A new Maori Queen was anointed Thursday, taking on the role at a time when New Zealand is facing some of the biggest challenges to race relations in two decades.

A statement released by representatives said Nga Wai Hono i te Po had been chosen by Maori elders to replace her father, King Tuheitia Pootatau Te Wherowhero VII, who died aged 69 last week following surgery.

“The new monarch was raised up in a ceremony known as Te Whakawahinga, in front of thousands of people gathered for the tangihanga (funeral and burial) of Kiingi Tuheitia,” a spokesperson for the Kiingitanga or royal family said.

The new queen is not crowned and instead a bible that has been used since 1858 was placed upon her head and Archbishop Don Tamihere used sacred oils to bestow prestige, sacredness, power and spiritual essence upon her.

Thousands gathered at Tuurangawaewae, the meeting place of the King movement, to farewell him in a traditional funeral.

Following the anointment of his daughter, the King’s coffin was taken to the Waikato River by hearse before being paddled in a flotilla of traditional Maori waka or canoe to Taupiri Mountain, where he was to be buried alongside other royals and high-profile Maori.

The Maori King or Queen is considered the paramount chief of several tribes, or iwi, but is not affiliated with all of them. The monarch’s role has no judicial or legal authority in New Zealand and is largely ceremonial.

The role is not necessarily hereditary but voted on by representatives from iwi across the country. The new queen, or Kuini, is the only daughter and youngest child of the former King and his wife Te Atawhai Makau Ariki and is aged 27.

Radio New Zealand says that the new monarch, who has two older brothers, was favored to ascend the throne, although it had not been a foregone conclusion.

The new queen holds a Master of Arts in Tikanga (societal lore of) Maori and has served on a number of boards include that of the Te Kohanga Reo National Trust, an organization charged with revitalizing Maori language, according to 1News.

New Zealand Prime Minister Christopher Luxon said the government welcomed the new queen’s appointment as she carries forward the mantle of leadership left by her father.

Her anointment comes at a time when New Zealand is struggling with race relations.

New Zealand’s center-right coalition which took office last year has started undoing policies of previous governments, particularly those promoting the official use of the Maori language, the enhancement of Indigenous living standards and rights and efforts to repair some of the wrongs undertaken during colonization.

King Tuheitia held a gathering of tribes from across the country in January to discuss how to respond to government plans. As King Tuheitia told the thousands who attended that their voices matter, his daughter, the new queen stood beside him.

German police shot dead an armed man after an exchange of fire near the Israeli consulate in central Munich on Thursday, officers said.

The suspect was armed with an older long gun when he was shot on Karolinenplatz, a square near the Israeli consulate and a Nazi documentation center, according to police in Munich.

The suspect was fatally injured after shots were exchanged, Munich police said in a post on X.

Police have not revealed a possible motive, and an investigation is under way. A helicopter was deployed to provide a more detailed assessment of the incident, according to Reuters.

This is a developing story and will be updated.

Since his papacy began in 2013, Pope Francis has signaled his intention to build bridges with other faiths. The global growth of Islam, and the rise of extremism across religions, also made this an urgent priority.

On Thursday, in the biggest mosque in the world’s largest Muslim-majority nation, the pontiff used a joint statement with Indonesia’s Grand Imam Nasaruddin Umar to pinpoint “two serious crises” facing the world: dehumanization and climate change.

“The global phenomenon of dehumanization is marked especially by widespread violence and conflict, frequently leading to an alarming number of victims,” said the statement, signed in the sprawling capital Jakarta.

“It is particularly worrying that religion is often instrumentalized in this regard, causing suffering to many, especially women, children and the elderly,” it continued. “The role of religion, however, should include promoting and safeguarding the dignity of every human life.”

On climate change, the declaration stated that “human exploitation of creation” had led to “various destructive consequences such as natural disasters, global warming and unpredictable weather patterns,” and an “obstacle to the harmonious coexistence of peoples.”

Francis arrived at Istiqlal Mosque, the largest in Southeast Asia, in the morning, driving past streets lined with well-wishers in a metropolis that is one of the fastest sinking cities in the world. That concern has sparked a controversial and expensive plan to relocate Indonesia’s capital entirely.

The mosque is next-door to the city’s Catholic cathedral, and the pope visited an underpass known as the “tunnel of friendship” which connects the places of worship.

As part of the event, the pope also listened to Islamic prayers being recited by a young blind girl named Syakila, the winner of a national Quran recitation competition.

His Indonesia trip and the signing of the declaration are in keeping with his bridge-building approach. But while about 87% of Indonesia’s 280 million people practice Islam, the visit also puts the spotlight on its 8.6 million Catholics and other minorities.

His arrival in the archipelago nation “is good news for us, something that strengthens our faith,” said Father Hieronymus Sridanto Ariwobo, a Catholic priest in Jakarta.

“And secondly, the pope will come here as a symbol (of) the relationship between the Christian and Muslim here in the country.”

Historically, the country’s form of Islam has been moderate and syncretic, often sitting comfortably alongside animist and other pre-Islamic practices, while the state ideology, known as “Pancasila,” encourages religious freedom and social justice.

“Indonesia is a great country, a mosaic of cultures, ethnicities and religious traditions, a rich diversity, which is also reflected in the varied ecosystem,” Francis said during Thursday’s inter-faith meeting, which the pontiff spent in a wheelchair. “May no one succumb to the allure of fundamentalism and violence.”

The 87-year-old is currently on the longest trip of his pontificate, despite facing health challenges and having started to use a wheelchair in recent years.

He is scheduled to hold a mass at Jakarta’s National Stadium later Thursday, which is expected to be attended by about 80,000 people.

The following day he leaves for Papua New Guinea, the second leg of a marathon 12-day visit of four countries in Southeast Asia and the South Pacific, which also includes East Timor and Singapore.

Religious plurality

Indonesia is a symbolically strong choice for the kind of inter-faith approach Francis has embraced.

In the 13th century, traders from Arabia, Gujarat and China reached what is now Indonesia, buying cloves, cinnamon and nutmeg. Some of those spice-trade merchants also brought with them Islam and, as some settled on the islands of Java and Sumatra, the religion gradually blended with local animist beliefs.

Christianity came to Indonesia with Portuguese traders more than 200 years later, mainly in the eastern islands of Maluku and Timor. The Jesuit missionary St. Francis Xavier worked in the Maluku islands, but by the late 1600s the Dutch East India Company had expelled all Catholic missionaries.

After Japanese occupation during the Second World War, nationalist leaders Sukarno and Mohammad Hatta declared Indonesian independence in 1945. Muslims and Christians have coexisted in Indonesia for decades since its modern founding, and most of its Islamic believers are broadly moderate and syncretic.

But there have been occasional bouts of religious tension. In 2021, two suicide bombers attacked Sacred Heart Cathedral in Makassar on Indonesia’s Sulawesi island during a Palm Sunday Mass, injuring at least 14 people. In 2018, at least seven were killed in three church bombings in Indonesia on the same day.

Religious minorities have at times faced attacks from vocal Islamist extremist groups and some parts of Indonesia are more conservative, such as the province of Aceh, which practices strict Islamic laws.

“Indonesia [is] like a huge laboratory for experiencing a different kind of Islam, a different kind of democracy,” said Ulil Abshar Abdalla, a leader of Nahdlatul Ulama, the country’s biggest Islamic organization.

Milawati, a Catholic who like many Indonesians goes by one name, said she hopes the pope’s visit will send a message to her compatriots to “live a life of mutual love, respect and tolerance between other religions” so that the country may progress.

“⁠As Catholics, we view all religions as having the same goal, living a good and righteous life and believing in God the Creator,” she said.

And Elia Dimas Indahputro, a 47-year-old sound engineer, said the significance of religion is sometimes overstated in parts of Indonesia, adding that mingling between people of different creeds is common.

Francis’ Indonesia visit follows trips to other majority-Muslim nations such as Egypt, Morocco and the United Arab Emirates, with the latter marking the first time a pope had travelled to the Arabian Peninsula. While in Abu Dhabi in 2019, he signed a historic declaration on inter-faith co-operation with the Grand Imam of Al-Azhar, Sheikh Ahmed al-Tayeb, the leading Sunni Muslim leader.

China is enjoying its “best in history” ties with African nations, leader Xi Jinping said on Thursday, as he pledged $50 billion in financial support for the continent, in addition to military aid.

China and Africa should rally their populations together to become a “powerful force” and write a “new chapter in peace, prosperity and progress,” Xi said in a sweeping speech to delegations from more than 50 African nations as he sought to bolster relationships seen as key to Beijing’s position as a rising global power.

“China-Africa relations are at their best in history. Looking to the future, I propose that China’s bilateral relations with all African countries, with which it has diplomatic ties, be elevated to the level of strategic relations,” the Chinese leader said while flanked by African dignitaries seated on stage in the cavernous Great Hall of the People in Beijing.

Xi also separately pledged another $280 million in aid to African countries, split evenly between military and food assistance.

The pledge of $140 million in military aid is the largest amount that China has earmarked for this purpose at the three-yearly Forum on China-Africa Cooperation. In 2018, China said it would provide $100 million to support the African Standby Force and African Capacity for Immediate Response to Crisis.

The freshly promised military aid signals the increasing importance of security in the relationship between Beijing and its partners in Africa.

Leaders including South Africa’s Cyril Ramaphosa, Kenya’s William Ruto and Nigeria’s Bola Tinubu have assembled in the Chinese capital this week for the three-day forum that Beijing has hailed as its largest diplomatic gathering in years.

This year’s event comes amid questions about the direction of those relations as Beijing, long the driving foreign economic power in Africa, has been recalibrating its extensive economic ties to the continent, while other major powers are ramping up their own efforts to engage Africa.

China has been pulling back on big-ticket spending under Xi’s signature Belt and Road Initiative. That infrastructure drive saw it fund projects like railways, roads and power plants and expand its influence on the continent. However, it also faced criticism that unsustainable lending contributed to heavy international debt loads now shouldered by many African countries.

Xi did not mention these debt challenges in his address but did make broad pledges for China to deepen cooperation with Africa in industry, agriculture, infrastructure, trade and investment.

Raft of support

Xi’s pledge of $50 billion to the continent over the next three years — a mix of credit funds, assistance and private investment from Chinese firms — outstrips a previous pledge made three years ago of around $30 billion during a prior iteration of the forum in Dakar, Senegal.

While lower than the $60 billion pledged in 2015 and 2018 respectively, it appears to be aimed at sending a strong signal to visiting leaders about China’s commitment to the continent.

In his 10-minute speech, Xi outlined 10 action areas for cooperation over the coming three years, including infrastructure connectivity, trade, security and green development – an area where Beijing is widely seen as pushing to enhance its exports of green technology.

It’s unclear how Xi’s pledges would align in practice with the expectations from visiting African leaders, analysts say. Fulfillment of past pledges has also been difficult to track, they say.

Leaders in Beijing are seeking investment, trade, and support to industrialize and create jobs. That includes a push for China to import more processed goods from Africa, rather than simply exporting and processing raw materials – like Africa’s highly sought after critical minerals.

Following Xi’s speech, African leaders also gave remarks, with South Africa’s Ramaphosa praising China’s “solidarity” with the continent. He pointed to global challenges including conflict, climate change and a “global contestation for critical minerals” that is fueling geopolitical rivalry.

“These challenges affect all nations but are more often severely felt on the African continent, yet amid these challenges there is hope and opportunity,” he said.

Typhoon Yagi has rapidly intensified to a super typhoon as it powers its way towards the Chinese holiday island of Hainan, where it is forecast to make landfall towards the end of the week.

Yagi is currently packing winds of up to 240 kph (150 mph), according to the Joint Typhoon Warning Center (JTWC) Wednesday. That makes it a high-end Category 4 Atlantic Hurricane and is only 7 mph shy of being a Category 5 Atlantic hurricane.

“Intensification will continue while in the warm tub of the South China Sea,” the typhoon warning center said.

Just a day ago, Yagi was a tropical storm with top winds of 90 kph (60 mph). Scientists have found that hotter oceans caused by the human-caused climate crisis are leading storms to intensify more rapidly.

It is expected to make landfall Friday evening across the southwest portions of China, near northern tip of Hainan.

The island is often dubbed “China’s Hawaii,” boasting sandy beaches, good surf, five-star resorts and duty-free luxury shopping. It is not currently peak travel season, however, and the island generally has a good track record of weathering powerful storms.

Intercity bus services have been suspended on the island since midnight Thursday, according to Hainan’s provincial government.

Train and high-speed rail services will be suspended on Thursday starting 6p.m. local time, while all flights departing after 8p.m. will also be cancelled until Friday midnight, it added.

Several tourist attractions have already shut down, with authorities warning that winds could be “massive and destructive.”

On Thursday morning, Yagi was churning to the south of Hong Kong, prompting the city to cancel kindergarten and several flights.

The local observatory warned it expected to hoist a higher storm warning later in the day, a step which will trigger further travel restrictions. If that warning remains in place until Friday, the city’s stock market — one of Asia’s largest — will be suspended.

Yagi, known as Enteng in the Philippines, brought heavy rainfall across the country earlier in the week. At least 13 people were killed, Reuters reported. In some parts of Luzon, rainfall totaling 400 millimeters (15.8 inches) were reported.

A disgraced mayor wanted in the Philippines for alleged links to Chinese criminal networks has been arrested in Indonesia after several weeks on the run, Philippines officials announced Wednesday, as they vowed to prosecute cases against her.

Alice Leal Guo, identified as Chinese national Guo Hua Ping by Philippine immigration authorities, fled the country in July as speculation swirled over her true identity after raids exposed a huge scam center staffed by hundreds of people in her home town.

The scandal captivated the country for months as lawmakers dug deeper into the allegations against Guo, through a senate inquiry that heard claims of illegal gambling activities, money laundering, human trafficking and fraud.

As pressure grew on Guo, 34, to explain how she amassed millions in assets as a first-time politician within two years of being elected to public office, she vanished, fleeing the country allegedly via a covert network of vans and small boats.

From the Philippines, authorities believe she crossed the sea to Malaysia, then Singapore and Indonesia, where local police caught up with her in the early hours of Wednesday.

Dressed in a baby pink pajama set and a white jacket, Guo was seen being led down a staircase by Indonesian authorities in Jakarta’s Tangerang City in a video released by Philippine authorities.

In a video statement posted to Facebook, Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. commended law enforcement officials for Guo’s arrest.

“Let this serve as a warning to those who attempt to evade justice. Such is an exercise in futility. The arm of the law is long, and it will reach you,” he said.

Fall from grace

With long black hair and a beaming smile, the bespectacled candidate running for mayor of Bamban, a small town in Tarlac province about 60 miles north of Manila, appeared in 2022 campaign material posted to YouTube with the description: “Get to know the real Alice Guo.”

Dressed in a pink polo shirt and jeans, she’s seen waving to her supporters, who are also dressed in pink, her signature color. The campaign worked, and Guo was elected.

Her provincial life seemed ordinary. On her YouTube videos, she’s seen tending her chickens and having deep fried dried fish for breakfast, like a typical Filipino.

However, Guo’s image as an enthusiastic, young public servant was called into question earlier this year when the Presidential Anti-Organized Crime Commission (PAOCC) received separate tip-offs from two workers from Malaysia and Vietnam.

They had asked for help to be sent back to their home countries after claiming to have been held against their will in a building in Bamban, home to just 78,000 people.

The building was suspected to be a Philippine Offshore Gaming Operation (POGO), which caters to punters based in China, where gambling is illegal. Until July, POGOs were popular places of employment for tens of thousands of foreign workers.

However, when authorities raided the Bamban complex in March, they found more than 800 Filipinos, Chinese, Vietnamese and other nationals, who claimed to have been working there against their will.

The government-run Philippine News Agency reported police found “love scam” scripts, firearms and mobile phones allegedly used for scam transactions.

The rescued workers were allegedly made to pose as lovers to lure people to send money, in what’s commonly known as “pig-butchering” – a type of confidence fraud in which victims are lured by scammers often impersonating young women on the internet.

To get to the bottom of what was happening in Bamban, the Philippine senate ordered an inquiry into Guo on May 7 headed by Senator Risa Hontiveros.

Guo failed to show up for at least three of the hearings, citing death threats and poor mental health, according to a statement on Facebook before her official account was taken down.

While she was absent from the hearings, raids on casino hubs continued and public criticism intensified over POGOs, which have spread across the country.

Subsequent probes into the complexin Bamban also uncovered alleged links between the mayor and the shady underworld of gambling centers, with some suspected of being vehicles to launder money.

President Marcos Jr. expressed his growing concern about the explosion of offshore casinos in an address to the nation on July 22. Amid a standing ovation from lawmakers, he ordered a total ban with immediate effect.

“Disguising as legitimate entities, their operations have ventured into illicit areas furthest from gaming, such as financial scamming, money laundering, prostitution, human trafficking, kidnapping, brutal torture — even murder,” Marcos said. “The grave abuse and disrespect to our system of laws must stop.”

Suspected ties with China

Against this heightened scrutiny, the senate inquiry into Guo’s possible links to Chinese criminals, which began in May, has been compulsive viewing for Filipinos hooked on the intrigue.

Many parts of Guo’s life story did not add up, lawmakers said during the publicly broadcasted sessions that lasted for hours, filled with the dizzying back and forth of questions aimed at Guo and her suspected accomplices.

During her testimony, Guo claimed she grew up on a livestock farm in the town of Bamban, and was the love child of a Filipino maid and Chinese man.

Guo speaks Tagalog fluently, but she does not speak the regional language, Kapampangan, which is typically spoken in the town. She said she was homeschooled by a woman called “Teacher Rubilyn” and claimed she did not have any childhood friends who would vouch for her.

Suspicion that she was working as an “asset” for Beijing grew among lawmakers, as they cited her evasive answers to questions about her Chinese parentage. Her alleged business ventures with foreigners who have criminal records also appeared to raise doubts.

Speculation intensified when the senate probe revealed that her real name was “Guo Hua Ping” based on immigration records from 2005. Later, the National Bureau of Investigation found that her fingerprints matched a Chinese national of the same name.

The Philippine senate investigation presented documents showing Guo had incorporated Baofu Land Development in 2019 with supposed business partners Zhang Ruijin and Lin Baoying. It was registered to the same sprawling complex in Bamban where the workers were rescued by authorities.

Her suspected Chinese business partners Zhang and Lin are both serving prison time in Singaporean for fraudulently using forged documents to launder millions of dollars.

Armed with mounting evidence, Philippine law enforcement agencies, including the Anti-Money Laundering Council (AMLC), jointly filed multiple counts of money laundering against Guo and 35 others before the Department of Justice, for allegedly laundering over $1.8 million (100 million Philipine pesos) in proceeds from criminal activities.

The AMLC also filed to forfeit assets valued over 6 billion Philippine pesos ($106 million) from Guo and her associates.

Among those charged include Guo, her alleged sister, Shiela, and a business partner named Cassandra Li Ong for alleged scam farm operations undera number of companies: QSeed Genetics, Zun Yuan Technology Inc, Hongshen Gaming Technology Inc, QJJ Farms and Baofu Land Development Inc.

But by the time the charges were filed on August 30, Guo was already on the run.

President Marcos Jr. said Guo would be entitled to standard legal rights but stressed the Philippines would waste no time in seeking justice and vowed to track down those who had helped her to flee.

“We will not allow this to prolong the resolution of the case whose outcome will be a victory for the Filipino people,” he said.

This second plane, a Dassault Falcon 2000 registration number YV3360, is similar to the aircraft seized by authorities in the United States on Monday, and it appears on a US Treasury list of sanctioned goods belonging to Maduro.

The plane seized by US authorities on Monday had been described by officials as Venezuela’s equivalent to Air Force One and was pictured in previous state visits by Maduro around the world.

It was seized after determining that its acquisition was in violation of US sanctions, among other criminal issues. The US flew the aircraft to Florida on Monday, according to two US officials.

US Attorney General Merrick Garland said in a statement that “the Justice Department seized an aircraft we allege was illegally purchased for $13 million through a shell company and smuggled out of the United States for use by Nicolás Maduro and his cronies.”

The Venezuelan government described the first Falcon’s seizure as “piracy” in a statement on Monday, and accused Washington of escalating “aggression” toward Maduro’s government following a contested presidential election this July.

The Dominican Republic’s President, Luis Abinader, said the plane seized Monday was not registered under the name of the Venezuelan government but rather under “the name of an individual.”

The country’s Attorney General’s Office received an order last May from a national court to “immobilize” the plane, according to the Dominican Republic’s foreign minister, Roberto Álvarez. The US had requested it be immobilized so they could search it for “evidence and objects linked to fraud activities, smuggling of goods for illicit activities and money laundering,” he said.

Monday’s seizure in the Dominican Republic marked an escalation as the US continues to investigate what it regards as corrupt practices by Venezuela’s government.

It also comes as the US recently placed pressure on the Venezuelan government to “immediately” release specific data regarding its presidential election, citing concerns about the credibility of Maduro’s claimed victory in the recent presidential election.

The death of a beloved white beluga whale has turned into a mystery in Norway as animal rights groups speculate whether he was actually assassinated.

The beluga, nicknamed Hvaldimir, rose to fame in 2019 after being spotted wearing a specially-made harness with mounts for a camera, sparking claims that the animal may have been trained by the Russian military.

Two Norwegian animal rights groups alleged on Wednesday that the whale was “shot to death” after Hvaldimir was found dead over the weekend in southern Norway.

OneWhale and NOAH are calling for a criminal investigation “based on compelling evidence that the whale was killed by gunshot wounds,” OneWhale, which describes itself as a “nonprofit committed to protecting Hvaldimir and relocating him to a wild population of belugas,” wrote in an Instagram post.

It added that “several veterinarians, biologists, and ballistics experts have reviewed [the] evidence of Hvaldimir’s injuries, determining that the whale’s death was the result of a criminal act.”

The organizations filed a police report to the Sandnes Police District and the Norwegian National Authority for Investigation and Prosecution of Economic and Environmental Crime.

“I don’t think we’ve had a case like this before,” said Southwestern Police District Superintendent Victor Fenne-jensen, who declined to comment on whether his department had investigated rumors that the whale was a Russian spy.

He added, Hvaldimir was “kind of a celebrity.”

However, Marine Mind, another non-profit that advocates for protecting marine life, has called the public to “refrain from speculation” until the country’s Veterinary Institute has finished its own investigation.

It was Marine Mind that found Hvaldimir’s body in the bay. “When we found Hvaldimir on Saturday, it was not possible to immediately determine the cause of death, and therefore it is important to refrain from speculation until the institute has completed its work,” Marine Mind posted to its Facebook page on Wednesday.

Norwegian public broadcaster NRK reported that his body was found floating at the Risavika Bay in southern Norway Saturday by a father and son who were fishing, according to the Associated Press (AP).

The beluga, named by combining the Norwegian word for whale — hval — and the first name of Russian President Vladimir Putin, was lifted out of the water with a crane and taken to a nearby harbor where experts for experts to examine, AP reported.

Marine biologist Sebastian Strand told NRK Hvaldimir’s cause of death was not immediately clear and that no major external injuries were visible on the animal, the AP reported.

That the harness clips read “Equipment St. Petersburg” only contributed to the popular theory that he came from Murmansk, Russia, and was trained by the Russian navy.

Palestinian journalists say that they were fired on by the Israeli military during a raid in the occupied West Bank town of Kafr Dan.

Mohammed Mansour, a journalist for the Palestinian news agency WAFA, was injured when the car he was driving was struck by gunfire, according to video of the aftermath and his employer.

Footage filmed in the car by freelance journalist Jarah Khalaf shows a chaotic scene, as Mansour races through the streets and blood pours from his leg. All journalists were wearing flak jackets with “press” labels, and the car bore a “press” identifier on its hood.

“The occupation surprised us by shooting at us directly. Our colleague Mohammed Mansour was here in this car,” said Khalaf. “The army shot at us more than once, even though we had press signs and were wearing body armor and everything.”

WAFA said that the Israeli military “fired live bullets directly at the vehicle,” which was carrying four journalists reporting on the Tuesday raid. The Palestine Red Crescent Society said that it treated four journalists who were injured by gunfire and shrapnel.

Violence from the Israeli offensive in Gaza since the Hamas-led October 7 attacks has spilled into the occupied West Bank in recent months. The IDF unleashed a barrage of raids and airstrikes in multiple parts of the territory on August 28 – including in the cities of Jenin, Tubas and Tulkarem – bulldozing highways and razing buildings to rubble.

The IDF has said that its operations in the West Bank are necessary “in order to remove immediate terror threats in real time.”

Humanitarian groups have accused the Israeli military of using disproportionate force against Palestinian residents, inflicting severe damage on critical infrastructure and disrupting health care services. On Tuesday, a UN spokesperson warned that Israeli forces are using “lethal war-like tactics” in the occupied territory, with people being killed, injured and displaced – and have blocked critical access to aid organizations.

‘We were directly targeted’

In another video, reporters film Israeli military bulldozers tearing up the surface of a street in Jenin. The IDF says this is done to find and dismantle explosive devices.

Khalaf said he was also among the journalists filming the Israeli military bulldozers on Monday, when suddenly “a bulldozer started backing on us.”

“We moved down the road when the bulldozer turned … and chased after us,” added Khalaf. “We were trapped behind a wall, but the bulldozer kept coming forward toward us when it started destroying shops and the sidewalk we were on. We were trapped for a few minutes before we managed to get away.”

Israeli forces have killed 33 Palestinians in the West Bank, including six children and two elderly people, since launching the operation last month, according to the Palestinian Ministry of Health in Ramallah. Another 130 people have been injured. The ministry does not differentiate between civilians and militants.

The Al-Qassam Brigades, Hamas’ armed wing, said Friday that three of its members had been killed.

Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador has long been critical of his country’s Supreme Court as it stood in the way of some of his signature policy proposals. This month, as he closes out his six-year term in office, he appears poised to remake the entire judiciary in his mold.

Lawmakers in Mexico City this week began to push through a sweeping constitutional reform that would see Mexicans select judges at all levels of government through elections, a procedure that legal experts say would turn Mexico into an international outlier.

The controversial measure passed the lower chamber of Congress on Wednesday with overwhelming support. The reform will next be voted on in the Senate, where its approval is likely due to López Obrador’s ruling coalition being one senator short of a supermajority.

López Obrador, a popular leftist, says the overhaul is necessary to rid the judiciary of corruption and ensure its responsive to the popular will. Critics of the reform call it a power grab that will expose one of the last remaining checks on presidential power to political influence.

“I see this as a constitutional crisis,” said Mariana Campos, the general director of México Evalúa, a civil society organization. “The judiciary has been a counterweight for the executive and the legislative branches, and the president and his political group believe that they can’t advance their objectives with this type of counterweight.”

Opposition to the reform has quickly manifested into monumental schisms, with the country’s Supreme Court justices voting this week to join a nationwide protest of judicial workers grinding most legal proceedings to a halt.

A rare and stinging critique from US Ambassador Ken Salazar in Mexico City, in which he called the election of judges “a major risk to the functioning of Mexico’s democracy,” led to an international spat between the countries. And warnings from business groups that the reform could undermine the Mexican investment environment sent the value of the peso tumbling.

On Tuesday, protesting judicial staff blocked the entrance to the lower chamber of Congress, forcing lawmakers into an overnight session held in a sports complex, with basketball hoops hanging overhead.

Still, even critics of the reform acknowledge it appears likely to move swiftly through the Mexican legislature with the president’s political party exerting wide margins of control.

A battle for seats

Under the current law, Supreme Court judges in Mexico are nominated by the president and must be approved in the Senate. Federal judges are selected by a judicial commission that uses professional exams and coursework to evaluate candidates on a meritocratic basis.

If the reform passes, judicial elections would take place next year after a period of campaigning. About 7,000 judges would be required to battle for their seats, or turn the gavel over over to the most popular candidate.

It would see candidates for judicial postings submit applications and be nominated to run in an election by evaluation committees within the executive, legislative, and judicial branches.

Additionally, the number of judges serving on the Supreme Court would be reduced from 11 to nine, and their term would be shortened to 12 years instead of 15.

While the reform spells out judicial elections that are independent of political parties, an analysis released earlier this year by the Center for Constitutional Studies, an investigative branch of the Supreme Court, concluded that the new selection process for judges would “undermine the perception of impartiality” in the judiciary.

“The method of designating candidates to judicial positions favors their proximity to political authorities, political parties or judicial leaders,” the analysis said.

The analysis also noted that judicial elections would generate “a risk of co-optation of jurisdictional bodies by private interests, such as large business groups or even criminal organizations,” who already use widespread violence to influence local political elections.

“The government is creating an institutional infrastructure that will permit external pressures on judges so that they’re not necessarily responding to the law and the facts, but rather trying to look good in order to be able to maintain their position,” Campos, with México Evalúa, said.

The effort to hand over the selection of judges to a popular vote arrives as López Obrador’s political movement grows in power. In June, Claudia Sheinbaum, a former mayor of Mexico City and López Obrador’s political protégé, was elected president in a landslide, winning nearly 60 percent of the nationwide vote.

Sheinbaum, who will take office on October 1, has challenged the perception that the reform would concentrate power for ruling party Morena. In a video statement last week, she emphasized that the process to nominate judge candidates will be split between the three branches of government.

Defenders of the reform have also pointed to the United States as an example of a long-running model for judicial elections. But the comparison between the two countries is inadequate, said Michael Nelson, a political science professor at Pennsylvania State University who studies judicial systems around the world.

Thirty-nine states in the US carry out judicial elections in some form, while federal judges are appointed by the president and confirmed in the Senate. “Mexico would be the only country in the world that elects judges at such a scale,” he said.

The heavily politicized context that the reforms are being made under could also impact how voters view the elections in the near-term, Nelson said.

“The Mexico proposal is not coming out of nowhere – this isn’t people sitting around in Philadelphia in the 1700s saying how should we design a judiciary,” he said. “(Voters) are going to remember that these elections came about because the president was angry at the courts and their experience of the election is going to be filtered through that.”

Legal experts say the closest benchmark to weigh the Mexican reform against comes from Bolivia, the small Andean state which in 2011 became the first modern country to directly elect its federal judges.

The reform there achieved some of its desired results: Bolivia’s federal bench became the most diverse constitutional court in the Western Hemisphere, with historically high numbers of female and minority jurists, according to a 2015 paper in the Journal of Law and Courts.

But opinion polls measured a decrease in public confidence in the Supreme Court after the reform took hold, the research found.

“Even if changes are perfectly designed and adopted with broad consensus, if the public perceives the process to have been politicized then public faith in the resulting institutions may be in jeopardy,” said Florida State University professor Amanda Driscoll, one of the authors of the paper.