A Swiss court on Wednesday weighed up whether to hear a landmark climate case pitting residents of a tiny Indonesian island being swallowed by rising sea levels against cement giant Holcim.”It is like a David versus Goliath struggle,” one of the plaintiffs, Asmania, who like many Indonesians goes by one name, told AFP after the …
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The director of a new film about a five-year-old girl killed by Israeli forces in Gaza told the Venice Film Festival Wednesday she wanted to give “a voice and a face” to victims.”We’ve seen that the narrative all around the world is that those dying in Gaza are collateral damage, in the media, and I think this is so dehumanising,” Franco-Tunisian director Kaouther Ben Hania told journalists ahead of the world premiere of “The Voice of Hind Rajab”.”And that’s why cinema, art, and every kind of expression is very important to give those people a voice and a face.”Gaza has been front and centre at the prestigious event in Venice after a group of filmmakers and others called on festival organisers to more forcefully condemn the war.Ben Hania’s film is one of 21 in the running for the Golden Lion prize.It tells the true story of the girl who pleaded with emergency services to come and rescue her after Israeli forces killed the rest of her family in their car while evacuating from Gaza in January 2024.The movie uses the actual audio from phone calls Hind made with the Red Crescent.”This movie was very important for me because when I heard the first time the voice of Hind Rajab, there was something more than her voice,” said Ben Hania.”It was the very voice of Gaza asking for help and nobody could enter,” she added.”It was like a kind of strong desire and the feeling of anger and helplessness that gave birth to this movie.”Ben Hania was the first filmaker to represent Tunisia at the Academy Awards in 2021. adp/ams/jj
Pizzeria owner Saeed is unable to take or serve orders at his restaurant in the Iranian capital, his business stalled by rolling power outages that have compounded the country’s many economic woes.”Outages often hit right in the middle of lunch service, the worst time for restaurant owners,” the 48-year-old entrepreneur told AFP from his pizzeria in an upscale neighbourhood of northern Tehran, requesting to be identified only by his first name.Prolonged power cuts, which also disrupt water and internet access, have become routine, with officials blaming fuel shortages, drought, decrepit infrastructure and soaring demand in the sweltering heat.The burden on small businesses, already struggling to make ends meet, is likely to worsen with European powers moving to reimpose sanctions if an agreement is not reached on Iran’s nuclear programme in the coming weeks.The Iranian currency is already in free fall, exacerbating chronic hyperinflation.Tehran has seen one of its hottest summers on record this year, with temperatures around 40C prompting the government to repeatedly shut banks and public offices to conserve energy and water.Last Friday, state television reported electricity consumption reached 73,500 megawatts, approaching the all-time record of 79,000 megawatts recorded in 2024.Without sufficient fuel to operate the power plants, authorities are forced to ration electricity to prevent overloading the ageing grid, instituting daily two-hour cuts across the country.No electricity means no internet, and so no online orders for Saeed — a significant portion of his business.”Orders have fallen drastically,” said Saeed, who regularly misses online requests placed during outages.To stay afloat, he says he has been forced to lay off staff and cut back further on electricity use.- ‘Unavoidable’ -Last month, Iran’s President Masoud Pezeshkian acknowledged the strains the energy crisis was causing, pledging reforms to attract investment.He however conceded that, for now, “cutting off electricity was unavoidable.”Across Tehran, butchers, bakers, pastry shops, and even ice cream vendors suffer heavy losses in the meantime.In the city centre, a pastry chef showed AFP  rows of refrigerators, empty or at most half-filled after a power outage stalled his process.”Dry pastries can survive in the fridge for maybe two hours,” he told AFP. “But the soft ones, especially chocolate ones, collapse.” “They go mushy, and nobody buys them,” the grey-haired patissier complained, saying the worst part of the outages is their unpredictability.Authorities publish outage schedules by area, but the cuts often still occur at erratic times.”Sometimes it happens two hours before schedule, right when we’re in the middle of production,” he said, at which point he can only watch his creations go bad.- Wilted icing -Videos circulating widely on social media in recent weeks have shown bakery workers throwing out trays of spoiled goods, including dough and decorative cakes, colourful icing wilting in the heat.Butcher Hossein Hajabassi has been forced to do the same, his business quickly shrinking as meat prices soar and purchasing power plummets.”Chicken breasts and fillets, but also lamb liver, which are already very expensive, spoil very quickly,” said the butcher in his sixties.”I sometimes take the meat home to avoid wasting it.”
Syrian Kurdish forces said Wednesday they thwarted an escape attempt by more than 50 inmates of Al-Hol camp, which holds people suspected of ties to the Islamic State (IS) group.Kurdish authorities in northeastern Syria have run camps hosting thousands of suspected jihadists and their families since the jihadist group lost its last territory in Syria six years ago.Kurdish security forces said they thwarted a “mass escape attempt” from the Al-Hol camp by several IS families on Tuesday “numbering 56 individuals”.They added that the detainees attempted to escape “using a large vehicle”.Kurdish security forces detected “suspicious activity yesterday (Tuesday) afternoon, when a group of people were seen boarding a vehicle in an abnormal manner”, they said in a statement.The troops “stopped the vehicle as it attempted to pass through the main gate, arresting all those inside”.Al-Hol houses approximately 27,000 people, including some 15,000 Syrians and about 6,300 foreign women and children from 42 nationalities, in addition to some 5,000 Iraqis, camp director Jihan Hanan told AFP in August.Since IS’s defeat, the Kurdish-run administration has repeatedly called on foreign governments to repatriate their nationals. Despite repeated warnings from international organisations of the dire conditions in the camps, many Western governments have refused to repatriate their citizens.Neighbouring Iraq, however, has repatriated around 17,000 people, mostly women and children.In February, Kurdish official Sheikhmous Ahmed said the administration aimed to empty the camps of Iraqis and displaced Syrians by the end of the year.
