An “egregious” refusal by successive Canadian governments to honor a key treaty signed with Indigenous nations made a “mockery” of the deal and deprived generations of fair compensation for their resources, Canada’s top court has ruled.

But while the closely watched decision will likely yield billions in payouts, First Nation chiefs say the ruling adds yet another hurdle in the multi-decade battle for justice.

In a scathing and unanimous decision released on Friday, Canada’s supreme court sharply criticized both the federal and Ontario governments for their “dishonourable” conduct around a 174-year-old agreement, which left First Nations people to struggle in poverty while surrounding communities, industry and government exploited the abundant natural resources in order to enrich themselves.

“For almost a century and a half, the Anishinaabe have been left with an empty shell of a treaty promise,” the court wrote in the landmark ruling.

After weeks of Israeli bombardment left them with nowhere else to go, hundreds of Palestinians have ended up in a former Gaza prison built to hold murderers and thieves.

Yasmeen al-Dardasi said she and her family passed wounded people they were unable to help as they evacuated from a district in the southern city of Khan Younis towards its Central Correction and Rehabilitation Facility.

They spent a day under a tree before moving on to the former prison, where they now live in a prayer room. It offers protection from the blistering sun, but not much else.

Israel has said it goes out of its way to protect civilians in its war with the Palestinian militant group Hamas, which runs Gaza and led the attack on Israel on Oct. 7 that sparked the latest conflict.

Iranian-designed Shahed attack drones, which fly to their target and detonate on impact, have become a staple of Russian aerial attacks since they began being used in the first year of Russia's full-scale invasion launched in February 2022.

The new Russian drones with cameras do not carry explosives but closely resemble regular Shahed drones and fly with groups of them, Cherniak said.
The second new type of drone contains no explosive charge or only a small one and is being used as a decoy, Cherniak added.

A Russian vessel is suspected of a territorial violation of Finland’s marine area in the Gulf of Finland, an arm of the Baltic Sea, the Finnish defense ministry said on Friday.

The suspected violation, which the Finnish Border Guard is currently investigating, took place in the eastern part of the Gulf of Finland Friday afternoon, a brief government statement said.

The ministry didn’t disclose further details of the incident but the Finnish newspaper Helsingin Sanomat said, citing information from border officials, that the suspected vessel is the Russian Navy’s hydrographic survey ship, the Mikhail Kazansky.

The Russian vessel, used among other things for underwater topography and repair work, entered into Finnish territorial waters south of the town of Hamina without authorization just after noon Friday, and the violation lasted about seven minutes, the newspaper said.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/17975216

"Every day that we continue supplying weapons and munitions to Israel is another day that women are shredded by our bombs and children are murdered with our bullets."

Bangladesh’s prime minister Sheikh Hasina is under fire for “shedding crocodile tears” over damage caused to a railway station during a protest against her government that left more than 150 people dead.

Ms Hasina was seen wiping away tears in pictures taken during her visit to a metro station in Mirpur, as social media users lambasted her for what they saw as her apparent lack of empathy for the victims of violence.

Police fired rubber bullets, released teargas, and threw sound-grenades in an effort to disperse tens of thousands of protesters who came out onto the streets to rail against job quotas. The government denied that any live rounds had been fired, but hospital sources said dead and injured people had wounds from bullets and shotgun pellets.

Rights groups and critics accuse Ms Hasina of becoming increasingly autocratic during her 15 years in power. They say her time in office has been marked by mass arrests of political opponents and activists, forced disappearances, and extrajudicial killings. She denies all of these charges.

Vice Admiral Eduardo Santos was in charge of the Philippine navy at a time of ‘creeping invasion’ by China. Then along came an unusual idea

More than 25 years ago, the BRP Sierra Madre was sent off for one final, secret voyage. In the darkness of night, the Philippine navy ship sailed from Manila Bay into the remote waters of the South China Sea. Then, to the surprise of many, it ran aground, and hasn’t moved since.

“I did it as quietly as I could, so I would not raise any hackles among anybody,” says retired Vice Adm Eduardo Santos, who was chief of the navy at the time. To him, it was a case of mission accomplished. His plan had been to run the ship on to a small reef known as Second Thomas Shoal, one of the world’s most fiercely contested maritime sites, without China knowing. The move would help the Philippines defend the area for decades to come.

“The first reaction was the Chinese ambassador knocking at my office early in the morning when they heard about it … I said, ‘well, it was supposed to be on the way [to a mission], and it ran aground’,” says Santos. With hindsight, Santos, who is now 80, can smile about it, though he, more than most, is keenly aware of how delicate the issue remains.

If the shoal had been left unoccupied, it would have been lost to Beijing, he says, because the Philippines was already facing a “creeping invasion” by China.

Beijing had already seized Mischief Reef, an atoll just 21 nautical miles away, despite being within the Philippines’ exclusive economic zone (EEZ) – an area that stretches 200 nautical miles from a state’s coast, giving it special rights to build or exploit resources in the area. Second Thomas Shoal is also with the Philippines’ EEZ.

Fires on French railway tracks have delayed journeys for 800,000 travelers in what the transport minister described as “coordinated attacks of malicious intent.”

A co-ordinated arson attack on the French rail system is turning the first weekend of the 2024 Summer Olympics in Paris into a nightmare for hundreds of thousands of travelers. 

French rail company SNCF announced on Friday its high-speed train system had been hit by "deliberate arson attacks to damage [its] facilities" causing delays and cancellations which are expected to last all weekend.

The disruptions are affecting trains heading East, North and West of Paris, and travelers have been asked to postpone their plans.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/18426493

MANILA, Philippines (AP) — There is no indication that a big cargo of industrial fuel oil stored in a tanker that sank in stormy weather in Manila Bay has started to leak, the Philippine coast guard said Friday, and plans are being firmed up to try to siphon off the highly toxic shipment to prevent a major spill that could reach the bustling capital.

The tanker Terra Nova had left Bataan province en route to the central province of Iloilo with about 1.4 million liters (370,000 gallons) of industrial fuel oil stored in watertight tanks when it got lashed by huge waves and took on water. The crew struggled to steer the tanker back to port but it eventually sank shortly after midnight Thursday. The coast guard rescued 16 crewmembers but one drowned, coast guard spokesperson Rear Adm. Armando Balilo said.

“We’re racing against time to siphon off the oil to avoid an environmental catastrophe,” Balilo told reporters, adding that the plans could be hampered if the weather turns bad.

MELBOURNE, Australia (AP) — At least 26 people were killed by a gang in three remote villages in Papua New Guinea’s north and eight villagers remained missing Friday in the latest violence in the South Pacific island nation relating to contested land ownership and sorcery allegations, officials said.

“It was a very terrible thing … when I approached the area, I saw that there were children, men, women. They were killed by a group of 30 young men,” the acting police commander in East Sepik province, James Baugen, told Australian Broadcasting Corp. on Friday.

KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — The former prisoners of war still puzzle over the strange events leading up to the night now seared into their memories, when an explosion ripped through the Russian-controlled Olenivka prison barracks and killed so many comrades two years ago.

Among the survivors: Kyrylo Masalitin, whose months in captivity and long beard age him beyond his 30 years. Arsen Dmytryk, the informal commander of the group of POWs that was shifted without explanation to a room newly stocked with bare bunks. And Mykyta Shastun, who recalled guards laughing as the building burned, acting not at all like men under enemy attack.

“Before my eyes, there were guys who were dying, who were being revived, but it was all in vain,” said Masalitin, who is back on the front line and treated as a father-figure by the men he commands.

TOKYO (AP) — Depending on who you ask, the bones that have been sitting in a Tokyo repository for decades could be either leftovers from early 20th century anatomy classes, or the unburied and unidentified victims of one of the country’s most notorious war crimes.

A group of activists, historians and other experts who want the government to investigate links to wartime human germ warfare experiments met over the weekend to mark the 35th anniversary of their discovery and renew a call for an independent panel to examine the evidence.

Japan’s government has long avoided discussing wartime atrocities, including the sexual abuse of Asian women known as “comfort women” and Korean forced laborers at Japanese mines and factories, often on grounds of lack of documentary proof. Japan has apologized for its aggression in Asia, but since the 2010s it has been repeatedly criticized in South Korea and China for backpedalling.

Around a dozen skulls, many with cuts, and parts of other skeletons were unearthed on July 22, 1989, during construction of a Health Ministry research institute at the site of the wartime Army Medical School. The school’s close ties to a germ and biological warfare unit led many to suspect that they could be the remains of a dark history that the Japanese government has never officially acknowledged.