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Jaguar’s ambition to seduce younger, richer drivers was on full display in Paris with a presentation of its newest prototype, the Type 00, which promises all-electric luxury… at a steep price.The low-slung, muscular-looking concept car presented to European reporters on Friday prefigures a production model expected mid-2026 at a base cost of 150,000 euros ($160,000).That’s …

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Israel’s attorney general said on Friday that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu cannot name a new internal security chief, following a supreme court decision freezing the government’s bid to oust him.The unprecedented move to fire Shin Bet chief Ronen Bar has deepened divisions in the country while Israel resumes its military operations in the Gaza Strip.The top court’s decision earlier Friday came after opposition parties and a non-governmental organisation filed separate appeals following the government’s decision to sack Bar.”According to the decision of the Supreme Court, it is prohibited to take any action that harms the position of the head of the Shin Bet, Ronen Bar,” Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara said in a message to Netanyahu published by a spokesperson. “It is prohibited to appoint a new head of Shin Bet, and interviews for the position should not be held.” In a post on X, Netanyahu insisted it was up to the government to decide who heads the domestic security agency. “There will be no civil war! The State of Israel is a state of law, and according to the law, the government of Israel decides who will be the head of the Shin Bet,” Netanyahu said.Shin Bet has acknowledged its own failure to prevent Hamas’s October 7, 2023 attack on Israel that started the Gaza war, but Bar has pointed to the need for a broader probe that would include the prime minister. Opposition leader Yair Lapid’s centre-right Yesh Atid party said it appealed Bar’s dismissal before the Supreme Court of Israel in the name of several opposition movements.Yesh Atid denounced what it called “a decision based on flagrant conflict of interest”.The Movement for Quality Government in Israel, an NGO, also appealed what it said was “an unlawful decision… posing a real risk to the national security of the State of Israel”.The separate legal appeals came after the government fired Bar in the early hours of Friday. Netanyahu has cited an “ongoing lack of trust” in him.The Shin Bet chief’s dismissal was to have been effective before April 10, making him the country’s first domestic intelligence agency chief to be fired.Bar was appointed by the previous Israeli government that briefly kept Netanyahu from power between June 2021 and December 2022.The attorney general, a critic of Netanyahu, is also under government scrutiny. Netanyahu’s office, citing a cabinet meeting agenda, said the government would meet on Sunday for a no confidence vote on Baharav-Miara, “due to her inappropriate behaviour and due to significant and prolonged differences between the government and the government’s legal adviser.” – ‘Qatargate’ -Thousands of Israelis braved cold and rainy weather on Thursday night to protest the moves against Bar and Baharav-Miara, demonstrating outside parliament and Netanyahu’s home in Jerusalem.Some spoke of a threat to democracy from Netanyahu’s policies.The opposition appeal highlighted what critics see as the two main reasons why Netanyahu moved against Bar.The first was his criticism of the government over the security failure that allowed Hamas’s attack to become the deadliest day in Israel’s history.The second was what Israeli media have dubbed “Qatargate” but which Netanyahu’s office has dismissed as “fake news”.The decision to sack Bar came “as Israel’s Security Agency is currently investigating the prime minister’s close associates… on suspicion of receiving money from entities directly linked to and acting on behalf of the State of Qatar”, the opposition appeal read.In a letter made public late on Thursday, Bar described his dismissal as motivated by Netanyahu’s “personal interests”.Friday’s appeal also mentioned that Bar’s dismissal took place after a Shin Bet investigation highlighting, according to the plaintiffs, “that the political leadership bears responsibility for the October 7 disaster”.In a video published Thursday, President Isaac Herzog deplored the government’s “controversial moves” that “deepened divisions” while Israel is still at war in the Gaza Strip.The tensions come against the backdrop of new Israeli attacks on Gaza since Tuesday and the reintegration into the government of one of Israel’s far-right figures, Itamar Ben Gvir.He had resigned as national security minister to protest the ceasefire with Hamas that took effect on January 19.

The UN warned Friday that all of Gaza’s approximately one million children were facing “massive trauma” as fighting in the war-ravaged territory resumed, and amid dire aid shortages.Humanitarians described an alarming situation in Gaza, amid a growing civilian death toll since Israel resumed aerial bombardment and ground operations this week after a six-week ceasefire.Sam Rose, the senior deputy field director in Gaza for the UN agency for Palestinian refugees UNRWA, highlighted the psychological shock for already traumatised children to one again find themselves beneath the bombs.This is a “massive, massive trauma for the one million children” living in the Palestinian territory, he told reporters in Geneva, speaking from Gaza. The breakdown of the ceasefire that took effect on January 19 comes as the population is already dramatically weakened from 15 months of brutal war sparked by Hamas’s deadly October 7, 2023 attack on Israel.”It’s worse this time,” Rose warned, “because people are already exhausted, they’re already degraded, their immune systems, their mental health, (and) populations on the verge of famine.”Children who had come back to school after 18 months out of school, now back in tents,… hearing the bombardment around them constantly.”It’s fear on top of fear, cruelty on top of cruelty, and tragedy on top of tragedy.”- ‘Nightmare’ -James Elder, a spokesman for the UN children’s agency UNICEF, said traumatised children usually only start to process their trauma when they begin returning to normalcy.”Psychologists would say our absolute nightmare is that they return home and then it starts again,” he told reporters.”That’s the terrain that we’ve now entered,” he said, warning that Gaza was the only “example in modern history in terms of an entire child population needing mental health support”.”That’s no exaggeration.”Gaza’s civil defence agency said 504 people had been killed since Tuesday, including more than 190 under the age of 18.The toll is among the highest since the war started more than 17 months ago with Hamas’s attack on Israel.It has also been a deadly period for humanitarians, with seven UNRWA staff killed just since the ceasefire broke down, bring the total number killed from that agency alone to 284 since the Gaza war began.A Bulgarian worker with another UN agency was also killed this week, as was a local staff member of Doctors Without Borders, the medical charity said Friday. – ‘Massive shortages’ -Humanitarians warned the situation on the ground has been made worse by Israel’s decision earlier this month to cut off aid and electricity to Gaza over the deadlock in negotiations to prolong the ceasefire. “We were able to bring in more supplies in during the six weeks of the ceasefire than … in the previous six months,” Rose said, warning though that that progress was “being reversed”.Currently, he said, there is only enough flour supply in Gaza for another six days.Asked about Israel’s charge that Hamas has diverted the more than sufficient aid inside Gaza, Rose said he had “not seen any evidence” of that.”There is no aid being distributed right now, so there is nothing to steal.”He warned though that if aid is not restored, “we will see a gradual slide back into what we saw in the worst days of the conflict in terms of looting … and desperate conditions among the population”.Elder meanwhile described the vital aid items that aid agencies were unable to bring into Gaza.”We’ve got 180,000 doses of vaccines a few kilometres away that are life-saving and are blocked,” he said. He also pointed to a “massive shortage” of incubators in Gaza even as pre-term births were surging.”We have dozens of them, again sitting across the border,” he said. “Blocked ventilators for babies.”

Three weeks after jailed PKK founder Abdullah Ocalan urged his militants to disband, Turkey’s Kurds were celebrating their Newroz New Year Friday with peace prospects still remote. The efforts to broker a solution to the decades-long Kurdish conflict have likely been complicated by the widespread unrest provoked by Wednesday’s arrest of Istanbul Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu, a key opposition figure. “The government is dragging the country into increasing violent upheaval with its silencing of the opposition,” said Tuncer Bakirhan, co-chair of the pro-Kurdish DEM, the third largest party in Turkey’s parliament. In Diyarbakir and the main cities in the Kurdish-majority southeast, thousands of people — women in traditional dresses, men in shawls — gathered to dance and celebrate Newroz, marking the arrival of spring. Many had hoped for a message from Ocalan, who has been jailed on a prison island near Istanbul since 1999 but who still garners widespread respect, his image present at every rally.But DEM said there would be no message from the 75-year-old as the government had not answered their request to pay him a new visit. A DEM delegation has visited Ocalan three times in recent months, relaying his messages to the Turkish authorities and transmitting his historic February 27 call for his PKK militants to disband. The PKK, or Kurdistan Workers’ Party, has led a decades-long insurgency against the Turkish state that has claimed tens of thousands of lives.”Since the delegation’s application (for a new visit) received no response, there was no message from Mr Ocalan for this year’s Newroz,” DEM said. The PKK’s military leadership, which is based in mountainous northern Iraq, accepted Ocalan’s call, declaring a ceasefire and pledging to hold a congress to formally disband.But last week, the PKK said it was impossible for its leaders to safely meet given the ongoing attacks by Turkey’s military. President Recep Tayyip Erdogan warned earlier this month there would be harsh consequences “if the promises are not kept” or the militants delayed their pledge to disarm. To date, there has been no suggestion of when the PKK leaders would meet, or whether Ocalan would be able to “direct and lead it” as they requested. – Lost momentum? -On Thursday, Erdogan’s nationalist ally Devlet Bahceli — a key figure in efforts to resume talks — proposed they meet in Malazgirt near Lake Van in Turkey’s far east on May 4.”The separatist terrorist PKK organisation must immediately convene its congress to disband and lay down its weapons, handing them over to the authorities in order to avoid spoiling the February 27 appeal,” he said. Since Ocalan’s call, the Turkish military has continued its assault on Kurdish militant positions, with the PKK’s co-leader Cemil Bayik on March 14 saying that holding a congress under such conditions would be “very dangerous”.Ankara is also concerned about the Kurdish fighters in northeastern Syria, who form the bulk of the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF). When the SDF reached a deal with Damascus’ new leadership in mid-March to integrate into the national government, Erdogan said it would “serve peace”. But the process has since run into difficulties. And Ankara’s growing crackdown on the opposition — notably the arrest of Istanbul’s mayor and its removal of 10 DEM mayors in recent months — risks jeopardising efforts to end the conflict with the Kurds.”What’s happening with Imamoglu, with the Turkish pro-democracy movement, and in Syria, really complicates the process that has been launched with Ocalan,” said Gonul Tol, head of the Turkish studies programme at the Washington-based Middle East Institute.”Right now, (the PKK) have zero motivation to do anything, given the chaos happening in Turkey,” she told AFP.”If things go more smoothly in Syria, that could give them an opening.”