NANNING – Police personnel from China and Vietnam concluded joint counter-terrorism training in south China’s Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region on Friday. The training was aimed at jointly addressing the threat of terrorism and focused on combating violent terrorist activities.

During the two-week program, police personnel from both sides conducted exchanges, discussions and various exercises covering subjects such as command, skills and tactics.

This joint training exercise marked the first of its kind between the Chinese People’s Armed Police Force and the mobile police forces of the Vietnamese Ministry of Public Security. It aimed to cement friendship between the two countries, strengthen mutual trust and cooperation, and enhance joint counter-terrorism capabilities.   (Xinhua)…[+]

NEW YORK – Three Americans who were freed in a prisoner swap deal with Russia, including Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich, have arrived back on US soil. Gershkovich, 32, was one of 16 people swapped for eight Russian prisoners in what has been described as the biggest exchange since the end of the Cold War between Russia and the West.

The exchange at an airfield in Turkey also included the release of former US marine Paul Whelan and Russian-American journalist Alsu Kurmasheva. After touching down at Joint Base Andrews, in Maryland, Gershkovich, Kurmasheva and Whelan emerged from the jet to cheers from those on the tarmac. All three were greeted by US President Joe Biden and Vice-President Kamala Harris before they embraced their families. They lingered on the tarmac for photographs and conversations before leaving the air base within an hour, as did Biden and Harris’s motorcades. Speaking ahead of their return, Biden welcomed their release and declared: “Their brutal ordeal is over”.

He praised the role played by America’s allies, particularly Germany and Slovenia, and hailed the release of Whelan, Gershkovich and Kurmasheva, as well as leading Kremlin critic Vladimir Kara-Murza, as a “feat of diplomacy”. The three released Americans were then sent to the Brooke Army Medical Centre in Texas for a medical check-up. The deal had been more than 18 months in the making and appears to have hinged on Moscow’s demand for the return of Vadim Krasikov, who was serving a life sentence in Germany for carrying out an assassination in a Berlin park.

He is now back in Russia. Krasikov always maintained in captivity that the false identity he went under was real, but the Kremlin has admitted since his release that he was an agent with the FSB security service. In total, 24 people jailed in seven different countries were exchanged in Ankara, Turkey’s presidency said. The prisoners were held in the US, Germany, Poland, Slovenia, Norway, Russia and Belarus, it said in a statement. Ten people, including two minors, were relocated to Russia, 13 prisoners to Germany, and three to the US, the statement added. The eight prisoners who returned to Russia were serving sentences on a variety of criminal charges in the West. Charges against the 16 held in Russia and Belarus included espionage and treason, but were generally considered by Western governments and rights organizations to be politically motivated  (BBC)…[+]

DOHA – Thousands of people on Friday attended the funeral prayer for the late Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh at Doha’s grand mosque amid tight security.

Haniyeh’s funeral prayer was attended by various Palestinian factions, diaspora groups, diplomatic dignitaries and nationals from many countries. He was laid to rest at Lusail royal cemetery north of the capital Doha on Friday afternoon.

Symbolic funeral prayers for Haniyeh have been organised in several Muslim countries, including Yemen, Jordan and Turkey. Streams of mourners started to arrive at the Imam Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab Mosque at about 9am, more than two hours before the Friday prayer, to bid farewell to the Hamas political chief who was assassinated in the Iranian capital Tehran in the early hours of Wednesday morning.

Men and women, many of them wearing the keffiyeh, the traditional Palestinian scarf, and carrying Palestinian flags, came to attend the funeral prayers despite Doha’s punishing heat, which hovered around 45 degrees Celsius (113 degrees Fahrenheit). His body was brought to Doha on Thursday after a memorial event in Tehran, which was attended by thousands of people and where funeral prayers were led by the country’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Iranians waved Palestinian flags and carried pictures of the 62-year-old Hamas leader as they took part in the funeral procession.

Haniyeh, who was the diplomatic face of Hamas based in Qatar, was assassinated in his accommodation in Tehran. He was in the Iranian capital to attend the inauguration of Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian. Israel has not publicly claimed responsibility. Fuad Shukr, a senior commander with the Lebanese armed group Hezbollah, an ally of Hamas, was also killed by Israel hours before Haniyeh’s assassination.

Hassan Abu Dhr, who lost his leg and hand in an Israeli bombing on Gaza’s Bureij refugee camp in November, came to the funeral prayer to pay tribute to Haniyeh. “We are in grief. We feel so sad because of his killing. He was like our father,” the 24-year-old, who was evacuated to Qatar for medical treatment, told Al Jazeera. “Ismail Haniyeh was the pride of Gaza. We trusted him, he was the best leader for Gaza.” (Al Jazeera) …[+]

LAGOS – Armed with a protest sign, 20-year-old Samuel Adeleke joined a crowd of angry Nigerians gathered in Ikeja, the heart of Nigeria’s commercial capital Lagos, on Thursday morning.

Passing through nearby residential areas, the few hundred protesters raised placards decrying the high cost of food and rising cost of living, while pumping their fists in the air and chanting songs to urge more people to join them.

By the time they arrived in Ojota, the area 7.5km away where demonstrators were converging for the first of a planned 10-day-long protest, the number of demonstrators had swelled to a couple of thousand. Tens of thousands of people across Africa’s most populous country are participating in the protests under the banner of #EndBadGovernanceInNigeria. Organisers have called for days of street demonstrations beginning on August 1 to protest against bad governance, corruption and the increasing cost of living that has left millions of Nigerians reeling. In total, protesters have 19 demands.

In parts of the country, such as the northern Kano and Yobe states, authorities imposed a curfew as some protesters attacked vehicles, burning them. In capital Abuja, the police fired back tear gas shells to disperse protesters, and gunshots were heard. By Friday morning, rights group Amnesty International’s Nigeria head said at least 13 protesters had been killed, and more than 300 arrested.

Adeleke, a law student at the University of Lagos (Unilag), went out to register his displeasure with the government, which he said has put his education under threat because of its policies. “People [in government] that got free education came into power and withdrew free education,” he told Al Jazeera, urging the government to “reverse school fees and make the nation habitable for students”. Unilag increased university tuition fees while simultaneously instituting a rule that forbids students from doing business from their hostels, he said, which has left already vulnerable young people without sources of much-needed income. (Al Jazeera) …[+]

USA – The man is very slight of build, his hair shorn but his beard full. He is naked except for the handcuffs shackling his wrists in a clinically bright room.

This photo is the first published image of a “war on terror” detainee in a CIA black site. The man staring at the camera is Ammar al-Baluchi, one of five men at Guantánamo Bay accused by the US government of plotting the 9/11 attacks. (On Wednesday, the Pentagon announced that three of the five men, but not Baluchi, had agreed to plead guilty to all charges and would avoid possible death sentences.) Baluchi was first arrested in Karachi, Pakistan, in April 2003 and then secretly shuffled between five black sites from May 2003 to September 2006. Since then, he has been held at Guantánamo, though he has not been convicted of a crime.

This photograph, shared with the Guardian by Baluchi’s lawyers, is believed to be from early 2004, when he was 26 years old, and was probably taken at the CIA’s black site in Bucharest, Romania, known in US government communications both as Location No 7 and by the color-coded name of Detention Site Black. In the picture, Baluchi, whose story formed the basis for a character in the film Zero Dark Thirty, is probably being readied for transit to another black site. The black bar visible across his midsection has been added by his attorneys to preserve Baluchi’s dignity.

Between 2002 and 2008, at least 119 Muslim men were hidden, housed, and interrogated at these secret CIA prisons around the world, with 39 of them subjected to what the Bush administration euphemistically labeled “enhanced interrogation techniques”. In 2014, the US government admitted these practices constituted torture, when Barack Obama stated: “We tortured some folks.” No one at the CIA has ever been held accountable for the torture. (The Guardian) …[+]