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An American citizen freed in an exchange deal after being imprisoned for nearly eight years in Iran has urged the US government to launch a “gamechanging global endeavour” to end the Islamic regime’s longstanding practice of holding foreign nationals hostage.
Siamak Namazi, 51, was one of five US citizens released yesterday under the terms of an agreement in which five Iranians facing charges in the US were granted clemency and Iran was given access to $6bn of frozen oil revenues.
The prisoners’ release was hailed by President Joe Biden, who immediately announced fresh sanctions on the hardline former Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and the country’s powerful intelligence ministry over the still undetermined fate of Robert Levinson, a retired FBI agent who vanished after visiting an island off Iran’s southern coast in 2007.
Biden also called on Americans – including those holding dual US-Iranian nationality – to avoid visiting Iran, which has been at loggerheads with Washington since 52 American embassy employees were held hostage in Tehran for 444 days in the aftermath of the 1979 Islamic revolution.
What did Namazi say? “Over the past 44 years, the Iranian regime has mastered the nasty game of caging innocent Americans and other foreign nationals, and commercialising their freedom,” he said after flying from Tehran to Doha, calling Evin prison a “dystopian United Nations of hostages”.
‘Credible evidence’ India behind alleged assassination of Sikh leader, says Trudeau
Justin Trudeau said there is “credible evidence” India is responsible for the alleged assassination of Hardeep Singh Nijjar, a prominent Canadian Sikh leader, a claim Delhi dismissed as “absurd”.
The Canadian prime minister told the House of Commons of Canada yesterday that, in recent weeks, national security authorities had been investigating allegations that New Delhi was behind a state-sponsored assassination.
“Any involvement of a foreign government in the killing of a Canadian citizen on Canadian soil is an unacceptable violation of our sovereignty,” he said. “Canada is a rule-of-law country, the protection of our citizens in defence of our sovereignty are fundamental.
“Our top priorities have therefore been one, that our law enforcement and security agencies ensure the continued safety of all Canadians. And two, that all steps be taken to hold perpetrators of this murder to account.”
What has India said? India’s ministry of external affairs said it rejected statements by Trudeau and his foreign minister, adding that allegations of India’s involvement in any act of violence in Canada were “absurd and motivated”. The ministry added: “We are a democratic polity with a strong commitment to rule of law.”
Trump official Jeffrey Clark attempts to move Georgia trial to federal court
A federal judge appeared inclined yesterday to reject the former Trump justice department official Jeffrey Clark’s effort to transfer from state to federal court his criminal case for conspiring to overturn the 2020 election in Georgia, striking his written testimony from consideration.
The way that the hearing played out for Clark could dictate how future efforts by Donald Trump or his other co-defendants to remove their cases to federal court could play out, given how Clark’s lawyer at times put blame on the former president.
The district judge Steve Jones did not make a formal ruling from the bench at the court hearing in Atlanta but left Clark, the former assistant attorney general for the civil division, without the key evidence he had wanted to submit after he failed to appear in person.
What does that mean? It means the judge will make a decision on whether Clark can remove his racketeering charges brought by the Fulton county district attorney’s office last month based on the oral arguments by Clark’s lawyer and parts of a supporting affidavit from former attorney general Edwin Meese.
In other news …
A colossal, beloved 150-year-old banyan tree at the centre of Lahaina town that was scorched when deadly wildfires ravaged Maui, Hawaii, last month is showing viridescent signs of new growth. The tree, which has been described as the “heartbeat of Lahaina Town” was badly singed, but still standing last month.
A major fire has broken out at a warehouse in Lviv and a man has been seriously injured after a Russian attack on the western Ukrainian city, the regional governor has said. In a Telegram post, Maxim Kozitsky said a woman was also pulled uninjured from the rubble.
Authorities found a debris field on Monday from a Marine Corps F-35 stealth fighter jet that crashed in South Carolina after the pilot ejected and parachuted to safety. The debris field was located in rural Williamsburg county, according to the Marine Corps’ Joint Base Charleston.
One day after the largest climate march since the start of the Covid-19 pandemic, hundreds of activists blockaded the Federal Reserve Bank in New York to call for an end to funding for coal, oil and gas, with police making many arrests.
Stat of the day: People who work from home all the time ‘cut emissions by 54%’ against those in office
People who work remotely all the time produce less than half the greenhouse gas emissions of office workers, according to a study. Employees in the US who worked from home all the time were predicted to reduce their emissions by 54%, compared with workers in an office, the study found. But hybrid workers did not reduce their emissions so dramatically, according to the research published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
One day of remote work a week reduced emissions by just 2% because energy savings from not being in the office were offset by factors such as an increase in non-commuting travel when working from home. Working remotely two or four days a week reduced an individual’s emissions by up to 29% compared with on-site workers.
Don’t miss this: Property over people? New York City’s $52bn plan to save itself from the sea
In late October 2012, the approach of Hurricane Sandy up the US Eastern Seaboard coincided with a spring tide, propelling a surge of storm water that crashed into New York City and its surrounds, causing more than $70bn in damages, mostly from flooding. Since that day, a billion-dollar, federally funded programme has been enacted to fortify nine miles of the Rockaway peninsula’s Atlantic-facing beach. The boardwalk was rebuilt in concrete and now doubles as flood protection; quarry stone groins were put in to break the waves; and – allowing for nesting of small, plump piping plover, a federally protected species – sand dunes were dug out and underpinned with a stone-filled trench and concrete wall going down 16 feet. A decade after Hurricane Sandy, critics are calling it a “failure of imagination”.
… or this: Russell Brand’s wonderland – the online soapbox where the star pushes his ‘free speech’
Amid the relentless conspiracy theorising on Russell Brand’s YouTube and Rumble video channels, there have been fleeting pauses for self-reflection. The comedian first launched his internet career back in 2014 with his own YouTube series, entitled The Trews: True News with Russell Brand. There were more than 200 episodes in the first year but the sharp spike in appetite for his views came after he started to suggest that the response of governments to the Covid pandemic along with that of the pharmaceutical industry and the “mainstream media” were part of a conspiracy.
Last Friday, it was through his channel on the video platform Rumble that Brand first commented on the rumours that the Sunday Times and the Channel 4 Dispatches programme were about to publish “very, very serious criminal allegations”. They would include rape. He has denied the allegations.
Climate check: ‘Mutilating the tree of life’ – wildlife loss accelerating, scientists warn
Groups of animal species are vanishing at a rate 35 times higher than average owing to human activity, according to researchers, who say it is further evidence that a sixth mass extinction in Earth’s history is under way and accelerating. Scientists analysing the rate at which closely related animal species have gone extinct in the past 500 years have found they would have taken 18,000 years to vanish in the absence of humans, and the rate at which they are being lost is increasing. The study, published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, found that at least 73 mammal, bird, reptile and amphibian species groupings have gone extinct since 1500. If trends had followed the average pre-human impact rates of extinction, just two would have been expected to disappear, they estimated.
Last Thing: Justice for Neanderthals! What the debate about our long-dead cousins reveals about us
The past few years have seen an abundance of works of popular science about a variety of human beings who once inhabited Eurasia: “Neanderthals”. They died out, it appears, 40,000 years ago. What distinguishes these new books isn’t just what they tell us about an extinct sub-species of humans, but the surprising passion they bring to their subject. Their authors are enraged that popular ideas about the Neanderthals lag so far behind the cutting edge of paleontological research – research that has brought the Neanderthals closer to us than they have been in 40,000 years.
They were long derided as knuckle-draggers, but new discoveries are setting the record straight. As we rethink the nature of the Neanderthals, we could also learn something about our own humanity
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