4 killed after car bomb rocks luxury hotel in Pakistan’s Balochistan hosting Chinese ambassador

An explosive-laden car detonated outside the posh Serena Hotel in Quetta, the capital of Balochistan province in Pakistan, killing four, as a Chinese delegation was staying there. The Taliban claimed responsibility for the blast.

The explosion swept through the hotel parking lot on Wednesday. According to a preliminary investigation, the blast was caused by a bomb that was planted on a car left outside the four-star deluxe hotel.

Footage from the scene showed flames ravaging the scorched remains of several vehicles as sirens blared.

At least four people, including a police official, were killed by the explosion, while 12 others were injured, including several who were taken to hospital in critical condition. Local authorites branded the exposion an act of terrorism, noting that “enemies of Pakistan” were behind the blast.

At the time of the explosion a Chinese government delegation was staying at the hotel. China’s Ambassador to Pakistan Nong Rong was also among its guests, but was away on a function as the blast struck, Pakistan’s Interior Minister Mir Ziaullah Langove said. Addressing speculation that the high-ranking Chinese diplomat might have been the ultimate target of the attack, Langove noted that the investigation would look to answer that question. The minister said he met with Nong right after the blast, and that the diplomat was “in high spirits.”

While the Pakistani government fell short of pointing the finger at the culprit behind the blast, the Pakistani branch of the Taliban – Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) – claimed responsibility for the bombing, Reuters reported. TTP alleged that the explosion was a suicide attack, triggered by a suicide bomber inside the vehicle.

In recent years, Balochistan, which borders Iran and Afghanistan, has seen a surge in attacks against Chinese interests in the resource-rich province. Five people were killed in an attack on a five-star hotel in Gwadar, a port city on the southwestern coast of Balochistan, in May 2019. The attack on the city, one of the major hubs involved in the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) project, was claimed by militants with the Balochistan Liberation Army. Separatists oppose the CPEC, part of Beijing’s Belt and Road Initiative, which aims to upgrade Pakistan’s infrastructure and connect it to China through roads and sea-links.

https://www.rt.com/news/521754-pakistan-hotel-blast-ambassador/

‘As sorry as we are’: German lawmakers approve new controversial Covid-19 lockdown bill following heated debate

The Bundestag has passed the controversial amendments to the national Infection Protection Act that significantly tightens Covid-19 lockdown restrictions. The bill passed despite harsh criticism from the opposition.

The bill introducing new binding lockdown rules for the German states with high infection rates was approved by a narrow majority in the Bundestag on Wednesday. It received support from 342 MPs while 250 lawmakers voted against it and 64 abstained.

Some restrictions introduced by the amendments have been eased in comparison to the draft published by the German media in April.

Walking and jogging alone will be possible until midnight, unlike what German media has previously predicted. Schools and universities will have to switch to distance education only when the average incidence rate reaches 165 per 100,000 people. Non-essential shops will be able to allow customers with negative Covid-19 tests until the infection rate reaches 150, instead of just closing. After that, people will still be allowed to pick up preordered goods.

All federal states where an average seven-day Covid-19 infection rate rises over 100 per 100,000 people will have to impose a night-time curfew starting from 22:00 (and not 21:00 as it was originally intended).

Currently, 15 out of 16 German states fall under the restrictions of the bill, which is yet to be approved by the Bundesrat – another chamber of the German parliament representing the states.

Germany’s northernmost Schleswig-Holstein is the only one that has an incident rate lower than 100 per 100,000. In Saxony it is around 200 per 100,000 people, and in Thuringia it has surpassed 240.

https://www.rt.com/news/521747-germany-pass-covid-restrictions-bill/

UN experts slamming UK for 'normalising white supremacism' is a projection of America's divisive identity politics

Instead of an organisation promoting peace and harmony across the globe, the UN has shown it sees the world through the prism of intersectionality, by projecting American woke imperialism to accuse the UK of systemic racism.

Over the years I have learned that reports that bear the imprimatur of the UN are likely to circulate self-serving mendacious propaganda rather than anything approximating an objective account.

So, I am not surprised that so-called United Nations human rights experts have published what the New York Times described as a “devastating critique” of the UK’s government’s recent report on race.

As far as the UN’s jumped-up experts are concerned Britain is the land of white supremacy. They accuse the authors of the government’s race report of normalising white supremacy and failing to acknowledge Britain’s “atrocities of the past.”

The UN panel of experts stated that in “2021, it is stunning to read a report on race and ethnicity that repackages racist tropes and stereotypes into fact, twisting data and misapplying statistics and studies into conclusory findings and ad hominem attacks on people of African descent.”

The authors insist that Britain is institutionally racist and they condemn the rejection of this account of life in British society as equivalent to a grave cultural crime. They claim: “This attempt to normalise white supremacy despite considerable research and evidence of institutional racism is an unfortunate sidestepping of the opportunity to acknowledge the atrocities of the past and the contributions of all in order to move forward.”

What the UN panel is really getting at is that unless you confess to being irredeemably racist and take the knee you are a white supremacy denier.

As someone who has written several books on racism, I am aware that prejudice and discrimination still continues to play a role in society. However, the claim that Britain is institutionally racist is absurd. Whatever the weakness of the government’s report it provides compelling evidence about the significant decline of the influence of race in the life chances of people.

The report of the UN Working Group of Experts on People of African Descent serves as a paradigmatic example of woke advocacy masquerading as expertise. The five members of the panel led by human rights attorney, Dominique Day, possess no expertise about the situation in Britain. They are professional NGO operatives who feel empowered to hold forth on anything to do with people of African descent. It is far from clear who appointed them and why they were chosen. In other words who made them the Gods, whose verdict the world needs to take seriously?

In recent months the UN’s woke imperialism has been reinforced by the election of Joe Biden as the president of the United States. Predictably, one of the first things that Biden’s UN ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield stated was that if the US is going to join the UN’s Human Rights Council, we must acknowledge “our own failures,” since “White supremacy is weaved into our founding documents and principles.”

It looks as if the Biden administration will attempt to globalise its values through the UN and insist that the world acknowledge its white sin and adopt the ritual of taking the knee at least three times a day.

It is in many ways tragic that the institutions associated with the UN have become vehicles for promoting American identity politics. The world needs an international institution that the people of all nations could respect. Sadly the authority of the UN is being misused by campaigning organisations who are in the business of scoring points.

I still remember an absurd report published last year that drew on ‘data’ from UNESCO, the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC). This international report claimed that the UK is one of the worst countries in the world for respecting children’s rights! It ranked the UK 169th out of 182 nations, behind Yemen, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, and Iraq.

Things are far from perfect for children in the UK. But you don’t need a Ph.D. in the social sciences to know that on balance British children are no better or no worse off than just about anywhere in Europe.

https://www.rt.com/op-ed/521604-united-nations-woke-imperialism/

Gold bullion, luxury cars and cash seized in alleged $10 million NDIS scam

Six people have been arrested after allegedly swindling $10 million from the National Disability Insurance Scheme, with police seizing luxury cars, gold bullion and jewellery in raids across Sydney.

More than 150 Australian Federal Police investigators, forensic specialists and partner agency officers raided the alleged western Sydney syndicate on Tuesday, searching properties in Lidcombe, Bass Hill, Monterey, Merrylands, Granville, South Granville, Bankstown and Ryde.

“It will be alleged the syndicate has claimed more than $10 million since 2017 in NDIS funding,” the AFP said in a statement on Thursday. “Police inquiries identified a syndicate allegedly operating across three companies to defraud the NDIS.”

Police allege once the claims were received, an amount went into the pockets of company operators.

A 34-year-old man and 30-year-old woman from Lidcombe and a 32-year-old Monterey man are alleged to be the company operators. Police said the first two engaged a 22-year-old Merrylands man to withdraw cash from approved claims on their behalf while the fifth member, a 24-year-old man from Granville, was paid at least $40,000 to set up a bank account in his name to facilitate one company’s claims.

All five were arrested for their involvement in the alleged fraud scheme while another man, a 37-year-old French national from Ryde, was an associate of the two company operators.

Police seized “suspected tainted assets” totalling more than $2 million on Tuesday including approximately $600,000 in cash across multiple properties and eight kilograms of gold bullion worth approximately $600,000 from a vault.

The assets further included $635,176 in cryptocurrency, three vehicles - a BMW M3, Audi Q7 and Porsche Cayenne - with a combined value of approximately $250,000, a “significant amount” of jewellery and a small amount of white powder police suspect to be border-controlled drugs.

The group allegedly obtained NDIS funding for people who do not have a genuine disability, skimmed funding from genuine NDIS participants without their knowledge, conspired with NDIS participants or their families/nominees to obtain funds they were not entitled to receive or monetise their genuine disability, and over-claim for services provided.

The 34-year-old Lidcombe man was charged with causing a loss to the National Disability Insurance Agency of $1,986,942.59 and dishonestly causing that loss by enrolling participants into the NDIS using false documents and later claiming for services that were not delivered to those participants.

https://www.smh.com.au/national/nsw/gold-bullion-luxury-cars-and-drugs-seized-in-alleged-10-million-ndis-scam-20210422-p57lc7.html

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