Category: 2. World

Thailand’s Constitutional Court suspended Prime Minister Paetongtarn Shinawatra from office until it rules on a petition seeking her permanent removal over alleged ethical misconduct, deepening a crisis that threatens to end her family’s over two-decade dominance of the country’s politics.

Paetongtarn is barred from exercising prime ministerial powers while the nine-member court considers the petition by a group of senators, it said in a statement. The ruling to suspend her was backed by seven out of nine judges, the court said.

Istanbul chief public prosecutor’s office announces investigation after charges of ‘openly insulting religious values’.

Police in Turkiye have detained four people over a cartoon published by the satirical magazine LeMan, which critics say appeared to depict Prophet Muhammad and Prophet Moses shaking hands in the sky as missiles fell below in a war-like scene – a claim the magazine denies.

The cartoon, published last week, triggered a backlash from government officials and religious groups in Turkiye. On Tuesday, the Istanbul chief public prosecutor’s office announced a formal investigation under charges of “openly insulting religious values”.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan lashed out at the magazine, describing it as “a vile provocation”.

“It is a clear provocation disguised as humour, a vile provocation,” he said, also denouncing it as a “hate crime”, confirming authorities had taken over LeMan magazine and were taking legal action against it.

Interior Minister Ali Yerlikaya posted a video on X showing the arrest of cartoonist Dogan Pehlevan on Monday.

“I strongly condemn the shameless caricaturing of our Prophet,” Yerlikaya said. “This is not press freedom. This is not freedom of expression. These provocative acts, which insult our sacred values and deeply hurt Muslim consciences, will not go unpunished.”

He added that a total of six detention orders had been issued. Two people who were overseas have yet to be arrested.

Yerlikaya also said the magazine’s graphic designer and two other senior staffers were detained, along with the cartoonist.

Justice Minister Yilmaz Tunc said the investigation is proceeding under Article 216 of the Turkish Penal Code, which criminalises “incitement to hatred and enmity”.

In a statement posted on X, LeMan apologised to readers who were offended but insisted the cartoon had been misinterpreted. The magazine said Pehlevan aimed to highlight “the suffering of a Muslim man killed in Israeli attacks” and denied any attempt to mock Islam.

“The name Muhammad is among the most common in the Muslim world in honour of the Prophet. The cartoon does not portray him, nor was it intended to disrespect religious beliefs,” the magazine said, accusing critics of wilfully distorting its message.

LeMan urged authorities to investigate what it described as a targeted smear campaign and called for stronger protection of press freedom.

Later in the evening, videos surfaced online of crowds of protesters marching to LeMan’s office in Istanbul, kicking the building’s doors and chanting slogans.

The case has reignited debates in Turkiye over the boundaries of free expression and religious sensitivity.

In a lifetime of activism, I have canvassed and phone-banked, raised money, and twisted arms for dozens of political candidates. Zohran Mamdani, the 33-year-old Indian-Ugandan democratic socialist and presumptive winner of the New York City Democratic mayoral primary, is the only one I’ve both supported without reservation and believed could win.

Volunteering for a campaign always teaches you something. Often, it’s discouraging – like the moment my partner and I saw Hillary Clinton’s team selling lawn signs for $25 instead of blanketing Philadelphia by distributing them free, and predicted she’d lose. But the lessons of Zohran’s victory are hopeful for the left and the Democrats – if the party takes them to heart.

Socialism is practical

“A city we can afford.” Zohran’s slogan is unremarkably moderate and unabashedly progressive. In a city whose median income is rising sharply in spite of a 25% poverty rate, only the rich are comfortable, while everyone else, from students to firefighters to families with more than one kid struggle – or leave.

Asked by a local Fox TV interviewer what a democratic socialist is, Mamdani answered: “To me it means that every New Yorker has what they need to live a dignified life – it’s local government’s responsibility to provide that”. His platform includes a rent freeze on the city’s 2.3 million regulated apartments; free childcare starting at six months; no-fare buses; and a $30 minimum wage – about the city’s living wage – by 2030. Basically, he believes life in the city can be easier and happier.

This platform resonates. When you canvass, you ask people what concerns them. A woman with a baby on her hip nodded toward the baby and sighed. I got what she meant. At a shabby industrial building surrounded by new glass towers, a woman descended four flights because the landlord won’t fix the buzzer, or anything else; he’s trying to push out the tenants and sell the lot. She said cheap rent allowed her to start a business, which she feared Mamdani would tax to death. I told her he supported a crackdown on bad landlords and commercial rent control. “Hmm,” she said. By the conversation’s end, I entered “leans yes” in the canvassing app.

Mamdani’s ideas are not pie-in-the-sky. The rent guidelines board, appointed by the mayor, voted 0% increases on some leases in 2015, 2016, and on all leases in 2020, during the pandemic. Democratic mayor Bill De Blasio got universal pre-kindergarten staffed, funded, and full almost immediately upon election in 2014.

Chicago and Atlanta may be moving ahead with municipal groceries. A 2023 pilot program waiving fares on five New York bus routes was largely successful, and its failures can inform the next attempt.

How would Mamdani pay for all this? Impose a 2% tax on the top 1%–residents earning more than $1m annually; and raise the top corporate tax rate to match neighboring New Jersey’s, to 11.5% from 7.25%.

New York has the resources. Nationally, corporate profits have risen 80% since the pandemic. In New York, 34,000 households, a thin skin on the Big Apple, take home 35% of the earnings. Other cities and states have tapped the windfall that companies and the rich have reaped from federal income tax cuts. Combined with such Republican-sounding ideas as eliminating waste in procurement and boosting small business by cutting red tape, Mamdani says these reforms can bring in $10bn in revenue, pay for the services that improve city life and ultimately grow the tax base.

“From each according to their ability, to each according to their need”: that’s socialism 101. “The greatest good for the greatest number”: old-fashioned utilitarianism. These policies are also sensible municipal management.

Moral integrity is good politics

Since founding his college’s chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine, Mamdani, an east African Muslim, has been a vocal critic of Israel’s occupation. A week after Hamas’s attacks – which he calls a war crime – he joined Jewish Voice for Peace in a protest of Israel’s outsized response. For this position, his closest rival, former New York governor Andrew Cuomo, and the rightwing press have hammered Mamdani as an antisemite and a Holocaust denier; on one mailer, his photo was doctored to make his beard bushier and longer. Cuomo kept mispronouncing his name, insinuating that Zohran Mamdani is inscrutably, dangerously foreign.

Establishment Democrats – Kamala Harris, Cory Booker – keep running from condemnation of what most of the world calls Israel’s crimes against humanity. This is not just a moral failing. It’s politically unnecessary. A recent Pew poll found that almost seven in 10 Democrats – and half of Republicans under 50 – have negative views of Israel. In a couple of months of canvassing, I met only two people who wouldn’t vote for Mamdani because of his position on Israel-Palestine. One had Hebrew tattooed on his forearm. Among the volunteers, several who were drawn to Zohran for his stance on Palestine, were Jewish.

The question may be moot. In an Emerson poll, 46% of New York voters said their candidate did not need to be pro-Israel. The journalist Peter Beinart believes that Mamdani’s victory suggests that the movement for Palestinian freedom has entered mainstream politics and can be an asset to Democrats.

Confronted repeatedly by false accusations of antisemitism, Mamdani has been frustrated and hurt. Yet he is neither defensive nor evasive. “At the core of my position about Israel, Palestine, anyplace in the world, is consistency, international law, and human rights,” he told Fox. “I believe that justice, freedom, safety – those are things that should be applied to all people.”

In his victory speech, he said: “I cannot promise that you will always agree with me, but I will never hide from you.” He would “wrestle with” opinions that differed from his own, he added, implying he meant feelings about the Middle East.

Mamdani is a gifted politician – and an honest man who doesn’t dismiss those he disagrees with. A person can be all these, and win.

Fear doesn’t always rule elections

Mamdani’s campaign was partially, appropriately, fueled by economic anxiety. But try as his detractors did to shift the focus, it was not fueled by fear of crime. He does not advocate defunding the police. Instead, he’s proposed a department of community safety, to deal with volatile mental health crises in the subways and to attack hate crimes at their source, leaving cops to pursue violent crime. He recognizes that good public services and personal economic stability, not more police, constitute public safety.

More striking, Zohran mobilized civic pride, solidarity, and joy. These too are winning political emotions.

Young people represent the crises facing working Americans

At the beginning of a canvassing shift, everybody introduces themselves and says why they’re there. I am usually the oldest. As a white person, I’m one of maybe half the group. Many of my comrades’ genders are less recognizable than my own. As a homeowner with an adequate income, I’m in the minority.

“I can’t even afford the Bronx” – the cheapest borough for renters – a recent college graduate with her parents moaned, to knowing laughter. A pregnant woman has “a panic attack” whenever she contemplates paying for daycare. A man in his 30s who drives an Uber 12 hours a day would like to be home when his kids are awake. A first-generation Chinese American fears for her undocumented parents and feels an obligation to elect someone who will protect them.

Their jobs are precarious, their credit cards overcharged. They have no health insurance and wonder if they’ll ever retire their student debt. They come from mixed immigration status families and imagine middle age on a broiling planet. And they are the young voters who turned out overwhelmingly for a member of the Democratic Socialists of America. If the Democrats want the same results, they need to offer these voters, who personify America’s troubled working and middle classes, a progressive vision.

People can overpower money

Mamdani crushed it in presumed Cuomo strongholds throughout the five boroughs. Of course, he ruled in the youth-dominated “commie corridor” from Astoria, Queens to Bushwick, Brooklyn (80%). But he also carried communities such as Asian Flushing, Sunset Park, Elmhurst, and Chinatown Queens, by no means presumed progressive.

In February, Cuomo polled at 33% of potential votes; Zohran had 1%.

By primary day, the pro-Cuomo Super Pac, bankrolled by billionaires including Trump supporters like Wall Street bigwig Bill Ackman, had spent $25m, largely on smear ads. Mamdani’s Pac spent $1.2m, and a Working Families party affiliated Pac put in $500,000.

Mamdani had as many as 50,000 volunteers, who knocked over a million doors. Cuomo avoided the public and the press.

Money isn’t everything.

We don’t have to settle for the lesser of two evils

The general election will be tougher. Mamdani beat a badly compromised rival with only 432,000 votes in a city with 4.7 million “active voters” in 2024, not all of whom vote. If Cuomo runs as an independent, he will double down on the Islamophobia and red-baiting. So will now independent mayor Eric Adams and Republican Curtis Sliwa, founder of the quasi-vigilante Guardian Angels. The Republican party is already making Mamdani the poster boy of a Marxist, terrorist, criminal immigrant Democratic party. Wall Street is preparing for battle.

But whether Mamdani wins or loses, pundits on all sides will avow that what happens in liberal New York stays in liberal New York. It can’t transplant to national, or even statewide, elections. That’s a cynical error.

In his primary night speech, Mamdani promised to use his office “to reject Donald Trump’s fascism, to stop masked Ice agents from deporting our neighbors, and to govern our city as a model for the Democratic party. A party where we fight for working people with no apologies.”

This is not today’s Democratic party. But it has everything to gain from watching Zohran Mamdani and the extraordinary coalition of superhumanly enthusiastic volunteers he has inspired. Theirs are the faces of a political party that democracy, and Americans, deserve.

Thailand’s Constitutional Court has suspended Prime Minister Paetongtarn Shinawatra, who has come under mounting pressure to resign over her leaked phone conversation with former Cambodian leader Hun Sen.

The clip, in which Paetongtarn called him “uncle” and criticised a Thai military commander, sparked public anger and a petition for her dismissal, which the court is now considering.

That could make Paetongtarn the third politician in the powerful Shinawatra clan – which has dominated Thai politics for the past two decades – to lose power before completing their term.

Her ruling coalition is already teetering with a slim majority after a key conservative ally abandoned it two weeks ago.

The Constitutional Court voted 7-2 to suspend her while they consider the case for her dismissal and she has 15 days to present her defence.

In the meantime the deputy PM will serve as the country’s acting leader. Paetongtarn, however, will remain in the cabinet as culture minister, a new appointment following a cabinet reshuffle that was endorsed hours before she was suspended.

On Tuesday, Paetongtarn apologised again, adding that the purpose of her phone call with Hun Sen was “more than 100%… for the country”.

The call was about the border dispute between the two countries – although it’s decades old, tensions have risen again since late May when a Cambodian soldier was killed.

The leaked audio especially angered conservative lawmakers who accused her of appeasing Hun Sen and undermining Thailand’s military.

But she defended herself on Tuesday, saying, “I had no intent to do it for my own interest. I only thought about how to avoid chaos, avoid fighting and to avoid loss of lives.

“If you listened to it carefully, you’d understand that I didn’t have ill intentions. This is what I’ll focus and spend time on explaining thoroughly.”

If she is eventually dismissed, Paetongtarn will be the second prime minister from the Pheu Thai party to be removed from premiership since August last year.

At that time, her predecessor Srettha Thavisin was dismissed, also by the constitutional court, for appointing to his cabinet a former lawyer who was once jailed.

Days later, Paetongtarn – whose father is Thailand’s deposed leader Thaksin Shinawatra – was sworn in as prime minister.

Tuesday’s decision once again underscores the constitutional court’s power to unmake governments, which critics say can be weaponised to target political opponents.

This court has dissolved 34 parties since 2006, including the reformist Move Forward, which won the most seats and votes in the 2023 election but was blocked from forming the government.

“This has become a pattern in Thai politics… a part of the Thai political culture, which is not what a true political process is supposed to be,” said Titipol Phakdeewanich, a political science lecturer at Ubon Ratchathani University.

“The suspension by court order shouldn’t have happened but most people could see its legitimacy because the leaked conversation really made people question if the PM was genuinely defending the interest of the country.”

Paetongtarn, 38, remains the country’s youngest leader and only the second woman to be PM after her aunt, Yingluck Shinawatra.

Already struggling to revive a weak economy, Paetongtarn saw her approval rating fall to 9.2% last weekend, down from 30.9% in March.

The court’s decision comes on the same day as Paetongtarn’s father, who was seen as the driving force behind her government, battles his own political troubles.

Thaksin is fighting charges of insulting the monarchy over an interview he gave to a South Korean newspaper nine years ago. His trial started on Tuesday.

The controversial political leader, who returned to Thailand in 2023 after 15 years in exile, is the most high-profile figure to face charges under the country’s notorious lese majeste law.

Thaksin’s return was part of a grand compromise between Pheu Thai and its former conservative foes.

They include the military, which deposed two Shinawatra governments in coups, and groups close to the monarchy.

President Donald Trump’s move to cut most of the US funding towards foreign humanitarian aid could cause more than 14 million additional deaths by 2030, according to research published in The Lancet medical journal.

A third of those at risk of premature deaths were children, researchers projected.

Low- and middle-income countries were facing a shock “comparable in scale to a global pandemic or a major armed conflict,” said Davide Rasella, who co-authored the report.

US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said in March that over 80% of all programmes at the US Agency for International Development (USAID) had been cancelled. The Trump administration has taken aim at what it sees as wasteful spending.

The controversial cutbacks – which were condemned around the world by humanitarian organisations – were overseen by Elon Musk. The billionaire was then leading an initiative to shrink the federal workforce.

During his second term, Trump has repeatedly said he wants overseas spending to be closely aligned with his “America First” approach.

The USAID funding cuts “risk abruptly halting – and even reversing – two decades of progress in health among vulnerable populations,” said the statement from Rasella, a researcher at the Barcelona Institute for Global Health.

In their report, Rasella and his fellow researchers estimated that USAID funding had prevented more than 90 million deaths in developing countries between 2001 and 2021.

They modelled the potential impact on death rates with an assumption that funding would be cut by 83% – the figure provided by Rubio in March.

The researchers suggested that the cuts could lead to a “staggering” number of more than 14 million avoidable deaths by 2030.

That would include the deaths of more than 4.5 million children under the age of five, they added.

The Lancet report was published as dozens of world leaders meet in the Spanish city of Seville this week for a United Nations-led aid conference, the biggest of its kind in a decade. The US is not expected to attend.

The US, by far the world’s largest humanitarian aid provider, has operated in more than 60 countries, largely through contractors. According to government data, it spent $68bn (£55bn) on international aid in 2023.

USAID was seen as integral to the global aid system. After Trump’s cuts were announced, other countries followed suit with their own reductions – including the UK, France and Germany.

The moves have been widely condemned by humanitarian organisations. Last month, the United Nations said it was dealing with “the deepest funding cuts ever to hit the international humanitarian sector”.

According to Rubio’s statements in March, there were still approximately 1,000 remaining US programmes that would be administered “more effectively” under the US State Department and in consultation with Congress.

Still, the situation on the ground has not been improving, according to UN workers.

Last month, a UN official told the BBC that hundreds of thousands of people were “slowly starving” in Kenyan refugee camps after US funding cuts reduced food rations to their lowest ever levels.

At a hospital in Kakuma, in northwestern Kenya, the BBC witnessed a baby who could barely move and was showing signs of malnutrition, including having parts of her skin wrinkled and peeling.

PARIS — France and the rest of Europe were still in the grips of the first major heat wave this summer with health warnings in effect Tuesday, even as conditions began to improve in some parts of the region.

Punishing temperatures were forecast to reach 40 degrees Celsius (104 degrees Fahrenheit) in Paris and to stay unusually high in Belgium and the Netherlands. In contrast, temperatures were falling in Portugal, where no red heat warnings were issued.

In France, the national weather agency Météo-France placed several departments under the highest red alert, with the Paris region particularly hard hit. The heat wave — defined as consecutive days of very high temperature — is expected to intensify Tuesday and more than 1,300 schools were expected to be partially or fully closed, the Education Ministry said.

Visitors to the Eiffel Tower without tickets were told to postpone their visits, and the summit of the city’s landmark was closed until Thursday.

Farther south, 17 of Italy’s 27 major cities were experiencing a heat wave, according to the Health Ministry.

Météo-France also warned of the heightened risk of wildfires due to the drought-stricken soil, compounded by a lack of rain in June and the recent surge in temperature.

Climate experts warn that future summers are likely to be hotter than any recorded to date. By 2100, France could be up to 4 C (39 F) warmer, with temperatures exceeding 40 C expected every year and extreme heat spikes potentially reaching 50 C (122 F). According to Météo-France, the country may face a tenfold increase in the number of heat wave days by 2100.

In Portugal, Lisbon was forecast to reach 33 C (91 F), typical for this time of the year, though some inland areas could still see peaks of 43 C (109 F), according to the national weather agency. June temperature records were broken in two locations in Portugal on June 29.

___

Associated Press writers Barry Hatton in Lisbon, Portugal, and David Billier contributed to this report.

CNN
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Democratic mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani could clinch victory Tuesday when the New York City Board of Elections releases the first look at the ranked-choice voting results from the June 24 primary.

The board’s report will also provide more data on how primary voters viewed Mamdani’s candidacy after a week of conversations about what his performance means for the party and the city.

Under the city’s ranked-choice voting rules, if no candidate wins a majority of the first-choice votes, the race is decided by how voters ranked other candidates on their ballots.

Mamdani, a 33-year-old state assemblyman and democratic socialist, emerged on Election Night with 43.5% of the first-choice votes and a significant lead over former Gov. Andrew Cuomo.

The results Tuesday made clear that Mamdani would be heavily favored to cross 50% once ranked-choice tabulation was complete. Mamdani had a cross-endorsement with the only other candidate who won more than 10% of the vote, city Comptroller Brad Lander. And much of the rest of the field had encouraged voters to leave Cuomo off their ballots entirely. Cuomo saw that writing on the wall and conceded the race on Election Night (although he will still be included in today’s results).

The New York City Board of Elections will release a full, but unofficial, look at the ranked-choice tabulation based on all the ballots processed so far.

In the ranked-choice voting process the city is using, the results are tabulated in rounds with the candidate with the fewest votes being eliminated and people who ranked that candidate first having votes reallocated to their next-highest choice still in the running.

That process continues until only two candidates are left and there’s a winner.

Election officials will run that tabulation on the more than 990,000 ballots the city released last Tuesday, plus any additional ballots processed since then (mail ballots that arrived after Friday weren’t included in the Election Night report).

However, these results won’t be final. There will still be a small number of ballots added to the count between now and when the board certifies the election on July 15. While these ballots could shift the order in which lower-rated candidates are eliminated, it’s highly unlikely they’ll have any impact on the final results.

There’s very little reason to think the results won’t show Mamdani beating Cuomo in the final round.

About 20% of voters ranked someone other than Mamdani or Cuomo first. Without accounting for the additional ballots that will be added to the count, that means that for Mamdani to win, he needs to be ranked ahead of Cuomo on only about one-third of ballots for that went for other candidates in the first round.

Realistically, an even smaller number would secure his victory since a sizable number of votes will drop out of the calculation as voters’ top choices are eliminated, reducing the number of votes required to win a majority.

Because of these “exhausted” ballots, Mamdani’s percentage of the vote in the final round will be higher than it is now, even before accounting for other voters who had ranked him lower on their ballots.

All that being said, it’s theoretically possible Cuomo wins. Until the board releases the results, there’s no way to know for certain how that 20% of the vote breaks down.

The ranked-choice system will give a rare peek at how voters who supported lower-ranking candidates feel about their likely nominee.

If a large share of those 20% ranked Mamdani ahead of Cuomo, it could demonstrate Mamdani’s ability to expand his coalition beyond his core supporters. On the other hand, if many voters are more supportive of Cuomo or left both men of their ballots, it could indicate wider uncertainty about the progressive candidate.

Another 36 workers remain in hospital with burns and other injuries after the blast and fire at the Sigachi factory.

At least 36 people have been confirmed dead after a powerful explosion triggered a fire at a pharmaceutical factory in the southern Indian state of Telangana.

“The condition of the bodies is such that we’ve had to deploy a specialised medical team to carry out DNA tests,” said Health and Medical Cabinet Minister of Telangana Damodar Raja Narasimha on Tuesday.

A government panel has been formed to investigate the cause of the disaster.

The blast, which erupted on Monday afternoon at a facility run by Sigachi Industries, took place in the plant’s spray dryer unit – a section used to convert raw materials into powder for drug manufacturing. The factory is located roughly 50km (31 miles) from Hyderabad, the state capital.

Authorities recovered 34 bodies from the debris, while two more workers succumbed to injuries in hospital, according to Telangana’s fire services director, GV Narayana Rao.

“The entire structure has collapsed. The fire is under control and we’re continuing to clear the rubble in case more people are trapped,” he told the Associated Press news agency.

Twenty-five of the deceased are yet to be identified, a district administrative official, P Pravinya, said.

About 36 workers remain in hospital with burns and other injuries. Police officials said that more than 140 people were working in the plant when the incident occurred.

Local residents reported hearing the blast from several kilometres away.

The incident has raised new concerns about industrial safety in India’s booming pharmaceutical sector. Despite the country’s reputation as a global supplier of low-cost medicines and vaccines, fatal accidents at drug manufacturing units are not rare, particularly in facilities handling chemicals or solvents.

Sigachi Industries, which has its headquarters in India, produces active pharmaceutical ingredients and nutrient blends, and operates manufacturing plants across the country. It also runs subsidiaries in the United Arab Emirates and the United States, according to its website.

Officials say rescue and recovery efforts will continue until the entire site has been cleared. The factory’s operations have been suspended pending the outcome of the investigation.