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A United Nations Security Council delegation made its first-ever visit to Syria on Thursday, pledging the international community’s support for the country days before the anniversary of Bashar al-Assad’s ousting.”We reiterated our clear support for sovereignty, unity, independence and territorial integrity of Syria,” Slovenian UN ambassador Samuel Zbogar told a press conference in Damascus.”Our united message was simple and clear: We recognise your country’s aspirations and challenges, and the path to a better future of new Syria will be Syria-led and Syria owned,” said the diplomat, whose country holds the rotating presidency of the UN body.”The international community stands ready to support you whatever you believe that we can be helpful,” he said, adding: “We want to help build a bridge to this better future for all Syrians.”The delegation met with Syria’s interim President Ahmed al-Sharaa, a presidency statement said, publishing images of the meeting.While the UN works to reestablish itself in Syria, the Security Council recently lifted sanctions on Sharaa, a former jihadist whose forces led the offensive that ousted Assad on December 8 last year.The UN has urged an inclusive transition in the multi-ethnic and multi-confessional country after nearly 14 years of civil war.Zbogar said the delegation also met communities from the Syrian coast and southern Sweida province, where sectarian violence this year killed saw hundreds killed from the country’s Alawite and Druze minority communities respectively.He said they also met with Syrian committees investigating those events, as well as the country’s commission for missing persons, religious leaders and other figures.- ‘Historic moment’ -The day’s discussions included issues from justice and reconciliation to political inclusivity, reconstruction, economic development and counterterrorism, “as well as the need for Syria not to be the source of threat to the security of other countries”, Zbogar said.Syrian Foreign Minister Asaad al-Shaibani said the visit represented “a historic moment for rebuilding trust, with the support of the international community for the Syrian people”.State news agency SANA said the delegation also visited Damascus’s historic Old City and the heavily damaged suburb of Jobar.The diplomats are to visit neighbouring Lebanon on Friday and Saturday.Zbogar had said Monday that “the visit to Syria and Lebanon is the first official visit of the Security Council to the Middle East in six years, the first visit to Syria ever”.The trip comes “at a crucial time for the region” and for both countries, Zbogar had said, noting the new authorities’ efforts towards Syria’s transition as well as a year-old ceasefire in Lebanon between Israel and militant group Hezbollah “which we see daily that is being challenged”.He noted that “there’s still a bit of lack of trust in the UN-Syria relationship, which we try to breach with this visit”.UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres’s spokesman Stephane Dujarric said on Tuesday that “we very much hope that the visit will increase the dialogue between the United Nations and Syria.”

Organisers of the Eurovision Song Contest — the world’s largest music event — on Thursday began two days of debate about Israel’s future participation, after mounting calls to exclude it, notably due to the war in Gaza.Members of the European Broadcasting Union (EBU) met behind closed doors and under tight security in Geneva, following threats of mass withdrawals from the annual show if Israel takes part next year.Voting arrangements are also on the agenda, after Israel’s Yuval Raphael — a survivor of Hamas’s October 7, 2023 attack — was propelled into second place overall after the public vote, prompting suspicions about manipulation.Similar concerns were raised the previous year after Israel’s Eden Golan was catapulted into fifth place despite lacklustre scoring from national juries.Eurovision entries are scored first by professional juries, then the public by phone, text or online, which often radically alters the leader board.Countries including Iceland, Ireland, Spain and the Netherlands have all threatened in recent months to pull out of Eurovision next year if Israel takes part.Others, including Belgium, Finland and Sweden, have also indicated they were considering a boycott over the situation in Gaza.The head of Spanish public broadcaster RVTE, Jose Pablo Lopez, on Thursday said that by not acting sooner, the EBU had subjected itself to “the greatest internal tension in its history”.”The sanctions against Israel for its repeated breaches at Eurovision should have been adopted at the executive level and not by shifting the conflict to the (general) assembly”, he wrote on X.Dutch broadcaster AVROTROS justified its threat to withdraw because of what it said was Israel’s “serious violation of press freedom” in Gaza.Countries cannot vote for their own entry, but AVROTROS accused Israel of “proven interference” at the last event this year by lobbying the public overseas to vote for it.- ‘Political ends’ -The EBU had planned to convene member broadcasters in November for a vote on the issue. But a few days after the October 10 announcement of a ceasefire agreement between Israel and Hamas, the EBU postponed a decision until its ordinary general assembly on December 4 and 5.Last month, in an apparent bid to avoid a contentious vote, the EBU announced that it had changed Eurovision voting rules to address members’ concerns and to strengthen “trust and transparency”.Broadcasters will now be asked to consider whether the new measures are sufficient or whether they still wish to see a vote on Israel’s participation.”The plan is to discuss and vote on these changes during the EBU General Assembly meeting later today,” Finland’s public broadcaster Yle said on Thursday.”Yle will make its decision on participating in Eurovision based on the outcome of the discussion and vote at the meeting.Austria’s public broadcaster ORF, which will host the 2026 contest, has expressed hope that a consensus can be reached so that it can host “as many participants as possible”.But other broadcasters have suggested the new EBU measures are insufficient.Iceland’s RUV said last week it would call for Israel to be expelled before determining its own participation in 2026. Spain’s RTVE reaffirmed its intention to boycott the competition if Israel is allowed to take part and accused the country of using the contest “for political ends”.Slovenia’s public broadcaster is also set to snub the contest, judging from a budget passed last week that included no funds for participation.But RTV Slovenija chief Natasa Gorscak said “we would propose… to participate” if Israel is shut out.Any exclusion would not be a first. Russia was barred from taking part following its 2022 invasion of Ukraine, and Belarus was excluded a year earlier after the contested re-election of President Alexander Lukashenko.burs-apo/nl/rh/phz/st

Microsoft is facing a complaint in the European Union filed by a non-profit organisation alleging it illegally stored data on Palestinians used for Israeli military surveillance.The Irish Data Protection Commission (DPC) confirmed Thursday it had received the complaint against the US tech giant, saying it was “currently under assessment”.Since Microsoft’s European headquarters are located in Ireland, the DPC is the EU’s lead data regulator for the company.The organisation that brought the complaint, Eko — which says it fights for “people and planet over profits” — accused Microsoft of violating Europe’s data protection law.”Microsoft unlawfully processed personal data belonging to Palestinians and EU citizens, enabling surveillance, targeting, and occupation by the Israeli military,” it said a statement.The complaint follows a report in British newspaper The Guardian that the Israeli Defense Forces used Microsoft’s cloud service Azure “for the storage of data files of phone calls obtained through broad or mass surveillance of civilians in Gaza and the West Bank”.After investigating the report, Microsoft cut the Israeli army’s access to certain cloud services in September.Eko has said that “new evidence shared by Microsoft whistleblowers indicates that the company rapidly offloaded vast quantities of illegally captured surveillance data after a Guardian investigation”.In a statement, a Microsoft spokesperson said: “Our customers own their data and the actions taken by this customer to transfer their data in August was their choice.”These actions in no way impeded our investigation,” they added.According to The Guardian, the data was stored on Microsoft’s servers in Ireland and the Netherlands, placing it under the EU’s strict General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).GDPR, launched in 2018, aims to protect European consumers from personal data misuse and breaches.

Israel’s participation in the Eurovision Song Contest will be debated at a two-day meeting of member broadcasters in Geneva starting Thursday, following calls to exclude the country over its Gaza war tactics.Countries including Iceland, Ireland, Spain and the Netherlands, have threatened in recent months to pull out of the 2026 contest if Israel takes part.Others, including Belgium, Finland and Sweden, have also indicated they were considering a boycott over the situation in Gaza.In justifying its decision, Dutch broadcaster AVROTROS highlighted a “serious violation of press freedom” by Israel in Gaza.It accused Israel of “proven interference… during the last edition of the Song Contest” — in which it came second — by lobbying the public overseas to vote for it.The European Broadcasting Union (EBU), which organises the glitzy competition, had planned to convene member broadcasters in November for a vote on the issue.But a few days after the October 10 announcement of a ceasefire agreement between Israel and Hamas, the EBU postponed a decision until its ordinary general assembly on December 4 and 5.Then last month, in an apparent bid to avoid a contentious vote, the EBU announced that it had changed its voting rules to address members’ concerns and to strengthen “trust and transparency”.During this week’s meeting, broadcasters will therefore be asked to consider whether the new measures are sufficient or whether they still wish to see a vote on Israel’s participation.- Boycott calls -ORF, the public broadcaster in Austria, which will host the 2026 contest, has expressed hope that a consensus can be reached so that it can host “as many participants as possible”.But other broadcasters have suggested the new EBU measures are insufficient.Iceland’s RUV said last week it would call for Israel to be expelled before determining its own participation in the 2026 edition. Spain’s public broadcaster reaffirmed its intention to boycott the competition if Israel is allowed to take part.”Israel has politically used the contest, has tried to influence the outcome, and has not been sanctioned for this conduct,” said RTVE president Jose Pablo Lopez. Slovenia’s public broadcaster is also set to snub the contest, judging from a budget passed last week that included no funds for participation.But if at the EBU General Assembly “there is a vote on whether Israel should or should not participate at the Eurovision contest, and, if the result is that they do not participate, then we would propose… to participate”, said RTV Slovenija chief Natasa Gorscak.The EBU rule changes came after the past two contests saw the Israeli acts receive little backing from professional juries but a surge of support from the public vote.That catapulted Eden Golan from the depths of the jury rankings to fifth place in Malmo, Sweden in 2024, and Yuval Raphael to second place in Basel, Switzerland, this year. If Israel is excluded, it would not be the first time a broadcaster is barred.Russia was excluded following its 2022 invasion of Ukraine, while Belarus had been excluded a year earlier after the contested re-election of President Alexander Lukashenko.burs-apo/nl/rh

Atop one of Egypt’s Sinai mountains, near where the three Abrahamic faiths say God spoke with Moses, another unmistakable sound rings out: the incessant drilling of construction work. In the remote, rugged terrain of southern Sinai, Egypt has undertaken a vast megaproject aimed at drawing mass tourism to the once serene mountain town of Saint Catherine.Heritage experts and locals say the state’s bulldozers have already damaged the nature reserve and UNESCO world heritage site, home to the world’s oldest functioning Christian monastery and Bedouin who fear for their ancestral land.”The Saint Catherine we knew is gone. The next generation will only know these buildings,” said a veteran hiking guide from the Jabaliya tribe, as a five-star hotel loomed overhead and the beeps of a reversing bulldozer drowned out the songbirds.Like others AFP interviewed about the nearly $300-million “Great Transfiguration” or “Revelation of Saint Catherine” project, he requested anonymity for fear of retaliation.”We should call this what it is, which is the disfigurement and destruction” of the site, John Grainger, the former manager of the European Union’s Saint Catherine protectorate project, told AFP.From above, bright lights and concrete overpower the town’s red-brick homes and orchards, in the form of hotels including a sprawling Steigenberger resort, a conference centre and hundreds of housing units.In July, World Heritage Watch urged UNESCO to list the area as a World Heritage site in danger.Last month, UNESCO elected Egypt’s former tourism and antiquities minister Khaled El-Enany as its chief. During his tenure, Egypt launched the Saint Catherine project and demolished swathes of Cairo’s historic City of the Dead cemetery, which is also a UNESCO site as well as an active burial place.- Mutiny at the monastery -Just beyond the site of the new project on biblical Mount Sinai, or Jebel Moussa, two dozen monks in black vestments tend a small cluster of ancient shrines.In May, an Egypt court ruled the Saint Catherine monastery sits on state-owned land and that the Greek Orthodox monks are merely “entitled to use” it, sparking a diplomatic row with Greece and uproar from Orthodox patriarchates. Egypt has defended the ruling, which critics say leaves the monastery dependent on authorities’ goodwill for its survival. In September, Saint Catherine’s archbishop resigned, reportedly after an unprecedented mutiny.Each morning, the monks still open their gates to visitors, mostly sunrise hikers accompanied by local Jabaliya guides.The Jabaliya, whose name derives from the Arabic word for “mountain”, have lived here for 1,500 years, and are said to descend from the Roman soldiers who came to guard the monastery. Each year, they guide hundreds of thousands of worshippers and adventurers, drawn to the sacred sites and the austere but magnificent landscapes. They have for decades called for better services and infrastructure to lift their community out of poverty.Long marginalised, they now fear that rapid development has come at their expense — even disturbing the dead.- ‘No room for us’ -In 2022, bulldozers levelled the town’s centuries-old cemetery, forcing people to exhume hundreds of bodies.”They just came in one day without saying anything and destroyed our cemetery,” said the hiking guide.The gravesite is now a car park.The South Sinai governor’s office did not respond to AFP’s questions about the cemetery and the local impact of the project.Government officials tout its economic benefits and say decisions were taken in consultation with the community, but locals told AFP their concerns had been ignored. “No one knows what will happen tomorrow. Maybe they’ll tell us to get out, that there’s no room for us anymore,” the guide added.Many still hope tourism will bring prosperity, even as they navigate life around bulldozers and struggle to keep up with soaring prices.”Did you hear they tore down half my house?” a 70-year-old casually told a friend. Across the country, many who have had their homes demolished in recent years for tourism or infrastructure projects, including overpasses and real-estate developments in Cairo, say state compensation does not meet their needs.After uproar from conservationists over Saint Catherine, UNESCO requested in 2023 that Egypt “halt the implementation of any further development projects”, conduct an impact evaluation and develop a conservation plan.Construction continued unabated and the government said in January the project was 90 percent complete.Gesturing across the monastery’s grapevines and cypresses towards a nearly finished five-star hotel, a local official laughed. “These hotels are huge, the costs astronomical. Are they even going to be full? That’s the real problem, but we can’t say anything,” he said.