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BEIJING: A Chinese court on Thursday upheld the death penalty for a US citizen over the murder of his girlfriend, calling the conviction “accurate” and sentence “appropriate.” Shadeed Abdulmateen had been found guilty in April of stabbing the 21-year-old woman in the face and neck multiple times when they met to talk about disagreements in their relationship. He appealed against the death sentence handed to him at the time. But a higher court in eastern China on Thursday rebuffed Abdulmateen’s appeal, according to an official statement. The Zhejiang High People’s Court said Abdulmateen had threatened the woman after she told him multiple times that she wanted to break up. On the night of the murder in June 2021 they met near a bus stop in Ningbo, about 150 kilometers (90 miles) south of Shanghai. Abdulmateen turned up with a folding knife and “stabbed Chen’s neck and face multiple times, causing Chen to lose a large volume of blood and die on the spot.” The court on Thursday said the initial conviction was “accurate, the sentencing was appropriate, and the trial procedure was legal.” When asked for comment a US Embassy spokesperson told Reuters that they were “aware of a court decision related to a US citizen.” “We take seriously our responsibility to assist US citizens abroad and are monitoring the situation,” the spokesperson said via email. “Due to privacy considerations, we have no further comment.” Human rights groups say China executes more prisoners every year than any other country, but executions of Westerners are rare. The most recent case involving a Westerner is believed to be that of Akmal Shaikh, a British citizen put to death in 2009 for heroin trafficking, according to state news agency Xinhua.
ISLAMABAD: Princess Sarah Zeid of Jordan has called on Pakistani authorities to ramp up nutrition aid for women and children in the wake of deadly floods ravaging the country.
Around 37 percent of Pakistan’s 220 million inhabitants face food insecurity, according to World Food Program data. Eighteen percent of Pakistani children under the age of five suffer from acute malnutrition, around 40 percent in the same age group are stunted and 29 percent are underweight.
Concerns are rising that the situation will further deteriorate because of the flooding that has hit Pakistan recently — 30 million people in the South Asian nation have been left homeless amid the heaviest monsoon rains in decades, which have wreaked havoc across the country since June 14. Disaster-management authorities have since recorded at least 982 extreme weather-related deaths. The southwestern Balochistan province and Sindh, in the south, have been the worst hit areas.
“The terrible floods that are currently happening in Pakistan will affect women and girls the most. Children will get diseases from water, so any good program should be nimble enough and flexible enough to provide a buffer to these shocks,” the princess, who is the WFP’s special adviser on mother and child nutrition, told Arab News in an exclusive interview in Islamabad on Friday.
“We have to make sure that no one is left behind and everybody is given the support and access to education and nourishment which they deserve to have. Ultimately, that is the best thing for the nation.”
The princess arrived in Pakistan on Aug. 21 for a week-long working visit — her second to the country — to assess efforts to improve nutrition for women and children over the last three years.
“It is to celebrate the fact that not only has the government embraced its role as a leader for nutritional-health development for Pakistani mothers, but has gone above and beyond,” she said, adding that initiatives under the Benazir Income Support Program, which helps the government implement its social welfare plan, were “extraordinary.”
“I would ask the Pakistani government to keep going. I am here to encourage the government of Pakistan to continue its investment in the wellbeing and nutrition of mothers and children.”
During the trip, the princess has met with government officials to advocate increased focus on maternal and child health and visited several WFP-supported nutrition projects in Sindh and Islamabad.
“The (Pakistani) women I have met are extraordinary on every level. From the government officials, (I have seen) the technical knowledge, dedication, and passion they have for the wellbeing of their people. And the female health workers are magnificent — the role they play in their communities is really extraordinary,” she said.
She stressed the need to create an “enabling environment” for girls in educational institutions to reduce the number of girls who drop out of schools in Pakistan. The country is home to an estimated 22.8 million out-of-school children, the second highest in the world, according to UNICEF. The majority of them — about 12.2 million — are girls, who face cultural and social barriers preventing them from seeking formal education, especially in rural areas.
“The girls have all sorts of reasons why they are not able to continue their schooling,” Princess Sarah said. “We have to create an enabling environment (so that) girls stay in school.”
She also advocated raising awareness of family planning in Pakistan, the world’s fifth most populous country.
“A woman should be able to decide how many children she is going to have, and when she will have them, and that takes education, information,” she said, adding that women should not face societal pressure to give birth.
“You need to have access to family-planning services (for women and for men), as husbands need to prioritize the health of their wives so that they can have a healthy family.”
KYIV: Merchant sailors will be allowed to leave Ukraine if they receive approval from their local military administrative body, the Ukrainian prime minister said on Saturday, a move that could ease the process of shipping grain from the country’s ports. Premier Denys Shmyhal said the decision had been approved by the cabinet on Saturday. The change would cover male crew members of sea and river vessels, as well as students who need to undertake practical training aboard ships, he added. The decision is likely to ease a shortage of sailors able and willing to crew ships coming into and out of Ukraine to export grain via an internationally brokered corridor. Ukrainian men aged 18-60 have largely been barred from leaving Ukraine under a state of martial law imposed as the country battles the Russian invasion. Women of all ages have been free to leave throughout the war.
Thousands of people living near flood-swollen rivers in Pakistan’s north were ordered to evacuate Saturday as the death toll from devastating monsoon rains neared 1,000 with no end in sight. Many rivers in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa — a picturesque province of rugged mountains and valleys — have burst their banks, demolishing scores of buildings including a 150-room hotel that crumbled into a raging torrent. “The house which we built with years of hard work started sinking in front of our eyes,” said Junaid Khan, 23, the owner of two fish farms in Chrasadda. “We sat on the side of the road and watched our dream house sinking.” The annual monsoon is essential for irrigating crops and replenishing lakes and dams across the Indian subcontinent, but each year it also brings a wave of destruction. Officials say this year’s monsoon flooding has affected more than 33 million people — one in seven Pakistanis — destroying or badly damaging nearly a million homes. On Saturday, authorities ordered thousands of residents in threatened areas to evacuate their homes as rivers had still not reached maximum capacity. “Initially some people refused to leave, but when the water level increased they agreed,” Bilal Faizi, spokesman for the Rescue 1122 emergency service, told AFP. Officials say this year’s floods are comparable to 2010 — the worst on record — when over 2,000 people died and nearly a fifth of the country was under water. Farmer Shah Faisal, camped by the side of a road in Chrasadda with his wife and two daughters, described how he saw his riverside home swallowed by a river as the powerful current eroded the bank. The Jindi, Swat and Kabul rivers flow through the town before joining the mighty Indus, which is also flooding downstream. “We escaped with our lives,” Faisal told AFP. Officials blame the devastation on man-made climate change, saying Pakistan is unfairly bearing the consequences of irresponsible environmental practices elsewhere in the world. Pakistan is eighth on the Global Climate Risk Index, a list compiled by the environmental NGO Germanwatch of countries deemed most vulnerable to extreme weather caused by climate change. Still, local authorities must shoulder some of the blame for the devastation. Corruption, poor planning and the flouting of local regulations mean thousands of buildings have been erected in areas prone to seasonal flooding — albeit not as bad as this year. The government has declared an emergency and mobilized the military to deal with what Climate Change Minister Sherry Rehman on Wednesday called “a catastrophe of epic scale.” According to the National Disaster Management Authority, since the monsoon started in June more than two million acres of cultivated crops have been wiped out, 3,100 kilometers (1,900 miles) of roads have been destroyed and 149 bridges have been washed away. In Sukkur, more than 1,000 kilometers south of Swat, farmlands irrigated by the Indus were under water, and tens of thousands of people were seeking shelter on elevated roads and highways as they waited for fresh torrents from the north. “We have opened the gates fully,” dam supervisor Aziz Soomro told AFP, adding the main rush of water was expected Sunday. The flooding could not come at a worse time for Pakistan, whose economy is in free fall and whose politics are gripped by crisis following the ousting of former prime minister Imran Khan by a parliamentary vote of no confidence in April.
ADDIS ABABA: The UN children’s agency UNICEF on Saturday condemned an air strike that “hit a kindergarten” in Ethiopia’s Tigray region, killing at least four people including two children. Friday’s strike in the Tigray capital Mekele came days after fighting erupted on the region’s southern border between government forces and rebels, ending a five-month truce. “UNICEF strongly condemns the air strike ... (that) hit a kindergarten, killing several children, and injuring others,” UNICEF’s executive director Catherine Russell said on Twitter. The Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) that controls the northern region said the air raid demolished a kindergarten and hit a civilian residential area, claims the government denied. Addis Ababa said it only targeted military sites, and accused the TPLF of staging civilian deaths. Kibrom Gebreselassie, chief clinical director at Mekele’s Ayder Referral Hospital, told AFP that four people were killed in the strike, including two children. Nine others were receiving treatment for injuries, he said. Tigrai TV, a local network, said the death toll had reached seven and broadcast footage of mangled playground equipment at the apparent scene of the strike. Russell said the 21-month war in Ethiopia’s north had “caused children to pay the heaviest price.” “For almost two years, children and their families in the region have endured the agony of this conflict. It must end,” she said.