Month: July 2022

Türkiye’s Defense Ministry said Saturday it will send another plane to deliver aid materials to Iran after heavy rain caused deadly flooding.

“A transport plane belonging to our Air Force, which will deliver the aid materials such as tents and blankets needed due to the flood disaster in Iran, departed from Ankara Etimesgut Airport. Another plane is planned to set off for the area,” it wrote on Twitter.

The death toll stands at 56 from devastating flash floods that have wreaked havoc across Iran in recent days, according to officials. A weather alert is in place.

Iran, a country that has seen long spells of drought, has been occasionally hit by devastating floods, mostly during summers. Experts attribute it to climate change.

Source: Anadolu Agency

Mercedes team’s British driver George Russell took his first-ever pole position Saturday in the Formula One circuit ahead of Sunday’s Hungarian Grand Prix.

On Budapest’s 4.3-kilometer (2.67-mile) Hungaroring, Russell finished the third qualifying race in 1 minute and 17.377 seconds to take his maiden pole position.

Two Ferraris, Carlos Sainz and Charles Leclerc, were second and third, respectively, in the qualifying session that decided the starting grid.

Sainz from Spain finished in 1:17.421 and Monaco’s Leclerc was 0.190 seconds behind Russell.

Russell will start ahead of Sainz and Leclerc in the race — Round 13 of the 2022 season.

The 70-lap race on the Hungaroring circuit will start at 1300GMT.

Source: Anadolu Agency

lke Ozyuksel won a bronze medal Saturday at the 2022 UIPM Pentathlon World Championships in Egypt.

The Turkish Modern Pentathlon body said Ozyuksel, 25, came third with 1,405 points in the final of the women’s pentathlon in Alexandria.

Elena Micheli from Italy won gold with 1,416 points.

Hungary’s Michelle Gulyas was awarded the silver medal with 1,412 points.

The championships will end July 31 with a mixed relay.

Source: Anadolu Agency

The head of northern Iraq’s Kurdish Regional Government (KRG), Nechirvan Barzani, on Sunday called for political dialogue between the country’s political rivals in Erbil.

“KRG will always be part of a solution to the ongoing political deadlock in Iraq,” Barzani said in a statement.

He said the proposed dialogue “aims to reach an understanding and agreement on the country’s supreme interests.”

“We call on all different political parties to exercise self-restraint and engage in direct dialogue for solving problems,” the KRG leader added.

He warned that complicating the situation would put “the society’s peace, security and stability in the country at risk.”

“At the time we respect the will for peaceful rally by the people, we stress on the importance of protecting the country’s institutions,” Barzani said.

Tension escalated in recent days in Iraq following the nomination of Mohammed Shia al-Sudani to form a new government by a coalition of groups close to Iran amid protests by supporters of influential Shia cleric Muqtada al-Sadr.

Iraq has been in a political deadlock for nine months following the country’s general elections in October 2021 which failed since then to agree on a new government between the rival parties.

Source: Anadolu Agency

A former US official said Recep Tayyip Erdogan deserved to be nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize, citing the Turkish president’s efforts on the Ukrainian grain export deal.

Former US Undersecretary of Defense Dov S. Zakheim penned an article, “The triumph of Turkey’s Erdogan” for the Hill news website that was published Friday where he wrote: “His authoritarian domestic policies render it unlikely that the liberal Norwegian Nobel Committee would give him much in the way of consideration, but surely Erdogan deserves at least to be nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize.”

He said “unpredictable” is an understatement when describing Erdogan.

“Despite his conducting what appears to be a most confusing foreign policy — and maybe in some respects, because of it — Erdogan, working alongside the United Nations, was able to broker a deal between Russia and Ukraine that would allow the shipment of grain from Ukrainian ports through the Black Sea,” he said.

Noting that 22 million tons of grains had not moved due to a Russian blockade and that there were disagreements between Moscow and Kyiv about the clearing of mines in the Black Sea, he said: “As a result of the impasse, international food prices skyrocketed and millions were threatened with starvation, creating the prospect of another mass migration to Europe.”

The agreement would allow Moscow to export food and fertilizers, he said, adding: “The agreement is literally a lifesaver.”

“There can be little doubt that the grain agreement represents a major triumph for the Turkish president, “ he said.

Türkiye, the UN, Russia and Ukraine signed a deal last week in Istanbul to reopen three Ukrainian ports — Odesa, Chernomorsk, and Yuzhny — for grain exports stuck for months because of the Russia-Ukraine war, which is now in its sixth month.

A Joint Coordination Center was established to carry out inspections at the entrances and exits of harbors and to ensure the safety of the routes, according to the deal.

Source: Anadolu Agency

France’s government singled out for criticism at an Anadolu Agency journalist who criticized its decision to expel Imam Hassan Iquioussen, a Muslim scholar.

The Interministerial Committee for the Prevention of Crime and Radicalisation (CIPDR), whose website says it works under “the aegis of the prime minister,” has targeted a number of people who are victims of Islamophobia, now including at least Anadolu Agency correspondent.

The committee targeted those who criticized the deportation decision, which was announced on Thursday, accusing them on Twitter of being linked to the Muslim Brotherhood and Salafism.

“There is Feiza Ben Mohamed, who works for Anadolu Agency and joins this support campaign (for the imam) by constantly attacking France with false allegations. And without hesitation, she argues that Hassan Iquioussen is an ‘innocent imam’,” it said on Twitter on Friday.

After this post, Ben Mohamed was subjected to intense cyber harassment.

Marwan Muhammad, former director of the Collective against Islamophobia in France (CCIF), was also accused of using anti-secular rhetoric to incite conflict between Muslims and non-Muslims.

The committee also had Billal Righi, a former director of the Ummah Charity, on its hit list, by trying to link him to the 2020 murder of teacher Samuel Paty in a Paris suburb.

After the tweets were published, numerous online users denounced the committee for using state resources to harass and suppress Muslim figures for their political and religious opinions.

One Twitter user claimed that Muslim hunting was the committee’s favorite hobby and that targeting media and Muslim figures for cyberbullying is seen as normal in President Emmanuel Macron’s France.

Since Friday, while Mohamed’s journalism was distorted, she has been assailed by anti-Turkish, anti-Islamic, and sexist messages.

“It is a very malicious step to be cast in the same light as those who went to Syria to fight,” meaning terrorists, another Twitter user said on the issue.

Another user denounced France’s targeting of Muslims and proposed a march to combat Islamophobia in September. Political scientist Francois Burgat blasted the committee’s moves.

“Let’s not be passive, we could be next,” he said. Burgat said the committee’s accusations against Ben Mohamed are very dangerous in a country with freedom of expression, adding that he also wrote articles for Anadolu Agency.

RSF (journalists without borders) has ranked France as having the 26th-highest level of free speech in the world.

After public figures and politicians, the RespectZone association found in 2018 that journalists were the third most susceptible profession to cyber-harassment.

Although this research indicates that unidentified male internet users make up the bulk of cyber stalkers, it was observed in the instance of Feiza Ben Mohamed that a government organization publicly targeted the AA reporter.

Source: Anadolu Agency

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy ordered the evacuation of the city of Donetsk on Saturday amid the war with Russia, according to the country’s presidency.

“There is a government decision on a mandatory evacuation from the Donetsk region, everything is being organized. Full support, full assistance – both logistical and payments,” said Zelenskyy.

He said officials “need a decision from the people themselves, who have not yet made it for themselves. Go, we will help.”

“There are hundreds of thousands of people, tens of thousands of children,” he said. “Many people refuse to leave … but it really needs to be done. This decision will still have to be made. Anyway! Believe me”

“If you have the opportunity, please talk to those who still remain in the combat zones in Donbas. Please convince them that it is necessary to leave, especially if they are families with children,” he added.

Source: Anadolu Agency

At least 25 people were killed after mass flooding decimated eastern parts of the US state of Kentucky, a local official said on Saturday.

“We’ve got some tough news to share out of Eastern Kentucky today, where we are still in the search and rescue phase,” Governor Andy Beshear said on Twitter.

“Our death toll has risen to 25 lost, and that number is likely to increase,” he added.

Bridges and hundreds of houses in the region submerged, while over 18,000 Kentuckians remain without power.

Source: Anadolu Agency

Authorities in Nepal are considering relocating the base camp of Mount Everest because of environmental concerns.

Experts and environmentalists support the move they say is needed to alleviate growing signs of destabilization.

The current base camp is at 5,364 meters (17,598 feet) above sea level and is known as the Khumbu region, home to the Sherpa people.

Over the years, environmentalists have urged additional measures to deal with environmental damage at the world’s highest peak.

A study in the Nature Portfolio Journal of Climate and Atmospheric Science earlier this year said that ice formed on the South Col Glacier — one of the highest glaciers on Mount Everest during a period of 2,000 years, melted in about 25 years.

Sudeep Thakuri, a climate scientist and the dean of the faculty of science at Mid-Western University in Nepal, said the shifting of the base camp is related to the melting of snow and glacier ice by human activity in and around the Everest Base Camp (EBC), and “conceptually it is reasonable.”

“The EBC is located just below the Khumbu Ice-fall (the most dangerous section of Mt Everest summit route) … one can easily observe that the increased human activities in the EBC have disturbed the clean ice. The landscape around the EBC has physically changed in the last few decades,” he said. “The glacier ice pinnacles in and around the basecamp have considerably reduced. This is surely contributed by human activities in the basecamp, including frequent movements and local heating effects.”

Thakuri said that from a security standpoint, the current base camp is located in a high-risk zone as snow, ice, and rock avalanches can also create devastating effects in the region.

“A rise in temperature and permafrost degradation can potentially increase the chances of avalanches in the regions,” he said.

He said local negative effects can be minimized with planned mountaineering arrangements.

But the increasing global warming issue may not be addressed just by shifting the base camp or taking similar local efforts, he warned

“I assume that only shifting the base camp by a few kilometers away may not solve the problem in the long run. In fact, there are hardly suitable locations available for the basecamp,” he said.

Thakuri said the study on glacier change in the Mount Everest region showed that about 390 square kilometers (150 square miles) of the surface were covered by glaciers in the upper Dudh Koshi River valley where Everest is located.

“In the last half a century (from 1962), the region has already lost about 15% of glacier surface area with the retreat of an average of about 6 meters per year, glacier length and ice mass loss from the glaciers by an average thickness loss of 0.6 meters per year,” he said.

Melting fast

Priti Bhusal, a Nepal-based physician who successfully summited Everest in 2022, told Anadolu Agency that she was surprised to see melting ice cliffs and it is the melting of the cliffs that mostly destabilizes the glacier.

“Most of the glacier is covered by rocky debris but there are also areas of exposed ice, called ice cliffs. It results in increased rock fall and avalanches. Glaciers are melting, so there is a lack of ice and snow on the peaks. Icefall is much more unstable because it is getting warmer day by day,” she said.

Bhusal said, according to residents and Sherpas, decades ago on Mount Everest, ice would be present at the base camp until the end of May.

“Now, only running water and open rock are seen in the base camp by April. Everest base camp trekking routes are showing the signs of climate change,” she said.

Bhusal said at the camp, rockfalls, avalanches, and ice falls can be heard.

To decrease the risk of increased signs of destabilization at the base camp, it should be shifted 200 – 400 meters (656 – 1,312 feet) lower at the rocky part so that the crevasses and cracks that appear overnight at the camp will be less.

“Helicopter operation should be controlled. Unnecessary use of helicopters are making too much noise pollution in the Himalayan region in the Khumbu region,” she said.

Under consideration

The head of Nepal’s Tourism Department told Anadolu Agency that it is studying the relocation of the base camp.

“We are getting worries and concerns by the countries about melting of glaciers … and so we have compiled that recommendation (relocation) to the primary report to the Ministry of Tourism. It is now under consideration,” said Taranath Adhikari.

He said that his agency has recommended forming a research committee for science that will study, research what they find and maybe relocate or continue the base camp with other measures.

Source: Anadolu Agency