News in Brief

Date: 04 September 2022 - 21:23

News ID: ۱۰۶۵۲۸

WASHINGTON (Dispatches) – Hundreds of employees of the American tech giants Google and Amazon will hold a protest rally on Thursday against their companies’ recent billion-dollar deal with the Zionist regime. The employees will hold their “Day of Action,” which is part of the #NoTechforApartheid movement, on September 8, demanding the cancelation of Project Nimbus contract over the regime’s grave human rights violations against the Palestinians, Palestine’s official Wafa news agency reported on Sunday. Under the $1.2-billion contract, Google (Google Cloud Platform) and Amazon (Amazon Web Services) were selected to provide Zioonist agencies with cloud computing services, including artificial intelligence tools and machine learning. Rights groups have already expressed concern that technologies could be used by the occupying regime to surveil the Palestinians in the occupied West Bank. The #NoTechForApartheid movement, which was founded last year, has also launched a campaign to sign a petition calling on the management of the two companies to cancel the major deal.

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WASHINGTON, DC (NBC) – A man was killed and multiple other people injured at a Maryland convenience store near Washington, DC on Saturday night, police said.  Officers with the Prince George’s County Police Department were dispatched to a 7-Eleven in Maryland at 8 p.m. on reports of a shooting, the agency said. Police did not provide an exact patient count, but police Cpl. Unique Jones said a man who was struck was pronounced dead at a hospital. Multiple others were hospitalized in unknown condition for trauma related to gunshot wounds, police said. The shooting occurred in Prince George’s County, just east of Washington. The chain did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The shooting was under investigation and police were reviewing security video and interviewing witnesses, Jones said. No one was in custody in the shooting Saturday night and the motive was immediately clear, police said. “Detectives are on scene attempting to develop a suspect(s) and motive,” the department tweeted.

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SRINAGAR (Dispatches) – A human rights group has called on the Indian government to end its ‘oppression’ in Indian occupied Kashmir (IOK) amid a rise in human rights violation in the region. Amnesty International released a briefing, called, “We are being punished by the law”: Three years since of abrogation of Article 370 in Jammu & Kashmir. The briefing documents how civil society at large and journalists, lawyers, human rights defenders in particular have faced relentless interrogations, arbitrary travel bans, revolving door detentions and repressive media policies while blocking access to appeals or justice in courts and human rights bodies. “For three years now, civil society and media in Jammu and Kashmir have been subjected to a vicious crackdown by the Indian government, which is determined to stifle dissent using draconian laws, policies and unlawful practices in their arsenal,” said Aakar Patel, chair of the board of Amnesty International India. “By harassing and intimidating critical voices, authorities are targeting all credible, independent sources of information in and about Jammu and Kashmir. There is a silence achieved on all dissent through heavy handed repression which has spread fear and uncertainty in the region.” The briefing also states that the Indian government has total control on information coming out of the region after passing restrictive media policies, as the authorities suspend internet services in parts of Kashmir often without warning, thus creating a monopolistic environment of controlling the media and silencing dissent.

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OYGARDEN, Norway (AFP) – On the shores of an island off Norway’s North Sea coast, engineers are building a burial ground for unwanted greenhouse gas. The future terminal is to pump tons of liquefied carbon dioxide captured from the top of factory chimneys across Europe into cavities deep below the seabed. The project in the western municipality of Oygarden aims to prevent the gas from entering the atmosphere and contributing to global warming. It “is the world’s first open-access transport and storage infrastructure, allowing any emitter that has captured his CO2 emissions to deliver that CO2 for safe handling, transport and then permanent storage,” project manager Sverre Overa told AFP. As the planet struggles to meet its climate targets, some climate experts see the technique, called carbon capture and storage, or CCS, as a means to partially reduce emissions from fossil-fuel-based industries. Norway is the biggest hydrocarbon producer in Western Europe, but it also boasts the best CO2 storage prospects on the continent, especially in its depleted North Sea oil fields. The government has financed 80 percent of the infrastructure, putting 1.7 billion euros ($1.7 billion) on the table as part of a wider state plan to develop the technology. A cement factory and a waste-to-energy plant in the Oslo region are set to send their CO2 to the site.

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TRIPOLI (Reuters) – Libyan armed factions have fought in the western outskirts of Tripoli as forces aligned with Abdul Hamid Dbeibah’s government further consolidated their control over the capital. Fighting took place in Warshafala, a district west of Tripoli that has been the site of repeated clashes throughout the 11 years of violence and chaos since a NATO-backed uprising ousted veteran leader Muammar Qaddafi. The clashes, along with a major pro-Dbeibah group taking over a military headquarters in southern Tripoli, come a week after Libya’s biggest bout of warfare for two years, as several rival factions battled in and around the capital. Last week’s fighting dislodged several groups that had aligned with Dbeibah’s rival as prime minister — the former Interior Minister Fathi Bashagha who has been appointed by the eastern-based parliament to head a new government. The standoff between the two men had lasted for months, with Libya’s powerful eastern faction lined up behind Bashagha, while the numerous factions controlling Tripoli and the rest of the northwest were divided.