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Egyptian prison authorities have intervened medically days after jailed British-Egyptian pro-democracy activist Alaa Abd El-Fattah escalated his hunger strike, his mother said.

The nature of the intervention is not known but Mr Abd El-Fattah’s family have expressed fears prison officials will force-feed the activist.

The family say this would amount to torture.

Mr Abd El-Fattah, 40, was sentenced to five years in prison in Egypt in December last year after being charged with spreading fake news.

The activist was charged over a Facebook post he shared about human rights abuses in Egyptian prisons in 2019.

His imprisonment has become a symbol of a return to autocracy in Egypt.

Mr Abd El-Fattah’s mother Leila Soueif, said she spoke to prison authorities by phone and asked them if her son was undergoing any medical procedure and they said he was.

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She told the Associated Press news agency she asked “if it was by force, and they said no” and told her “Alaa is good”.

Mr Abd El-Fattah had been on a partial hunger strike of 100 calories a day for the past six months.

He stopped all calorie intake and began refusing water on Sunday – the first day of the COP27 climate summit held in Sharm el-Sheikh in Egypt.

His hope was to get the attention of British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, who attended the UN-led summit this week, and persuade him to take immediate action for his release.

Mr Abd El-Fattah is now in a prison hospital following the escalation in his hunger strike.

The activist said in an earlier letter that he was prepared to die in prison if not freed.

Ms Soueif has called for her son to be transferred to a civilian hospital rather than a prison facility.

“I need proof for this. I don’t trust them,” she said.

She has been waiting outside the prison every day this week, asking for proof her son is alive.

Mr Abd El-Fattah’s sister Mona Seif has said she has now been informed by prison officials that he is undergoing “medical intervention”.

The activist’s family have been increasingly worried for his health and continuously campaigned for his release ahead of COP27.

They also organised a sit-in outside the UK Foreign Office.

Mona Seif (left), the sister of writer Alaa Abd el-Fattah, a British-Egyptian activist imprisoned in Egypt, at a sit-in outside the Foreign Office in London. Picture date: Tuesday October 18, 2022.
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Mona Seif (left), the sister of writer Alaa Abd el-Fattah, outside the Foreign Office in October

Mr Abd El-Fattah’s younger sister Sanaa Seif said last week in a public address to world leaders at COP27: “You are going to be in the same land as a British citizen dying.

“And if you don’t show that you care, it will be interpreted as a green light to kill him. My brother can be saved.”

“If you don’t save him, you have blood on your hands.”

Mr Abd El-Fattah rose to prominence during the pro-democracy uprisings in 2011 which took place throughout the Middle East and played a role in dismounting Egypt’s long-time president Hosni Mubarak.

World leaders and activists have repeatedly called for Egyptian authorities to release him.

Read more
Egyptian MP removed from COP27 meeting about jailed hunger striker after shouting at his sister
Rishi Sunak writes to family of jailed British-Egyptian writer

At COP27, UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, French President Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Olaf Scholz raised the activist’s case in their talks with Mr el-Sissi.

Celebrities who have spoken out in support of Mr Abd El-Fattah include Dame Judi Dench, Dame Emma Thompson, Mark Ruffalo, Carey Mulligan and Khalid Abdalla.

Climate activist Greta Thunberg even refused to join the COP27 because she disagreed with the country’s human rights abuses.

The environmentalist was seen pictured at a protest in solidarity of Mr Abd El-Fattah

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Climate-vulnerable islands storm out of COP29 negotiation room in row over funding

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Climate-vulnerable islands storm out of COP29 negotiation room in row over funding

Representatives of dozens of climate vulnerable islands and African nations have stormed out of high-stakes negotiations over a climate funding goal.

Patience is wearing thin and negotiations have boiled over at the COP29 climate talks in Azerbaijan, which were due to finish yesterday but are now well into overtime.

After two weeks of talks, the more than 190 countries gathered in the capital Baku are still trying to agree a new financial settlement to channel money to poorer countries to both curb and adapt to climate change.

Talks have now run well into overtime at COP29, but a deal now feels much more precarious.

The least developed countries like Mozambique and low-lying island nations like Samoa say their calls for a portion of the fund to be allocated to them have been ignored.

Samoa’s minister of natural resources and environment Toeolesulusulu Cedric Schuster is one of the representatives who walked out.

“We are here to negotiate but we have walked out… at the moment we don’t feel we are being heard in there,” he said on behalf of more than 40 small island and developing states, whose shorelines are being lost to rising sea levels.

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Shortly after he made a veiled threat of leaving COP29 altogether, saying: “We want nothing more than to continue to engage, but the process must be INCLUSIVE.

“If this cannot be the case, it becomes very difficult for us to continue our involvement here at COP29.”

Evans Njewa, who chairs a group of more than 40 least developed countries, said the current deal is “unacceptable for us. We need to speak to other developing countries and decide what to do.”

The last official draft on Friday pledged $250bn a year annually by 2035.

This is more than double the previous goal of $100bn set 15 years ago, but nowhere near the annual $1.3trn that experts say is needed.

Sky News understands some developed countries like the UK were this morning willing to bump up the goal to $300bn.

Developing countries are angry not just about the finance negotiations, but also on how to make progress on a pledge from last year to “transition away from fossil fuels”.

A group of oil and producing countries, spearheaded by Saudi Arabia, have tried to dilute that language, while the UK and island state are among those that have fought to keep it in.

Mr Schuster said all things being negotiated contain a “deplorable lack of substance”.

He added: “We need to see progress and follow up on the transition away from fossil fuels that we agreed last year. We have been asked to forget all about that at this COP, as though we are not in a critical decade and as though the 1.5C limit is not in peril.”

“We need to be shown the regard which our dire circumstances necessitate.”

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At least 11 killed in Israeli strikes on central Beirut, Lebanese authorities say

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At least 11 killed in Israeli strikes on central Beirut, Lebanese authorities say

At least 11 people have been killed and 63 injured in an Israeli strike on central Beirut, Lebanese authorities have said.

Lebanon‘s health ministry said the death toll could rise as emergency workers dug through the rubble looking for survivors. DNA tests are being used to identify the victims, the ministry added.

State-run National News Agency (NNA) said the attack “completely destroyed” an eight-storey residential building in the Basta neighbourhood early on Saturday.

Footage broadcast by Lebanon’s Al Jadeed station also showed at least one destroyed building and several others badly damaged around it.

The central Basta neighbourhood in Beirut, where four people were killed in an Israeli airstrike
Image:
The central Basta neighbourhood in Beirut, where four people were killed in an Israeli airstrike

Map of Lebanon and Israel

The Israeli military did not warn residents to evacuate before the attack – the fourth targeting the centre this week.

At least four bombs were dropped in the attack, security sources told Reuters news agency.

The blasts happened at about 4am (2am UK time).

A seperate drone strike in the southern port cuty of Tyre this morning killed one person and injured another, according to the NNA.

The blasts came after a day of bombardment of Beirut’s southern suburbs and Tyre. The Israeli military had issued evacuation notices prior to those strikes.

Pic: AP
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Pic: AP

Israel has killed several Hezbollah leaders in air strikes on the capital’s southern suburbs.

Heavy fighting between Israel and Hezbollah is ongoing in southern Lebanon, as Israeli forces push deeper into the country since launching a major offensive in September.

Read more:
No 10 indicates Netanyahu would be arrested
‘Dozens’ of Palestinians killed in Israeli airstrike

US envoy Amos Hochstein was in the region this week to try to end more than 13 months of fighting between Israel and Hezbollah, ignited last October by the war in Gaza.

Mr Hochstein indicated progress had been made after meetings in Beirut on Tuesday and Wednesday, before going to meet Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and defence minister Israel Katz.

According to the Lebanese health ministry, Israel has killed more than 3,500 people in Lebanon and wounded more than 15,000.

It has displaced about 1.2 million people – a quarter of Lebanon’s population – while Israel says about 90 soldiers and nearly 50 civilians have been killed in northern Israel.

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Vladimir Putin vows to increase production of Russia’s ‘unstoppable’ missile – as NATO and Ukraine to hold talks

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Vladimir Putin vows to increase production of Russia's 'unstoppable' missile - as NATO and Ukraine to hold talks

President Vladimir Putin has said Russia will ramp up the production of a new, hypersonic ballistic missile.

In a nationally-televised speech, Mr Putin said the intermediate-range Oreshnik missile was used in an attack on Ukrainian city Dnipro in retaliation for Ukraine’s use of US and British missiles capable of striking deeper into Russian territory.

Referring to the Oreshnik, the Russian president said: “No one in the world has such weapons.

“Sooner or later other leading countries will also get them. We are aware that they are under development.”

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Putin’s warning to the West

Russia war latest: Long-awaited US air defences arrive in Ukraine

He added: “We have this system now. And this is important.”

Detailing the missile’s alleged capabilities, Mr Putin claimed it is so powerful that using several fitted with conventional warheads in one attack could be as devastating as a strike with nuclear weapons.

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General Sergei Karakayev, head of Russia’s strategic missile forces, said the Oreshnik could reach targets across Europe and be fitted with either nuclear or conventional warheads – while Mr Putin alleged Western air defence systems will not be able to stop the missiles.

Mr Putin said of the Oreshnik: “There is no countermeasure to such a missile, no means of intercepting it, in the world today. And I will emphasise once again that we will continue testing this newest system. It is necessary to establish serial production.”

Read more from Sky News:
What are storm shadow missiles?
How bionic limps are helping Ukrainian troops

Testing the Oreshnik will happen “in combat, depending on the situation and the character of security threats created for Russia“, the president added, stating there is “a stockpile of such systems ready for use”.

NATO and Ukraine are expected to hold emergency talks on Tuesday.

Meanwhile Ukraine’s parliament cancelled a session as security was tightened following the strike on Dnipro, a central city with a population of around one million. No fatalities were reported.

EU leaders condemn Russia’s ‘heinous attacks’

Numerous EU leaders have addressed Russia’s escalation of the conflict with Poland’s Prime Minister Donald Tusk saying the war is “entering a decisive phase [and] taking on very dramatic dimensions”.

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Russia’s new missile – what does it mean?

Speaking in Kyiv, Czech foreign minister Jan Lipavsky called Moscow’s strike an “escalatory step and an attempt of the Russian dictator to scare the population of Ukraine and to scare the population of Europe”.

At a news conference, Mr Lipavsky gave his full support for delivering the additional air defence systems needed to protect Ukrainian civilians from the “heinous attacks”.

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