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UN Secretary-General António Guterres attends the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) at the United Nations headquarters on September 24, 2024 in New York City. Spencer Platt/Getty Images 

The U.S. was not among the more than 100 United Nations member states that signed a new letter of support for U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres after Israel’s foreign minister declared him “persona non grata” and barred him from entering the country.

The letter, spearheaded by Chile, said Israel’s attack on Guterres would “undermine the United Nations’ ability to carry out its mandate, which includes mediating conflicts and providing humanitarian support.”

“In the Middle East, this could further delay an end to all hostilities and the establishment of a credible path towards the two-state solution, with the state of Palestine and Israel living side by side in peace and security,” the letter continues. “We reaffirm our full support and confidence in the secretary-general and his work.”

 

Signatories to the letter include France, China, Lebanon, Iran, Sweden, Switzerland, Finland, Brazil, and the African Union. Notably absent from the list were nations that have supplied Israel with arms during its yearlong assault on Gaza, including the U.S., Germany, Italy, the United Kingdom, and Canada. 

Earlier this month, Israeli Foreign Minister Israel Katz declared Guterres banned from entering Israel, falsely accusing the U.N. chief of failing to condemn Iran’s ballistic missile barrage and the Hamas-led attack of October 7, 2023. Katz reiterated his position on Sunday, writing on social media that “Guterres can continue seeking support from U.N. member states, but the decision will not change.”| 

Guterres, a persistent advocate of a cease-fire agreement in the region and critic of the United States’ failure to exert pressure on its ally, did not respond directly to the Israeli foreign minister’s statement, but a spokesperson for the U.N. chief called it “one more attack on the United Nations staff that we’ve seen from the government of Israel.”

The letter of support for Guterres came after Israeli forces repeatedly fired on U.N. peacekeepers stationed in Lebanon, injuring at least four soldiers. Guterres called the attacks “intolerable.”

On Saturday, dozens of nations that contribute troops to the U.N. Interim Peacekeeping Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) issued a joint statement condemning “recent attacks on the UNIFIL peacekeepers” and calling for an international investigation of the Israeli attack last week.

“We urge the parties to the conflict to respect UNIFIL’s presence, which entails the obligation to guarantee the safety and security of its personnel at all times, so that they can continue to implement its mandate and continue their work of mediation and support for peace and stability in Lebanon and the entire region,” the statement added.

The U.S. does not contribute troops to UNIFIL. In a statement on Thursday, U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Linda Thomas-Greenfield said the Biden administration is “deeply concerned about reports that Israeli forces fired on positions and a tower used by UNIFIL
peacekeepers in Lebanon.”

Jameel Jaffer, director of the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University, wrote in response, “I don’t believe anymore that the Biden administration is ‘concerned’ about any of this — the killing of thousands of civilians, the targeting of journalists and aid workers and peacekeepers.”

“What actual evidence is there of this supposed concern?” he asked. By By  

Meta has announced it will bar Russian state media outlets including RT and Rossiya Segodnya from using its Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp services.

“After careful consideration, we expanded our ongoing enforcement against Russian state media outlets,” Meta said in a statement September 17.

“Rossiya Segodnya, RT and other related entities are now banned from our apps globally for foreign interference activity,” Mark Zuckerberg’s company added.

The EU, UK, US, and Canada have already banned Russian media outlets including RT and Sputnik, as part of Western sanctions against Russia following the country’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022.

Russian state media had carried influence operations and evaded detection on Meta’s platforms, said the company.

It would begin enforcing the bans in the coming days, the Menlo Park-based technology conglomerate announced.

Meta had already limited the reach of posts by Russian state media on its platforms.

Elon Musk’s social media platform X, on the other hand, still allowed RT accounts to post, except in countries that banned the Russian outlet.

Musk argued his own platform followed a policy more devoted to free speech.

RT’s editor-in-chief Margarita Simonyan said in February that Ukraine’s allies were “all so jumpy because public opinion in the West is changing, very rapidly and very cheerfully.”

The change in Western public opinion was largely due to Russia’s “covert projects”, said  Simonyan.

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said September 13 that RT engaged in covert influence operations and collaborated closely with the Russian military.

These actions interfered with “the sovereign affairs of countries around the world”, said Blinken.

“Today, we’re exposing how Russia deploys similar tactics around the world,” added Blinken, and Russian “weaponisation of disinformation to subvert and polarise free and open societies extends to every part of the world”.

RT expanded its capabilities early last year, with Russia’s government enhancing its “cyber operational capabilities and ties to Russian intelligence,” the US State Department said in a press release.

Meta’s ban followed revelation of a Russian scheme that allegedly funnelled $10 million through shell companies to covertly fund influence campaigns on TikTok, Instagram, X, and YouTube, according to an unsealed indictment.

The scheme was linked to RT, said prosecutors.

RT has pursued malign influence campaigns in countries opposed to its policies, including the United States, in an effort to sow domestic divisions and thereby weaken opposition to Government of Russia objectives,” they said.

Since 2016, American authorities have accused Russia of interfering in US presidential elections.

While the US asked other governments also to take action against Russian state media, India declined to do so.

A government official in New Delhi told The Hindu the dispute “does not pertain to India”.

“This will be viewed as double standards by the Global South that they are trying to target. India will obviously not be responsive to such American pressure,” said former Indian ambassador to Russia Kanwal Sibal.

For Russia’s part, Margarita Simonyan said in the West, “freedom of speech only applies to those who support official narratives and obey instructions from its intelligence services.”

The latest attack on Russian media “is a clear effort to clamp down on the information space ahead of the November vote”, she wrote in a Russia Today op-ed.

“They need to silence everyone. This is the story of freedom and democracy in the so-called free West,” Simonyan argued, who called the claims her outlet collaborated with Russian intelligence “a classic case of projection.”

“The idea that you can’t achieve results without being part of the intelligence service has exposed them for what they are”, she said.

Maria Zakharova, Russia’s foreign ministry spokeswoman, said the new sanctions against her country’s media were “repressions unprecedented in scale”. By , RT

 

Dogs eat nsima, a porridge made from maize flour or husks, in Blantyre, Malawi

Malawi has recently recorded the sudden deaths of dogs that consumed meals prepared from maize husks contaminated with aflatoxins.

Veterinary experts say the country has recorded 450 dog deaths since April, when the first cases were identified in Malawi’s commercial city, Blantyre.

Aflatoxins are toxic substances produced by fungi that grow on pet food ingredients like peanuts, corn and other grains. Experts warn that the accumulation of those toxins in an animal’s body can lead to liver damage, blood clotting and, in severe cases, death.

Timothy Banda is the veterinary clinic manager at the Blantyre Society for the Protection and Care of Animals, which has been testing the dogs. He told VOA that symptoms include a yellowish tint on the dog‘s skin, hemorrhagic diarrhoea or bloody diarrhoea, and sometimes vomiting.

"For the past two, three weeks, we haven’t received any death from the problem," he said. "But from the time it started somewhere around April up to somewhere around early August, the estimations could be somewhere around 450 dogs so far have died.”

He said the aflatoxin contamination was suspected after it was observed that the dogs were not responding to treatment.

“Under normal circumstances, once we started the right treatment, we could get good results, but in this scenario, they were all dying despite whatever treatment was given. Nothing could work out,” Banda said.

Banda said the affected dogs were those fed with nsima, a thick porridge prepared from maize or maize husks. Alfred Manda, a resident of Chirimba township, said that he lost three dogs in August.

“The kind of food I mostly give out to my dogs is nsima flour made from leftover maize called madeya," he said. "To me, I thought it was a healthy diet. I wish I knew earlier. I could have done things better to save my dogs, but unfortunately, this is the sad reality that I have faced.”

Health experts warn that aflatoxins can also cause tumours in the livers of animals and humans. But health officials in Malawi, where maize is the staple food, have not reported any human deaths resulting from consuming contaminated maize.

In Zambia, media reports indicate over 400 dogs died in July after consuming maize meal contaminated with aflatoxins. Malawi authorities are advising dog owners to switch to alternative foods, such as rice, until the problem is contained. Source: VOA

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