TEL AVIV – Israel has approved a resolution to cut ties with the Israeli news outlet Haaretz and ban government funding bodies from communicating or placing advertisements with the newspaper.

The government said its decision was due to “many articles that have hurt the legitimacy of the state of Israel and its right to self-defence, and particularly the remarks made in London by Haaretz publisher Amos Schocken that support terrorism and call for imposing sanctions on the government,” Haaretz reported on Sunday.

The left-leaning news outlet added that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu approved the decision, which did not appear on the government’s agenda for the weekly cabinet meeting. In response to the decision, Haaretz said it was an “opportunist resolution to boycott Haaretz, which passed in today’s government meeting without any legal review … [and] another step in Netanyahu’s journey to dismantle Israeli democracy”.

“Like his friends [Russian President Vladimir] Putin, [Turkish President Recep Tayyip] Erdogan, and [Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor] Orban, Netanyahu is trying to silence a critical, independent newspaper. Haaretz will not balk and will not morph into a government pamphlet that publishes messages approved by the government and its leader,” the outlet added. Haaretz columnist Gideon Levy told Al Jazeera that the government sanctions on the outlet “send a very bad message, both politically and morally”. (Al Jazeera) …[+]

IRAN – Iran says it will hold nuclear talks with officials from France, Germany, and the United Kingdom this week, amid escalating tensions over Iran’s nuclear programme. The meeting, which is set to happen on Friday, was announced by the Iranian Foreign Ministry on Sunday, and UK officials also confirmed the meeting.

“A range of regional and international issues, including the issues of Palestine and Lebanon, as well as the nuclear issue, will be discussed,” Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Esmaeil Baghaei said. Neither London nor Tehran said where the meeting would take place. On Thursday, the United Nations’ International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) adopted a resolution denouncing Iran for what it called a lack of cooperation. The three European Union members that will meet with Iranian officials were among those voting for the resolution. (Al Jazeera) …[+]

WARSAW  – Poland’s main opposition party, the nationalist Law and Justice (PiS), picked historian Karol Nawrocki on Sunday as its candidate for next year’s presidential election, hoping to hold onto the presidency after losing control of parliament.

A pro-European coalition headed by Prime Minister Donald Tusk defeated PiS in a parliamentary election last year, but Tusk’s centrist government has not been able to pass major reforms with PiS ally Andrzej Duda as president. That situation could continue if a PiS-aligned candidate wins again.

Nawrocki, 41, the head of Poland’s Institute of National Remembrance, was a key figure in PiS efforts to promote patriotism through teaching history that critics said whitewashed the difficult parts of Poland’s past. He will face Tusk’s presidential candidate, progressive Warsaw mayor Rafal Trzaskowski, in the race, which could prove crucial in the government’s push to undo a PiS court overhaul that the European Union said subverted democratic norms.

Polish presidents have the power to veto laws passed by parliament. “Because we must defend Poland, we must defend our values, we must not allow our symbols to be taken away and our sovereignty to be limited,” Nawrocki said during the presentation of his candidacy on Sunday. As director of the World War Two Museum in the coastal city of Gdansk, Nawrocki changed its main exhibition to emphasize the scale of Polish suffering and stories of Poles who had protected Jews during the Holocaust, resulting in lawsuits against him by the museum’s creators. A significant body of research suggests that, while thousands of Poles risked their lives to help Jews, thousands also participated in the Holocaust. Many Poles do not accept such findings. (Reuters) …[+]

USA – After 45 years, authorities in California were finally able to tell the Gonzalez family who they believe killed their loved one. The Riverside County Sheriff’s Office used DNA and forensic genealogy to identify the suspected killer, who turned out to be the same man who reported finding Esther Gonzalez’s body to authorities.

On February 9, 1979, 17-year-old Gonzalez was walking to her sister’s house in Banning, California, about 85 miles east of Los Angeles. She never made it home. The next day, her body was found in a snowpack off a highway near Banning, the Riverside County District Attorney’s Office said in a news release. She was attacked during her walk, raped and bludgeoned to death, authorities said.

Deputies described the unidentified man who found the body as “argumentative,” according to the news release. The man, later identified as Lewis Randolph “Randy” Williamson, called the county sheriff to report the body and said he didn’t know whether it was a man or woman. Williamson was later asked by sheriff’s investigators to take a polygraph test. The district attorney’s office said he agreed to the test and passed, which “at the time, cleared him of any wrongdoing,” according to the release.

Nearly five decades later, the district attorney’s office said a cold case homicide team used forensic genealogy to confirm Williamson is Gonzalez’s suspected killer. Forensic genealogy is surging across the country as investigators analyze DNA in addition to traditional genealogy research to generate leads for unsolved cases. Jason Corey, the master investigator for the Riverside County Sheriff’s Office, said the technique is a tremendous addition to an investigator’s toolbox.

“I think it will be a great investigative tool moving forward in the future,” Corey said. “It will help do a lot of good and not only identify victims, but it will help point the investigators in a direction with their investigative leads that will help bring those suspects to justice.” Even as the Gonzalez case went cold, Riverside County detectives kept searching. The homicide team continued to investigate the case for decades after Gonzalez’s death. The team uploaded a semen sample from the crime scene into the Combined DNA Index System but there weren’t any leads.

In 2023, detectives sent various items of evidence to a genetic lab in Texas that specializes in forensic genealogy and identifying victims in unsolved murders. Earlier this year, a crime analyst laid out all the facts of the case. Then, the light bulb went off. “Although Williamson was seemingly cleared by the polygraph in 1979, he was never cleared through DNA because the technology had not yet been developed,” the district attorney’s office said. (CNN) …[+]

PORT AU PRINCE –   The National Human Rights Defense Network (RNDDH), says more than 100 gang members have been killed in Haiti in a three-day period, as the armed gangs stepped up attacks and attempted last Tuesday to invade one of the capital’s upscale neighbourhoods, Pétion-Ville.

The Haitian National Police (PNH)said it is maintaining its security operations also in Vivy Mitchell and Belleville in the commune of Pétion-ville as the authorities seek to dismantle the operations of the gang that has ever since the assassination of President Jovenel Moise in July 2021, have seized a significant position of the capital, Port au Prince.

RNDDH executive director, Pierre Espérance, said that in a number of cases, the police have fatally wounded the armed individuals with members of the public setting fire to the bodies. He said in other cases, it is the residents themselves who have killed the bandits to protect themselves. RNDDH said that among the 90 deaths reported on Tuesday, 25 occurred in the Canapé Verte neighbourhood and 15 along the Pan-American Highway near the Oasis Hotel in Pétion-Ville. It said last Thursday, six gang members were killed between Delmas 57 and 59 and the Christ-Roi neighbourhood. (CBC.BB) …[+]