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Protesters hit Istanbul streets again over Erdogan rival’s arrest

Vast crowds of students surged onto Istanbul’s streets Monday in the latest protest over the arrest and jailing of Istanbul’s opposition mayor that has sparked Turkey’s worst unrest in years. The demonstrations began after Ekrem Imamoglu’s March 19 arrest and have since spread to at least 55 of Turkey’s 81 provinces, sparking clashes with riot police and drawing international condemnation.Police have arrested more than 1,130 people over the past six days, including 43 on Monday night, the interior minister said. Among them are journalists, including an AFP photographer. Imamoglu, 53, of the opposition CHP party, is widely seen as the only politician capable of defeating Turkey’s longtime leader Erdogan at the ballot box.In just four days he went from being the mayor of Istanbul — a post that launched Erdogan’s political rise decades earlier — to being arrested, interrogated, jailed and stripped of the mayorship as a result of a graft and terror probe.On Monday, students in both Istanbul and the capital Ankara began gathering in the early afternoon after announcing they were boycotting lectures at the main universities in both cities. In Istanbul, as crowds of chanting, flag-waving students headed through the streets to Besiktas, a port on the Bosphorus, residents applauded and banged saucepans in a show of support, AFP correspondents said. – ‘Your palaces, our streets’ -After rallying by the port, the students began marching along the coast towards the historic peninsula to join the nightly protest outside City Hall, an AFP correspondent said. “This is not a meeting, this is an act of defiance against fascism!” CHP leader Ozgur Ozel told the vast crowd, which held up a sea of banners including one aimed at Erdogan that read “Palaces are yours, the streets are ours.”Ozel also called for a boycott of pro-government TV channels that have not been broadcasting images of the protests as well as other businesses known to be close to the government, including a chain of cafes.After meeting his cabinet on Monday, Erdogan once again accused the opposition of provoking the protests. “Stop playing with the nation’s nerves,” he said, while also insisting that everything was under control with the Turkish economy, saying the government had “successfully managed the last market fluctuation”. The move against Imamoglu has badly hurt the lira and caused chaos on Turkey’s financial markets. The benchmark BIST 100 stock index closed nearly 8.0 percent lower on Friday but recovered somewhat on Monday, ending the session around 3.0 percent higher.On Sunday, Imamoglu was overwhelmingly chosen as the CHP’s candidate for a 2028 presidential run, with observers saying it was the looming primary that triggered the move against him. His jailing drew sharp condemnation from Germany, which called it “totally unacceptable”, while neighbouring Greece said moves to undermine civil liberties “cannot be tolerated”. And the European Union warned Ankara it needed to demonstrate “a clear commitment to democratic norms”. Overnight, France’s foreign ministry said Imamoglu’s arrest was a “serious attack on democracy”. – ‘Stop targeting journalists’ -Before dawn on Monday, police detained 10 Turkish journalists at their homes, including an AFP photographer, “for covering the protests”, the MLSA rights group said.The move was condemned by the Journalists’ Union of Turkey, the Turkish Journalists Association and several other associations. “Stop targeting journalists!” they said in a joint statement, saying many journalists had been subjected to police violence, tear gas and plastic bullets while reporting.Reporters Without Borders (RSF) demanded “the release of the journalists arrested”, said the group’s Turkey representative, Erol Onderoglu. The arrests were also denounced by Imamoglu’s wife.”What is being done to members of the press and journalists is a matter of freedom. None of us can remain silent about this,” Dilek Kaya Imamoglu posted on X. Imamoglu, who has denounced the judicial moves against him as a political “execution without trial”, sent a defiant message from jail via his lawyers.”I wear a white shirt that you cannot stain. I have a strong arm that you cannot twist. I won’t budge an inch. I will win this war,” he said.

US, Russia talks on Ukraine ceasefire end after 12 hours

A meeting between Russian and US officials on a partial ceasefire in Ukraine ended after 12 hours of negotiations in Saudi Arabia on Monday, Russian state media reported, with a joint statement expected the following day.  With Ukrainian negotiators waiting nearby, a day after they sat down with the US team, the Americans and Russians met in Riyadh with a Black Sea ceasefire top of the agenda.President Donald Trump is pushing for a rapid end to the three-year war and hopes the latest round of talks will pave the way for a breakthrough.While the talks took place at a luxury hotel in the Saudi capital, nearly 90 people including 17 children were wounded in a missile attack on Sumy in northeastern Ukraine, President Volodymyr Zelensky said.The attack on a “densely populated residential area” damaged apartments and an educational facility, the regional prosecutor’s office said. The city’s acting mayor earlier said a hospital had been affected. The Ukrainian negotiating team was expecting a second meeting with the US delegation on Monday, a source in Kyiv told AFP, a sign that progress may have been made.Russia’s state-run TASS news agency cited a source as saying that the meeting with the US had ended after “more than 12 hours of consultations” and that a joint statement on results would be published Tuesday.  – ‘Trump’s proposal’ -At a previous round of talks this month in Jeddah — days after Zelensky’s White House dressing-down by Trump — Kyiv agreed to a US-proposed 30-day ceasefire that was subsequently rejected by Russian President Vladimir Putin.Officials are now studying a possible resumption of the Black Sea Initiative, an agreement that allowed millions of tonnes of grain and other food exports to be shipped from Ukraine’s ports.”The issue of the Black Sea Initiative and all aspects related to the renewal of this initiative is on the agenda today,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said in his daily briefing.”This was President Trump’s proposal and President Putin agreed to it. It was with this mandate that our delegation travelled to Riyadh.”The US-Ukraine and US-Russia talks were originally planned to take place simultaneously to enable shuttle diplomacy, with the United States going back and forth between the delegations, but they are now taking place one after the other.Ukraine’s Defence Minister Rustem Umerov, who heads the Ukrainian team, said Sunday’s talks with the United States were “productive and focused”.Trump envoy Steve Witkoff has voiced optimism that any agreement would pave the way for a “full-on” ceasefire.”I think you’re going to see in Saudi Arabia on Monday some real progress, particularly as it affects a Black Sea ceasefire on ships between both countries,” he told Fox News. “And from that you’ll naturally gravitate to a full-on shooting ceasefire.”- ‘Only at the beginning’ -But the Kremlin has downplayed expectations of a rapid resolution.”We are only at the beginning of this path,” Peskov told Russian state TV on Sunday, adding: “There are difficult negotiations ahead.”When Putin, in a lengthy phone call with Trump, rebuffed the joint US-Ukrainian call for a full and immediate 30-day pause, he proposed instead a halt in attacks on energy facilities.The traditional adversaries are now discussing the return of the Black Sea Initiative, which was originally brokered by Turkey and the United Nations in 2022. Russia pulled out of the agreement in 2023, accusing the West of failing to uphold its commitments to ease sanctions on Russia’s own exports of farm produce and fertilisers.A senior Ukrainian official previously told AFP that Kyiv would propose a broader ceasefire, covering attacks on energy facilities, infrastructure and naval strikes.- ‘Mutually beneficial’ -Before the missile strike on Sumy, both sides had launched fresh drone attacks on the eve of the negotiations.And Ukraine’s national railway operator said Monday it was countering a sophisticated cyberattack for the second day running.Moscow headed into the Saudi talks after a rapprochement with Washington under Trump that boosted the Kremlin’s confidence.Peskov said Sunday that the “potential for mutually beneficial cooperation in a wide variety of spheres between our countries cannot be overstated”.”We may disagree on some things but that does not mean we should deprive ourselves of mutual benefit,” he added.Meanwhile, British and French defence chiefs met in London on Monday to discuss plans for allied countries to safeguard any ceasefire deal as part of UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s so-called “coalition of the willing”.Questions remain over what shape such an initiative might take, but Starmer and French President Emmanuel Macron have voiced willingness to put British and French troops on the ground in Ukraine.”If there is a deal, it’s a deal that has to be defended,” Starmer’s spokesman said.

Hyundai announces new $21 billion investment in US manufacturing

South Korean auto giant Hyundai on Monday announced a multi-billion-dollar investment in the United States, including a new $5.8 billion steel plant.The plant, which will be based in the US state of Louisiana, “will create 1,300 American jobs,” Hyundai executive chairman Euisun Chung told reporters at a White House event alongside President Donald Trump.The move …

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Journalist for Al Jazeera killed in Gaza, 7 days into Israeli offensive

An Israeli air strike on Gaza killed a journalist working with Al Jazeera, according to the network and Gaza’s civil defence rescue agency, seven days into renewed Israeli bombardment and ground operations in the Palestinian territory.Israel resumed intense air strikes across the densely populated Gaza Strip last Tuesday, with ground troops following, after talks on extending a ceasefire with Hamas Palestinian militants reached an impasse.Civil defence said Hussam Shabat, who was working with the Qatari news channel, was targeted in an Israeli drone strike on his car on Monday afternoon near a petrol station in the northern town of Beit Lahia.Mahmud Bassal, spokesman for the civil defence agency, said air strikes had targeted more than 10 cars including Shabat’s in various areas of the Gaza Strip.”Hussam Shabat, a journalist collaborating with Al Jazeera Mubasher, was martyred in an Israeli strike targeting his car in the northern Gaza Strip,” an Al Jazeera alert said, referring to the network’s live Arabic channel.AFPTV footage from the scene in Beit Lahia showed Palestinians gathering around the car, which had an Al Jazeera sticker on its windscreen and whose rear window was severely damaged. A body could be seen on the ground nearby.According to the US-based Committee to Protect Journalists, Israel’s military in October accused Shabat and five other Palestinian journalists of being militants, which he denied.AFP journalists reported hundreds of people attending Shabat’s funeral held at Beit Lahia’s Indonesian Hospital, praying over his body which still wore a press flak jacket.Relatives and colleagues, their faces covered in tears, carried the body on a stretcher through the streets flanked by rows of tents that displaced Gazans use as shelters. The civil defence agency said a media worker from Islamic Jihad-affiliated Palestine Today TV, Muhammad Mansour, was killed in a separate air strike “that targeted his home in Khan Yunis”, in Gaza’s south.In a statement, the Palestinian Journalists Syndicate called the deaths of Shabat and Mansour “a crime added to the record of Israeli terrorism.” It said that more than 206 journalists and media workers had been killed since the start of the war, triggered by Hamas’s attack on Israel on October 7, 2023.- Civilians ‘trapped’ -The health ministry in Hamas-run Gaza said Monday that 730 people had been killed since Israel resumed bombardments on March 18, including 57 in the past 24 hours.Israel’s military said it intercepted two “projectiles” launched on Monday from the Gaza Strip, after air raid sirens sounded in Israeli communities near the territory.On Friday the military also said it intercepted two projectiles fired from Gaza.Hamas’s first military response to the renewed civilian death toll came last Thursday when it announced rocket fire on Tel Aviv. The military said one projectile was intercepted while two others hit an uninhabited area.The municipality in the southern Gaza city of Rafah said in a statement Monday that “thousands of civilians” were “trapped under intense Israeli shelling” in the city’s Tal al-Sultan neighbourhood.It added that all communications were cut with the neighbourhood, and that the local health care system had “entirely collapsed”, causing those wounded to be left unattended.On Sunday the military said it had encircled Tal al-Sultan to “dismantle terrorist infrastructure and eliminate” militants there.Gaza’s civil defence agency said that 50,000 displaced civilians were now left without humanitarian and medical services.It said in a separate statement that one attack on Sunday in the Tal al-Sultan area “left dozens of civilians wounded or killed”.The International Red Cross Society (ICRC) reported on Monday that one of its Rafah offices “was damaged by an explosive projectile”.It said that escalation of hostilities over the past week has left “hundreds of civilians killed, some of whom remain buried under rubble while others have been left behind unable to be rescued.”Israel’s military said Sunday its troops were also active on the ground in the northern Gaza town of Beit Hanun, with backing from fighter jets strikes.

Journalist working with Al Jazeera killed in Israeli Gaza strike, network says

Al Jazeera said on Monday that a journalist working with one of its channels was killed in an Israeli strike on his vehicle in northern Gaza.”Hussam Shabat, a journalist collaborating with Al Jazeera Mubasher, was martyred in an Israeli strike targeting his car in the northern Gaza Strip,” an Al Jazeera alert said, referring to the network’s live Arabic channel. The territory’s civil defence agency confirmed his death, as well as that of Muhammad Mansour, an employee of the Islamic Jihad-affiliated Palestine Today TV.The agency said Shabat was targeted by an Israeli drone strike on his car on Monday afternoon near a petrol station in the northern town of Beit Lahia. It said Mansour was killed in a separate airstrike on his home in the southern city of Khan Yunis in the morning.Mahmud Bassal, spokesman for the civil defence agency, said airstrikes had targeted more than 10 cars in various areas of the Gaza Strip.In a statement, the Palestinian Journalists Syndicate called the deaths of Shabat and Mansour “a crime added to the record of Israeli terrorism”. “This horrific war crime aims to obscure the truth and terrorise all those who carry the message of free speech,” it added.It said that more than 206 journalists and media workers had been killed since the start of the war, triggered by Hamas’s attack on Israel on October 7, 2023.Israel restarted intense air strikes across the densely populated Gaza Strip last week followed by ground operations, shattering the relative calm of a six-week ceasefire agreement with Hamas.The health ministry in Hamas-run Gaza said Monday that 730 people had been killed since Israel resumed bombardments on March 18, including 57 in the past 24 hours.Earlier in March, Gaza’s civil defence agency said nine people including journalists were killed in Israeli strikes in the north of the territory, an attack Hamas denounced as a “blatant violation” of the fragile ceasefire.

US, Russia in Ukraine ceasefire talks as 65 wounded in latest strike

US and Russian officials met in Saudi Arabia to discuss a partial ceasefire in Ukraine on Monday as dozens of people were wounded in a missile strike on a Ukrainian city.With Ukrainian negotiators waiting nearby, a day after they sat down with the US team, the Americans and Russians met in Riyadh with a Black Sea ceasefire top of the agenda.President Donald Trump is pushing for a rapid end to the three-year war and hopes the latest round of talks will pave the way for a breakthrough.While the talks took place at a luxury hotel in the Saudi capital, 65 people were wounded in a missile attack on Sumy in northeastern Ukraine, officials said.The attack on a “densely populated residential area” damaged apartments and an educational facility, the regional prosecutor’s office said. The city’s acting mayor earlier said a hospital had been affected. The Ukrainian negotiating team was expecting a second meeting with the US delegation on Monday, a source in Kyiv told AFP, a sign that progress may have been made.- ‘Trump’s proposal and Putin agreed’ -This month in Jeddah — days after President Volodymyr Zelensky’s White House dressing-down by Trump — Ukraine agreed to a US-proposed, 30-day ceasefire that was then rejected by Russian President Vladimir Putin.Officials are now studying a possible resumption of the Black Sea Initiative, a year-long agreement that allowed millions of tonnes of grain and other food exports to be shipped from Ukraine’s ports.”The issue of the Black Sea Initiative and all aspects related to the renewal of this initiative is on the agenda today,” Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said in his daily briefing.”This was President Trump’s proposal and President Putin agreed to it. It was with this mandate that our delegation travelled to Riyadh.”The US-Ukraine and US-Russia talks were originally planned to take place simultaneously to enable shuttle diplomacy, with the United States going back and forth between the delegations.The US team is led by Andrew Peek, a senior director at the White House National Security Council, and senior State Department official Michael Anton, a source familiar with the matter told AFP.Ukraine’s Defence Minister Rustem Umerov, who heads the Ukrainian team, said Sunday’s talks with the United States were “productive and focused”.Trump envoy Steve Witkoff has voiced optimism that any agreement would pave the way for a “full-on” ceasefire.”I think you’re going to see in Saudi Arabia on Monday some real progress, particularly as it affects a Black Sea ceasefire on ships between both countries,” he told Fox News. “And from that you’ll naturally gravitate to a full-on shooting ceasefire.”- ‘Only at the beginning’ -But the Kremlin has downplayed expectations of a rapid resolution.”We are only at the beginning of this path,” Peskov told Russian state TV on Sunday, adding: “There are difficult negotiations ahead.”When Putin, in a lengthy phone call with Trump, rebuffed the joint US-Ukrainian call for a full and immediate 30-day pause, he proposed instead a halt in attacks on energy facilities.The traditional adversaries are now discussing the return of the Black Sea Initiative, which was originally brokered by Turkey and the United Nations in 2022. Russia pulled out of the agreement in 2023, accusing the West of failing to uphold its commitments to ease sanctions on Russia’s own exports of farm produce and fertilisers.A senior Ukrainian official previously told AFP that Kyiv would propose a broader ceasefire, covering attacks on energy facilities, infrastructure and naval strikes.- US, Russia’s ‘mutual benefit’ -As well as the missile strike on Sumy, both sides launched fresh drone attacks on the eve of the negotiations.Ukrainian officials said a Russian drone attack overnight Saturday killed three civilians in Kyiv, including a five-year-old girl and her father.AFP reporters in the capital saw emergency workers treating the wounded early Sunday in front of damaged residential buildings hit in the strike.Meanwhile, Ukraine’s national railway operator said it was countering a sophisticated cyberattack for the second day running.Moscow headed into the Saudi talks after a rapprochement with Washington under Trump that boosted confidence Kremlin confidence.Peskov said Sunday that the “potential for mutually beneficial cooperation in a wide variety of spheres between our countries cannot be overstated”.”We may disagree on some things but that does not mean we should deprive ourselves of mutual benefit,” he added.