Israeli Rafah offensive would break international law, says UK deputy foreign minister
Andrew Mitchell warns a ground invasion could strengthen Hamas, in comments viewed as attempt to get Israel to sign up for peace deal accepted by Hamas on Monday
UN chief Antonio Guterres urges Israel to ‘stop any escalation’ after tanks enter Rafah and army takes control of crossing on the border with Egypt
Updated 08 May 2024
Arab News
LONDON: An Israeli ground offensive in Rafah would contravene international humanitarian law and would not succeed in removing Hamas from power in Gaza or eradicating the organization, Britain’s deputy foreign minister warned on Tuesday.
Andrew Mitchell said Israeli authorities had failed to present a military plan that complies with international law, and that entering Rafah, which has become the final refuge for more than a million people displaced by fighting in other parts of Gaza, could strengthen, not weaken, Hamas.
However, he stopped short of saying what international consequences, if any, Israel might face if it proceeds.
Mitchell reiterated the UK government’s desire for a permanent, sustained ceasefire in Gaza. His comments, which followed a similar statement by authorities in France on Monday, were seen as an attempt to put pressure on Israel to sign up for a provisional, three-stage peace deal that was accepted by Hamas on Monday, The Guardian newspaper reported on Tuesday.
Israeli minister Benny Gantz has said the peace proposal did not “correspond to the dialogue that has taken place so far with the mediators and has significant gaps.”
Mitchell also echoed calls from the UN for Israel to end a renewed block on humanitarian aid entering Gaza. Also on Tuesday, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres called for border crossings to be reopened “immediately” so that essential aid can be delivered to Gaza. He urged Israeli authorities to “stop any escalation” after they sent tanks into Rafah early on Tuesday and the army took control of the nearby crossing on the border with Egypt.
“Things are moving in the wrong direction. I am disturbed and distressed by the renewed military activity in Rafah by the Israel Defense Forces,” Guterres said.
International pressure has been building on Israel over the potentially devastating consequences of a threatened ground invasion of Rafah, where the UN estimates about 1.4 million Palestinians are sheltering.
EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell said such action could cause many “civilian casualties.” White House spokesperson John Kirby said that Israel told Washington its operation in Rafah “was limited and designed to cut off Hamas’s ability to smuggle weapons” into Gaza.
Egypt has urged Israeli authorities to “exercise the utmost restraint.” The Organization for Islamic Cooperation condemned Israel’s “criminal aggression.”
Police in India pull the plug on British singer Ed Sheeran’s impromptu street concert
Sheeran was singing and playing his guitar on pavement in center of Bengaluru ahead of Sunday concert
Police say event organizers had refused permission for street performance on one of city’s busiest streets
Updated 6 sec ago
Reuters
A street performance by Ed Sheeran in India’s tech capital of Bengaluru was stopped abruptly by police on Sunday, outraging fans and prompting the British singer to issue a clarification.
Sheeran, dressed in a white t-shirt and shorts was seen singing and playing his guitar on a pavement in the center of Bengaluru ahead of his concert on Sunday night.
Local channels showed a policeman walking up to Sheeran as he was singing the hit single “Shape of You” and unplugging the microphone, as onlookers jeered. Sheeran left soon after.
Police said event organizers had refused permission for the street performance, which was on one of the city’s busiest streets.
“I refused to give permission because Church Street gets very crowded. That is the reason he was asked to vacate the place,” Bengaluru police official Shekar T Tekkannanavar was quoted as saying by news agency ANI.
Sheeran, who began his career as a busker in the UK, said later on his Instagram account that he did have permission to perform.
“It wasn’t just us randomly turning up. All good though,” he wrote.
Sheeran is in India for a series of concerts, and performed in front of thousands of people at an open ground in the city later that night, accompanied by Indian singer Shilpa Rao.
China’s Xi accepts invitation to attend Moscow’s Victory Day in May, TASS reports
Kremlin earlier said it had invited ‘many countries’ to attend the 80th anniversary of the end of World War Two
The Soviet Union lost 27 million people in World War Two, including many millions in Ukraine
Updated 55 min 20 sec ago
Reuters
MOSCOW: Chinese President Xi Jinping has accepted Russia’s invitation to attend the commemorations of the Soviet victory over Nazi Germany in World War Two, TASS state news agency reported on Monday.
“Chinese President Xi Jinping has accepted an invitation to take part in the celebrations on May 9 in Moscow on the occasion of the 80th anniversary of Victory in the Great Patriotic War,” TASS cited Russian ambassador to China, Igor Morgulov, as telling Russian state television.
The Kremlin said in December that it had invited “many countries” to attend the 80th anniversary of the end of the war, which Russians call the “Great Patriotic War.”
The Soviet Union lost 27 million people in World War Two, including many millions in Ukraine, but eventually pushed Nazi forces back to Berlin, where Adolf Hitler committed suicide and the red Soviet Victory Banner was raised over the Reichstag in 1945.
Nazi Germany’s unconditional surrender came into force at 11:01 p.m. on May 8, 1945, marked as “Victory in Europe Day” by France, Britain and the United States. In Moscow it was already May 9, which became the Soviet Union’s “Victory Day” in what Russians call the Great Patriotic War of 1941-45.
Victory Day has become Russia’s most important secular holiday.
Morgulov said that Xi in return, invited Russian President Vladimir Putin to China for the country’s commemoration of the end of World War Two, which are planned for September.
In Super Bowl interview, Trump says he is serious about Canada becoming 51st state
“I think Canada would be much better off being the 51st state because we lose $200 billion a year with Canada,” Trump tells reporters
Adds that Canada is “not viable as a country” without US trade, and warned that Canada can no longer depend on the US for military protection
Updated 10 February 2025
AP
WASHINGTON: President Donald Trump said he is serious about wanting Canada to become the 51st state in an interview that aired Sunday during the Super Bowl preshow.
“Yeah it is,” Trump told Fox News Channel’s Bret Baier when asked whether his talk of annexing Canada is “a real thing” — as Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau recently warned.
“I think Canada would be much better off being the 51st state because we lose $200 billion a year with Canada. And I’m not going to let that happen,” he said. “Why are we paying $200 billion a year, essentially a subsidy to Canada?”
The US is not subsidizing Canada. The US buys products from the natural resource-rich nation, including commodities like oil. While the trade gap in goods has ballooned in recent years to $72 billion in 2023, the deficit largely reflects America’s imports of Canadian energy.
Trump has repeatedly suggested that Canada would be better off if it agreed to become the 51st US state — a prospect that is deeply unpopular among Canadians.
Trudeau said Friday during a closed-door session with business and labor leaders that Trump’s talk of making Canada the 51st US state was “a real thing” and tied to desire for access to the country’s natural resources.
“Mr. Trump has it in mind that the easiest way to do it is absorbing our country and it is a real thing. In my conversations with him on ...,” Trudeau said, according to CBC, Canada’s public broadcaster. “They’re very aware of our resources of what we have, and they very much want to be able to benefit from those.”
Speaking to reporters aboard Air Force One on Sunday as he traveled to the Super Bowl game in New Orleans, Trump continued to threaten a country that has long been one of the US’s closest allies. He claimed that Canada is “not viable as a country” without US trade, and warned that the founding NATO member can no longer depend on the US for military protection.
“You know, they don’t pay very much for military. And the reason they don’t pay much is they assume that we’re going to protect them,” he said. “That’s not an assumption they can make because — why are we protecting another country?“
In the Fox interview, which was pre-taped this weekend in Florida, Trump also said that he has not seen enough action from Canada and Mexico to stave off the tariffs he has threatened to impose on the country’s two largest trading partners once a 30-day extension is up.
“No, it’s not good enough,” he said. “Something has to happen. It’s not sustainable. And I’m changing it.”
Trump last week agreed to a 30-day pause on his plan to slap Mexico and Canada with a 25 percent tariff on all imports except for Canadian oil, natural gas and electricity, which would be taxed at 10 percent, after the countries took steps to appease his concerns about border security and drug trafficking.
Aboard Air Force One, Trump said that he would on Monday announce a 25 percent tariff on all steel and aluminum imports into the US, including from Canada and Mexico, and unveil a plan for reciprocal tariffs later in the week.
“Very simply it’s if they charge us, we charge them,” he said.
Trump’s participation in the Super Bowl interview marked a return to tradition. Presidents have typically granted a sit-down to the network broadcasting the game, the most-watched television event of the year. But both Trump and his predecessor, Joe Biden, were inconsistent in their participation.
Biden declined to participate last year — turning down a massive audience in an election year — and also skipped an appearance in 2023, when efforts by his team to have Biden speak with a Fox Corp. streaming service instead of the main network failed. During his first term, Trump participated three out of four years.
Trump was the first sitting president to attend the Super Bowl in person — something he told Baier he was surprised to learn.
“I thought it would be a good thing for the country to have the president at the game,” he said.
During his flight to New Orleans, Trump signed a proclamation declaring Feb. 9 “the first ever Gulf of America Day” as Air Force One flew over the body of water that he renamed by proclamation from the Gulf of Mexico.
Trump in the interview, also defended the work of billionaire Elon Musk, whose so-called Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, has been drawing deep concern from Democrats as he moves to shut down whole government agencies and fire large swaths of the federal workforce in the name of rooting out waste and inefficiency.
Musk, Trump said, has “been terrific,” and will target the Department of Education and the military next.
“We’re going to find billions, hundreds of billions of dollars of fraud and abuse,” Trump predicted. “I campaigned on this.”
He was also asked about his dancing, which has become a popular meme on social media.
“I don’t know what it is,” he said. “I try and walk off sometimes without dancing and I can’t. I have to dance.”
US army takes Ukraine drone warfare notes in Bavaria
The US military is changing as a result of what it sees in Ukraine and the way drone warfare is developing
Army official believes there is only one person in the US who could potentially produce drones at scale in the event of war: Elon Musk
Updated 10 February 2025
AFP
HOHENFELS Germany: Deep in a Bavarian forest, a black reconnaissance drone buzzes overhead, piloted by US soldiers hoping to put lessons learnt from the war in Ukraine into practice.
Cheaper and more plentiful than in the past, drones are changing the face of modern warfare, particularly in Ukraine.
Both Moscow and Kyiv use them for armed attacks as well as surveillance, making it hard for combatants to hide.
“It’s a transparent battlefield. That’s why in Ukraine you see troops deep down in bunkers or consistently moving,” said Brig. Gen. Steve Carpenter, training with the army at a base in Hohenfels, in the southern German state of Bavaria.
“You stop, you die.”
Army Chief of Staff General Randy George said the US military is changing as a result of what it sees in Ukraine and the way drone warfare is developing.
That means making a unit’s footprint smaller and more mobile, making them harder to target.
During the exercise, involving soldiers from the US army’s 3rd Brigade, 10th Mountain Division, the battle headquarters changed position four times in nine days.
No more than about 20 personnel are usually there at any one time — far fewer than in past campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan, when upwards of 100 may have been at a command post.
Of the lessons drawn from the Ukraine war, “I think the most important is the speed with which we need to change,” said George, urging the army to become more “flexible, nimble, adaptive.”
With new technology moving fast in Ukraine, the US military also wants to speed up its procurement processes.
There were tentative signs of this at Hohenfels.
New transport trucks were being tested just three months after the army asked General Motors to repurpose a civilian vehicle, a period that Alex Miller, George’s science and technology adviser, said “might be” record time for the army.
An Infantry Squad Vehicle transports US soldiers at the Hohenfels Training Area in southern Germany on February 6, 2025. (AFP)
But building drones at scale could prove more challenging for the United States.
Russian and Ukranian forces often deploy cheap, off-the-shelf Chinese drones.
But the United States, amid rising tensions with Beijing, does not want to have to rely on a potential adversary for its supplies.
The US industrial base has meanwhile eroded in recent decades.
The number of people employed in defense industries in the country dropped by 1.9 million, or 63.5 percent, in 2023 compared to the level in 1985, according to the Department of Defense.
“American industry doesn’t have the ability to produce drones like the Chinese,” said Col. Dave Butler, George’s communications adviser.
And he believes there is only one person in the United States who could potentially produce drones at scale in the event of war.
That businessman is Elon Musk, since Tesla makes far more of its own components than other vehicle makers.
“If we had to suddenly flick on a switch and make 10,000 drones a month, only Elon could do it,” he said.
Musk, the multi-billionaire entrepreneur, has been a fixture on the American political scene since President Donald Trump made him one of his closest advisers.
For technology adviser Miller, the need is acute and the United States could use help.
“We are trying to incentivise... an American industrial base for things like flight controllers, things like cameras and antennas,” he said.
But he added that NATO allies must join in, saying that it “can’t just be us — it’s got to be Europe too.”
Trump to announce 25% steel and aluminum tariffs in latest trade escalation
Canada and Mexico to be hit, being the largest sources of US steel imports, aloing with Brazil
Canada is also the largest supplier of primary aluminum metal to the US, accounting for 79 percent
Updated 10 February 2025
Reuters
ABOARD AIR FORCE ONE: US President Donald Trump said on Sunday he will introduce new 25 percent tariffs on all steel and aluminum imports into the US, on top of existing metals duties, in another major escalation of his trade policy overhaul.
Trump, speaking to reporters on Air Force One on his way to the NFL Super Bowl in New Orleans, said he will announce the new metals tariffs on Monday.
He also said he will announce reciprocal tariffs on Tuesday or Wednesday, to take effect almost immediately, applying them to all countries and matching the tariff rates levied by each country.
“And very simply, it’s, if they charge us, we charge them,” Trump said of the reciprocal tariff plan.
The largest sources of US steel imports are Canada, Brazil and Mexico, followed by South Korea and Vietnam, according to government and American Iron and Steel Institute data.
By a large margin, hydropower-rich Canada is the largest supplier of primary aluminum metal to the US, accounting for 79 percent of total imports in the first 11 months of 2024.
“Canadian steel and aluminum support key industries in the US from defense, shipbuilding and auto,” Canadian Innovation Minister Francois-Philippe Champagne posted on X.
“We will continue to stand up for Canada, our workers, and our industries.”
Trump also said that while the US government would allow Japan’s Nippon Steel to invest in US Steel, it would not allow this to become a majority stake.
“Tariffs are going to make it very successful again, and I think it has good management,” Trump said of US Steel.
Nippon Steel declined to comment on the latest announcements from Trump.
US President Donald Trump said on February 7, 2025 that Japan's Nippon Steel will make a major investment in US Steel, but will no longer attempt to take over the troubled company. (AFP)
Quota questions
Trump during his first term imposed tariffs of 25 percent on steel and 10 percent on aluminum, but later granted several trading partners duty-free exemptions, including Canada, Mexico and Brazil. Mexico is a major supplier of aluminum scrap and aluminum alloy.
Former President Joe Biden later negotiated duty-free quota arrangements with Britain, the European Union and Japan. It was not immediately clear from Trump’s announcement what will happen to those exemptions and quota arrangements.
“Quebec exports 2.9 million tons of aluminum to (the US), that is, 60 percent of their needs. Do they prefer to get supplies from China?” Francois Legault, premier of Quebec, said on X.
“All this shows that we must begin to renegotiate our free trade agreement with the United States as soon as possible and not wait for the review planned for 2026. We must put an end to this uncertainty.”
Steel mill capacity usage jumped to levels above 80 percent in 2019 after Trump’s initial tariffs, but has fallen since then as China’s global dominance of the sector has pushed down steel prices. A Missouri aluminum smelter revived by the tariffs was idled last year by Magnitude 7 Metals.
Matching rates
Trump said he would hold a news conference on Tuesday or Wednesday to provide detailed information on the reciprocal tariff plan, adding that he first revealed on Friday that he was planning reciprocal tariffs to ensure “that we’re treated evenly with other countries.” The new US president has long complained about the EU’s 10 percent tariffs on auto imports being much higher than the US car rate of 2.5 percent. He frequently states that Europe “won’t take our cars” but ships millions west across the Atlantic every year.
The US, however, enjoys a 25 percent tariff on pickup trucks, a vital source of profits for Detroit automakers General Motors , Ford and Stellantis’ US operations.
The US trade-weighted average tariff rate is about 2.2 percent, according to World Trade Organization data, compared to 12 percent for India, 6.7 percent for Brazil, 5.1 percent for Vietnam and 2.7 percent for European Union countries.
Border steps
In a separate Fox News interview, Trump said Canada’s and Mexico’s actions to secure their US borders and halt the flow of drugs and migrants are insufficient ahead of a March 1 tariff deadline.
Trump has threatened to impose tariffs of 25 percent on all Mexican and Canadian imports unless America’s two largest trading partners take stronger actions. He paused the tariffs until March 1 after some initial border security concessions from the two countries, with Mexico pledging to add 10,000 National Guard troops to its border and Canada deploying new technology and personnel and taking new anti-fentanyl steps.
Asked whether Mexico’s and Canada’s actions were good enough, Trump replied: “No, it’s not good enough,” Trump said. “Something has to happen, it’s not sustainable, and I’m changing it.”
Trump did not say what Canada and Mexico needed to do to avoid broad tariffs on March 1.
