About: the world this week, 7 April 2024 to 13 April 2024: War Vows; EU immigration; a brand new young Prime Minister; a Swiss Victory; corrupted in Vietnam; and a total eclipse of the sun.

Everywhere

Israel, Hamas, and Vows

This week the terrorist Hamas rejected yet another ceasefire proposal made by Israel, at talks in Egypt. Israel and Hamas sent teams to Cairo for talks that included Qatari and Egyptian mediators as well as CIA Director William Burns.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said, “We are constantly working to achieve our goals, first and foremost the release of all our hostages and achieving a complete victory over Hamas. This victory requires entry into Rafah (Gaza’s last refuge for displaced Palestinians) and the elimination of the terrorist battalions there. It will happen – there is a date”. However, a date was not specified.

Meanwhile, it’s becoming deadly clear that most of the Israeli hostages taken on 7 October 2023 have been murdered in captivity and Hamas is unable to ‘produce them’. Hamas acknowledges it lacks ‘sufficient living Israeli hostages’ for a deal – that confirms that most hostages are deceased. Hence, Hamas delays negotiations fearing exposure of its deceit about the captive status. Officials believe hostages who are still alive are being used as human shields surrounding the Hamas leadership, hidden deep in the tunnels of Gaza.

Towards the end of the week, Israel got into a high alert mode, on a possible attack by Iran, who have vowed to avenge Israel’s attack on a ‘building near its Consulate’ in Syria. Amid these fears, the United States in its turn, vowed support for Israel.

Poland and Immigration

This week more than 250 illegal migrants from Africa and the Middle East tried to storm the Polish border from the Belarus side. Polish riot police and the Army managed to push them back into Belarus. This comes in the backdrop of Russia and Belarus – who are great friends – using weaponised migration as a form of hybrid warfare.

In recent times, Poland has taken in the largest number of Ukrainian refugees since Russia’s invasion of the country in 2022.

European lawmakers voted this Wednesday on a revamp of the European Union’s (EU) migration policy: to cut the length of time for security and asylum procedures, and increase returns of migrants to reduce unwanted immigration from the Middle East and Africa, a high priority on the EU’s agenda.

The EU Asylum and Migration Pact has been in the works since 2015, and following its approval by the European Parliament, it will come into force in two years’ time. It will require EU member states to share responsibility for asylum seekers. The EU’s 27 countries will be required to either take in thousands of migrants from ‘frontline’ countries such as Italy, Greece, Spain, or provide extra funding or resources instead, called ’solidarity payments’.

The EU’s migration pact has become a highly charged political issue in Poland. Poland’s Prime Minister, Donald Tusk said his government would not accept any relocated asylum seekers under the EU’s proposed new migration pact and is opposed, in general, to the introduction of such a system.

Poland does not accept refugees from Muslim countries – from Africa or the Middle East: it accepts refugees from Christian countries.

Ireland’s New Prime Minister

In March this year, Irish Prime Minister (PM) Leo Varadkar, 45, in an unexpected shocking decision, resigned as the leader of his party, Fine Gael, and as PM. And Ireland’s Government had to scramble its lawmakers to find a replacement.

This week Simon Harris, 37, was elected as taoiseach (Irish PM), by members of the Dail (Irish Parliament). He is also the new Fine Gael party leader and becomes the youngest person to lead the Republic of Ireland. Simon Harris was elected after a vote in which 88 Dail members supported him while 69 voted against him. He was officially installed as taoiseach this Tuesday, after meeting President, Michael D Higgins, to receive the Seals of Office. Harris was the only candidate to seek the party leadership, after Varadkar’s decision to quit.

Simon Harris grew up in the coastal town of Greystones, in County Wicklow. He is the eldest of three children, the son of a taxi driver and a special needs assistant. His younger brother Adam is autistic – a fact which Harris said kickstarted his own involvement in political campaigning when he was just 16.

In 2009, he became a Councillor in Wicklow obtaining the highest individual vote of any candidate in the County. When Fine Gael swept to power in 2011, to lead a new coalition government, Harris won a parliament seat for the party in Wicklow. He entered the 31st Dail in 2011 at the age of 24 – the youngest member and the ‘baby of the house’. Since then, he has had a rapid rise through the party ranks, landing his first cabinet role before his 30th birthday, in 2016. He took on the prestigious but difficult role of Health Minister. The following summer he married his long-term girlfriend, children’s cardiac nurse, Caoimhe Wade, and is now father to two children. As minister for health, he oversaw Ireland’s vote to overturn its abortion ban and was in-charge of the country’s initial response to the Covid-19 pandemic.

A Swiss Victory

This week, in a stunning verdict The European Court of Human Rights’s (ECtHR) ruled that the Switzerland government had violated the human rights of its citizens by failing to do enough to combat climate change. The case was brought by more than 2000 Swiss Women, known as KlimaSeniorinnen, all aged over 64.

The decision will set a precedent for future climate lawsuits and is expected to resonate in court decisions across Europe and beyond, and to embolden more communities to bring climate change cases against governments.

But in a sign of the complexities of the growing wave of climate litigation ECtHR rejected two other climate-related cases on procedural grounds. One of these was brought by a group of six Portuguese young people against 32 European governments, and another by a former mayor of a low-lying French coastal town.

The KlimaSeniorinnen said their government’s climate inaction put them at risk of dying during heatwaves. They argued their age and gender made them particularly vulnerable to such climate change impacts. In the ruling, the Court President said the Swiss government had failed to comply with its own targets for cutting greenhouse gas emissions and had failed to set a national carbon budget.”It is clear that future generations are likely to bear an increasingly severe burden of the consequences of present failures and omissions to combat climate change,” the President said.

The verdict in the Swiss case, which cannot be appealed, will have international ripple effects, most directly by establishing a binding legal precedent for all 46 countries that are signatories to the European Convention on Human Rights.

It indicates Switzerland has a legal duty to take greater action on reducing emissions.

If Switzerland does not update its policies, further litigation could follow at the national level and courts could issue financial penalties.

Switzerland has committed to cutting greenhouse gas emissions by 50% by 2030, from 1990 levels. The country had proposed stronger measures to deliver the goal, but voters rebuffed them in a 2021 referendum as too burdensome.

Vietnam and Corruption

A court in Vietnam sentenced real estate tycoon Truong My Lan to death over her role in a 304 trillion dong (USD 12.5 billion) financial fraud case, the country’s biggest on record. Vietnam imposes the death penalty not only for violent offences but also for economic crimes. The country has executed hundreds of convicts, in recent years, mainly by lethal injection.

Lan’s trial, which began on 5th March and ended earlier than planned, was one dramatic result of a campaign against corruption, which the leader of the country’s ruling Communist Party, Nguyen Phu Trong, has pledged for years to stamp out.

Lan, the chairwoman of real estate developer Van Thinh Phat (VTP) Holdings Group, was found guilty of embezzlement, bribery, and violations of banking rules at the end of the trial in the business hub of Ho Chi Minh City. Her’s is a story of rising-up, from selling perfumes to the world of high finance.

Lan started as a cosmetics trader at the central market in Ho Chi Minh City, helping out her mother. She later founded her real estate company VTP in 1992, the same year when she got married.

Lan was found guilty, with her accomplices, of siphoning off more than 304 trillion dong from Saigon Joint Stock Commercial Bank, or SCB, which she effectively controlled through dozens of proxies despite rules strictly limiting large shareholding in lenders. From early 2018 through October 2022, when the state bailed out SCB after a run on its deposits triggered by Lan’s arrest, she appropriated large sums by arranging unlawful loans to shell companies. The bank is currently propped up by the central bank. And faces a complex restructuring under which authorities are trying to establish the legal status of hundreds of assets that were used as collateral for loans and bonds issued by VTP. The bonds alone are worth USD 1.2 billion. Some of the assets are high-end properties, but many others are unfinished projects.

Before her fall from grace, Lan had played a key role in Vietnam’s financial world, getting involved in the previous rescue of troubled SCB more than a decade before she contributed to the bank’s new crisis.

She was found guilty of having bribed officials to persuade the authorities to look away, including paying USD 5.2 million to a senior central bank inspector, Do Thi Nhan, who was sentenced to life in prison.

Vietnam’s graft crackdown, dubbed ‘Blazing Furnace’, has seen hundreds of senior state officials and high-profile business executives prosecuted or forced to step down. Corruption is so widespread that in some provinces many people say they pay bribes just to obtain medical services in public hospitals, according to a recent survey by the United Nations Development Programme, and other organisations.

Total Eclipse of the Sun

Throngs of skywatchers spread across North America gazed upward at a blackened sun in the midday dusk this Monday, celebrating with cheers, music, and matrimony the first total solar eclipse to darken the continent in seven years.

From a Mexican beach resort, close to where the eclipse made landfall, to the banks of the Ohio River, and farther north beyond the roaring cascades of Niagara Falls at the US-Canadian border, spellbound crowds reacted to the sight of ‘totality’ with jaw-dropping expressions of awe and joy.

Where clear skies prevailed, observers along the direct path of the eclipse were treated to the rare spectacle of the moon appearing as a dark orb creeping in front of the sun, briefly blocking out all but a brilliant halo of light, or corona, around, the sun’s outer edge.

It was first total eclipse to sweep across a large swath of North America since 2017, and will be the last one visible from the contiguous United States until 2044.

Mexico’s beachside resort town of Mazatlan was the first major viewing spot for totality. Thousands in solar-safe eyewear perched in deck chairs along the coastal promenade, and an orchestra played the ‘Star Wars’ movie theme as skies darkened under the approaching lunar shadow.

More jaw-dropping stories coming in the weeks ahead. Join forces and vow to stay with World Inthavaaram.