviation consultant IBA.

Boeing 737-800s have been flying since 1998, and Boeing has sold more than 5,100 of them. They have been involved in 22 accidents that damaged the planes beyond repair and killed 612 people, according to data compiled by the Aviation Safety Network, an arm of the Flight Safety Foundation.

“There are thousands of them around the world. It’s certainly had an excellent safety record,” the foundation’s president, Hassan Shahidi, said of the 737-800.

The plane was not a Boeing 737 Max, the planes that were grounded worldwide for nearly two years after deadly crashes in 2018 and 2019.

China’s air-safety record has improved since the 1990s as air travel has grown dramatically with the rise of a burgeoning middle class. Before Monday, the last fatal crash of a Chinese airliner occurred in August 2010, when an Embraer ERJ 190-100 operated by Henan Airlines hit the ground short of the runway in the northeastern city of Yichun and caught fire. It carried 96 people and 44 of them died. Investigators blamed pilot error.

The U.S. National Transportation Safety Board said a senior investigator was chosen to help with the crash investigation. The U.S. Federal Aviation Administration, which certified the 737-800 in the 1990s, said it was ready to help in the investigation if asked.

Chicago-based Boeing Co. said it was in contact with the U.S. safety board “and our technical experts are prepared to assist with the investigation led by the Civil Aviation Administration of China.” The safety board said engine maker CFM, a joint venture between General Electric and France’s Safran, would provide technical help on engine issues.

Crash investigations are usually led by officials in the country where the crash occurred, but they typically include the airplane’s manufacturer and the investigator or regulator in the manufacturer’s home country.

Shahidi said he expects investigators to comb through the maintenance history of the plane and its engines, the training and records of the pilots, air traffic control discussions and other topics.

Headquartered in Shanghai, China Eastern is one of the country’s top three airlines, serving 248 domestic and foreign destinations.

The aircraft was delivered to the airliner from Boeing in June 2015 and had been flying for more than six years. China Eastern Airlines uses the Boeing 737-800 as a workhorse of its fleet — the airline has more than 600 planes, and 109 are Boeing 737-800s.

The CAAC and China Eastern both said they had sent officials to the crash site in accordance with emergency measures.

China Eastern’s website switched to a black-and-white homepage after the crash.

The twin-engine, single-aisle Boeing 737 in various versions has been flying for more than 50 years and is one of the world’s most popular planes for short and medium-haul flights.

The 737 Max, a later version, was grounded for about 20 months after two crashes in Indonesia and Ethiopia killed 346 people. China in December became the last major market to clear the Max to return to service, although Chinese airlines have not yet resumed flying the Max.

The deadliest crash involving a Boeing 737-800 came in January 2020, when Iran’s paramilitary Revolutionary Guard accidentally shot down a Ukraine International Airlines flight, killing all 176 people on board.

TEL AVIV, Israel (AP) — Vladimir Putin on Friday again painted his enemies in Ukraine as “neo-Nazis,” even though the country has a Jewish president who lost relatives in the Holocaust and who heads a Western-backed, democratically elected government.

The Holocaust, World War II and Nazism have been important tools for Putin in his bid to legitimize Russia’s war in Ukraine, but historians see their use as disinformation and a cynical ploy to further the Russian leader’s aims.

Israel has proceeded cautiously, seeking not to jeopardize its security ties with the Kremlin, despite what it considers the sacred memory of the 6 million Jews who were murdered by the Nazis in the Holocaust.

Here’s a closer look at how the ghosts of the past are shaping today’s conflict:

THE WAR THAT DEFINES RUSSIA

World War II, in which the Soviet Union lost an estimated 27 million people, is a linchpin of Russia’s national identity. In today’s Russia, officials bristle at any questioning of the USSR’s role.

Some historians say this has been coupled with an attempt by Russia to retool certain historical truths from the war. They say Russia has tried to magnify the Soviet role in defeating the Nazis while playing down any collaboration by Soviet citizens in the persecution of Jews.

On Ukraine, Russia has tried to link the country to Nazism, particularly those who have led it since a pro-Russian leadership was toppled in 2014.

This goes back to 1941 when Ukraine, at the time part of the Soviet Union, was occupied by Nazi Germany. Some Ukrainian nationalists welcomed the Nazi occupiers, in part as a way to challenge their Soviet opponents, according to Yad Vashem, Israel’s Holocaust memorial. Historians say that, like in other countries, there was also collaboration.

Some of Ukraine’s politicians since 2014 have sought to glorify nationalist fighters from the era, focusing on their opposition to Soviet rule rather than their collaboration and documented crimes against Jews, as well as Poles living in Ukraine.

But making the leap from that to claiming Ukraine’s current government is a Nazi state does not reflect the reality of its politics, including the landslide election of a Jewish president and the aim of many Ukrainians to strengthen the country’s democracy, reduce corruption and move closer to the West.

“In terms of all of the sort of constituent parts of Nazism, none of that is in play in Ukraine. Territorial ambitions. State-sponsored terrorism. Rampant antisemitism. Bigotry. A dictatorship. None of those are in play. So this is just total fiction,” said Jonathan Dekel-Chen, a history professor at Jerusalem’s Hebrew University.

What’s more, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy is Jewish and has said that three of his grandfather’s brothers were killed by German occupiers while his grandfather survived the war. That hasn’t stopped Russian officials from comparing Zelenskyy to Jews who were forced to collaborate with the Nazis during the Holocaust.

HOLOCAUST DISTORTION

Putin’s attempts to stretch history for political motives is part of a trend seen in other countries as well. Most prominently is Poland, where authorities are advancing a nationalist narrative at odds with mainstream scholarship, including through a 2018 law that regulates Holocaust speech.

The legislation sought to fight back against claims that Poland, a victim of Nazi Germany, bore responsibility for the Holocaust. The law angered Israel, where many felt it was an attempt to whitewash the fact that some Poles did kill Jews during the German occupation during World War II. Yad Vashem also came out against the legislation.

Havi Dreifuss, a historian at Tel Aviv University and Yad Vashem, said the world was now dealing with both Holocaust denial and Holocaust distortion, where countries or institutions were bringing forth their own interpretations of history that were damaging to the commemoration of the Holocaust.

“Whoever deals with the period of the Holocaust must first and foremost be committed to the complex reality that occurred then and not with wars over memory that exist today,” she said.

ISRAELI INTERESTS

The Holocaust is central to Israel’s national identity. The country comes to a two-minute standstill on its Holocaust remembrance day. Schoolchildren, trade groups and soldiers make regular trips to Yad Vashem’s museum. Stories of the last cohort of Holocaust survivors constantly make the news.

Israel has butted heads with certain countries, including Poland, over the memory of the Holocaust. But Israel has appeared more reticent to challenge Putin and his narrative, according to some observers, because of its current security interests. Israel relies on coordination with Russia to allow it to strike targets in Syria, which it says are often weapons caches destined for Israel’s enemies.

Israel came under fire from historians in 2020 after a speech by Putin and a separate video presentation at a meeting of world leaders in Jerusalem to commemorate the liberation of the Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp, which they said skewed toward his narrative and away from the historical facts.

Israel was conspicuously muted in its criticism of Russia in the lead-up to the war on Ukraine. Commentator Raviv Drucker wrote in the daily Haaretz that Israel was “on the wrong side of history” with its response, which initially sought to support Ukraine while not rattling Russia.

Israeli Foreign Minister Yair Lapid has repeatedly condemned Russia’s invasion. But Prime Minister Naftali Bennett has stopped short of issuing a public condemnation of Russia. Through that neutral stance, he has emerged as an unlikely mediator between Kyiv and Moscow.

Vera Michlin-Shapir, a former official at Israel’s National Security Council and the author of “Fluid Russia,” a book about the country’s national identity, said that Israel’s regional security concerns were of greater interest than challenging Russia on its narrative.

“Russia can provide weapons systems to our worst enemies and therefore Israel is proceeding very cautiously — you could say too cautiously — because there is an issue here that is at the heart of Israel’s security,” she said.

Shimon Hayut – more widely known under the alias of Simon Leviev – insisted that he is not a fraud or a fake in an interview with Inside Edition television show after the viral Netflix documentary ‘The Tinder Swindler’ exposed him for defrauding multiple women out of hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Leviev, the subject of the documentary, told Inside Edition, that he was “just a single guy that wanted to meet some girls on Tinder,” denying the fact that he posed as the son of Israeli diamond mogul Lev Leviev.

“I want to clear my name. I want to say to the world: this is not true,” he said in the interview that aired in the US on Monday. “I’m not this monster that everybody has created.”

According to the documentary, he had scammed various women using the same tactic, by developing an emotional connection with them and then asking them to establish lines of credit and loans in their names to ensure that he does not get caught and to carry on living an ultra-luxurious life without the responsibility to pay it back to the banks.

When asked about how he still manages to afford a lavish lifestyle, he said that he was a “legit businessman” who made his fortune when he “bought Bitcoin in 2011 when it was nothing. I don’t need to say how much it’s worth now.”

Online news media The Times of Israel estimates that Leviev is believed to have stolen around $10 million over the years from scamming numerous women across Europe in a Ponzi scheme.

The documentary debuted on Netflix on February 2 and quickly rose to the top 10 most-watched movies of the week on the streaming service in several countries.

Leviev was sentenced to two years in prison for fraud in Finland in 2015. In 2019, he was also sentenced to 15 months in prison in Israel and is wanted in several countries for fraud.

According to online news media Variety, Leviev also spent five months of a 15-month sentence in an Israeli prison in 2019.

He was also charged with theft, forgery and fraud for cashing stolen checks in 2011. It was reported in the documentary that he stole checkbooks belonging to a family which he was babysitting for and while working as a handyman in other peoples’ homes while in Israel. He never showed up to court; instead, he fled the country.

By GABE TOOLE

The atypical nature of Iranian diplomacy can be seen in a story from June 2012, when two Iranian terrorists were arrested in Kenya and charged with possession of explosives.

As nuclear negotiations between Iran and the West continue in Vienna, many are beginning to voice their concern over the lack of progress. For many in the Middle East, this comes as no surprise. The past is riddled with anecdotal stories of the dangers of engaging with the Iranian regime. One such story took place in Kenya and provides a perfect window into the true nature of Iranian diplomacy. The saga would play out sporadically over seven years and read like a bad script for an even worse movie. On the surface, this story is bizarre and almost comical, on a deeper level, it illuminates the atypical nature of Iranian diplomacy.

On June 19, 2012, news broke that two terrorists had been arrested in Kenya and charged with possession of explosives. The fact that terrorists were arrested in Kenya was not surprising, as terrorist activity has spilled over from the Somali border in recent years. What was unique about these arrests was the two suspects were not Kenyan or Somali, but Iranian tourists who had recently flown into the country.

What exactly transpired was a mystery at first. Kenya-Iran relations were seemingly positive at the time, with the two countries concluding negotiations earlier that month over the purchase of 30 m. barrels of Iranian oil. Iran’s ambassador to Kenya denied any connection to the two Iranians and the lawyer for the two Iranians expressed outrage, claiming they were investors whose arrests have threatened Kenya-Iran relations.

However, based on local news reports and court records, the initial arrests and subsequent saga unfolded as follows: On June 12, 2012, two suspected Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) operatives, Ahmad Mohammad and Sayed Mousavi, were dispatched by Iran to carry out attacks in Kenya against Western targets. The pair flew into Nairobi, Kenya on tourist visas and traveled to the port city of Mombasa. While there they met with an accomplice and acquired a large quantity of RDX, an explosive material used in bomb making. They stashed the explosives near a golf resort and departed.

UNBEKNOWNST TO the two Iranians, Western intelligence had tracked the pair and tipped off local security services. Mohammad and Mousavi were arrested, interrogated and led investigators to the stash of the explosives they had hidden earlier. A judge quickly denied bail, in part because an additional 85 kg. of RDX had been smuggled into the country and remained unaccounted for. Upon conclusion of their trial, Mohammad and Mousavi were sentenced to life in prison and the story quickly faded out of sight. A few years would go by with little to no media coverage of the matter, except for a series of appeals by their lawyer.

In 2016, the story reappeared under eerily similar circumstances. In November 2016, two lawyers from Iran’s Ministry of Justice, Nasrollah Ebrahimi and Abdolhosein Ghola Safafe, traveled to Kenya on behalf of the jailed Iranians for a legal follow up. After visiting their clients at the Kamiti Maximum Security Prison in Nairobi, Kenya, the news broke that the two lawyers had been arrested on terrorism charges. After their meeting at Kamiti prison, the lawyers had apparently been caught secretly filming the Israeli Embassy in Nairobi. The two lawyers were released from custody later that day, rearrested two days later and ultimately deported back to Iran.

As interesting and bizarre as these events are, the story takes another turn a few years later. In February 2019, news broke that the Iranian ambassador to Kenya, Hadi Farajvand, was under criminal investigation following a failed plot to secure the release of the two jailed Iranians. Reportedly, he bribed two Kenyan officials in an attempt to secure the release of the Iranians. The ambassador had even gone as far as purchasing plane tickets for the two Iranians in anticipation of their release.

HOWEVER, IN a comical twist of fate, the two Kenyan officials he paid were not associated with the government at all, but were con artists who had swindled the ambassador out of his money. As it stands today, Mohammad and Mousavi are still behind bars and the Iranians continue their malevolent activity in the country.

There are contemporary lessons to be drawn from Kenya’s experience with the Iranian regime. Iran’s initial overtures of negotiation and diplomacy were not only disingenuous, but quickly gave way to hostility. While on the surface Iran worked within Kenya’s legal system, at the same time they continued to circumvent the entire process itself, dispatching hostile operatives into the country to carry out Iran’s true objectives. At no point did Iran ever cease its malevolent activity in Kenya, not after the initial arrests of the two Iranians, not after the arrests of their lawyers and not after the exposure of criminal activity by its ambassador. As recently as November 2021, another Iranian was arrested in Kenya under similar terrorism charges.

Within the context of the current nuclear negotiations in Vienna, stories like these are important to remember. Western diplomats continue to proclaim that an agreement with Iran is right around the corner. In the meantime, Iran continues its expansionist agenda and shows no signs of rapprochement. Their nuclear program is unabatedly continuing, four American citizens remain imprisoned in Iran and Iranian proxies continue to launch attacks across the region.

Even if some form of agreement is reached, Iran’s long-term strategic objectives will remain unchanged. Iran is happy to come to the negotiating table, but only as a means to its own end: Acquiring nuclear weapons. Diplomacy is not Iran’s true face and as these negotiations continue, we would all do well to remember this.

The writer is the legislative fellow at the Endowment for Middle East Truth (EMET) in Washington.

(AP)-In a medical first, doctors transplanted a pig heart into a patient in a last-ditch effort to save his life and a Maryland hospital said Monday that he’s doing well three days after the highly experimental surgery.

While it’s too soon to know if the operation really will work, it marks a step in the decades-long quest to one day use animal organs for life-saving transplants. Doctors at the University of Maryland Medical Center say the transplant showed that a heart from a genetically modified animal can function in the human body without immediate rejection.

The patient, David Bennett, a 57-year-old Maryland handyman, knew there was no guarantee the experiment would work but he was dying, ineligible for a human heart transplant and had no other option, his son told The Associated Press.

“It was either die or do this transplant. I want to live. I know it’s a shot in the dark, but it’s my last choice,” Bennett said a day before the surgery, according to a statement provided by the University of Maryland School of Medicine.

On Monday, Bennett was breathing on his own while still connected to a heart-lung machine to help his new heart. The next few weeks will be critical as Bennett recovers from the surgery and doctors carefully monitor how his heart is faring.

There’s a huge shortage of human organs donated for transplant, driving scientists to try to figure out how to use animal organs instead. Last year, there were just over 3,800 heart transplants in the U.S., a record number, according to the United Network for Organ Sharing, which oversees the nation’s transplant system.

“If this works, there will be an endless supply of these organs for patients who are suffering,” said Dr. Muhammad Mohiuddin, scientific director of the Maryland university’s animal-to-human transplant program.

But prior attempts at such transplants — or xenotransplantation — have failed, largely because patients’ bodies rapidly rejected the animal organ. Notably, in 1984, Baby Fae, a dying infant, lived 21 days with a baboon heart.

The difference this time: The Maryland surgeons used a heart from a pig that had undergone gene-editing to remove a sugar in its cells that’s responsible for that hyper-fast organ rejection. Several biotech companies are developing pig organs for human transplant; the one used for Friday’s operation came from Revivicor, a subsidiary of United Therapeutics.

“I think you can characterize it as a watershed event,” Dr. David Klassen, UNOS’ chief medical officer, said of the Maryland transplant.

Still, Klassen cautioned that it’s only a first tentative step into exploring whether this time around, xenotransplantation might finally work.

The Food and Drug Administration, which oversees such experiments, allowed the surgery under what’s called a “compassionate use” emergency authorization, available when a patient with a life-threatening condition has no other options.

It will be crucial to share the data gathered from this transplant before extending it to more patients, said Karen Maschke, a research scholar at the Hastings Center, who is helping develop ethics and policy recommendations for the first clinical trials under a grant from the National Institutes of Health.

“Rushing into animal-to-human transplants without this information would not be advisable,” Maschke said.

Over the years, scientists have turned from primates to pigs, tinkering with their genes.

Just last September, researchers in New York performed an experiment suggesting these kinds of pigs might offer promise for animal-to-human transplants. Doctors temporarily attached a pig’s kidney to a deceased human body and watched it begin to work.

The Maryland transplant takes their experiment to the next level, said Dr. Robert Montgomery, who led that work at NYU Langone Health.

“This is a truly remarkable breakthrough,” he said in a statement. “As a heart transplant recipient, myself with a genetic heart disorder, I am thrilled by this news and the hope it gives to my family and other patients who will eventually be saved by this breakthrough.”

The surgery last Friday took seven hours at the Baltimore hospital. Dr. Bartley Griffith, who performed the surgery, said the patient’s condition — heart failure and an irregular heartbeat — made him ineligible for a human heart transplant or a heart pump.

Griffith had transplanted pig hearts into about 50 baboons over five years, before offering the option to Bennett.

“We’re learning a lot every day with this gentleman,” Griffith said. “And so far, we’re happy with our decision to move forward. And he is as well: Big smile on his face today.”

Pig heart valves also have been used successfully for decades in humans, and Bennett’s son said his father had received one about a decade ago.

As for the heart transplant, “He realizes the magnitude of what was done and he really realizes the importance of it,” David Bennett Jr. said. “He could not live, or he could last a day, or he could last a couple of days. I mean, we’re in the unknown at this point.”