The Times - UK (2020-07-28)

30 2GM Tuesday July 28 2020 | the times

Wo r l d

Brush with crime: fox

is mystery shoe thief

Germany A fox has stolen more

than 100 shoes from gardens in a

wealthy area of Berlin. Christian

Meyer, a resident of Zehlendorf,

started patrolling after losing a

running shoe and spotted the

animal “in flagrante with two

blue flip-flops in his snout”. A few

days later he followed it to an

area of nearby woods that was

littered with the stolen goods,

possibly taken as toys for its cubs.

Nuclear arms protect

us from war, says Kim

North Korea Kim Jong-un said

that his nuclear arsenal was a

guarantee against war. He told a

reception for veterans of the

1950-53 Korean War that the

weapons had been developed to

win “absolute power”. “We are

capable of defending ourselves in

the face of any form of high

intensity pressure and military

threats from imperialist and

hostile forces,” he added. (Reuters)

Samoan chieftain lured

slaves to New Zealand

New Zealand A Samoan chieftain

was jailed for 11 years over an

“abhorrent” slavery racket that

exploited workers from his Pacific

homeland over a 25-year period.

Joseph Matamata, 66, lured 13

victims to New Zealand with

promises of generous pay but

beat them once they arrived and

forced them into unpaid labour

on farms and in his home. His

youngest victim was 12. (AFP)

Murals removed from

Breivik bomb building

Norway Two murals designed by

Picasso have been removed from

a government building damaged

during the 2011 attack by the

right-wing extremist Anders

Breivik. He planted a car bomb

near the Y Block in Oslo before

going on a shooting spree, killing

77 people in total. The complex is

being demolished and replaced

and the sandblasted murals will

be installed at the new one. (AFP)

26 Rohingya refugees

found on Malaysia isle

Malaysia Twenty-six Rohingya,

including four children, have

been found on a northern islet

after they jumped from a fishing

boat and were feared to have

drowned. The coastguard began a

search after picking up a survivor

on Saturday near Langkawi. Two

suspected traffickers were

arrested. Hundreds of thousands

of Rohingya have fled oppression

in Burma since 2017. (AP)

Protesters topple statue

of Napoleon’s empress

Martinique Cheering protesters

tore down a statue of Napoleon’s

wife on a Caribbean island as part

of worldwide protests against

racism. Empress Joséphine was

born on Martinique and lived

there until she was a teenager

before moving to Paris. She and

Napoleon Bonaparte married in

1796. Campaigners also toppled a
      statue to Pierre Belain
      d’Esnambuc, who established
      France’s first colony in the West
      Indies. The French government
      condemned the vandalism.
      President Macron has said that
      France will not take down statues
      of colonial-era figures as has
      happened in some other
      countries. (AP)

can House Speaker, called it “brain-

washing” and “propaganda”.

Mr Cotton told the Arkansas Demo-

crat Gazette: “We have to study the his-

tory of slavery and its role and impact

on the development of our country. As

the Founding Fathers said, it was the

necessary evil upon which the union

was built, but the union was built in a

way, as Lincoln said, to put slavery on

the course to its ultimate extinction.”

Nicole Hannah Jones, an author of

the 1619 project, tweeted: “If... perman-

ent, race-based slavery where it was

legal to rape, torture and sell human be-

ings for profit were a ‘necessary evil’ as

@TomCottonAR says, it’s hard to im-

agine what cannot be justified if it is a

means to an end.”

Mr Cotton caused outrage last month

with an article in The New York Times

urging Mr Trump to use the army

against protesters.

Tension mounted along the Israel-

Lebanon border last night after a clash

between the Israeli army and suspected

Hezbollah fighters in disputed territory.

Binyamin Netanyahu, Israel’s prime

minister, broke off a meeting with his

Likud party as reports of an attack came

through. On the Lebanese side, pro-

Hezbollah media said that a unit be-

longing to the group had fired a

Kornet missile at an Israeli Merkeva

tank in the disputed Shebaa Farms area.

Initial reports suggested that a Hez-

bollah unit had infiltrated into the area

across the United Nations “Blue Line”

that marks the de facto border.

The Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) re-

turned fire, saying that they had forced

the unit back into Lebanese territory

without sustaining casualties. They

also denied that the Hezbollah unit had

managed to fire a missile, though they

subsequently sent a barrage of artillery

shells into southern Lebanon.

Hezbollah denied mounting an

attack, saying that the Israelis had over-

reacted because of its “state of terror”.

The Shebaa Farms, known as Har

Dov on the Israeli side, form a strip of

land six miles long and two miles deep

at the point where Israel, Lebanon and

the Golan Heights meet.

A complex reminder of a century of

conflict, the area was taxed in the colo-

nial era by Lebanon, controlled by Syria

after independence but then occupied

and annexed by Israel after the Six-Day

War in 1967, along with the rest of the

Syrian Golan Heights.

The Israeli government considers it

to be Israeli territory, while Lebanon

and Hezbollah say that it is the last rem-

nant of the Israeli occupation of south-

ern Lebanon, which ended in 2000.

Because it is disputed territory,

attacks by Hezbollah inside Shebaa

Farms are regarded by both sides as less

confrontational than attacks elsewhere

along the border. Israel conducted one

of its now regular airstrikes on targets

associated with Iranian-backed militias

inside Syria last week. Hezbollah later

reported that one of its operatives had

been killed, prompting consternation

in Israel, which is said to be keen to

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Farms

Israel and Hezbollah exchange fire in fresh clashes

avoid outright conflict with Hezbollah

as it battles Covid-19 and a political

crisis.

It was reported to have passed a mes-

sage to Hezbollah via the UN saying

that the death was unintended and

urging the group to desist from retalia-

tion. It also threatened a response if it

did retaliate.

The seriousness of yesterday’s events

was never quite clear. Mr Netanyahu

said as he broke off the Likud meeting:

“We are in the midst of a complicated

event.” An IDF spokesman said: “We

thwarted an infiltration attempt of a

terror squad crossing the Blue Line into

Israel. No IDF casualties. The event is

ongoing.”

IDF officials said that the army had

watched the unit approach and cross

the border — there is no fence — before

opening fire and driving it back. They

stepped back from media claims that

Hezbollah fighters had been killed, say-

ing their condition was “not known”.

Pro-Hezbollah social media claimed

that Israeli soldiers had been killed but

this was swiftly denied by the Israelis,

and then by Hezbollah itself. The Israeli

talk of “thwarting an infiltration” was

“absolutely not true”, it said.

A similar border attack by Hezbollah

last September fizzled out quickly.

Golan Heights

Richard Spencer Beirut

Israeli artillery units were ready for action on the border if Hezbollah retaliated

Protesters clashing with federal agents in Portland, Oregon, have shields and use leaf blowers to disperse tear gas, below left

Slavery a necessary evil, says senator

United States

David Charter Washington

MARCIO JOSE SANCHEZ/AP

America’s chaotic summer of protest

showed no signs of abating as a far-right

Republican senator close to President

Trump said that slavery was a “necessa-

ry evil” to build America — a view that

he claimed the Founding Fathers held.

Tom Cotton, who represents Arkan-

sas, made the remark while attacking a

project to re-examine slavery that con-

servatives claim is rewriting history to

make early US leaders out to be racist

oppressors.

The row erupted after another night

of clashes in Portland, Oregon,

between federal officers ordered in by

Mr Trump to defend a court building

against activists who used cutting tools

to remove protective fencing. Portland

police said that they had found two pet-

rol bombs and four loaded gun maga-

zines in a park.

Some warned that the protesters

were playing into the Trump campaign

narrative that electing a Democratic

president would see similar violence

across America.

The Trump administration has de-

cided to send reinforcements to the 114

federal agents in Portland with plans

for 100 deputy US marshals and an

extra 50 customs and border protection

personnel, according to The Washing-

ton Post. It was not clear how

many would be replace-

ment and how many ad-

ditional forces.

Other protesters

in Portland, of

whom most have

been peaceful,

copied tactics

from the Hong

Kong protests and

used leaf blowers

to disperse tear gas

fired by federal

agents. As the chaos

spread to other Demo-

cratic-controlled cities, in-

cluding Seattle, all of which are

resisting Mr Trump’s imposition of fed-

eral officers, the president retweeted a

supporter who wrote: “I find it extreme-

ly ironic that all of the people who said

‘Trump would destroy America’ are the

one’s burning our cities.”

The protests in Portland

and elsewhere are over

the killing of George

Floyd, a black man,

under the knee of a

white police officer

in Minneapolis in

May. In Portland

they have become

an anti-estab-

lishment rejection

of the forces sent in

to defend federal

property.

Mr Trump has vowed

to send federal officers

drawn from border patrol and

airport security guards into other cities

as the “president of law and order”.

Some opponents accuse him of stoking

the protests so that he can accuse Dem-

ocratic leaders of being soft on crime.

Mr Cotton, 43, drew angry protests

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from, among others, authors of The

New York Times’s 1619 project, which

reassessed slavery and which has been

adopted as teaching material by schools

in some Democratic-controlled areas.

The project traced an alternative

American narrative not from the decla-

ration of independence in 1776 but from

the arrival of the first enslaved people in

1619, claiming that the legacy of slavery

shaped capitalism.

Mr Trump called it a “Racism Witch

Hunt” by the “failing New York Times”

while Newt Gingrich, a former Republi-

Tom Cotton has

defended the

Founding Fathers