cekikikan

By Lyse Doucet

Chief international correspondent in Munich

It’s called the Munich Rule: engage and interact; don’t lecture or ignore one another.

But this year, at the 60th Munich Security Conference (MSC), two of the most talked-about people weren’t even here.

That included former US President Donald Trump, whose possible return to the White House could throw a spanner in the work of the transatlantic relationship, which lies at the heart of this premier international forum.

And Russia’s President Vladimir Putin, who was vehemently blamed by one world leader after another for the death of his most prominent critic Alexei Navalny, not to mention his full-scale invasion of Ukraine, which continues to cast a long dark shadow across Europe and far beyond.

The staggering news of Navalny’s death, which broke just hours before the conference kicked off on Friday, underlined again the perilous unpredictability of a world carved up by multiple fault lines and entrenched interests.

ADVERTISEMENT

“We live in a world where there is more and more confrontation and less co-operation,” regretted the EU’s High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, Josep Borrell. “The world has become a much more dangerous place,” he told me as the conference drew to a close on Sunday.

“Lose-Lose?” was the maxim of this year’s gathering, at a time of deepening geopolitical tensions and jarring economic uncertainties.

The MSC’s annual report warned that it could give rise to “lose-lose” dynamics among governments, “a downwards spiral that jeopardises co-operation and undermines the existing international order”.

“I think this has been the conference of a disordered world,” reflected David Miliband, the CEO and president of the International Rescue Committee (IRC).

“It’s a world dominated by impunity, where the guardrail stabilisers are not working and that’s why there’s so much disorder, not just in Ukraine and in Gaza and Israel, but more widely in places like Sudan, whose humanitarian crisis isn’t even getting on the agenda,” he said.

https://emp.bbc.com/emp/SMPj/2.51.0/iframe.htmlMedia caption,

Watch Yulia Navalnaya speak following report of husband’s death

This issue of impunity, one of the toughest of political challenges, was suddenly transformed into a poignant personal story when Navalny’s wife, Yulia Navalnaya, unexpectedly appeared on the conference’s main stage in the grand Bayerischer Hof hotel to condemn Russia’s president and urge the assembled presidents, prime ministers, defence chiefs and top diplomats to bring him to justice.

Her remarkable composure and clarity stunned the packed hall, which gave her a sustained standing ovation before and after she spoke with palpable pain.

This year Russia, as well as Iran, weren’t invited to Munich because the organisers assessed they weren’t “interested in meaningful dialogue”.

In MSC forums gone by, vitriolic speeches by Russia’s veteran Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov angered and electrified the main hall, and Iran’s visible presence highlighted the rivalries and risks in urgent need of resolution.

The imperative of continuing hefty Western military and financial assistance to Ukraine was underscored repeatedly by Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky, who exhorted participants to act, as he rushed from one high-level meeting to the next.

“The year of 2024 demands your response – from everyone in the world,” he beseeched delegates when he spoke from the top podium.

• Zelensky warns of ‘artificial deficit’ of weapons

The US’s pivotal support was uppermost in his mind as a vital security package, amounting to $60bn (£48bn), is being held up by a US Congress where Republican lawmakers are increasingly divided over whether to keep backing Kyiv in its fight.

Back home in Ukraine, soldiers are even running out of bullets on front lines.

US delegates in Munich, including Vice-President Kamala Harris, were at pains to insist that she and President Joe Biden would not abandon Ukraine, nor America’s leadership in global affairs.

But with US elections just nine months away, Mr Trump is already shaping the polarised political debate in Washington and reviving anxiety that he could pull the US out of the Nato military alliance and other international commitments.

“They know what they need to do but they can’t get it done, and that’s the gap that has to be filled,” was how Mr Miliband assessed pledges voiced by the US and European allies in Munich.

Others were even more stinging in their criticism.

“Lots of words. No concrete commitments,” posted Nathalie Tocci, Director of the Institute of International Affairs, on X, formerly known as Twitter. “It’s a sad MSC2024.”

The gaps were even more glaring when it came to the devastating Israel-Gaza war, which erupted after Hamas’s murderous assault on southern Israel on 7 October.

Israel’s military operations are causing a staggering number of civilian casualties and have ravaged much of this coastal strip.

“We have seen a really great interest from the international community and the world leaders who have gathered here in Munich that they would like to see a serious ceasefire and a substantial amount of international aid into Gaza,” Palestinian Prime Minister Mohammad Shtayyeh remarked in an interview.

But Israeli delegates, including former peace negotiator Tzipi Livni, doubled down on the need to keep pressing forward.

“I’m a political opponent of [Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu, but I support the war in Gaza,” she emphasised in a session, which also included Mr Shtayyeh and the Jordanian Foreign Minister Ayman Safadi.

“I support the strategic need to eliminate Hamas as a terrorist organisation and as a regime,” Ms Livni said.

This year’s MSC marked a record attendance: more than 900 participants including some 50 heads of state and government from around the world, more than 100 ministers, as well as representatives of think-tanks, non-governmental organisations and leading businesses.

Top spooks, feminist foreign ministers, climate warriors, Iranian activists, weapons experts, technology wizards and more – all gathered for their own get-togethers on public stages and in private rendezvous and hushed huddles.

It all underlined how the world’s understanding of “global security” keeps shifting shape.

Over the decades, this forum – born in 1963 in a Cold War quest for peace and prosperity – has often been a venue for real-time diplomacy, too.

But in a year marked by worry over “lose-lose dynamics” Munich was a place for a lot of talking and taking stock as the world nervously wonders where the next blows will fall.https://tehopeng.com/

By Matt Precey

BBC News, Suffolk

Nuclear weapons could be making a return to a United States Air Force base in Suffolk 15 years after it reportedly removed its last ones.

Documents indicate RAF Lakenheath is preparing facilities to house and guard bombs with an explosive power many times greater than the one dropped on Hiroshima at the end of World War Two.

What do we know about the plans?

RAF Lakenheath is currently home to the 48th Fighter Wing, also known as the Liberty Wing, with the latest generation F-35A Lightning II aircraft stationed there.

According to the USAF these fighter jets have successfully been flight tested to carry the short-range B61-12 thermonuclear bomb, a tactical weapon designed for the battlefield.

Documents detailing a contract awarded to build defensive shelters for RAF Lakenheath’s “upcoming nuclear mission” were published, and then withdrawn, by the US Department of Defense.

ADVERTISEMENT

These mobile units would protect the troops assigned to defend the base, the 48th Security Forces Squadron.

In addition, millions of dollars have been earmarked to build a facility known as a “surety dormitory” at the base, which is understood to be storage facilities for nuclear weapons, according to a US Department of Defense .

The RAF base opened in Lakenheath in 1941 and was operational during World War Two.

As the Cold War between Nato and the Soviet bloc intensified, the USAF assumed administrative control of the base in 1951.

There are 4,000 US military personnel and a further 1,500 British and US civilian staff at the site.

Will the weapons arrive in Suffolk?

Sir Lawrence Freedman, emeritus professor of war studies at King’s College London, said there were “some suggestions” the plans were precautionary.

The shelters could just be extra capacity in the event other weapons had to be removed from storage sites in Europe, he added.

“It is one thing to build storage facility, it’s another thing to hide the fact that American weapons are going to be based in Britain, so it may have quite a relatively mundane explanation rather than be some sort of dramatic escalation in the arms race,” he said.

The UK and Nato have a long-standing policy to neither confirm nor deny the presence of nuclear weapons at a given location.

Why is this happening now?

Sir Lawrence said he did not think the plans were specifically related to the situation in Ukraine.

“It is part of, I think, a general increasing of tension with Russia,” he said.

“It also reflects the high priority given to short-range systems in Russian doctrine.”

But William Alberque, a former senior NATO official now with the International Institute for Strategic Studies, said it was a “response to an increasingly dangerous threat environment across Europe because of Russia’s actions”.

He cited the stationing of Russian nuclear forces in Belarus, the invasion of Ukraine and “wildly increased threats of nuclear weapons use by Vladimir Putin”.

What does this mean for the base?

Hans Kristensen, from the Federation of American Scientists, was among the first people to raise the possibility nuclear weapons could be returning to RAF Lakenheath.

“There is no doubt that if you have nuclear weapons on a base, that base is more likely to be targeted in a nuclear conflict with Russia,” he said.

“There’s no doubt that once you have nuclear weapons in, it’s a different ball game.”

• Plans progress to bring US nuclear weapons to UK
• Anger over claims UK could host US nuclear weapons
• Protesters oppose possible nuclear arms return

Mr Alberque said it was “highly likely” the base was already a Russian target.

“If I’m a Russian military planner, I’m already going to hit it. If you watch Russian television, they talk about the UK a lot; they talk about nuking the UK a lot.”

Mr Alberque believes Russian President Vladimir Putin would authorise the use of these weapons.

“To say he is capable of it would be an understatement. If he sees a lack of resolve and a lack of consequences I think he would,” he said.

What happens next?

The Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND) has already protested outside the base.

CND general secretary Kate Hudson said: “If they’re here, we’re going to get rid of them.”

The group has instructed law firm Leigh Day to look into whether building of the surety dormitory is lawful.

Lawyer Ricardo Gama said: “The [UK] Ministry of Defence says that the Lakenheath development won’t lead to significant environmental effects, but in coming to that conclusion our client argues they have ignored the potential environmental effects of stationing nuclear weapons at the airbase, including the potential for nuclear accidents”.https://tehopeng.com/

By Rushdi Abu Alouf in Istanbul & Kathryn Armstrong in London

BBC News

The Israeli military says its special forces are still inside the Nasser hospital in Gaza as fears grow for patients at the site.

Israel launched what it described as a “precise and limited mission” there on Thursday. The military says it has caught “dozens of terror suspects”.

Hamas dismissed that claim as “lies”. The Hamas-run health ministry said five people died after generators failed.

The World Health Organization (WHO) said the facility urgently needed fuel.

It said the fuel was vital to “ensure the continuation of the provision of life-saving services”.

ADVERTISEMENT

Tarik Jasarevic, a WHO spokesperson, said there were now reports that the orthopaedic unit at the hospital, in the city of Khan Younis, had been damaged.

“That obviously reduces the ability to provide the urgent medical care,” he said, adding there were still “critically injured and sick patients” at the hospital.

“More degradation to the hospital means more lives being lost.”

Nasser is the main hospital in southern Gaza, and is one of the few still functioning. It has been the scene of intense fighting between the IDF and Hamas for days.

• Why are Israel and Hamas fighting in Gaza
• Jeremy Bowen: Death and Israel’s search for “total victory”

An injured man who had to leave the hospital said the conditions there were dire.

“Since they besieged it, there is no water or food,” Raed Abed told the Associated Press.

“Garbage is widespread, and sewage has flooded the emergency department.”

The hospital’s director, Nahed Abu-Teima, told BBC Arabic the situation inside was “catastrophic and very dangerous”.

The Hamas-run health ministry reported on Friday that the five people who died at the hospital did so after the electricity generators went down and oxygen could not be provided.

The deaths have not been independently verified.

On Wednesday, the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) ordered thousands of displaced people who had been sheltering there to leave.

Images, verified by the BBC, showed medical staff rushing patients on stretchers through a corridor filled with smoke or dust.

https://emp.bbc.com/emp/SMPj/2.51.0/iframe.htmlMedia caption,

Watch: Patients rushed through smoke, bodies moved – what we can see in video from Nasser hospital raid

The IDF believes Hamas has been using hospitals and other civilian bases as shields for military activities.

“We can’t give them [Hamas] a free pass, we have to make sure that they are pursued and hunted down,” IDF spokesperson Lt Col Peter Lerner told the BBC.

He said the military had been making “a huge effort to evacuate people from the hospital in order to get http://He said the military had been making “a huge effort to evacuate people from the hospital in order to getthem out of harm’s way”, denying claims that civilians had been targeted.

The IDF said that among those it had captured at the hospital were 20 Hamas members who were part of the 7 October attacks on Israel.

It also said it had found weapons, including grenades, at the facility.

The military is also searching for the bodies of Israeli hostages which it said intelligence suggests might be hidden in the hospital.

Meanwhile, the Palestinian Red Crescent Society (PRCS) said Israeli tanks were targeting the nearby Al-Amal hospital, “resulting in very severe damage in two nursing rooms”.

They wrote on social media that nobody had been hurt.

Intense hostilities have been reported around the hospital recently. The PRCS said it was raided last week after some 8,000 displaced people and patients complied with an order to evacuate.

On Friday, they said that two doctors who were arrested during the raid had been released, while 12 other staff remained in custody.

Israel launched its military offensive after waves of Hamas fighters burst through Israel’s border on 7 October, killing about 1,200 people – mainly civilians – and taking 253 others back to Gaza as hostages.

The Hamas-run health ministry says more than 28,700 people, mainly women and children – have been killed in Israel’s campaign.

Israel is facing increasing international pressure to show restraint but efforts to negotiate an end to the fighting have not yet yielded any results.

A senior Palestinian official familiar with the ceasefire talks told the BBC that the gap between the negotiating parties was still wide and there were disagreements over many of the proposed provisions.

Senior officials from the US, Israel, Egypt and Qatar have been meeting in Cairo this week to try and hammer out a deal.

The official said that the main issue remains the disagreement with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu over what happens the day after the war is over. The US want to rely on a strengthened Palestinian Authority, while Israel is against having a single administration in charge of the West Bank and Gaza.

Another disagreement is over Israel’s aim of completely destroying Hamas, which the US thinks will be difficult to achieve anytime soon.

The US is said to be trying to pressure the two sides to reach a long period of calm to make it difficult for the two sides to return to fighting again.https://tehopeng.com/

By Katie Silver

Business reporter

The Lunar New Year is traditionally a time for gathering with family and friends to eat and drink.

And for hundreds of years the drink of choice in China for these celebrations has been baijiu – a clear spirit made with fermented grains which packs a potent punch.

Baijiu is also often drunk straight and at social events such as weddings and birthdays.

Its Alcohol-By-Volume (ABV) can top 60% – in comparison spirits like scotch whisky and tequila typically have an ABV of around 40%.

“Baijiu certainly still has its place in Chinese liquor consumption, even among young consumers,” says Allison Malmsten, public research director at Daxue Consulting.

It accounts for well over 90% of China’s spirits sales, with annual sales of around $160bn (£127bn).

However, in recent times drinks from abroad have been growing in popularity in what is the world’s biggest spirits market.

Brand new story

In 2022, sales of whisky in China were valued at $2.3bn, according to market research firm Euromonitor International.

That figure is expected to almost triple by 2027 as the whisky market there is expected to grow at around five times the rate seen globally.

Those sales are being driven by young, middle class, urban, educated and increasingly female drinkers.

Many of them are shunning baijiu in favour of less alcoholic spirits from outside China, according to Ms Malmsten.

The growth in demand for whisky in particular, has helped encourage international brands to open distilleries across China.

Amongst them is French drinks giant Pernod-Ricard, which owns the Jameson Irish whiskey brand as well as Beefeater Gin and Absolut Vodka. It is investing $140m in a production base near Emei Mountain in Sichuan Province, Southwest China.

UK-based rival Diageo also opened a plant in the Yunnan Province in December and is currently trialling production with plans to be fully up and running later this year. The company is also opening an Asia-Pacific Innovation hub in Shanghai.

“We are here for a long-term play,” Managing Director for Diageo in China Atul Chhaparwal told the BBC.

He is bullish about the market, saying the demand is so strong that is space for everyone.

“Given the vibrancy of the overall whiskey category in China, there will be enough space for single malts, for blended whiskies, for local players, for imported whiskey, to grow,” he says.

“Whiskey currently makes up less than 2% of the total spirits consumed in China, which indicates that how much room headroom everyone has to play in here,” he adds.

That includes homegrown distilleries which have sprung up across the country. Pernod estimates there are between 30 and 50, with many still being built.

The whisky market is also expanding in other parts of Asia.

“The growth is immense”, spirits retailer Maison du Whisky’s Jamie Li told the BBC in the French company’s store in Singapore.

Mr Li, who heads sales to South Korea, Japan and China expects to see a boost during the Lunar New Year as Chinese tourists visit Singapore.

“Chinese New Year is kind of like Christmas in Europe – it’s festive, people want to spend money, buy nice gifts and have something memorable. So whisky is part of their memory,” he says.

There is also a growing number of collectors who “buy and hold” bottles of whisky which are expected to rise in value.

But it’s not all smooth sailing for China’s whisky market warns Ms Malmsten.

“The local distilleries are still in the early stages. 80% of the whisky has only been aged for two years or less. There’s a lack of barrels and a lack of professionals to help with production,” she says.

Still, if the success of China’s wine industry is anything to go by, ‘watch this space’ when it comes to whisky.

“What we saw with China’s wine industry is that once it started to mature, the demand for Chinese wines skyrocketed. In our recent survey, we found that after French wines, Chinese wines are the second most preferred,” Ms Malmsten says.

“As China’s whisky production matures, we might see a similar rise in demand for domestically produced whisky as well.”https://tehopeng.com/

By Laura Gozzi

BBC News

Major French magazine L’Express has revealed that its prominent former editor, Philippe Grumbach, was a KGB spy for 35 years.

Grumbach was an exceptionally well plugged-in figure in French society for decades.

He counted presidents, actors and literary giants as close friends. He was a legendary figure in journalism who shaped the editorial direction of one of France’s most successful publications. When he died in 2003, Minister of Culture Jean-Jacques Aillagon said Grumbach had been “one of the most memorable and respected figures in French media”.

But he was also “Brok”, the KGB spy.

Extensive proof of Grumbach’s duplicitous life can be found in the so-called Mitrokhin archives – named after the Soviet major who smuggled thousands of pages of documents out of Soviet archives and handed them to Britain in 1992. They were later compiled into a book by Christopher Andrew and Vasili Mitrokhin himself.

Among the thousands of pages of documents are profiles outlining the characteristics of Westerners who spied for the Soviet Union.

Several months ago, a friend of Etienne Girard, the social affairs editor at L’Express and the co-author of the Grumbach exposé, informed him that an acquaintance who was researching the Mitrokhin files had come across mentions of L’Express. The documents said that an agent with the code-name of Brok worked for the KGB – and spelled out biographical details that matched Grumbach’s.

Mr Girard’s interest was piqued immediately.

“I started to dig into it and found Grumbach’s name written in Russian, and some photos,” Mr Girard told the BBC. “And then things got much more serious. I got in touch with the French secret service to confirm that Brok was indeed Grumbach – and things snowballed from there.”

Born in Paris in 1924 into a Jewish family, Grumbach fled France with his mother and siblings in 1940 – the year Nazi Germany invaded and Marshal Philippe Pétain took power in Vichy with a collaborationist regime. Grumbach joined the US army almost immediately and fought alongside the resistance in Algeria in 1943. After the war, he joined the AFP news agency – but resigned soon after in protest at the French government’s actions in the war in Indochina.

In 1954, Grumbach was hired to work at L’Express by Jean-Jacques Servan-Schreiber, its founder.

From then onwards, Grumbach began rubbing shoulders with some of France’s most prominent figures of the 20th Century.

He helped rehabilitate the then-senator – and future president – Francois Mitterand’s reputation when he was accused of staging a fake assassination in 1960. He was close to the powerful Servan-Schreiber, President Valéry Giscard d’Estaing and prominent statesman Pierre Mendès France, among others. Actors Alain Delon and Isabelle Adjani were guests at his 1980 wedding, where writer Francoise Sagan and Pierre Berge, co-founder of Yves Saint Laurent, were the legal witnesses.

And Grumbach was a spy throughout.

Some may view his decision to spy for the Soviet Union as a romantic tale of loyalty to a doomed regime. But Mitrokhin himself speculated that while it was probably ideology that initially attracted Grumbach to the KGB, after only a few years his reasons for staying on as a spy had less to do with wishing to advance the cause of communism in Europe, and more with his desire to make enough money to buy a flat in Paris.

The financial incentives were certainly appealing. According to the Mitrokhin files, between 1976 and 1978 alone Grumbach was awarded the equivalent of today’s €250,000 (£214,000) for his services to the KGB. On three other occasions in the 1970s, he received an extra bonus for being one of the top 13 Soviet spies in France.

Yet it is unclear what missions he carried out exactly. The Mitrokhin files show that during the 1974 presidential election the KGB gave him fabricated files which were meant to create tensions between right-wing presidential candidates. Although L’Express quotes documents as saying that Grumbach was entrusted with the mission of “settling delicate issues” and “liaising with representatives and leaders of political parties, and groups”, there are few other concrete examples of Grumbach actively helping the USSR.

Maybe that is the reason why, in the early 1980s, the KGB severed ties with him. According to the Mitrokhin files book, KGB agents in Paris deemed Grumbach “insincere” and felt he exaggerated his abilities to gather information and the value of his intelligence. He was let go in 1981.

We will never know whether Grumbach was relieved that his double life was no more, or how he felt about his years of service to the KGB.

Whether because of shame or a lingering sense of loyalty, he rebuffed the only known attempt in 2000 by a journalist, Thierry Wolton, to find out more about his years as a spy. Grumbach initially appeared to obliquely admit to his past, but later rowed back, threatening to sue Wolton if he went ahead with the tell-all book he was planning.

Wolton dropped the project, but it seems the incident sparked in Grumbach a desire to talk about his experience.

His widow Nicole recently told L’Express that, soon after the Wolton visit, her late husband told her the truth. “He explained to me that he had worked for the KGB before we got married,” she told the magazine. She said he mentioned having been “revolted” by the racism he witnessed in Texas while he was in the US army, and implied this led him to seek a collaboration with the USSR instead. “He immediately added that he wanted to stop almost right away, but that he had been threatened,” Nicole told L’Express.

Mr Girard says he had no problem unearthing the truth about its former editor-in-chief.

“I definitely had the sense that I was doing my job. It’s up to us to do the investigation, because it concerns us – even if it means unearthing uncomfortable truths,” he said.

Writing the piece took three months, but it has paid off. Almost every media outlet in France has picked up the story – possibly because many still remember Grumbach as a towering figure who dominated the French media landscape for decades.

Some may be tempted to dust off their old copies of L’Express from the Grumbach years in search of subliminal pro-Soviet messaging. But they’re unlikely to find anything. In the 1950s, under Grumbach’s first stint as an editor-in-chief, L’Express leaned left without ever endorsing communism; in the 1970s, when Grumbach was again at the helm, L’Express moved to a resolutely moderate, liberal, centrist space.

As the report in L’Express points out, Grumbach’s work as a spy was never to spread propaganda.

“He was careful to keep his work as a spy separate from his work as magazine editor,” Mr Girard said. “But this is precisely why it all worked. The KGB wanted him to hold on to his cover of a centrist bourgeois to keep flying under the radar.”https://tehopeng.com/

“It was fully in the spirit of the KGB. It was a smart move. And it worked.”

By Nicholas Yong

BBC News, Singapore

Foreign tourists must now pay a 150,000 rupiah (£7.60; $9.60) levy to enter Bali, one of the world’s most popular tourist destinations.

Indonesian authorities say this is aimed at protecting the island’s environment and culture.

Bali is known for its pristine beaches and surfing waves, as well its beautiful landscapes.

Official data shows that almost 4.8 million tourists visited Bali between January and November last year.

The tourist tax, which was first announced last year, came into effect from Wednesday – Valentine’s Day.

It applies to foreign tourists entering the province from abroad or other parts of the country, with domestic Indonesian tourists exempt. Travellers are urged to pay up before arrival, through the Love Bali website.

Tourism contributed some 60% to Bali’s annual GDP before the pandemic.

According to the province’s statistics bureau, Australia was the largest contributor of foreign tourists to Bali in November 2023 with more than 100,000 arrivals. This was followed by tourists from India, China and Singapore.

But misbehaving tourists in Bali have riled locals in recent years.

Last March, a Russian man was deported from Bali after stripping off on Mount Agung, believed by Hindus to be the home of the gods.

In the same month, authorities said they planned to ban foreign tourists from using motorbikes, after a spate of cases involving people breaking traffic laws.

In 2021, uproar also resulted when a three-minute video circulated of a Russian couple having sex on Mount Batur, another holy site.

Watch: What maps don’t show about this Asian nation

The announcement came on the same day that millions of Indonesians headed to the polls to select a new president and legislature. More than 200 million people over Indonesia’s 17,000 islands and across three time zones are eligible to vote.https://tehopeng.com/

By Mariko Oi & Natalie Sherman

BBC News

Multi-billionaire Jeff Bezos has sold more of his shares in Amazon, bringing the total value of sales in recent days to more than $4bn (£3.2bn).

The technology giant, which Mr Bezos founded in 1994, said he has sold 24 million Amazon shares this month.

Mr Bezos, who is the firm’s executive chair, last sold Amazon shares in 2021.

Earlier this month, the company said he was planning to sell 50 million shares over the next year, which are worth around $8.4bn at current prices.

The first sale of 12 million shares was announced in a regulatory filing on Friday, followed by an announcement on Tuesday of the sale of another 12 million shares.

ADVERTISEMENT

Mr Bezos has also given away shares in Amazon as part of his philanthropy, most recently in 2022.

As Mr Bezos moved to Miami in Florida from Seattle in Washington last year, he will save around $280m in tax on the $4bn worth of stock he has sold.

• Call for billionaires to face a minimum tax rate
• Los Angeles Times to lay off 20% of its workforce

Gains above $250,000 from the sale of shares or other long term investments, are taxed at 7% in Washington state. Florida does not have state taxes on incomes or capital gains.

However, he will still be liable to federal taxes as a result of selling the shares.

When Mr Bezos announced his move to Florida it prompted speculation over whether it was because of a potential tax bill he would have faced in Washington after the state approved a new tax on large stock sales.

His sales of Amazon shares come after they have risen by almost 70% in the past year.

Mr Bezos said in November that his parents had recently moved back to Miami where he spent some of his childhood and that he wanted to be close to them and to his Blue Origin space project, which was “increasingly shifting to Cape Canaveral”.

“Lauren and I love Miami,” he wrote on Instagram, referring to his fiancée Lauren Sánchez.

“For all that, I’m planning to return to Miami, leaving the Pacific Northwest,” he added.

Mr Bezos remains Amazon’s biggest shareholder and is one of the richest people in the world, with an estimated fortune of more than $190bn.https://tehopeng.com/

By Tiffanie Turnbull

in Melbourne

From the moment she slipped the Fearless record into her CD player as a 14-year-old, Georgia Carroll has been fascinated by Taylor Swift.

A decade and a half on, she’s now touted as the only person in the world with a PhD on the superstar.

Her assessment? “At the moment, it wouldn’t be going too far to say [Swift] is one of the most powerful people in the world.”

That’s why Dr Carroll is among scores of experts who have descended on Melbourne this week for an international academic symposium attempting to explain just how Swift has become so influential.

The event – the first of its kind – is a curtain raiser to the Eras Tour in Australia, and has attracted more than 400 submissions from dozens of study disciplines and academic institutions around the world – sparking a flurry of excitement and global headlines.

The idea for the ‘Swiftposium’ was born last July as a half-joking tweet with just a few dozen likes. But when organisers quietly announced the event months later – backed by seven universities across Australia and New Zealand – it went internationally viral overnight.

Organisers woke up to coverage on the BBC, in Rolling Stone Magazine, CNN.

“I was like, I’ve got to email my boss,” Dr Eloise Faichney says with a grin. “Our little conference suddenly became this juggernaut.”

Fans were also desperate to take part, and on Sunday, hundreds of people – walking advertisements for rhinestones, cowboy boots and Swift’s signature red lip – flocked into Melbourne’s iconic Capitol Theatre just to hear lectures about the megastar.

At a sold-out friendship bracelet-making workshop beforehand, 19-year-old Soumil says the event – run by RMIT University – is helping heal the wounds left by the ticketing bloodbath of last year.

“It’s fun to still be part of it all,” he tells the BBC.

But the organisers are quick to clarify this is not a fan convention.

“Although some of us are fans, it certainly – for us – is about trying to take somebody like her seriously in academia,” Dr Emma Whatman says.

“This is not an uncritical celebration.”

‘Godlike’ influence

There’s no denying ‘Taylor Mania’ has swept the world this past year – she was named Time Magazines’ Person of the Year in 2023 – and it’s unclear when that might fade.

On Monday, the 34-year-old again dominated the headlines with pictures of her and footballer boyfriend Travis Kelce winning at the Super Bowl. Last week she cleaned up at the Grammys, taking home her fourth album of the year accolade.

Even her cats, her publicist and her childhood friends have name recognition and a loyal following.

“[Swift] has somehow become the most godlike superstar on the planet, bigger than I thought was even possible,” keynote speaker Brittany Spanos – a Rolling Stone reporter who in 2020 taught the first ever university course on the idol – told the conference.

But the pop icon has long found herself at the centre of huge cultural moments and debates, ever since shooting to stardom as a teenager.

She has become one of the highest-earning and most-celebrated artists of all time – all while igniting conversations about everything from streaming royalties and music ownership to misogyny and cancel culture.

The summit obviously has a whole panel dedicated to “Swiftonomics” – a trend coined to explain her mammoth effect on economies, and one which has left world leaders begging her to tour their countries.

But there are also experts detailing how her bops are being used to train young people in CPR and excited discussion about the way her romance with Kelce is helping girls feel at home in traditionally male-dominated sports fandoms.

There’s even a lyrical analysis of her attitudes towards public transport (ironically, as her real-life private jet use has increased, so have songs referencing trains and buses, Harrison Croft says).

And when the audience tired of listening to speeches, they were treated to a duet between a musician-turned-academic and an uncomfortably accurate AI clone of a younger Swift’s voice – to contrast how her sound has changed over the past 17 years.

For the literature fans, the conference had a mother-daughter duo read spoken-word poetry about the contempt society shows for the interests of young women – an item which drew an adoring reaction from the crowd. And for the politics nerds, an academic presenting on how Australian MPs use Swift to seem relatable.

Madeline Pentland, 27, found more than 30 speeches citing her most iconic lyrics – including a shameless performance by the treasurer of New South Wales, who racked up 20 references in a single speech.

Men were more likely to quote the singer, she discovered, but they tended to use the lyrics in political attack or mockery, whereas women were far more likely to use them to support topics of debate.

But Ms Pentland was most amused to find them wielded during one of Australian politics’ favourite past times – the disposing of leaders.

She laments, though, what she thinks are some missed opportunities: “I would have thought that there would be a bit of Bad Blood here and there, but I didn’t find any references!”

Another duo has explored how Swift has become such a magnet for conspiracy – from “delulu” fans reading into her strategic hints to right-wing characters reading into almost anything.

In the past few days alone, US President Joe Biden has joked off conjecture that Swift’s love life is part of a plot to rig the Super Bowl and help get him get re-elected, while her fans were convincing anyone with an internet connection that the re-record of the Reputation album was imminent.

Clare Southerton is interested in what all that can teach us about growing conspiracy communities.

“There’s a world of difference between being like, ‘Oh, look, the blue dress means 1989 is next’… and being a domestic terrorist, but it’s helpful for us to understand, why do people enjoy this?” the 35-year-old told the BBC.

There have also been uncomfortable debates about how terrifyingly unforgiving Swift’s fanbase can be, how her music reflects colonialism, and her controversial casting as a transport-emissions villain.

Singaporean academic Aimee-Sophia Lim – who studies how the artist is inspiring political activism in countries in South East Asia – says she’s a huge fan, but she is often disappointed by Swift’s “US-centric, white brand of feminism”.

“Perhaps people of colour and those from the Global South should be the ones advocating for themselves and their communities… but Taylor’s outreach is undeniable,” the 23-year-old tells the BBC from Singapore.

“It would be great if she manages to expand her activism, so perhaps she could give a platform to other people who are able to speak on behalf of themselves.”

How did she become so powerful?

Not everyone is buying into the hype though.

Sabrina – who is literally fleeing the city the weekend the Eras Tour comes to town – says she can’t comprehend the insane levels of Swift’s appeal or influence.

“I don’t understand the whole fuss… like, I really don’t understand what’s happening here,” she tells the BBC.

But Dr Carroll says it comes down to the broadly relatable brand Swift has built, and the “intense connection” she’s managed to cultivate with her base – many of whom feel like they’ve grown up with her.

“Taylor has spent her whole career making her fans think they could be her friend,” she tells the BBC.

“And she’s done all of these things that make fans want to act in a way that makes her like them back,” adding that can at times lead to concerning behaviour – like mobbing her friend’s wedding, spending tens of thousands on merch and tickets, and obsessing over her every move.

All throughout the symposium – hosted by the University of Melbourne – people have been likening Swift to Elvis, Michael Jackson, Madonna and Beyoncé.

It’s hard to compare her to those artists of a different era, keynote speaker Ms Spanos tells the BBC, but she’s certainly the hottest thing on the planet right now.

“She’ll be considered the greatest songwriter of her generation… and also one of the greatest songwriters of all time.”

Dr Carroll argues Swift has indeed been able to take her fame to another level though – thanks to that broad, incredibly motivated fanbase.

“[For other artists], their sphere of influence doesn’t extend too far out of their fan base. But that’s no longer true of Taylor.”

And it’s nice – and long overdue – that people are taking an interest in that, she says.

A year ago, when receiving her doctorate people laughed at the topic of her studies. Now she’s giving a keynote speech at one of the most publicised academic conferences in the world.

“It’s kind of like, oh my God, everybody gets it!” she says. “It’s that feeling of being seen, and recognition that my research does have a value.

“We are not just gonna be sitting around at this conference fangirling – that will occur – but there’s so much that studying her can tell us about the world.”https://tehopeng.com/

By Lucy Williamson

BBC News, Jerusalem

A six-year-old girl who went missing in Gaza City last month has been found dead, along with several of her relatives and two paramedics who tried to save her, after they appear to have come under fire from Israeli tanks.

Hind Rajab was fleeing the city in a car with her aunt, uncle and three cousins at the time.

Audio recordings of calls between Hind and emergency call operators suggest that the six-year-old was the only one left alive in the car, hiding from Israeli forces among the bodies of her relatives.

Her pleas for someone to rescue her ended when the phone line was cut amid the sound of more gunfire.

Paramedics from the Palestinian Red Crescent Society (PRCS) managed on Saturday to reach the area, which had previously been closed off as an active combat zone.

One paramedic told journalists that Hind was among the six bodies found inside the car, all of which showed signs of gunfire and shelling.

A few metres away were the remains of another vehicle – completely burnt out, its engine spilling onto the ground. This, the Red Crescent says, is the ambulance sent to fetch Hind.

Its crew – Yusuf al-Zeino and Ahmed al-Madhoun – were killed when the ambulance was bombed by Israeli forces, the organisation says.

In a statement, the PRCS accused Israel of deliberately targeting the ambulance, as soon as it arrived at the scene on 29 January.

“The [Israeli] occupation deliberately targeted the Red Crescent crew despite obtaining prior coordination to allow the ambulance to arrive at the scene to rescue the child Hind,” it said.

The PRCS told the BBC that it had taken several hours to coordinate access with the Israeli army, in order to send paramedics to Hind.

“We got the coordination, we got the green light,” PRCS spokeswoman, Nibal Farsakh, told me earlier this week. “On arrival, [the crew] confirmed that they could see the car where Hind was trapped, and they could see her. The last thing we heard is continuous gunfire.”

Recordings of Hind’s conversations with call operators – shared publicly by the Red Crescent – sparked a campaign to find out what had happened to her.

Hind’s mother told us – before her body was discovered – that she was waiting for her daughter “any moment, any second”.

Now she is demanding that someone be held accountable.

“For every person who heard my voice and my daughter’s pleading voice, yet did not rescue her, I will question them before God on the Day of Judgement,” she told the BBC. “Netanyahu, Biden, and all those who collaborated against us, against Gaza and its people, I pray against them from the depths of my heart.”

At the hospital where she waited for news of her daughter, Hind’s mother, Wissam, still holds the little pink bag she was keeping for her. Inside it, a notebook where Hind had been practising her handwriting.

“How many more mothers are you waiting to feel this pain? How many more children do you want to get killed?” she said.

We twice asked the army for details on its operations in the area that day, and about the disappearance of Hind and the ambulance sent to retrieve her – it said it was checking.

We have asked again for their response to the allegations made by the Palestinian Red Crescent on Saturday.

The rules of war say medical personnel must be protected and not targeted in a conflict, and that injured people must be given the medical care they need – to the fullest practical extent and with the least possible delay.https://tehopeng.com/wp-admin/

Israel has previously accused Hamas of using ambulances to transport its weapons and fighters.

By Kelly Ng

BBC News

Pakistan is dominated by news of politics as it prepares for general elections next week. But when hundreds of citizens marched on the capital Islamabad in December, they did so with a completely different agenda.

Among them was Sammi Deen Baloch, hugging a laminated photograph of her father – as she had done on numerous occasions over the past 14 years – and demanding to know where he is.

Or if he is even still alive.

The 26-year-old is one of several women who led the march, which saw protesters walk almost 1,000 miles from the restive Balochistan province, demanding the whereabouts of family members whom they say have been “forcibly disappeared”. At least 200 people were arrested and police fired tear gas and water cannons to disperse the crowds.

Campaigns like this are routine in the conflict-ridden province and women play a key part in organising them.

Balochistan, in the west of Pakistan, has been the scene of a long-running nationalist insurgency.

Separatist militants say they are fighting for a free Balochistan.

The protesters say their loved ones – many of them men – have been picked up, tortured and killed with impunity by Pakistani security forces, amid a bloody counterinsurgency operation. Islamabad authorities have denied these accusations.

They believe there have been thousands of such disappearances over the last two decades.

The UN defines enforced disappearances as “the arrest, detention, abduction or any other form of deprivation of liberty by agents of the state”.

Vanished without a trace

Sammi’s father, Deen Mohammad Baloch, was forcibly disappeared when she was just 11. In June 2009, armed forces stormed a public hospital in south-western Balochistan when he was the doctor on shift and detained him.

“Until today we do not know what has happened to him. My mother does not know if she is a widow or still married. And we still don’t know why they took him,” she told the BBC.

The Voice for Baloch Missing Persons, a non-profit organisation representing family members of those who disappeared in Balochistan, says approximately 7,000 cases have been registered with them since 2004.

The Commission of Inquiry on Enforced Disappearances convened by the government records 2,752 active cases of enforced disappearances in the province as of January 2024, but Pakistan’s interim prime minister claimed in a recent interview with the BBC that only about 50 people are missing.

In 2021, Pakistan’s parliament – the National Assembly – passed a bill to criminalise enforced disappearances, but it has not yet come into force. Court directives have also been issued over the years to hold the state responsible for such disappearances, but rights groups say these pledges have rung hollow.

The state has branded Baloch activists – many of whom have advocated Baloch nationalism and irredentism – as secessionists or trouble-makers.

But many people who were picked up in recent years are Baloch people who do not have anything to do with the armed resistance, Pakistani journalist Taha Siddiqui claims.

He said officials instead detain “on mere suspicion and at times on false information provided by rival pro-Pakistan groups based in Balochistan”.

Protesters have been calling for Pakistani authorities to deal with the accused according to the law, not detain them arbitrarily.

“If they had done anything wrong, produce them to the court. These forced disappearances have brought so much suffering to our family. My life has completely changed since 2009. We’ve been put through so much mental torture. I don’t know what life we are living. It is very painful,” Sammi said.

Mahrang Baloch, who organised last year’s long march and was arrested twice in the midst of it, told the BBC she hoped it “brought global attention to the human rights violations and state oppression prevalent in Balochistan”.

The 30-year-old, who is a prominent figure in the Baloch resistance movement, said that in 2009 her father Abdul Gaffar Langove was taken – allegedly by security service officers – and found dead with signs of torture two years later. Her brother was detained for three months in 2017.

“Cases of forced disappearances and extrajudicial killings in Balochistan escalated to an alarming extent… Many people remain unaccounted for. Some may be released after being held in secret cells and tortured. But the conditions of their mental and physical health are far from normal,” she said.

A Baloch man living in exile in London said he fled Pakistan for fear of being abducted.

“The Pakistani army had been trying to impose hegemony on citizens in Balochistan. We have a lot of gold and other natural resources in the province, but the Baloch people do not receive resources from the national government. Some places don’t even have proper drinking water,” said the man, who spoke to the BBC on condition of anonymity.

He noted cases of Baloch activists who mysteriously died while in exile, including activist Karima Baloch who was found dead in December 2020 near Lake Ontario in Toronto, Canada. Earlier that year, Pakistani journalist Sajid Hussain, who served as editor-in-chief of The Balochistan Times while in exile in Sweden, was found dead in a river north of Stockholm. Authorities in the respective countries have said the circumstances around both deaths were suspicious.

Exploited and alienated

Balochistan recently returned to the global spotlight after it was hit by air strikes from Iran in January, leading Pakistan to retaliate with strikes in Iran’s Sistan and Baluchistan province.

Both states say they were targeting Baloch militants.

Historically, the term Balochistan has been used to refer to a wider territory that includes land in Iran and Afghanistan.

Baloch groups in both Pakistan and Iran are part of a decades-long struggle for greater autonomy, with some fighting for an independent Balochistan state.

The Balochs have blamed the Pakistani government for exploiting and profiting from the province’s resources while neglecting its development.

It is also a crucial part of a multi-billion dollar project funded by China called the China Pakistan Economic Corridor, but many believe the Baloch people will not receive the employment opportunities created through the project.

“The entire province is racked by alienation, dejection and frustration towards Pakistan as well as those Punjabi socio-political elites who call the shots in Pakistan,” said Burzine Waghmar from the University of London’s SOAS South Asia Institute.

Protesters and observers believe it is in Pakistan’s political and economic interest to resolve the conflict in Balochistan, but they hold little hope that the upcoming elections would bring change for the Baloch people, and fear it may even disenfranchise the community further.

The state has been pushing non-Baloch candidates to contest in Baloch constituencies, which will further alienate the already-marginalised community, Mr Siddiqui said.

The election is of little significance for the Baloch, Mahrang said.

“Whichever government comes into power, the human rights violations and extrajudicial killings will persist in Balochistan. It has never been of genuine concern to the leadership,” she said.https://blejermot.com/