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8 Billion People in the World

There are now 8 billion people living in the world. According to the United Nations, this is a “milestone in human development” before birth rates start to slow.

One billion people had been added to the global population in just 12 years.

“This unprecedented growth is due to the gradual increase in human lifespan owing to improvements in public health, nutrition, personal hygiene, and medicine. It is also the result of high and persistent levels of fertility in some countries,” the UN statement noted.

Middle-income countries, mostly in Asia, accounted for most of the growth over the past decade, gaining some 700 million people since 2011. India added about 180 million people and is set to surpass China as the world’s most populous nation next year.

Even as the world continues to grow, the growth rate has fallen steadily to less than 1% per year. This should keep the world from reaching 9 billion people until 2037. The UN projects the global population will peak at around 10.4 billion people in the 2080s and remain at that level until 2100.

Most of the 2.4 billion people to be added before the global population peaks will be born in sub-Saharan Africa, according to the UN, marking a shift away from China and India.

Reaching an 8 billion global population “is an occasion to celebrate diversity and advancements while considering humanity’s shared responsibility for the planet,” UN Secretary General António Guterres said in the UN statement.

After months of deepening contention between the United States and China, President Joe Biden and President Xi Jinping met in person for the first time as national leaders Monday with a tone of mutual engagement that acknowledged that both their countries faced challenges from global conflict and economic headwinds.

When their meeting began, the leaders greeted each other like old companions. They agreed that neither wanted competition between their two superpowers to erupt in conflict. And after nearly three hours spent together, they promised more efforts to repair a relationship that has been at its most rancorous point in decades.

None of that hid the deeply divergent views behind their disagreements, including over the future of Taiwan, military rivalry, technology restrictions and China’s mass detentions of its citizens. But with the stakes so high, both Biden’s and Xi’s language represented a choice not to gamble on unrestricted conflict but to bet that personal diplomacy and more than a decade of contacts could stave off worsening disputes.

“We’re going to compete vigorously, but I’m not looking for conflict,” Biden said at a news conference after the meeting. “I’m looking to manage this competition responsibly.”

Both came to Bali for a meeting of the Group of 20 leaders after a moment of political success: Biden with better-than-expected results for Democrats in the midterm elections; Xi after securing a groundbreaking third term as Communist Party leader. But instead of swaggering into their meeting ready to contend over what Biden has called a struggle between democracy and autocracy, each appeared to agree that his national interests had been made vulnerable by the pandemic, climate change, a war in Europe and economic crisis.

“I absolutely believe there need not be a new Cold War,” Biden said.

Both men appeared eager to downplay the idea that Washington and Beijing

14 were careening toward confrontation, particularly over Taiwan, a self-ruled island claimed by China. Taiwan is the foThe Jewish Home | NOVEMBER 17, 2022 cus of a military and diplomatic pressure campaign by Beijing that has raised fears of a potential invasion. But Biden told reporters that he did not believe a Chinese invasion of Taiwan was “imminent.” And although both sides left without finding common ground on their most contentious disagreements — “I’m not suggesting this is Kumbaya,” Biden said — they found some accord. That included agreeing to reopen climate negotiations that had been frozen in recent months.

Iran Sentences Protester to Death

On Monday, Iran sentenced a person to death for taking part in the protests that have engulfed the country since mid-September. Among other charges, the person was charged with starting a fire at a government building.

The announcement angered many worldwide.

“The international community must strongly warn the Islamic Republic of the consequences of executing protesters,” the director of the Norway-based group Iran Human Rights, Mahmood Amiry-Moghaddam, said in a statement on Monday. “Summoning their ambassadors and implementing stronger effective human rights action against state officials are amongst the consequences European countries must consider.”

According to Iran Human Rights, at least 20 other protesters are currently facing charges punishable by death in the country. Five other protesters were also sentenced to between five and ten years in prison for participating in the demonstrations, which the Iranian regime refers to as “riots.”

The mass protests against the Iranian regime broke out after the death of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini in the custody of Iran’s “morality police.” She had been detained for allegedly violating the country’s strict dress code for women. With the slogan #WomanLifeFreedom, the demonstrations initially focused on women’s rights, but they have morphed into a movement against the conservative Shiite Muslim clerics that have ruled the country since the Islamic Revolution in 1979.

Iran’s leaders have accused foreign governments of instigating the protests and called for harsh sentences to be handed down to “key perpetrators” as a deterrent. According to figures released by Iran’s judiciary, more than 2,000 people have already been charged with participating in the unrest.

On Monday, the European Union announced fresh sanctions against Iranian individuals and entities that it said were “responsible for the suppression of the Iranian protesters.”

Those entities included the morality police squad that arrested Amini and the country’s interior minister. The United Kingdom, no longer an EU member, also announced further sanctions against Iranian officials.

“Together with our partners, we have sent a clear message to the Iranian regime: The violent crackdown on protests must stop and freedom of expression must be respected,” U.K. Foreign Secretary James Cleverly said on Monday.

Russia Retreats from Kherson

Ukrainian soldiers swept into the southern city of Kherson on Friday, seizing a major symbolic and strategic prize from the retreating Russian army and dealing a bitter blow to President Vladimir Putin.

Just weeks after Putin declared the Kherson region a part of Russia forever, his troops were forced to abandon its capital city, their third major retreat in the war. The setback further dented the once-formidable reputation of an army that has mismanaged logistics and sent unprepared and unmotivated soldiers into battle.

Wary of mines and navigating around blown-up bridges, Ukrainian soldiers at first filtered secretly into the city and nearby villages, after Russian forces had withdrawn hours earlier across the Dnieper River. But by Friday afternoon, soldiers were appearing openly on a central square, greeted as liberators by jubilant residents.

Videos shared on social media by Ukrainian government officials showed scenes of civilians who had endured more than eight months of occupation cheering the arrival of Ukrainian troops.

“Today is a historic day,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said in a message posted on the Telegram messaging app. “We are returning to Kherson.”

Hours earlier, the Kremlin had issued a statement saying that the withdrawal of its forces across the Dnieper River was complete.

Russian soldiers who remained in the city after the defense minister, Sergei Shoigu, announced a pullback on Wednesday withdrew by ferries across the Dnieper and over the Antonivsky Bridge, the major river crossing, overnight Thursday into Friday. They then apparently blew up the bridge to cover their retreat, according to residents and satellite images.

Although the arrival of Ukrainian troops portended relief for the beleaguered civilians who had remained, officials cautioned that the city was not out of danger. After previous setbacks, Russia has launched bombardments of cruise missiles and drones at Ukrainian cities.

Kherson is the only provincial capital Russia had captured, and it is a major link in Russia’s effort to control the southern coastline along the Black Sea.

Even as its soldiers fled, the Kremlin said that it still considered Kherson to be a part of Russia. “This is a Russian region,” Dmitry Peskov, the Kremlin’s spokesperson, told reporters Friday. “It has been legally fixed and defined. There can be no changes here.” (© The New York Times)

Boko Haram Kills “Witches”

16 ria they deemed “witches.” Last week, around 40 women were held in a village near Gwoza town in BorThe Jewish Home | NOVEMBER 17, 2022 no State on the orders of jihadist commander Ali Guyile whose children suddenly died overnight. The commander had accused the women of causing the children’s deaths through witchcraft. Guyile, 35, ordered his men to arrest the women from homes known to practice witchcraft, said Talkwe Linbe, one of the accused women. Linbe had managed to escape and fled to the regional capital Maiduguri after the killing of 14 women on Thursday. “He said would investigate our involvement in the deaths of his children and give appropriate punishment if found guilty. On Thursday, he ordered 14 of us shot. I was lucky not to be part of it, and my friend, among the men guarding us, helped me escape that same night,” the 67-year-old woman said. Accusations of witchcraft are not uncommon in Nigeria, which is a religiously conservative country almost equally divided between the mostly Muslim north and Christian south. Many people abhor witchcraft despite it being entrenched in society, and a section of the Nigerian criminal code still forbids its practice; it is punishable by a jail term. It is not uncommon for people to be branded witches and then brutalized or lynched.

On Saturday, the day Linbe arrived in Maiduguri, 12 other women were slaughtered after being accused of being witches.

“I received a call from Gwoza informing me that my mother, two aunts and nine other women were massacred on the orders of Ali Guyile, who accused them of being witches who killed his three children,” Abdullahi Gyya, who lives in Maiduguri, told AFP.

Boko Haram’s decade-long campaign of violence has killed 27,000 people and displaced about two million in Nigeria.

Europe Braces for Recession

The ride down may be shallow or steep, but either way, the European Union and Britain could be starting to slide into recession.

The British economy shrank 0.2% over July, August and September compared with the previous three months, the Office for National Statistics report-

Many countries are likely to enter a recession in the last three months of 2022, Paolo Gentiloni, the EU’s commissioner for the economy, said. “The EU economy is at a turning point,” he said. “Recent survey data points to a contraction for the winter.”

But while central bankers in Britain have warned of a “prolonged” recession lasting up to two years, the EU predicted that the 27-member bloc would face a “short-lived and not excessively deep” one.

Indeed, Gentiloni said he expected the EU would end 2022 with better-than-expected 3.3% growth, although that total is likely to significantly weaken next year, to just 0.3%.

The divergent outlooks illustrate how the economic fallout from the pandemic and the Russian invasion of Ukraine are having an uneven impact on the region’s countries.

In Germany, Europe’s largest economy, the annual inflation rate, according to one measure, reached 10.4% in October. In Britain, inflation hit 10.1% in September, the highest level in 40 years, and is expected to rise even more before peaking.

The national statistics office’s preliminary estimates showed that the slowdown in Britain was broad — including the production and services sectors — and meant that the country’s gross domestic product, or total output, remained below its pre-pandemic level.

Very few countries in the EU are expected to fall into the negative growth range next year, but the outlook for Germany, which has been hit hard by the loss of Russian pipeline gas, is grim. The EU estimates that its economy will shrink 0.6% in 2023.

Across Europe, inflation is expected to persist at higher levels than previously forecast. A strong labor market remains what Gentiloni called “a bright spot.”

The picture is darker in Britain, where long-term illnesses are keeping roughly 2.5 million people out of the workforce,

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The Jewish Home | NOVEMBER 17, 2022 Taliban Imposes Sharia Law

This was to be expected, but experts are concerned that the implementation of Sharia law will lead to a further deterioration of human rights in Afghanistan. This week, the Taliban ordered judges in Afghanistan to fully impose their interpretation of Sharia law, including public executions, amputations and flogging.

Taliban spokesperson Zabihullah Mujahid said Afghanistan’s Supreme Leader Alaiqadar Amirul Momineen made the “obligatory” command after meeting with judges to “investigate the cases of thieves, kidnappers, and seditionists.”

“Those cases that have met all the Shariah conditions of limitation and retribution, you are obliged to issue the limitation and retribution, because this is the order of the Sharia… and it is obligatory to act,” Mujahid tweeted on Sunday.

Kaheld Abou El Fadl, a professor of Islamic Law at UCLA and one of the world’s leading authorities on Sharia law, noted that there’s a debate on the laws of Sharia and various interpretations of their meaning.

“Every point of law you’ll find 10 different opinions… Sharia is very open-ended,” he added.

Sharia law within Islamic jurisprudence means the “search for the divine will,” El Fadl said. “Although, both in Western and native discourses, it is common to use Sharia interchangeably with Islamic law, Sharia is a much broader and all-encompassing concept.”

The Taliban’s hardline implementation of the doctrine when the group was last in power from 1996 to 2001 included violent punishments, such as public executions, stoning, floggings, and amputations.

El Fadl said that within the 1400year tradition of Sharia, those punishments were rarely implemented because the majority of Islamic jurists throughout history didn’t interpret the law the way the Taliban currently does. “The Taliban have a particular approach to Sharia that one cannot ignore,” El Fadl said. “Anyone who doesn’t fit their definition can be possibly put to death.”

After seizing power last August, the Taliban attempted to project a more moderate image to gain international support, but in the months since, the group has clamped down on rights and freedoms.

Women in Afghanistan can no longer work in most sectors and require a male guardian for long-distance travel, while girls have been barred from returning to secondary school.

Last week, women were stopped from entering amusement parks in the capital Kabul after the Taliban’s morality ministry said women’s access to public parks would be restricted.

During the group’s first stint in power, the Taliban banned most forms of music as un-Islamic; this summer, Afghan folk singer Fawad Andarabi was dragged from his home and killed.

Aside from human rights issues, the country is plummeting into poverty. Nearly half of the country faces acute hunger, according to the United Nations. An estimated 43% of Afghanistan’s population is living on less than one meal a day, with 90% of Afghans surveyed reporting food as their primary need, according to a May report by the International Rescue Committee.

Griner Sent to Russian Penal Colony

Wherever Brittney Griner was last Wednesday, one thing was clear: The American basketball star imprisoned by Russia was not heading back home, despite a concerted U.S. campaign to win her freedom.

Griner was instead being transferred

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from a jail outside Moscow and thrust into Russia’s vast and opaque penal colony system, lawyers said.

Beyond that, little was known.

Griner’s legal team said in a statement that her intended destination was unknown and that it expected to be officially notified, along with the U.S. Embassy, once she had arrived. The process can take up to two weeks.

It has been more than eight months since the WNBA star was seized after she flew into an airport near Moscow with a small amount of hash oil in her luggage. She has apologized repeatedly for what she says was an unintentional act, and pleaded guilty to the charges.

Last month, a Russian court upheld the nine-year prison sentence imposed on Griner, 32, setting the stage for her transfer to a penal colony.

The sentence imposed on Griner, an All-Star center with the Phoenix Mercury and a two-time Olympic gold medalist, was harsher than those ordinarily imposed for the drug infraction, experts say, and critics say Moscow is using her as a political pawn.

U.S. officials have repeatedly denounced the treatment of Griner, and they did so again Wednesday.

President Joe Biden directed his administration to “prevail on her Russian captors to improve her treatment and the conditions she may be forced to endure in a penal colony,” White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said in a statement.

Russian and American officials have signaled that Griner’s fate may be decided during high-level negotiations over a potential exchange for Russian inmates held in the United States. But those talks could not begin in earnest until the legal process was completed, Russian officials said.

Biden said last week that he hoped the negotiations could enter a new phase. “My guess is, my hope is, that now that the election is over, that Mr. Putin will be able to discuss with us and be willing to talk more seriously about a prisoner exchange,” he said. (© The New York Times)

UK and France Tackle Migrant Issue

Britain and France signed a new agreement Monday to stem the growing number of small boats carrying migrants over the busy waterway between them, a sign of thawing relations on an issue that has become a sore point for the embattled British government.

Under the agreement, Britain will pay France about 72.2 million euros ($74.5 million) over 2022 and 2023 — a previous deal involved a contribution of 62.7 million euros — and in turn, France will increase security patrols on its northern beaches by 40%, the countries said in a joint statement.

The arrival of small boats on British shores has become a focus of discontent among supporters of Britain’s governing Conservatives, even as the party has endured a tumultuous year that has seen three prime ministers in a matter of months. The issue has also been at the center of contentious diplomacy between Britain and France, close allies and historic rivals whose relationship is being reshaped by Britain’s departure from the European Union.

The crossings stoked tensions between then-British Prime Minister Boris Johnson and French President Emmanuel Macron. Liz Truss, who briefly