HAJJ PILGRIMS TAKE OFF FROM YEMEN TO SAUDIA FIRST SINCE 2016
The first commercial flight from Yemen’s rebel-held capital to Saudi Arabia since 2016 took off carrying Hajj pilgrims on June 17, in the latest sign of easing tensions after years of war. Two more flights will depart. A Yemenia Airways plane carrying 277 travellers departed at around 8 pm (1700 GMT), seven years since Sanaa’s international airport was blockaded by the Saudi-led coalition fighting the Iran-backed Houthi movement. The flight is the first since Sanaa’s airport was closed by the coalition blockade in August 2016, more than a year into the Saudi-led military campaign to dislodge the Houthis. Hundreds of thousands of people have died in the fighting or from indirect causes such as lack of food or water in what the UN calls one of the world’s biggest humanitarian crises.
SITUATION IN SUDAN ‘CATASTROPHIC’: SUDANESE OFFICIAL
The deputy leader of Sudan’s ruling Transitional Sovereignty Council has termed the situation in the country as “catastrophic”. Sudan has been ravaged by clashes between the army and the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) paramilitary group since mid-April. Nearly 1,000 civilians have been killed and thousands injured in the violence, according to local medics. “The situation in Sudan now is catastrophic,” Malik Agar said during a discussion session at the Cairo-based Egyptian Centre for Strategic Studies on June 17. “There is total destruction in Khartoum and the RSF are occupying residential neighbourhoods,” he added. Agar warned that Sudan’s collapse “means a complete collapse of the Horn of Africa.” The Sudanese official accused the RSF of taking civilians as human shields. “They are treating the country as if it were a private property,” he added.
NUSRAT JAHAN CONFIRMED AS 1ST US MUSLIM WOMAN FEDERAL JUDGE
ACLU lawyer Nusrat Jahan Choudhury won confirmation as the first Muslim woman and first Bangladeshi-American to serve as a life-tenured federal judge. The Senate confirmed the civil rights lawyer on June 15, 50-49, to a seat on the Brooklyn-based US District for the Eastern District of New York. The Senate confirmed the first Muslim life-tenured federal judge, Zahid Quraishi, in 2021 to a seat on the US District Court for the District of New Jersey. Choudhury, 46, spent her entire legal career at the ACLU and its affiliates, most recently as the legal director of the ACLU of Illinois. She previously worked in the ACLU’s Racial Justice Programme and its National Security Project. Her parents were born in what is now Bangladesh. Her father won a Fulbright grant to come to the US where he worked for 40 years as a physician in the Chicago area, which is where she was born.
QUADRUPLETS BORN FROM PALESTINIAN PRISONER’S SMUGGLED SPERM
The family of a Palestinian prisoner’s wife who gave birth to quadruplets using smuggled sperm have welcomed her and the babies home with “great joy” after they were released from the hospital. Rasmiya Shamali returned to her hometown of Gaza on June 12 with the four babies – three boys and one girl. The 38-year-old is married to Ahmed Shamali, who has been held in Israeli detention since 2008 serving an 18-year sentence over his “involvement in anti-occupation resistance activity”. Rasmiya, who resides in the Al-Shujaia neighbourhood of Gaza City, told Al-Araby Al-Jadeed newspaper that her attempts to conceive using smuggled sperm began in 2018. The first two attempts failed, but the third in October 2022 proved successful and she became pregnant with four children: three boys named Abdul Rahim, Rakan, and Rayan, and a girl called Najah.