China threatens ‘counter measures’ after Trump signs bills supporting

Stockholm, Jan 4: “I’m not the kind of person who celebrates birthdays,” Greta Thunberg said as she turned 17 on Friday, marking the occasion in inimitable style - with a seven-hour hour protest outside the Swedish parliament.

The climate activist braved winter conditions in her native Stockholm to continue the weekly Friday School Strike for the Climate campaign that helped catapult her to international fame.

“I stand here striking from 8am until 3pm as usual ... then I’ll go home,” Thunberg, Time magazine’s Person of the Year for 2019, told Reuters.

“I won’t have a birthday cake but we’ll have a dinner.”

It’s been a busy 12 months for Thunberg, who crisscrossed the globe by car, train and boat - but not plane - to demand action on climate change.

“It has been a strange and busy year, but also a great one because I have found something I want to do with my life and what I am doing is having an impact,” she said.

When she was 15, Thunberg began skipping school on Fridays to demonstrate outside the Swedish parliament to push her government to curb carbon emissions. Her campaign gave rise to a grassroots movement that has gone global, inspiring millions of people to take action.

Fifty-six journalists were killed in 2019 and most of them died outside conflict zones, a United Nations spokesperson said.

The number dropped by nearly half from the year 2018, but perpetrators enjoyed almost total impunity, Xinhua news agency quoted Stephane Dujarric, spokesperson for UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, as saying on Monday citing Unesco figures.

The figure was published in the 'Unesco Observatory of Killed Journalists' on Monday.

In total, Unesco recorded 894 journalist killings in the decade from 2010 to 2019, an average of almost 90 per year. The number in 2019 was 99.

Journalists were murdered in all regions of the world, with Latin America and the Caribbean recording 22 killings, the highest number, followed by 15 in Asia-Pacific, and 10 in Arab States.

"The figures show that journalists not only suffer extreme risks when covering violent conflict, but that they are also targeted when reporting on local politics, corruption and crime - often in their hometowns," the Unesco said.

Almost two thirds (61 per cent) of the cases in 2019 occurred in countries not experiencing armed conflict, a notable spike in a wider trend in recent years, and a reversal of the situation of 2014, when this figure was one third.

More than 90 per cent of cases recorded in 2019 concerned local journalists, consistent with previous years, it added.

In response to these figures, Audrey Azoulay, the Director-General of Unesco, said: "Unesco remains deeply troubled by the hostility and violence directed at all too many journalists around the world.

"As long as this situation lasts, it will undermine democratic debate."

Tehran, Jan 7: The Iranian Parliament on Tuesday ratified a motion dubbed as "harsh revenge", that considers all members of the US Pentagon and those responsible for the death of Major General Qasem Soleimani as "terrorist forces".

The triple-urgency motion is a modification of a previously ratified bill on April 23, 2019, that designated the US Central Command (CENTCOM) as a terrorist organization in retaliation to the same designation imposed on Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) by Washington, the Tehran-based Mehr News Agency said in a report.

Parliament Speaker Ali Larijani said in Tuesday's open session that in the previous anti-US law, CENTCOM was designated as a terrorist entity.

"Today, following the cruel US measure in assassinating General Soleimani, the responsibility of which was accepted by the US President, we modify the previous law and announce that all members of Pentagon, commanders, agents and those responsible for the martyrdom of Gen Soleimani will be considered as terrorist forces," Larijani was quoted as saying in the report.

All of Iran nation supports the resistance, he added.

The modified law also allows withdrawal of $223 million to the IRGC's Quds Force from the National Development Fund of Iran for the next two months, added Larijani.

He said that the Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei's permission to withdraw the fund has been obtained, the Mehr report added.

Following its ratification, MPs chanted anti-US slogans at the Parliament.

Soleimani and his son-in-law and Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, the second-in-command of Iraq's Popular Mobilization Front (PMF), along with eight other people were killed in the January 3 drone attack ordered by US President Donald Trump.

Soleimani, 63, was the elite Quds Force chief in charge of IRGC operations outside Iran, and has been on the ground in Syria and Iraq supervising militias backed by Tehran.

The Quds Force holds sway over a large number of militias across the region ranging from Lebanon to Syria and Iraq.

The attack has led to widespread condemnation in Iran. Supreme Leader Khamenei and President Hassan Rouhani has vowed revenge on the US.

On Sunday, Iranian MP Abolfazl Aboutorabi threatened to attack the heart of American politics.

During an open session of the Iranian Parliament on Sunday afternoon, President Trump was called a "terrorist in a suit" after he threatened to hit 52 Iranian sites hard if Tehran attacks Americans or US assets.