Riots break out in Buenos Aires over President Javier Milei’s reforms

Published

1 week ago

June 13, 2024

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Thousands of people rallied outside Congress in Argentina’s capital of Buenos Aires to protest against a bill proposed by President Javier Milei.

Senators voted 37 to 36 late on Wednesday to give their overall approval to Mr Milei’s controversial economic reform plan.

If the Senate approves the articles with modifications, the lower house still has to back them before Mr Milei can claim his first legislative win since entering office last December.

Thousands gathered outside Congress to protest against the bill as it delegates broad powers to the president – a right-wing economist – in energy, pensions, security and other areas.

At least 20 police officers were injured and more than a dozen protesters were arrested over the violence, authorities said.

Demonstrators poured gasoline on two cars and set them alight, turning the central square into a smoke-filled battlefield.

They also hurled sticks, stones and Molotov cocktails at police who sprayed water cannons, pepper spray and tear gas to disperse the huge crowds.

The bill would aim to overhaul an embattled economy, with inflation near 300%, and includes plans for privatising public firms and spurring investment.

But some protesters fear it would leave them further exposed to rising unemployment and consumer prices.

“Argentine people’s lives are at play. We’ve drunk this poison several times: to have zero inflation with zero economic activity,” protester and social leader Luis D’Elia said.

“This poison has failed several times in Argentina and we won’t allow this to carry on.”

The spending cuts and currency devaluation Mr Milei has delivered have – at least in the short term – deepened a recession and increased poverty to 55%.

“If this law passes, we are going to lose so many of our labour and pension rights,” said 54-year-old teacher Miriam Rajovitcher, protesting ahead of the vote alongside colleagues who say they have had to reconfigure their lives since Mr Milei slashed school budgets and devalued the currency.

“I am so much worse off.”

Mr Milei’s office celebrated the bill’s passage.

“What happened tonight is a triumph for the Argentine people and the first step to recovering our greatness,” the presidential office said in a statement.

Mr Milei, a brash economist and former pundit who has clashed with lawmakers and regularly called Congress a “nest of rats,” has tied a lot to the bill.

His government says it is key to undoing a major economic crisis it inherited.

“We are going to change Argentina. We’ll make a liberal Argentina,” Mr Milei said on Wednesday, adding if his reforms did not get through Congress now he would try again in 2025.

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‘Miracle baby’ burned in tent fire beating the odds – but mum says she’s shunned by society

Published

40 mins ago

June 23, 2024

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'Miracle baby' burned in tent fire beating the odds - but mum says she's shunned by society

Dalal is the little Syrian girl they never thought would survive.

Now four years old, despite horrific burn scars and no hands she is confounding the doctors, her family and everyone who knows her, all over again.

We watch as she concentrates hard on manoeuvring a pen between the stumps which she’s been left with. It is tough work for the little girl with no fingers.

She’s bent right over the paper she’s working on, trying hard to write her name as well as simple numbers. We notice she can manage to draw outlines which resemble hearts.

This young girl so badly mutilated by fire has a big heart herself despite her physical disadvantages.

Her eyesight’s not brilliant either, with heavy skin scarring all over her face making it hard to open them fully. Dalal’s skull is bald but for tufts of hair at her nape.

But her older sisters, Gazal and Hala, tie the little hair she has into a ponytail like theirs.

Doctors fought for months to save Dalal’s life not really believing they would succeed or she would have the strength for the multiple operations she needed to pull through.

When we first saw her, she was swathed from head to toe in bandages and had many horrific burns.

We first reported on her when she was a baby. Fire had ripped through her family’s tent, which had been pitched in a field in northwest Syria in the middle of the winter of 2021.

Her family had fled their home in Idlib province and were close to the Turkish border – along with tens of thousands of others trying to escape the regime bombing and fighting between Bashar al Assad’s troops, anti-regime groups and other militias.

The winter was bitter and the temperature in their tent near to freezing. There was a fire stove the adults lit to try to keep the family of six small children warm. But somehow the tent caught fire.

Her eldest sister, Yasmin, who was about 10, desperately tried to save Dalal, who was then a baby. But Yasmin was quickly overwhelmed by flames and smoke and could not be resuscitated.

Four of her younger siblings managed to scramble to safety or were helped out, but Dalal was already engulfed in flames. By the time she was pulled out, she was horrifically burned and barely alive.

Turkish authorities gave permission for her to be whisked across the border as a medical emergency and she was raced to Mersin hospital – unaccompanied by any family members at this stage.

A team of doctors and nurses worked tirelessly to save her.

‘Skin black like cole’

Lead surgeon Dr Cagatay Demirci told me then he never believed they’d be able to save her. She was so badly injured; her burns were so deep and she was so young, the challenges seemed insurmountable.

Her skin was “black like coal in many places”, the doctor said.

“Our team went to work on her and did what we could, but we left that night thinking she would not make it through the night,” he said at the time.

“But when we came back in the morning, she was still here, still alive. And we thought okay, this baby wants to live.”

And as she continued to pull through each complex operation – and there have been many – she confounded everybody. They called her the “miracle baby”.

But surgeons couldn’t save her fingers and had to amputate all her digits. Her face was terribly burned, the flames eating away at her eyelids, lips, hair, ears and hair follicles and feet.

Dr Demirci said then: “She will need many, many operations throughout her whole childhood as she grows and develops.”

Sky’s coverage of her astonishing survival was spotted by a single mum in Britain who was so moved by Dalal’s tale of tragedy and endurance, she set up a JustGiving page.

Within a few weeks, Lisa Cavey saw tens of thousands of pounds had been raised which would pay for an entirely new life for Dalal’s family.

First her father, Abdul Fattah, travelled to Turkey and stayed with her for months as she had operation after operation.

When it became apparent her survival depended being out of the Syrian battlefield and remaining in Turkey to receive medical help, the donations ensured passports were organised and funded the rest of the family.

Turkish authorities agreed her heavily pregnant mother and four siblings could join her.

The money helped pay rent for the family, now living as refugees in southern Turkey alongside four million other Syrians who fled the war across the border. It also contributed to medical help – because Dalal is likely to need multiple operations for years to come.

Ms Cavey has been in regular contact with the family ever since. “I cried when I saw the news report about Dalal,” she told me.

“Being a mother myself, I realised that could have been my daughter. They are of a similar age.

“I just felt it was so wrong that this had happened, and the family were in this situation through no fault of their own. I felt compelled to take some action.”

A Turkish-based charity called INARA, set up and run by journalist Arwa Damon, took on Dalal’s case and helped connect her with doctors and physiotherapists who’ve been helping her with her injuries ever since.

“Dalal’s case is exactly why I founded INARA,” she explained.

“To be an organisation that is willing and able to take on complex cases that require critical surgeries over the course of a child’s development,” adds Ms Damon.

“Often, what I saw from my experience in war zones is that these children tend to fall through the cracks in access to medical care or do not receive the many surgeries they need and as such end up relegated to a life in the shadows.

“INARA through its medical and mental health programme basically gives them the ability to see that their life is not over, that they do deserve and can be a part of society, even though it might be hard.”

Brave Dalal ‘not accepted’

But the war in Gaza, as well as the global economic downturn, has seen a depletion of public finances and much aid support for humanitarian groups diverted.

Doctors believe Dalal needs multiple expensive surgeries and are investigating if it’s possible to create fingers for her, perhaps by performing an intricate transplant of some of her toes to her hands.

Nothing has been decided yet as they explore the best options, but any surgery is expensive and Turkish authorities are dealing with inflation at around 70% and a crippling cost of living crisis.

Her mother, Fatima, is praying for more medical treatment for her daughter and describes heartbreaking moments in the playground when other children catch sight of Dalal.

“They scream in fear,” she says. “She is not accepted by the society. That is a fact.” She says she’s struggling to get any school to admit Dalal for the same reason.

Dalal is astonishingly independent, shrugging off help as she pulls on socks herself using her stumps – and climbs up the kitchen doorframe positioning her severed arms to hold herself up.

Each achievement is applauded by her family – but her now five siblings tell us of the hours of frustration, the tears and anger too.

“She cuts salad with us,” her eldest sister Gazal says. “She wants to do everything but she cries and says ‘why don’t I have fingers?'”

Alex Crawford reports from Southern Turkey with cameraman Jake Britton, specialist producer Chris Cunningham and Syria producer Mahmoud Mosa.

World

Israeli soldiers strapped injured Palestinian to jeep after West Bank arrest raid

Published

2 hours ago

June 23, 2024

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Israeli soldiers strapped injured Palestinian to jeep after West Bank arrest raid

Israeli soldiers strapped an injured Palestinian man to the bonnet of a military jeep after an arrest raid in the occupied West Bank.

The Israeli military confirmed the incident after a video circulated on social media showing the man tied to the vehicle and being driven around in Jenin on Saturday.

Reuters news agency named him as Mujahed Azmi.

In a statement, the Israeli military said Israeli forces were fired at and exchanged fire during the raid, wounding a suspect and arresting him.

Soldiers then violated military protocol, the statement said, as “the suspect was taken by the forces while tied on top of a vehicle”.

The suspect was later transferred to a Red Crescent ambulance for treatment, the statement added.

The military said the “conduct of the forces in the video of the incident does not conform to the values” of the Israeli military and the incident would be investigated.

According to Reuters, Mr Azmi’s family said they asked for an ambulance after he was wounded, and it was then that the army took Mr Azmi, tied him to the hood of the vehicle, and drove off.

Violence in the West Bank was already on the rise before the 7 October attacks in which militants stormed into southern Israel and killed around 1,200 people, kidnapping around 250 more.

Since then, over 37,400 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza by Israel, according to the territory’s health ministry.

On Saturday, an Israeli man was shot dead in a Palestinian town in the northern West Bank, according to Israel’s army.

Troops were occupying the area where it took place and Israeli forces had shot dead two militants in the same town on Friday.

Other developments in the Israel-Hamas war:

• At least 42 people were killed in Israeli strikes on houses and a refugee camp in Gaza

• US officials rubbished Houthi claims of an aircraft carrier attack

• Gaza officials and emergency workers said an Israeli tank fired on tents, killing 25

• A UN human rights office warned Israel may have “systematically violated” the laws of war

World

Jay Slater: Missing teenager’s father and brother make emotional pleas for his safe return

Published

4 hours ago

June 23, 2024

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Jay Slater: Missing teenager's father and brother make emotional pleas for his safe return

The father and brother of Jay Slater, the British teenager missing in Tenerife since Monday, have made emotional pleas for his safe return.

Warren Slater, the 19-year-old’s father, told Sky News he is “just hoping that somebody has helped him off this mountain”.

He added: “That’s all I want, that somebody has helped him get off this mountain. I just want him back and that’s it. He’s my son.”

His voice cracking, Mr Slater said the last few days have been “a nightmare, just a nightmare”.

Struggling to control his emotions, he then walked away from the camera as he repeated: “I just want him back and that’s it.”

Mr Slater’s brother, Zak Slater, echoed those words, saying: “We don’t know where he is, what’s happened, or anything. I don’t know what to say. We just want him to come home safe.”

He also became emotional as he said: “I just wish he’d come home.”

The pair have gone to Tenerife to help search for Jay, who was holidaying with friends before he disappeared. He had been at the NRG music festival with two friends on Sunday.

He was last heard from just after 8am on Monday, when he called his friend Lucy Law to say he was setting off to walk back to his accommodation after missing a bus.

It’s not clear whether he realised the journey could take as much as 11 hours.

Ms Law said he told her he was lost, in need of water, and only had 1% charge on his phone.

On Saturday, the sixth day of the search, police, rescue dogs and firefighters reconvened at Rural de Teno Park, the last location logged by Mr Slater’s phone.

Mr Slater is from the Lancashire town of Oswaldtwistle, where specialist officers are continuing to support his family, Lancashire Constabulary said.

The force added it had made “an offer of support to the Guardia Civil to see if they need any additional resources”, which was rejected by Spanish authorities.

Missing teen’s mum has ‘not slept’

The apprentice bricklayer’s mother, who is also on the island, the largest in the Canary Islands, also made a direct plea to her missing son, saying: “We just need you home.”

Debbie Duncan said she has “not slept” since he disappeared.

Asked how the family was coping with the situation, she said: “We’re not. I’m not coping very well at all. I’ve not slept, I’m exhausted. It’s been awful. I can’t give up on him, I just can’t.”