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Haiti Hit with Earthquake, Storm

A magnitude 7.2 earthquake hit Haiti on Saturday, killing at least 1,419 people. The next day, Tropical Depression Grace dumped heavy rain on the area, bringing with it gusts of winds.

In addition to the known deaths, the weekend’s earthquake injured at least 6,900 people, numbers that are only expected to rise as search and rescue efforts continue. Tens of thousands of homes were destroyed or damaged. Roads were blocked; infrastructure was wrecked.

Efforts are underway to repair the roads between the cities of Les Cayes and Jeremie – roads which were further obstructed overnight due to aftershocks and mudslides.

After the quake, Haiti Prime Minister Ariel Henry tweeted that he would mobilize all government resources available to help his country, and declared a month-long state of emergency.

“The most important thing is to recover as many survivors as possible under the rubble,” he said. “The needs are enormous. We must take care of the injured and fractured, but also provide food, aid, temporary shelter and psychological support.”

On Monday, Henry promised to accelerate aid and rescue efforts.

“We will increase our efforts tenfold to reach, in terms of assistance, the maximum number of victims possible,” he wrote on Twitter. “Faced with this emergency, there is no respite.”

Authorities have been going from house to house in search of survivors – efforts which demand a tremendous amount of resources.

Haiti – mired with a floundering economy and grappling with the July assassination of its late President Jovenel Moise – relies heavily on donor countries and organizations for its relief efforts.

U.S. President Joe Biden said after the quake, “In what is already a challenging time for the people of Haiti, I am saddened by the devastating earthquake that occurred in Saint-Louis du Sud, Haiti this morning. We send our deepest condolences to all those who lost a loved one or saw their homes and businesses destroyed.

“The United States remains a close and enduring friend to the people of Haiti, and we will be there in the aftermath of this tragedy.”

The earthquake struck at 8:30 a.m. local time on Saturday, at a depth of about 6.2 miles; its epicenter was about 7.5 miles northeast of SaintLouis-du-Sud in the southwest part of the country.

That location is 60 miles west of the epicenter of the disastrous 7.0-magnitude quake that killed an estimated 220,000 to 300,000 people in 2010.

Russian Firefighting Plane Crashes in Turkey

A Russian aircraft deployed to Turkey to help fight wildfires crashed on Saturday, killing all eight people on board, officials said.

State news agency TASS quoted a Saturday statement by the Russian Defense Ministry, according to which five of the crew members were Russian and the other three were Turkish nationals.

The plane, a Be-200 amphibious craft, crashed near Adana as it was preparing to land. The Russian Defense Ministry has sent a commission to the crash site, to help determine the cause of the crash.

Ömer Faruk Coşkun, governor of Turkey’s southern Kahramanmaras district, told the country’s state news agency Anadolu, “This is still very new right now. We sent a large number of teams to the area where the plane crashed.”

The plane had been sent by Russia to Turkey on July 8, to help fight the wildfires which have been raging across the country, TASS said.

Wildfires in Turkey’s Mediterranean region began in late July and have incinerated thousands of acres of forests, mostly in the seaside provinces of Mugla and Antalya. The fires came as Turkey and the whole Mediterranean endured a prolonged heat wave. At least eight people have died in Turkey’s wildfires. Northern Turkey was hit by flashfloods this week, leading to the deaths of at least 44 people.

Modi to Spend $1T on Infrastructure

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi has renewed a pledge to spend more than $1 trillion on infrastructure to create jobs for hundreds of thousands of young Indians and boost the economy.

The 100-trillion rupee ($1.35 trillion) plan — called “Gati Shakti,” which means momentum — was announced on India’s 75th Independence Day. Modi said that it would “break the silos” preventing more efficient transportation in Asia’s third-largest economy.

“This will reduce the travel time for the common man and the productivity of our industry will also increase,” he said during an address to the nation in the capital New Delhi on Sunday.

Although there was no specific time for when the plan would be rolled out, Modi said that it would launch in the “near future.” He added that it would go a “long way” toward making “local manufacturers globally competitive,” without going into specifics.

Modi frequently uses the anniversary of the India’s independence to make ambitious proposals for its future, including spending on infrastructure, one of his key goals for economic development. Last year, the leader promised to spend asimilar amounton infrastructure “to pull the people and the economy of our country out of this [coronavirus] pandemic.”

“It is often said that during crises, the emphasis should be given on infrastructure so that economic activity is [faster] and people get employment and it generates a cascading effect,” he said in a speech on August 15, 2020.

A former finance minister — from the opposition Congress Party — mocked Modi for making similar promises on infrastructure expenditure for three years in a row, without providing any updates on past initiatives.

“India is thrice blessed. We now have a [300-trillion rupee] plan that will be launched in the near future,” P Chidambaram wrote on Twitter.

Hacker Group Was Behind Iran Train Cyberattack

A report released Saturday by the Israeli-American cybersecurity company Check Point Software Technologies has named Iranian opposition

group Indra as the body responsible for a cyberattack on Iran’s train system several weeks ago.

According to Check Point’s report, the attacks were conducted using a version of a hacking tool deployed in 2019 and 2020 attacks on Iranian interests, which Indra claimed responsibility for.

According to Iranian state media, the July 9th attack caused “nation-state-level damage” as well as “unprecedented chaos” at train stations. One report suggested that this cyberattack was the catalyst for the Iranian attack on the MV Mercer Street.

In the cyberattack, hackers posted fake messages about alleged train delays and cancellations on display boards at train stations across Iran. The hackers also urged passengers to call for more information and listed the number of Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

The next day, Iran’s Transportation Ministry claimed a “cyber disruption” had affected its computer systems and took down its website and all associated links.

Sudoku Creator Dies

Maki Kaji, the creator of the numbers puzzle Sudoku whose life’s work was spreading the joy of puzzles, has died. He was 69.

Known as the “Godfather of Sudoku,” Kaji created the puzzle to be easy for children and others who didn’t want to think too hard. Its name is made up of the Japanese characters for “number” and “single,” and players place the numbers 1 through 9 in rows, columns and blocks without repeating them.

It wasn’t until 2004 when Sudoku became a global hit, after a fan from New Zealand pitched it and got it published in the British newspaper The Times. Two years later, Japan rediscovered its own puzzle as a “gyakuyunyu,” or “reimport.”

Maki traveled to more than 30 countries spreading his enjoyment of puzzles. Sudoku championships have drawn some 200 million people in 100 countries over the years.

Originally, Sudoku was called “Suji-wa-Dokushin-ni-Kagiru,” which translates to, “Numbers should be single, a bachelor.”

Born in the main northern island of Hokkaido, Maki started Japan’s first puzzle magazine after dropping out of Keio University in Tokyo. He founded his company Nikoli in 1983 and came up with Sudoku about the same time.

Second Nigerian “Chibok” Girl Finally Free

A young woman abducted seven years ago from the town of Chibok was freed this week, Borno’s state governor said.

The woman, Hassana Adamu, was abducted by Boko Haram militants and is the second young woman to be freed this week. Adamu and her two children were handed over by the military to Governor Babagana Zulum on Saturday.

According to the governor’s office, Adamu, like the other recently-freed “Chibok girl” reunited with her parents last week, “presented herself to the Nigerian army.”

Approximately 270 teens were kidnapped in Chibok in 2014, sparking international outcry. Eighty-two of the victims were freed following mediation in 2017, and 24 others were released or found. Over 110 are still missing.

Earlier this week, Nigeria’s army reported that over 1,000 Boko Haram members and their families had announced their surrender “due to the intense pressure from troops’ sustained offensive actions,” CNN said, noting that the group’s leader, Abubakar Shekau, died in May.

KNDO Admits Killings

Two senior commanders of the Karen National Defense Organization (KNDO) have admitted that security forces under their control detained and later killed 25 men in June in its territory near Myanmar’s border with Thailand, according to human rights group Fortify Rights.

General Ner Dah Bo Mya and Lieutenant Saw Ba Wah, who have been suspended from their posts, said that their men were responsible.

General Ner Dah Bo Mya denied wrongdoing, saying the men, who were not armed and not in uniform, were “spies” for the military and that his troops “had to finish them up, otherwise they try to run away during the fighting and then they would come back and it would be very hard for us.” The order came from a “captain of intelligence” at the Karen National Union (KNU) – the political group that controls the KNDO – the general added.

The killing amounts to a war crime.

“This was a massacre and it should be investigated and prosecuted,” Matthew Smith, CEO at Fortify Rights, said. “The KNU is setting an important example in transparency, cooperation and commitment to share evidence of atrocities with international justice mechanisms.”

The incident first came to light after state media in June accused fighters from the KNDO of killing 25 people it said were civilians working on a road construction project.

The men were part of a group of 47 people, including 16 women and children, who were detained by the KNDO on May 31 in Kanele village in Karen state. The 25 men were killed on June 1, and the remainder of the group were released over the following week.

Myanmar has been in a state of turmoil since the military seized power in a coup on February 1 with the KNU, one of the country’s biggest ethnic armed groups, providing shelter to those fighting against the takeover.

In March, Karen fighters seized a military post and the army retaliated with air raids, the first in more than 20 years in the state, which lies along the Thai border. The clashes forced at least 100,000 people from their homes, according to the United Nations.

The military has been accused of human rights abuses in its crackdown on the anti-coup movement with 1,000 people killed since the coup. It is also being investigated for genocide over its brutal crackdown on the minority Rohingya in 2017 that forced hundreds and thousands to flee into Bangladesh.

What is the Taliban, and What Do They Want?

The Taliban has taken control of Afghanistan, for the first time since 2001, seeking to install Islamic law. The rebel organization entered Kabul Sunday morning; by Sunday evening, it had declared the war over and itself victorious.

U.S. and other foreign troops and officials left the country over the weekend, and Afghani President Ashraf Ghani fled the country on Sunday. At the same time, Afghanistan’s main exit route was blocked by the hundreds of thousands of civilians attempting to flee the new regime.

According to The Washington Post, the Taliban has closed girls’ schools, banned smartphones, and forcibly drafted young men.

The Taliban, founded in Afghanistan in 1994 by anti-Soviet resistance commander Mohammad Omar, is made up of guerilla fighters, mostly Pashtuns. Its ideology is similar to that of Al-Qaeda, though the Taliban focuses mostly on controlling Afghanistan.

Initially, the group’s vision of jus-

tice helped it gain power.

“At the time, people really wanted law and order, and there was none,” said Kamran Bokhari of the Newlines Institute, a foreign policy think tank.

In autumn 1996, the group took control of Kabul, declaring Afghanistan an Islamic emirate. In July 2015, the Afghanistan government confirmed the death of Mohammad Omar in Pakistan in April 2013.

Thomas Ruttig, co-director of the Afghanistan Analysts Network, wrote earlier this year that the Taliban has “softened their rhetoric on some issues,” such as women’s rights. These changes are the product of political pressure, he said, not a change in beliefs.

In his research paper, Ruttig wrote, “Given their continued domineering behavior, intolerance of political dissent and oppression (especially toward girls and women) in the areas they control, there is legitimate concern that if political pressure diminished after an eventual peace agreement and a troop withdrawal, they might revert to pre-fall 2001 practices.”

The Taliban’s goal? Robert Crews, an expert on Afghanistan at Stanford University, told the Post, “They want their Islamic emirate back in power. They want their vision of Islamic law.”

“They don’t want a parliament. They don’t want electoral politics. They have an emir and they have a council of mullahs, and that’s the vision they see as best for Islam.”

However, that goal may be more complicated than it was twenty years ago: Women have taken on public roles, and cellphones and social media have become more common.

“There are lot of people who are better connected to the world through social media and say, ‘Hey, why can’t we have a life like that?’” Crews said. “What will they do with a society that believes in pluralism and doesn’t believe in monopolization of power? To what extent will Taliban violence silence those voices?”

Already there have been reports of Taliban terror throughout Afghanistan. It is said that women are being shot, and girls as young as 12 are being dragged from their homes to be “married.” The Taliban is going door to door, hunting down those who have helped foreign troops over the past few years. Australian not-forprofit Forsaken Fighters – that helps support those left behind – tweeted this week that one of the interpreters it works with was executed in Kandahar. The father of four had been “mutilated” as they found out he had worked for both the U.S. and UK around ten years ago.

Supposedly, thousands were made to gather to witness an execution in Kandahar at a sports stadium.

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In Lebanon, Electricity is a “Luxury”

Lebanon’s Central Bank issued an announcement last Wednesday that it would halt fuel subsidies. Though the new fuel prices have not yet been set, experts expect them to quadruple, causing an inflationary shock.

Heiko Wimmen, Iraq, Syria and Lebanon director at Crisis Group, noted, “This is obviously going to ripple through the whole economy. For a large part of the population, electricity will become a luxury. Driving your car will become a luxury, too. Transportation will become a luxury.”

He added, “Drinking water is all about transportation. If you don’t have diesel, you can’t get water from the mountain to the coast,” Wimmen noted. “For all merchandise that have a significant transportation element in them, prices will have to explode. The large majority of Lebanese ... will get drastically poorer.”

The announcement was expected for several days before it was made, and the country’s Central Bank had already suspended lines of credit to fuel importers.

On Thursday, the Central Bank said the subsidies had been exploited by businesses.

Neighborhoods and towns already suffering long outages lost access to fuel needed to power backup generators.

Lebanon has been without a functioning government for over a year, and according to the United Nations, approximately 77% of households cannot afford to purchase enough food. Over 71% are expected to lose access to safe water.

Poland’s Holocaust Restitution Bill

Polish President Andrzej Duda on Saturday signed into law a bill limiting restitution for Holocaust-related claims.

In a Saturday statement, Duda said, “I made a decision today on the act, which in recent months was the subject of a lively and loud debate at home and abroad. After an in-depth analysis, I have decided to sign the amendment.”

Israeli Foreign Minister Yair Lapid (Yesh Atid) responded, “Today, Poland approved, not for the first time, an anti-Semitic and unethical law. Tonight, I instructed the chargé d’affaires of the Israeli Embassy in Warsaw to return to Israel immediately for indefinite consultations.

“The new Ambassador to Poland, who was due to leave for Warsaw soon, will not be departing for Poland at this stage. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs will recommend today that the Polish Ambassador to Israel remain on holiday in his country. This time should be used to explain to the people of Poland the meaning of the Holocaust to the citizens of Israel and the extent to which we will refuse to tolerate any contempt for the memory of Holocaust and its victims. It will not end here.”

Lapid’s response has been criticized by some Israeli Foreign Ministry officials, who fear it could trigger harsh backlash and the loss of a poten-