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As more rescued, quake survivors in Turkiye ask what’s next

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As more rescued, quake survivors in Turkiye ask what's next

Thousands who survived the earthquakes that struck Turkiye and Syria a week ago are pondering what comes next. While many have been evacuated from the devastated region, others are staying by wrecked homes and as the search for missing loved ones continues.

Rescuers found a woman alive 174 hours after the first quake struck, but reports of rescues were coming less often as the time since the quake reaches the limits of the human body’s ability to survive without water, especially in freezing temperatures.

The magnitude 7.8 and 7.5 quakes struck nine hours apart in southeastern Turkiye and northern Syria on Feb. 6. They killed over 35,000, with the toll expected to rise considerably as search teams find more bodies, and reduced much of towns and cities inhabited by millions to fragments of concrete and twisted metal.

On Monday rescuers from Istanbul pulled a woman named Naide Umay from a collapsed building in the hard-hit city of Antakya. Earlier, a 40-year-old woman was rescued from the wreckage of a 5-story building in the town of Islahiye, in Gaziantep province, while a 60-year old was rescued in Besni, in Adiyaman province.

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A week after the quakes hit, many people were still without shelter in the streets. Some survivors were still waiting in front of collapsed buildings for the bodies of their loved ones to be retrieved.

In the village of Polat, in Malatya province, some 100 kilometers (62 miles) from the epicenter, almost no houses were left standing. Residents were trying to salvage refrigerators, washing machines and other goods from wrecked homes.

Resident Zehra Kurukafa said not enough tents had arrived, forcing up to four families to share the tents that were available.

“We sleep in the mud, all together with two, three, even four families. There aren’t enough tents,” she said.

In the city of Adiyaman, 25-year-old Musa Bozkurt was waiting for a vehicle to transport him and others to the city of Afyon, in western Turkiye.

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“We’re going away but we have no idea what will happen when we get there” Bozkurt said. “We have no goal. Even if there was (a plan) what good will it be after this hour? I no longer have my father or my uncle. What do I have left?” he said.

Fuat Ekinci, a 55-year-farmer, was reluctant to leave his home in rural Adiyaman for Afyon despite the destruction, saying he didn’t have the means to live elsewhere and had fields that need to be tended.

“Those who have the means are leaving, but we’re poor,” he said. “The government says, go and live there a month or two. How do I leave my home? My fields are here, this is my home, how do I leave it behind?”

Volunteers from across Turkiye have mobilized to help millions of survivors, including a group of volunteer chefs and restaurant owners who served traditional food such as beans and rice and lentil soup for survivors in downtown Adiyaman.

Other volunteers continued with the rescue efforts. But Eduardo Reinoso Angulo, a professor at the Institute of Engineering at the National Autonomous University of Mexico said the likelihood of finding people alive was “very, very small now.”

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The lead author on a 2017 study involving deaths inside buildings struck by earthquakes, Reinoso said that the odds of survival for people trapped in wreckage fall dramatically after five days, and is near zero after nine days, although there have been exceptions.

David Alexander, a professor of emergency planning and management at University College London, agreed, saying the window for pulling people alive from the rubble is “almost at an end.”

But, he said, the odds were not very good to begin with. Many of the buildings were so poorly constructed that they collapsed into very small pieces, leaving very few spaces large enough for people to survive in, Alexander said.

“If a frame building of some kind goes over, generally speaking we do find open spaces in a heap of rubble where we can tunnel in,“ Alexander said. “Looking at some of these photographs from Turkiye and from Syria, there just aren’t the spaces.”

Wintery conditions further reduce the window for survival. Temperatures in the region have fallen to minus 6 degrees Celsius (21 degrees Fahrenheit) overnight.

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“The typical way the body compensates for hypothermia is shivering — and shivering requires a lot of calories,” said Dr. Stephanie Lareau, a professor of emergency medicine at Virginia Tech. “So if somebody’s deprived of food for a number of days and exposed to cold temperatures, they’re probably going to succumb to hypothermia more rapidly.”

Many in Turkiye blame faulty construction for the vast devastation, and authorities have begun targeting contractors allegedly linked with buildings that collapsed.

At least 131 people were under investigation for their alleged responsibility in the construction of buildings that failed to withstand the quakes, officials said.

Turkiye has introduced construction codes that meet earthquake-engineering standards, but experts say the codes are rarely enforced.

In Syria, U.N. Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs Martin Griffiths said that the international community has failed to provide aid.

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Visiting the Turkish-Syrian border Sunday, Griffiths said Syrians are “looking for international help that hasn’t arrived.”

“We have so far failed the people in northwest Syria. They rightly feel abandoned,” he said, adding, “My duty and our obligation is to correct this failure as fast as we can.”

The earthquake death toll in Syria’s northwestern rebel-held region has reached 2,166, according to the rescue group the White Helmets. The overall death toll in Syria stood at 3,553 on Saturday, although the 1,387 deaths reported for government-held parts of the country hadn’t been updated in days. Turkiye’s death toll was 31,643 as of Sunday.

In the Syrian capital of Damascus, the head of the World Health Organization warned that the pain will ripple forward, calling the disaster an “unfolding tragedy that’s affecting millions.”

“The compounding crises of conflict, COVID, cholera, economic decline, and now the earthquake have taken an unbearable toll,” Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said.

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Rahul Gandhi: India’s Congress leader sentenced to jail for Modi ‘thieves’ remark

Rahul Gandhi: India’s Congress leader sentenced to jail for Modi ‘thieves’ remark

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Rahul Gandhi: India's Congress leader sentenced to jail for Modi 'thieves' remark

Indian opposition leader Rahul Gandhi has been sentenced to two years in prison in a criminal defamation case.

Mr Gandhi was convicted by the court in Gujarat state for 2019 comments about Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s surname during an election rally.

He will not go to jail immediately – he was granted bail for 30 days and will file an appeal against the conviction.

The Congress party MP was present in court for sentencing, which comes a year before general elections are due.

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Speaking at an election rally in Karnataka state in April 2019, ahead of the last general election, Mr Gandhi had said: “Why do all these thieves have Modi as their surname? Nirav Modi, Lalit Modi, Narendra Modi.”

Nirav Modi is a fugitive Indian diamond tycoon while Lalit Modi is a former chief of the Indian Premier League who has been banned for life by the country’s cricket board. Mr Gandhi argued that he had made the comment to highlight corruption and it was not directed against any community.

The case against him was filed on the basis of a complaint by Purnesh Modi, a lawmaker from India’s governing Bharatiya Janata Party, who said that Mr Gandhi’s comments had defamed the entire Modi community.

But some have said they are puzzled by the order.

Legal scholar Gautam Bhatia tweeted that “references to a generic class of persons” – surnames in this case – are not “actionable unless an individual can show a direct reference to themselves”.

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“If a man says ‘all lawyers are thieves’, then I, as a lawyer, cannot file a case against him for defamation unless I can show its imputation aimed at me,” Mr Bhatia said.

India’s criminal defamation law is British-era legislation under which there can be a maximum prison sentence of two years, a fine or both.

Free speech advocates have often argued that the law goes against the principles of freedom and that it is is used by politicians to silence their critics.

In 2016, some top Indian politicians including Mr Gandhi filed legal pleas arguing for defamation to be decriminalised. But India’s Supreme Court upheld the validity of the law, saying that the “right to free speech cannot mean that a citizen can defame the other”.

The Congress party tweeted that Mr Gandhi would appeal and said “we will fight and win”.

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Mr Gandhi has not commented publicly yet but has tweeted a quote in Hindi from India’s independence leader Mahatma Gandhi: “My religion is based on truth and non-violence. Truth is my God, and non-violence the means to get it.”

His lawyer, Kirit Panwala, told BBC Gujarati that Mr Gandhi had told the judge after the order that he had made the speech “in favour of democracy”.

He also said that their defence of Mr Gandhi was based on four points: “Firstly, Mr Gandhi is not a resident of Gujarat and so, before the complaint, an inquiry should be conducted. Secondly, there is no community named Modi. Thirdly, there is no association of people with Modi as their surname and lastly, there was no ill intention behind Mr Gandhi’s speech.”

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Lebanese security forces fire tear gas at crowds protesting pound devaluation

Lebanese security forces fire tear gas at crowds protesting pound devaluation

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Lebanese security forces fire tear gas at crowds protesting pound devaluation

Lebanese security forces on Wednesday fired tear gas at hundreds of protesters, mostly retired members of the security forces, who had gathered near government buildings in Beirut in anger at deteriorating economic conditions.

Crowds gathered in the streets of downtown Beirut between parliament and the government serail, carrying Lebanon’s tricolour or flags bearing the logos of security forces.

They were outraged at the deteriorating value of state pensions paid in the local currency. The pound has lost more than 98% of its value against the U.S. dollar since 2019.

“Our kids are hungry. We’re hungry,” said Mohamad el-Khateeb, a 59-year-old who had served in the army for 32 years.

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“We left the army with nothing. No healthcare, no welfare, our kids are out of school and prices are rising obscenely. What do you expect?” Khateeb told Reuters.

Some of the men tried to cross one of the checkpoints leading to a government building, prompting security forces to fire tear gas to keep them back, according to a Reuters witness.

Protesters dashed away from white clouds emanating from locations around the serail. One soldier was seen treating a young boy who was affected by the tear gas.

“If he fires on us, he’s firing on our rights and on his rights at the same time,” said army veteran Ahmad Mustafa, 60.

“He’s suffering just like me,” he told Reuters, clutching two of the tear gas canisters fired just moments earlier.

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There was no immediate statement from the Lebanese army.
Lebanon’s economic meltdown began in 2019 after decades of profligate spending and alleged corruption. Its onset prompted the most wide-ranging protests the country had seen in years, but they fizzled out and rallies have been sporadic since.

The country’s top financial and political leaders have allowed the crisis to fester, with the Lebanese pound hitting an all-time low of 140,000 to the U.S. dollar on Tuesday before an intervention by the country’s central bank.

Lebanon’s army troops and members of the security forces are receiving salary support in U.S. dollars from the United States and Qatar for the first time.

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Four killed in Russian drone strike on Kyiv region, officials say

Four killed in Russian drone strike on Kyiv region, officials say

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Four killed in Russian drone strike on Kyiv region, officials say

 At least four people were killed early on Wednesday in a Russian drone strike near Kyiv which Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said showed Moscow was not interested in peace.

The State Emergency Service said on the Telegram messaging app that two dormitories and an educational facility in Rzhyshchiv, 40 miles (64 km) south of the capital, had been partially destroyed in the overnight attack.

Regional police chief Andrii Nebytov said 20 people had been taken to hospital and several were still missing following a series of explosions after 3 a.m. (0100 GMT) that killed four people.

A large part of the top floor of a five-storey dormitory building had been knocked out by the attack. Workers in white helmets and reflective jackets clambered through the rubble of another badly damaged building.

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“We see that the enemy has once again attacked civilian infrastructure (and) innocent people have died,” Nebytov wrote on Telegram, adding that one of the victims was an ambulance driver who had arrived to help.

State emergency officials said the search for survivors was continuing after attacks that the Ukrainian military said involved Iranian-made Shahed drones.

“Over 20 Iranian murderous drones, plus missiles, numerous shelling incidents, and that’s just in one last night of Russian terror against Ukraine,” Zelenskiy wrote on Twitter.

“Every time someone tries to hear the word ‘peace’ in Moscow, another order is given there for such criminal strikes.”

The Ukrainian military said it had shot down 16 of the 21 drones launched at Ukraine overnight from the north.

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Russia, which invaded Ukraine 13 months ago, did not immediately comment on the latest attacks.

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