Latest attack highlights increased piracy in the region after Somali pirates hijacked an oil tanker last month.

Somalis have been angered recently by foreign fishermen flooding into their waters [File: Mohamed Dahir/AFP]

by Al Jazeera

Pirates have hijacked an Indian commercial ship off the coast of Somalia, the second attack in weeks after years of inactivity by pirates, industry and security sources said.

United Kingdom Maritime Trade Operations (UKMTO), which coordinates the management of all merchant ships and yachts in the Gulf of Aden area, said on Monday it had received information that a vessel en route to Bosasso from Dubai had been hijacked “in the vicinity of Socotra (Island)”.

A spokesman said UKMTO was unable to confirm the location of the vessel, which he identified as Al Kausar, or what had taken place, and that investigations were ongoing.

“We understand Somali pirates hijacked a commercial Indian ship and (it is heading) towards Somalia shores,” Abdirizak Mohamed Dirir, a former director of the anti-piracy agency in Somalia’s semi-autonomous Puntland region, told Reuters news agency.

Somali pirates hijacked an oil tanker last month, the first commandeering of a vessel since 2012, but released it after a fight with the Puntland marine force.

Somalis have been angered recently by foreign fishermen flooding into their waters, some of whom have been given licences to fish there by the Somali government.

Graeme Gibbon-Brooks of UK-based Dryad Maritime Security said industry sources had told him the Indian vessel was en route to Bosasso from Dubai when it was hijacked on Saturday.

The pirates were on board and were taking the ship and its 11 crew members to Eyl in Puntland, he said.

Gibbon-Brooks told AP news agency on Monday that the hijackers wanted a ransom for the crew.

India’s ministry of external affairs told Reuters it could not confirm the hijack but some local Indian media reported the ship was called Al Kaushar.

In a separate incident that highlights increased pirate activity, UKMTO said on its website that early on Monday, six skiffs had approached a vessel and that ladders and hooks were sighted.

The vessel raised alarm, prompting armed guards to take position and the skiffs left, leaving the vessel unharmed, UKTMO said.

Beijing says new rules are necessary to fight ‘extremism’ but rights groups have called similar restrictions repressive.

Many Uighurs have complained of cultural and religious repression and discrimination by China, an accusation Beijing has denied [How Hwee Young/EPA]

by Al Jazeera

China has banned “abnormal” beards and full-face coverings in the remote western region of Xinjiang as part of tighter “anti-extremism” regulations that also prohibit rejecting state media.

Xinjiang is home ot about 10 million Uighur Muslims, who have said they routinely face discrimination.

Hundreds of people have died in recent years in the region due to unrest blamed by Beijing on “separatists”, though rights groups say the violence is more a reaction to repressive Chinese policies.

The new legislation took effect on Saturday and lists a wide range of restrictions, including rejecting or refusing “radio, television or other public facilities and services”, marrying using religious rather than legal procedures and “using the name of Halal to meddle in secular life of others”.

The rules also ban not allowing children to attend government schools, not abiding by family planning policies, wearing robes that cover the whole body and face and “abnormal growing of beards and naming of children to exaggerate religious fervour”, according to the text of the rules published on a government website.

It did not clarify how the rules would be enforced.

Many Uighurs complain of cultural and religious repression and discrimination by China . Beijing has denied the accusations.

A number of similar regulations had previously been introduced in some places in Xinjiang, including stopping people with headscarves , veils and long beards from boarding buses in at least one city. The new rules, however, expand the list and formally apply them to the entire region.

The popularity of veils for Uighur women in particular has grown in recent years in what experts say is an expression of opposition to Chinese controls.

China has said Xinjiang faces a grave separatist threat from Uighur fighters allegedly linked to al-Qaeda and the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL, also known as ISIS), prompting the government to ramp up surveillance measures and police patrols. The government has provided little evidence for such claims.

ISIL released a video in late February purportedly showing Uighur fighters training in Iraq and vowing to strike China, according to the SITE Intelligence Group.

Earlier this month, Chinese President Xi Jinping called for a “great wall of iron” to safeguard Xinjiang, referencing the military response following the pro-democracy protest in Tiananmen Square in 1989.

Rights groups have said that Chinese religious restrictions on Muslims may have driven more than 100 to join ISIL.

Kathrada, beloved by millions of South Africans, spent 26 years in jail, many of them alongside Nelson Mandela.

by Al Jazeera

Anti-apartheid activist Ahmed Kathrada, who spent 26 years in jail – many of them alongside Nelson Mandela – for acts of sabotage against South Africa’s white minority government, died in Johannesburg on Tuesday morning at the age of 87.

He had been admitted to hospital with blood clotting in his brain earlier this month.

Kathrada was born on August 21, 1929, to Indian immigrant parents in a small town in northwestern South Africa .

He was among those tried and jailed alongside Mandela in the Rivonia trial in 1964, which drew worldwide attention and highlighted the brutal legal system under the apartheid regime.

Kathrada was sentenced to life imprisonment in 1964 and spent 26 years and three months in prison, 18 of which were on Robben Island.

After the end of apartheid, he served from 1994 and 1999 as parliamentary counsellor to President Mandela in the first African National Congress (ANC) government.

Al Jazeera’s Tania Page, reporting from Johannesburg, said that it was a sad day in South Africa – where Kathrada was affectionately known as “Uncle Kathy” – as tributes poured in about his widely perceived kindness, humility, and honesty.

He had been a major part of many South African’s memories over decades of anti-apartheid struggle, Page said.

“I think his passing is sort of signalling to South Africans, yet again, the ending of an era, of these great giants of apartheid [resistance] as they pass on,” she added.

Kathrada gave an emotional speech at Mandela’s funeral, in which he said he had lost a brother.

Kathrada was, until recently, still active in public life. He formed his own foundation and advocated strongly for human rights causes such as youth development, anti-racism, and freedom of speech.

Last year, he joined a movement of veteran figures who were critical of the governing ANC and its current crop of leaders – particularly President Jacob Zuma , who has been mired in mounting allegations of corruption . Kathrada penned an open letter to the president and called on him to step down.

“Right to the very end he kept himself relevant, he was a newsmaker, he was honest and true to his values and his beliefs,” Page said. “And that’s why so many millions of South Africans will be very sad at his passing today.”

“This is a great loss to the ANC, the broader liberation movement and South Africa as a whole,” Neeshan Balton, head of the Ahmed Kathrada Foundation, said in a statement.

“‘Kathy’ was an inspiration to millions in different parts of the world.”

Kathrada’s activism against the white-minority apartheid regime started at the age of 17, when he was one of 2,000 “passive resisters” arrested in 1946 for defying a law that discriminated against Indian South Africans.

In July 1963, the police swooped on Liliesleaf Farm in Rivonia, a Johannesburg suburb where Kathrada and other senior activists had been meeting in secret.

At the famous Rivonia trial, eight of the accused were sentenced to life imprisonment with hard labour on Robben Island.

His fellow prisoners included Mandela, Walter Sisulu and Denis Goldberg.

Winner of 1992 Nobel Prize in Literature dies at his house in Caribbean island of St Lucia after long illness.

The prolific and versatile poet was awarded the Nobel Prize in literature in 1992 [Getty]

by Al Jazeera

Nobel Prize-winning poet Derek Walcott has died at his home in the eastern Caribbean island of St Lucia at the age of 87.

A prolific and versatile poet, Walcott was widely respected as one of the greatest writers of the second half of the 20th century.

“Derek Alton Walcott, poet, playwright, and painter died peacefully today, Friday 17th March, 2017, at his home in Cap Estate, Saint Lucia,” read a statement his family released later in the morning. It said the funeral would be held in St Lucia and details would be announced shortly.

Jeff Seroy, a spokesman for publisher Farrar, Strauss and Giroux, said the cause of death was not immediately known, but added that Walcott had been ill for some time and had recently returned home from a hospital stay.

His longtime companion, Sigrid Nama, was with him at the time of his death, Seroy said.

With passions ranging from watercolour painting to teaching to theatre, Walcott’s work was widely praised for its depth and bold use of metaphor, as well as its mix of sensuousness and technical prowess.

Walcott received the Nobel Prize for literature in 1992 after being shortlisted for the honour for many years. In selecting him, the Swedish academy cited “the great luminosity” of his writings, including the 1990 “Omeros”, a 64-chapter Caribbean epic it praised as “majestic”.

“In him, West Indian culture has found its great poet,” said the academy in awarding the $1.2m prize to Walcott.

A distinctly Caribbean poet

Walcott proudly celebrated his role as a Caribbean writer.

“I am primarily, absolutely a Caribbean writer,” he once said during a 1985 interview published in The Paris Review.

“The English language is nobody’s special property. It is the property of the imagination: it is the property of the language itself. I have never felt inhibited in trying to write as well as the greatest English poets.”

Walcott said his writing reflected the “very rich and complicated experience” of life in the Caribbean. He compared his feeling for poetry to a religious avocation.

Walcott was born in St Lucia’s capital of Castries on January 23, 1930 to a Methodist schoolteacher mother and a civil servant father, an aspiring artist who died when the poet and his twin brother, Roderick, were babies.

His mother, Alix, instilled the love of language in her children, often reciting the work of William Shakespeare and reading aloud other classics of English literature.

At the age of 14, he published his first work, a 44-line poem called “1944”, in a local newspaper. About four years later, while still in his teens, he self-published a collection of 25 poems. At 20, his play “Henri Christophe” was produced by an arts guild he co-founded.

He left St Lucia to immerse himself in literature at Jamaica’s University College of the West Indies. In the 1950s, he studied in New York and founded a theatre in Trinidad’s Port-of-Spain, a Caribbean capital he mentioned with great warmth during his Nobel lecture in 1992.

Walcott’s treatment of the Caribbean was always passionate but unsentimental. In his 1979 work about Jamaica, “The Star-Apple Kingdom”, he wrote of the “groom, the cattleboy, the housemaid … the good Negroes down in the village, their mouths in the locked jaw of a silent scream”.

For much of his life, Walcott, who taught at Boston University for many years, divided his time between the United States and the Caribbean, and the exile of millions of Caribbean citizens who have left the region in search of a better life is another frequent theme in his works.

Although he was best known for his poetry, Walcott was also a prolific playwright, penning some 40 plays, including “Dream on Monkey Mountain” and “The Last Carnival”, and founding theatres such as the Boston Playwrights’ Theatre.

British writer Robert Graves said in 1984 that Walcott handled “English with a closer understanding of its inner magic than most – if not any – of his English-born contemporaries”.

Walcott’s reputation was weakened by sexual harassment allegations made against him at Harvard and Boston universities in the 1980s and 1990s.

He retired from teaching at Boston University in 2007 and spent more of his time in St Lucia.

Fighter jets bomb multiple targets, prompting Syrian retaliation with ground-to-air missiles, Israeli army says.

by Al Jazeera

The Israeli army says its aircraft have carried out several strikes inside Syria overnight, prompting Syrian forces to retaliate with ground-to-air missiles, one of which was intercepted.

It was one of the most serious incidents between the two countries, which remain technically at war, since civil war broke out in Syria in March 2011.

In response of Thursday night’s attack, the Syrian government deployed air defence systems and fired a number of missiles towards Israeli jets, Israeli daily Haaretz reported.

None of the missiles struck the jets, the army said, though one of the projectiles was intercepted by Israel’s Arrow missile defence system north of Jerusalem, according to Haaretz.

“Overnight … aircraft targeted several targets in Syria,” an Israeli army statement said.

“Several anti-aircraft missiles were launched from Syria following the mission and [army] aerial defence systems intercepted one of the missiles.”

Rocket sirens sounded in Israeli settlements in the Jordan valley, the military said and two witnesses heard an explosion a few minutes later, Reuters news agency reported.

Unidentified object

Syria’s army high command confirmed in a statement on Friday that Israeli jets breached Syrian airspace early in the morning and attacked a military target near Palmyra.

The high command described the attack as an act of aggression that aided the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) group, which is fighting against the Syrian government.

It said its air defences shot down one of four Israeli jets over what it called “occupied ground” and damaged another.

There were no reports by the Israeli army of any aircraft lost in the operation.

Jordanian new media said an “unidentified object” fell from the skies on Thursday night in the northern area of Irbid, after which security forces surrounded the area of impact.

Pictures shared on social media showed what appeared to be part of a missile that had landed in a yard.

It was not clear whether the object was part of of missile intercepted by Israel, part of an Israeli missile, or another object.

Arms convoys targeted

Both Israeli and other news media have reported Israeli air strikes inside Syria targeting arms convoys of Lebanese group Hezbollah, which fought a 2006 war with Israel and is now fighting alongside the Syrian government.

But normally Israel makes no official comment.

The missile fire prompted air raid sirens to go off in the Jordan Valley during the night, the Israeli army said.

Saudi says talks highlighted shared views on Iran, expresses ‘satisfaction’ Trump’s travel ban not aimed at Muslims.

US President Donald Trump and Saudi Deputy Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman at the White House [REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque]

by Al Jazeera

Saudi Arabia has hailed a “historic turning point” in relations with the United States after a meeting between US President Donald Trump and Deputy Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman at the White House.

The meeting on Tuesday was the first since Trump’s January 20 inauguration with a prince who is leading the kingdom’s efforts to revive state finances and is also its defence minister.

“The meeting today restored issues to their right path and form a big change in relations between both countries in political, military, security and economic issues,” a senior adviser to Prince Mohammed said in a statement.

The talks appeared to signal a marked difference from Riyadh’s often fraught relationship with the previous administration of Barack Obama, especially following the 2015 Iran nuclear deal.

The deputy crown prince viewed the nuclear deal as “very dangerous”, the senior adviser said, adding that both leaders had identical views on “the danger of Iran’s regional expansionist activities”.

The Trump White House has said the deal was not in the best interests of the US.

Referring to a US travel ban on six Muslim-majority countries, the adviser said that Prince Mohammed did not regard it as aimed at “Muslim countries or Islam”.

Earlier this month Trump signed a revised executive order banning citizens from Yemen, Iran, Somalia, Syria, Sudan, and Libya from travelling to the US but removed Iraq from the list, after a first attempt was blocked in the courts.

The senior adviser said Prince Mohammed “expressed his satisfaction after the meeting on the positive position and clarifications he heard from President Trump on his views on Islam.”

The two leaders also discussed opportunities for US companies to invest in Saudi Arabia.

Obama late last year suspended the sale of US-made precision-guidance munitions to the Saudis, a reaction to thousands of civilian casualties from Saudi-led air raids in Yemen.

US officials said Trump was considering ending that ban and approving the sale of guidance systems made by Raytheon Co.

The US State Department has approved the move, which awaits a final White House decision, the officials said.

Gregory Gause, a Gulf expert at Texas A&M University, said that while Saudi Arabia might find the “atmospherics” of its relations with Trump better than those with Obama, it might find less change than it hopes on key issues.

For example, he said, Trump is unlikely to mount a major, costly effort to counter Iranian influence in Iraq, or to launch a full-scale campaign to oust Syrian President Bashar al Assad, as Riyadh might wish.

“I think they’re going to find rhetorically that the new administration says things and uses language they like more,” said Gause. “But I think on the ground, we’re not going to see an enormous difference.”

Police charge 64-year-old man with arson after he attempted to set shop ablaze to ‘run the Arabs out of our country’.

Prosecutors will determine if Lloyd will be charged with a hate crime [Courtesy: Port St Lucie Police]

by Al Jazeera

A man in the US state of Florida faces a first-degree arson charge after attempting to set a convenience store ablaze because he thought it was owned by Muslims.

Richard Leslie Lloyd, 64, told police he tried to set the Port St Lucie shop on fire to “run the Arabs out of our country”, according to news reports on Sunday.

According to police, however, the shop owners were of Indian descent.

Local television channel WPTV reported that Lloyd was angry at Arabs “due to what they are doing in the Middle East”.

The intended target was the Met Mart store in the town 180km north of the city of Miami.

According to police, Lloyd carried out the attack on Friday morning while the shop was still closed.

Police said Lloyd was hoping that by setting a rubbish bin on fire he would ignite a bigger blaze targeting the shop.

“When the deputies arrived, they noticed the dumpster had been rolled in front of the doors and the contents were lit on fire,” Sheriff Ken J Mascara was quoted as saying in a statement.

“Upon seeing our deputies, the man put his hands behind his back and said ‘Take me away’.”

‘Doing his part for America’

Lloyd said he was “doing his part for America” by carrying out the attack, according to the arrest affidavit.

“It’s unfortunate that Mr Lloyd made the assumption that the store owners were Muslim when, in fact, they are of Indian descent,” said Mascara.

“Regardless, we will not tolerate violence based on age, race, colour, ancestry, ethnicity, religion, sexual orientation, national origin, homeless status, mental or physical disability.”

Police said they will review Lloyd’s mental health, and will leave it to prosecutors to determine if he can be charged with a hate crime.

The attack was the latest in a string of recent assaults targeting minorities in the United States.

On March 3, a Sikh man was shot and wounded outside his home in Seattle in Washington state, a day after a man of Indian origin was killed in the US state of South Carolina.

In late February, an Indian engineer working in Kansas was killed and two other people wounded after a gunman shouting racial slurs opened fire on them.

Regional Chinese officials make repeated warnings about threat of religious ‘extremism’ during meeting in Beijing.

President Xi Jinping had issued an order to “Sinicise” the country’s ethnic and religious minorities [Reuters]

China’s ruling Communist Party has hardened its rhetoric on Islam, with top officials making repeated warnings about the spectre of global religious “extremism” seeping into the country, and the need to protect traditional Chinese identity.

Shaerheti Ahan, a top party official in Xinjiang, on Sunday became the latest official from a predominantly Muslim region to warn political leaders gathered in Beijing that the”international anti-terror situation” is destabilising China.

Officials from Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region, which has an ethnic Hui population that is predominantly Muslim, warned similarly this past week about the perils of “Islamic extremism”.

Speaking at a regional meeting open to the media, Ningxia Communist Party secretary Li Jianguo drew comparisons to the policies of US President Donald Trump‘s administration to make his point.

“What the Islamic State and extremists push is jihad, terror, violence,” Li said. “This is why we see Trump targeting Muslims in a travel ban.

“It doesn’t matter whether anti-Muslim policy is in the interests of the US or it promotes stability, it’s about preventing religious extremism from seeping into all of American culture.”

Over the past year, President Xi Jinping has directed the party to “Sinicise” the country’s ethnic and religious minorities.

Regional leaders in Xinjiang, home to the Muslim Uighur ethnic minority, have also ramped up surveillance measures, police patrols and demonstrations amid fear of violence blamed on Muslim groups.

Although some scholars question whether global armed networks have penetrated China, top Chinese officials are increasingly echoing calls to counter “extremism”.

News of growing anti-Islam sentiment come as the South China Morning Post published a story about the growing popularity of similar anti-Islam expressions online targeting young Chinese Muslims.

Wu Shimin, a former ethnic affairs official from Ningxia, said that ideological work must be strengthened in the region to promote a Chinese identity among its Hui population, the descendants of Muslim traders plying the Silk Road centuries ago.

“The roots of the Hui are in China,” Wu said. “To discuss religious consciousness, we must first discuss Chinese consciousness. To discuss the feelings of minorities, we must first discuss the feelings of the Chinese people.”

Mohammed al-Sudairi, a doctoral student at the University of Hong Kong and an expert on Islam in China, said the comments by Ningxia party officials reflected the increasingly anti-Islamic rhetoric that has been rolled out over the past year by the top leadership in Beijing.

“There’s a strengthening trend of viewing Islam as a problem in Chinese society,” Sudairi said.

“Xi Jinping has been quite anxious about what he saw as the loss of party-state control over the religious sphere when he entered power, which necessitated this intervention. I don’t think things will take a softer turn.”

In Xinjiang, where hundreds of people have died in recent years in violent attacks, the government’s rising rhetoric has coincided with new security measures that activists said exacerbate a cycle of repression, radicalisation and violence.

The government, meanwhile, said Xinjiang faces a grave separatist threat from Uighur fighters allegedly linked to al-Qaeda and the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), though it provides little evidence for such claims.

ISIL released a video in late February purportedly showing Uighur fighters training in Iraq and vowing to strike China, according to the SITE Intelligence Group.

On Friday, Xi met Xinjiang officials, according to state media, and directed them to safeguard the region’s stability by erecting a metaphorical “great wall of iron”, a reference to the military response following the pro-democracy protest in Tiananmen Square in 1989.