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LONDON: The lawyer representing the family of Shamima Begum, the British girl who had her UK citizenship revoked after traveling to Syria to join Daesh, has said Canadian intelligence would back an investigation into the role of the security services in facilitating her journey in 2015.
Tasnime Akunjee told The Observer that Canadian Security Intelligence Service agents had serious concerns over allegations, made in a new book, that a Daesh human trafficker, Mohammed Al-Rashed, who helped Begum and two other teenage girls from London reach Syria, had ties to the CSIS.
The book, “Secret History of the Five Eyes,” written by journalist Richard Kerbaj, also claims London’s Metropolitan Police were aware that the trafficker who smuggled the trio to Syria was a double agent with links to a Western intelligence agency.
“I have spoken to individuals within the CSIS who are extremely concerned and shocked about its role in the trafficking of Shamima Begum, and would strongly support an inquiry into its involvement,” Akunjee said, adding that he feared children could be trafficked in such a manner in order to become intelligence assets.
“It is also worth noting that, at the time of her trafficking into Syria, [the] CSIS did not have the legal authority to recruit and provide resources to someone engaged in supporting terrorism,” he added.
The revelations have prompted calls for an inquiry into Begum’s journey to Syria and the role of intelligence agencies in it, with Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau prompted to address the book’s assertions, saying agencies need to be “flexible and creative” in fulfilling their duties but still abide by the law.
Kerbaj’s book claims the Canadian government admitted its involvement in the episode and asked UK authorities, as fellow members of the Five Eyes intelligence pact that also includes the US, Australia and New Zealand, to help cover up the story.
It also says CSIS officials met the former head of counterterrorism at the Metropolitan Police, Richard Walton, shortly after Begum left the UK in 2015.
Begum is currently in a prison camp for Daesh members in northeastern Syria. One of her companions, Kadiza Sultana, who was 16 when she left the UK, is thought to be dead, while the other, Amira Abase, who was 15, is missing.
LONDON: Nearly 1,000 migrants crossed the Channel in small boats on Saturday, the UK government said Sunday, as growing numbers of arrivals have exacerbated tensions between Britain and France. The defense ministry said 960 migrants were detected making the dangerous crossing in 20 boats. This came after 1,295 migrants were spotted making the crossing on August 22, setting a new record for a single day. The issue has caused a major political headache for the UK government, which promised tighter border controls after leaving the European Union. Tensions have risen between London and Paris, with the UK government accusing France of not doing enough to stop the crossings. So far this year there have been more than 26,000 crossings, while now is the peak time of year for those attempting to enter the UK this way. Over the whole of 2021 just over 28,500 migrants were detected in around 1,000 boats. The UK last month vowed to speed up removals of Albanians illegally entering the country as official statistics showed they were now the largest single group making small-boat crossings of the Channel. In previous years, asylum seekers from war zones made up the vast bulk of small-boat arrivals.
ISLAMABAD: Officials warned Sunday that more flooding was expected as Lake Manchar in southern Pakistan swelled from unprecedented monsoon rains that began in mid-June and have killed nearly 1,300 people. Meteorologists predicted more rain in the region in the coming days and authorities urged villagers in the Jamshoro and Dadu districts of Sindh province near the lake to evacuate. The rising waters reached dangerous levels and posed a threat to a protective dyke and embankment, they said. The lake, located west of the Indus River, is the largest natural freshwater lake in Pakistan and one of the largest in Asia. Fariduddin Mustafa, administrator for the Jamshoro district, said Sunday that officials made a cut into the lake’s embankment to allow excess water to escape and ultimately flow into the Indus. Still, the water continues to rise, he said. Parts of Dadu district have already been flooded, officials said. ″After we assessed water levels reached (a) dangerous level ... and there was fear that the embankment of the lake might be caved in at any time, the administration decided to make a cut on the Bagh-e-Yousuf side to avert any uncontrollable flow of water,” he said. The development comes a day after Pakistan appealed again to the international community for aid to victims of the unprecedented flooding from monsoon rains that have left nearly 1,300 people dead and millions homeless around the country. Planes from multiple countries have been bringing supplies to the impoverished country across a humanitarian air bridge. Multiple officials and experts have blamed the unusual monsoon rains and flooding on climate change, including UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, who last week called on the world to stop “sleepwalking” through the deadly crisis. He will visit Pakistan on Sept. 9 to tour flood-hit areas and meet with officials. In its latest report, Pakistan’s National Disaster Management Authority put the death toll since mid-June — when monsoon rains started weeks earlier this year — at 1,290 as more fatalities were reported from flood affected areas of Sindh, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Baluchistan provinces. The authority said relief and rescue operations continued Sunday with troops and volunteers using helicopters and boats to get people stranded out of flooded areas to relief camps where they were being provided shelter, food and health care. Scores of relief camps have been set up in government buildings servicing tens of thousands of people while thousands more have taken shelter on roadsides on higher ground. According to initial government estimates, the devastation has caused $10 billion in damage but Planning Minister Ahsan Iqbal said Saturday “the scale of devastation is massive and requires an immense humanitarian response for 33 million people.” The renewed request for international aid came as Pakistan has received 30 planes load of relief goods from Turkey, China, UAE, France, Uzbekistan and other countries with more planes expected in the coming days. Two members of Congress, Sheila Jackson and Tom Suzy, were expected to arrive in Pakistan Sunday to visit the flood-affected areas and meet officials.
OYGARDEN, Norway: On the shores of an island off Norway’s North Sea coast, engineers are building a burial ground for unwanted greenhouse gas. The future terminal is to pump tons of liquefied carbon dioxide captured from the top of factory chimneys across Europe into cavities deep below the seabed. The project in the western municipality of Oygarden aims to prevent the gas from entering the atmosphere and contributing to global warming. It “is the world’s first open-access transport and storage infrastructure, allowing any emitter that has captured his CO2 emissions to deliver that CO2 for safe handling, transport and then permanent storage,” project manager Sverre Overa told AFP. As the planet struggles to meet its climate targets, some climate experts see the technique, called carbon capture and storage, or CCS, as a means to partially reduce emissions from fossil-fuel-based industries. Norway is the biggest hydrocarbon producer in Western Europe, but it also boasts the best CO2 storage prospects on the continent, especially in its depleted North Sea oil fields. The government has financed 80 percent of the infrastructure, putting 1.7 billion euros ($1.7 billion) on the table as part of a wider state plan to develop the technology. A cement factory and a waste-to-energy plant in the Oslo region are set to send their CO2 to the site. But the most original feature of the project is on the commercial side: inviting foreign firms to send their CO2 pollution to be buried out of harm’s way.
Using CCS to curb carbon pollution is not a new idea, but despite generous subsidies the technology has never taken off, mainly because it is so costly. One of the world’s largest carbon capture facilities, at the Petra Nova coal-fired plant in Texas, was mothballed in 2020 because it was not economical. There are only a couple of dozen operational CCS projects around the world, according to the industry-run Global CCS Institute. But the failure to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in line with Paris Agreement goals and a massive influx of government subsidies have breathed new life into the technology. Energy giants Equinor, TotalEnergies and Shell have set up a partnership — dubbed Northern Lights — which will be the world’s first cross-border CO2 transport and storage service at its scheduled launch in 2024. A pipeline will inject the liquefied CO2 into geological pockets 2,600 meters below the ocean floor, and the idea is that it will remain there for good. On Monday, the Northern Lights partners announced a first cross-border commercial agreement. From 2025, it is to ensure 800,000 tons of CO2 are captured each year at a plant in the Netherlands owned by Norwegian fertilizer manufacturer Yara, then shipped to Oygarden and stored there. On Tuesday, two energy firms — Norway’s oil and gas giant Equinor and Germany’s Wintershall Dea — announced a project to take carbon dioxide captured in Germany to the Norwegian offshore storage site. If confirmed, the partnership between Equinor and Wintershall Dea could involve building a 900-kilometer (560-mile) pipeline connecting a CO2 collection facility in northern Germany with storage sites in Norway by 2032. A similar project with Belgium is already in the works.
In its first phase, the Northern Lights scheme will be able to process 1.5 million tons of CO2 per year, then later between five and six million tons. But that is just a tiny fraction of annual carbon emissions across Europe. The European Union emitted 3.7 billion tons of greenhouse gases in 2020, according to the European Environment Agency. Many climate experts warn carbon capture is no silver bullet for the climate crisis. Critics caution that CCS could prolong fossil fuel extraction just as the world is trying to turn toward clean and renewable energy. Greenpeace Norway’s Halvard Raavand said the campaign group had always opposed the practice. “In the beginning it was very easy to oppose all kinds of CCS (carbon capture and storage) and now because of the lack of climate action it’s of course a more difficult debate to be in,” he said. “This money should instead be spent on developing (a) proper solution that we know (works) and that could reduce the electricity bills for regular people, such as insulating homes or solar panels.”
KYIV: A critical nuclear power plant in Ukraine again lost external power, international energy officials said on Saturday, heightening concerns as the energy battle between Moscow and the West ramped up in recent days amid the ongoing war. Ukraine's Zaporizhzhia plant -- the largest in Europe -- saw its last remaining main external power line cut off even as a reserve line was able to continue supplying electricity to the grid, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) said. Only one of the six reactors remained in operation at the station, the agency said in a statement https://www.iaea.org/newscenter/pressreleases/update-97-iaea-director-general-statement-on-situation-in-ukraine posted on its website. The plant, controlled by Moscow since Russian troops invaded Ukraine in late February, has become a focal point of the conflict, with each side blaming the other for nearby shelling. Meanwhile, the standoff over Russian gas and oil exports ramped up this week as Moscow vowed to keep its main gas pipeline to Germany shuttered and G7 countries announced a planned price cap on Russian oil exports. The energy fight is a fallout from President Vladimir Putin's six-month invasion of Ukraine, underscoring the deep rift between Moscow and Western nations as Europe steels itself for the cold months ahead.
• IAEA says Ukraine nuclear plant again loses power line
• Russia delays pipeline reopening in blow to Europe
• G7 finance chiefs agree on Russian oil price cap
"Russia (is) preparing a decisive energy blow on all Europeans for this winter," Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said in his nightly address on Saturday, citing the Nord Stream 1 pipeline's continued closure. Zelenskiy earlier blamed Russian shelling for the nuclear plant's cutoff last week that narrowly avoided a radiation leak. Moscow has cited Western sanctions and technical issues for energy disruptions, while European countries have accused Russia of weaponizing supplies as part of its military invasion.
NUCLEAR CONCERNS Kyiv and Moscow have traded accusations about attacks on the Zaporizhzhia plant, which was captured by Russian forces in March but is still operated by Ukrainian staff and connected to the Ukrainian power grid. An IAEA mission toured the plant on Thursday and some experts have remained there pending the release of a report by the U.N. nuclear watchdog in coming days. Last week, Zaporizhzhia was severed from the national grid for the first time in its history after transmission lines were cut, prompting power cuts across Ukraine, although emergency generators kicked for vital cooling processes. Meanwhile, the IAEA on Saturday said remaining inspectors noted one reactor was "still operating and producing electricity both for cooling and other essential safety functions at the site and for households, factories and others through the grid." The Zaporizhzhia nuclear power station, in a statement, said the fifth reactor was switched off "as a result of constant shelling by Russian occupation forces" and that there was "insufficient capacity from the last reserve line to operate two reactors." Deteriorating conditions amid the shelling have prompted fears of a radiation disaster that the International Red Cross has said would cause a major humanitarian crisis. Ukraine and the West accuse Russia of storing heavy weapons at the site to discourage Ukraine from firing on it. Russia, which denies the presence of any such weapons there, has so far resisted international calls to relocate troops and demilitarise the area. Russia's defence ministry on Saturday accused Ukrainian forces of mounting a failed attempt to capture the plant, but Reuters was unable to verify the report. Turkey on Saturday also offered to facilitate the situation. GAS AND OIL In its announcement on Friday that it would not resume shipments through the Nord Stream 1 pipeline as had been expected, Russia's state-controlled energy giant Gazprom blamed a technical fault. Gazprom said on Saturday that Siemens Energy was ready to help repair broken equipment but that there was nowhere available to carry out the work. Siemens said it has not been commissioned to carry out maintenance work for the pipeline but it is available. Nord Stream 1, which runs under the Baltic Sea to supply Germany and others, had been due to resume operating after a three-day halt for maintenance on Saturday at 0100 GMT. The indefinite delay to resuming gas deliveries will deepen Europe's problems securing fuel for winter with living costs already surging, led by energy prices. Finance ministers from the Group of Seven wealthy democracies - Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan and the United States - on Friday said a cap on the price of Russian oil aimed to "reduce ... Russia’s ability to fund its war of aggression whilst limiting the impact of Russia’s war on global energy prices". The Kremlin said it would stop selling oil to any countries that implemented the cap. The Ukrainian armed forces' general staff on Saturday said its forces had repelled Moscow's advancements in various areas, particularly in eastern Ukraine as Russian forces sought to push through the Donetsk region. Fighting also continued in the Kharkiv region and the south, Zelenskiy said on Saturday. Russia invaded Ukraine on Feb. 24 in what it calls "a special military operation." Kyiv and the West have said it was an unprovoked aggressive war against a former part of the Soviet Union. More than six months later, Russia has pressed ahead as the United States and other countries have pledged fresh military aid for Kyiv. Ukraine had launched a counter offensive earlier this week after several weeks of relative stalemate in the conflict that has seen thousands killed and millions displaced. It targets the south, particularly the Kherson region, occupied by Russians early in the conflict.
Nine migrants died and 37 were rescued as they tried to cross the rain-swollen Rio Grande River into the United States near Eagle Pass, Texas, US customs officials said, warning people to avoid crossing. US Border Patrol said more rain was forecast in the coming week. “Despite these adverse conditions, US Border Patrol, Del Rio Sector continues to encounter large groups of more than 100+, 200+ attempting to cross the Rio Grande daily,” it said. “In an effort to prevent further loss of life, we are asking everyone to please avoid crossing illegally.” Border patrol agents, along with local fire and police agencies, searched on Friday for possible additional victims, a day after the Thursday incident, the Customs and Border Protection said earlier. A total of 53 migrants were taken into custody by US border patrol agents on Thursday, including the 37 rescued from the river, the agency said. Mexican government authorities arrested 39 people. Out of the nine dead, three were found by the Mexican government and six by US Border Patrol agents, US customs officials said. The Rio Grande swelled in recent days due to unusually heavy rains that flooded the streets of Piedras Negras, Mexico. Other groups of migrants also struggled on Thursday evening to cross the fierce currents of the river between Piedras Negras and Eagle Pass. Several men from Venezuela were successful after at least an hour attempting to ford the river’s fast waters, shirtless, with few belongings and using a rope to help one another, yelling “Help! Help!” once close to the US shore. One man from the group clung to a concrete column under the international bridge for minutes after his friends made it to shore, afraid to let go as the water rushed past until his companions returned to help. Texas has been at the center of a fierce national debate over illegal immigration that will likely play a role in the November mid-term elections. Federal and local officials are scrambling to locate close to a dozen unaccompanied migrant children, after Houston police raised concerns about their whereabouts, Reuters reported on Friday. The deaths and missing children underscore the challenges for President Joe Biden’s administration as it faces a record number of unaccompanied kids arriving at the southwest border.