Ukraine Foreign Minister Kuleba submits resignation in major government shake-up, lawmaker says
(LONDON) — Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba is the latest government minister to tender a resignation amid what could become a major shake-up of top officials under President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, according to a lawmaker.
Ruslan Stefanchuk — the chairman of the Ukrainian Rada parliament — said in a statement posted to Facebook that Kuleba had submitted his resignation to the body, uploading a photograph of a letter that appeared to be signed by the foreign minister, who has been in his post since 2020.
Stefanchuk said Kuleba’s resignation would be “considered at one of the upcoming plenary meetings,” though did not offer a specific date.
Kuleba is the latest in a slew of top ministers to offer their resignations in what appears to be a significant government shake-up.
Among them — according to Stefanchuk’s updates — are Strategic Industries Minister Alexander Kamyshin, Justice Minister Denys Maliuska, Ecology Minister Ruslan Strilets, Deputy Prime Minister for European and Euro-Atlantic Integration Olha Stefanishyna and Deputy Prime Minister and Reintegration Minister Iryna Vereshchuk.
David Arakhamia, the leader of Zelenskyy’s Servant of the People Party group in the Rada, wrote on Telegram on Tuesday that “a major reboot of the government can already be expected this week,” affecting as many as half of all government staff.
“Tomorrow is the day of layoffs, and the day after tomorrow is the day of appointments,” he added.
Oleksandr Merezhko — another member of parliament representing Zelenskyy’s party, and the chair of the Rada’s foreign affairs committee — told ABC News that the reshuffle is intended to “fill several vacancies in the government.”
The move is also “partly because the government needs to get prepared for the challenges lying ahead,” he added, “especially during winter.” Replacements will be appointed this week, Merezhko said.
(LONDON) — Gazing into a mirror framed by a vase of bright flowers, Taiba Sulaimani begins to sing. The lyrics, in Farsi, offer a message of hope — I will fly one day, I will be free one day.
Sulaimani is one of hundreds of Afghan women and allies around the world uploading videos of themselves singing on social media platforms. The videos are meant to protest a law passed by the Taliban last week banning women’s voices in public and mandating that they cover their entire bodies.
Women in Afghanistan are not allowed to show any skin, including their eyes. Before this law was passed, however, it was put forth as a recommendation — not enforced — and many women would show the upper half of their faces in public.
The new law “effectively [attempts] to render them into faceless, voiceless shadows,” a spokesperson for the United Nations Office of the High Commissioner said on Tuesday.
In response, women like Sulaimani are demonstrating that they refuse to be silenced.
“I recorded the video because I wanted to tell the Taliban, you can’t tell me what to do,” she told ABC News.
Sulaimani, who fled from Afghanistan to Canada three years ago after the Taliban regained power in 2021, didn’t even get a chance to say goodbye to her family. But, even though she currently lives more than 10,000 miles away, the Taliban still tried to intimidate her, warning her by phone that they can’t do anything to her, but that she also shouldn’t forget her family is still in Afghanistan.
But, in defiance, this only motivated Sulaimani further.
“It makes me sure that I have to go ahead with power, even more than ever,” she told ABC News.
Elsewhere, an Afghan woman now living in Norway, Hoda Khamosh, echoed the sentiment.
“We came to the conclusion that every voice can become thousands, showing that we women are not just a few individuals who can be erased,” she said.
Khamosh, who founded the Afghan Women’s Justice Movement, posted a video of herself singing a revolutionary poem saying that if you close your doors on us, we will use the windows to make her voices heard.
“We do not go to the field with a gun, but our voice, our image,” she said. “Protest is a war and a struggle.”
Even women inside Afghanistan are now recording videos of themselves singing, sometimes solo and sometimes in pairs or small groups, yet always wearing burqas that conceal their identities.
Zahra, a journalist in Afghanistan who asked only to be identified by her first name for her safety, said the situation on the ground is rapidly changing. Last week, there were many women outside, but since the passage of the law mandating women to veil their bodies, as well as their voices, she said the streets have emptied of women.
The new law now considers a woman’s voice intimate and they are forbidden to sing, recite or read anything in public. This comes in addition to other regulations forbidding women to leave their houses alone or allowing them to look or speak to men who they’re not related to by blood or marriage.
The combination of these restrictions makes leaving the home impractical at best, and even impossible in some cases. If a person violates the rules, they can be punished with a warning or be arrested, with a Taliban spokesperson saying the new law would “be of great help in the promotion of virtue and the elimination of vice.”
Now, many male family members often instruct their female relatives to stay at home since they don’t want trouble, Zahra said.
“Sometimes we have nightmares that [the Taliban] will come and arrest us,” she said, citing common anecdotes of rape and torture in prisons.
Although hope alone may not seem meaningful to many Afghan women, some now feel empowered by the outpouring of global support in response to the videos of women singing. Now — they hope — the international community will step in and tangibly do something to help protect Afghan women.
“Please don’t leave us alone with the Taliban,” Sulaimani said. “We all need your support.”
(LONDON) — As a 4-year-old Palestinian child waited on Sunday to cross into Jordan for a chance at a life-saving medical procedure, a gunman was crossing from the other side to attack Israeli border guards.
Accompanied by his mother and fiercest advocate, Huda, Ahmed Hammad had left Gaza a few hours earlier for an emergency surgery to change his pacemaker, a necessary device he had since he was just a baby that has a battery that is now days away from completely depleting.
As doctors first warned about the situation in March, the family soon organized to request an emergency evacuation, according to the humanitarian agents helping them. But Hammad’s case was repeatedly rejected by Israeli officials who cited security concerns, they said.
Until Sunday, when he made it out of Gaza for the first time, traveling to the crossing in the West Bank, just to be returned to the war-torn Gaza Strip a few hours later. All crossings from Jordan were shut down after the gunman coming from Jordan killed three Israeli civilians at Allenby Bridge crossing, Israeli officials said.
It has been over 11 months since Hamas militants carried out a surprise attack that prompted a retaliatory war from Israel, which has left over 41,000 killed and 94,000 injured in Gaza, according to the Hamas-controlled Gaza Health Ministry. The health care system in the Strip collapsed as a direct result, leaving cases like Hammad’s in a limbo of bureaucracy that quickly took most of the time he had left to save his life.
Humanitarian agencies, such as Save The Children and Doctors Without Borders, say there are thousands of other children like him waiting to evacuate for medical reasons.
Hammad, who is nonverbal, has people who raised their voice on his behalf, pleading his case to the relevant authorities more urgently as every day went by.
His mother, Huda, who said she already lost a daughter early in the war due to malnutrition and lack of health care, has been documenting Ahmed’s journey on Instagram.
In posts shared with a growing number of supporters from all around the world, Huda uploaded photos of her son resting in a tent, as well as videos of the frequent, painful seizure-like activity that came with his pacemaker’s battery dwindling.
Also fighting on behalf of Ahmed is Tareq Hailat, head of the Treatment Abroad Program at the Palestine Children’s Relief Fund (PCRF), which provides free medical care to Palestinian children who lack access to it.
“He needs to get out, or that battery runs out and he’s going to die,” Hailat told ABC News.
He added that surgeries like the one Hammad needs were ordinary in Gaza before Oct. 7 but are now impossible in what humanitarian agencies, such as Doctors Without Borders, call a destroyed health care system.
Hailat said that the situation with medical evacuations for children of Gaza deteriorated after the Israeli military took over the Philadelphi Corridor, a strategic ribbon of land running 9 miles at the border with Egypt that includes the Rafah crossing, a main evacuation point.
“Since the Rafah border has been closed, there’s only been about maybe a hundred children that have been pulled out. Before, we would pull out almost 50 every single day,” Hailat said.
When asked about the system in place and why emergency cases like Hammad’s can wait for months without updates, Hailat said there is no system in place and the permission appears to be given arbitrarily.
“We ask the same question every single day: why is this particular child not being able to be pulled out? And it really has to do with the fact that it’s all in the hands of COGAT and no one else,” Hailat told ABC News, referring to the Israeli military’s Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories. “So we have to wait and plead until they approve, and we have to exert as much pressure as possible.”
Hammad’s peacemaker will soon lose power, which would leave him to face likely cardiac arrest, according to his doctor and advocates.
ABC News has reached out to COGAT for comment.
Dr. Oday Sallout, a cardiac and pediatric surgeon at the European Hospital in Gaza who has been following Hammad’s case, said he has a “complete heart block” condition, with his heart’s upper and lower chambers disassociated and not working in combination.
“This creates a mess, with complications including sudden loss of consciousness and ultimately the risk of cardiac arrest,” Sallout said in an interview. “With a pacemaker he can sustain a good life, but it must be changed. I’ve learned he was first approved to evacuate without his mother, which is like a death sentence for someone like Ahmed.”
He’s dependent on his mother, so separating them could be catastrophic, Sallout said.
After the Palestinian Ministry of Health flagged the case, Hammad was approved through the World Health Organization to be welcomed for treatment in multiple countries, including Spain and the United Arab Emirates.
(LONDON) — Munich police shot a “suspicious person” in the Karolinenplatz area of the southern German city on Thursday morning, authorities said, adding they had launched a “major operation.”
“Police officers spotted a person who appeared to be carrying a firearm,” Munich’s police force said in an initial statement on social media. “The emergency services used their service weapons and the person was hit and injured.”
“The weapon used by the suspect is an older long gun,” a later police update clarified. “The suspect was fatally injured in the shootout. There are still no indications of further suspects or other injured persons.”
The area was cordoned off, with a helicopter in the air above the scene, the force said.
The shooting occurred next to the city’s Nazi Documentation Center, police said.
“Many emergency services are on their way to the site of operations,” the force noted. “We ask that you avoid this area as much as possible.”
The Nazi Documentation Center is one of the city’s most popular museums, located midway between the famous Karolinenplatz and Königsplatz squares just northwest of the medieval old town. It is less than 500 feet from the Israeli Consulate.
Israel’s Foreign Ministry confirmed that there had been a “shooting incident” close to the consulate, noting that the facility was closed on Thursday coinciding with the anniversary of the deadly terror attack at the 1972 Summer Olympics in Munich.
“No one from the consulate staff was injured in the incident,” the ministry’s spokesperson said. “The shooter was neutralized by the German security forces and the incident is under their care.”