World News

DAKAR, Senegal (AP) — Senegal is holding a legislative election Sunday, a vital test for opposition parties who are trying to minimize the ruling party’s influence before the 2024 presidential election amid worries that President Macky Sall may seek a third term.

About 7 million voters are eligible to elect 165 deputies in the National Assembly amid a politically tense atmosphere in the West African nation. Violent protests broke out last year after Sall’s main opponent, Ousmane Sonko, was arrested on rape charges, and more than a dozen people were killed. Sonko, who came in third in the 2019 election, denies the allegations and his supporters have been vocal about their opposition to the president.

This year, he and another of Sall’s major opponents were disqualified as candidates, which sparked more widespread anger and protests in which three people died in June.

Senegal, with a population of 17 million, is known for its stability in a region that has seen coups in three countries since 2020 and where leaders have changed laws to remain in power for third terms.

Sunday’s election will give a clearer indication of what could happen in 2024.

“For (the ruling party), it is a question of doing everything to maintain an absolute majority in the National Assembly in order to be able to govern quietly until 2024 … and guarding the possibility of passing certain laws to prepare for all eventualities at the end of Sall’s second term,” said Mame Ngor Ngom, a political analyst.

Even though Sonko’s candidacy was rejected by the Constitutional Council, he has organized opposition supporters across Senegal. A victory for the opposition “would be synonymous with the rejection of a possible third candidacy for Sall and a probable victory in the next presidential election,” Ngom said.

Sall’s Benno Bokk Yakaar ruling party currently holds 75% of the legislature’s seats.

Serigne Thiam, a political science expert at Cheikh Anta Diop University in Dakar, says the opposition is pushing the subject of a possible third term over other issues.

“If the opposition wins, the president will no longer be able to think of a third term. On the other hand, if the ruling power wins the ballot, its supporters can push the president towards a third term,” he warns.

Sall hasn’t talked about a third term but has promised to speak Monday, the day after the election.

Dissatisfaction with Sall has risen as possible adversaries — including the popular former mayor of Dakar, Khalifa Sall, and ex-president Abdoulaye Wade’s son Karim Wade — have been targeted by the judiciary and disqualified from running for office. Many accuse Sall of using his power to eliminate opponents.

Anger has also grown amid economic worries as prices for fuel and food have skyrocketed due to the war in Ukraine.

Senegal’s former prime minister and head of the ruling party, Aminata Touré, appealed to the country’s youth to vote.

“The youth must participate massively in the vote in thanks to the President Macky Sall for the extraordinary work he has done for Senegal,” he declared in Kédougou in the southeast.

Interior Minister Antoine Félix Abdoulaye Diom toured polling stations around the country and declared that all the arrangements had been made for a smooth vote, despite floods in the past few weeks.

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Petesch reported from Chicago.

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By Yew Lun Tian

BEIJING (Reuters) -China will “resolutely safeguard national sovereignty and territorial integrity”, an air force spokesman said on Sunday, referring to Taiwan, as tensions rise over the self-ruled island.

Air force spokesman Shen Jinke was quoted by state media as saying at a military airshow that the air force has many types of fighter jets capable of circling “the precious island of our motherland”.

U.S. House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi, number 3 in the line of presidential succession, signalled on Friday she was embarking on a trip to Asia. She did not mention Taiwan, but speculation of a visit there has intensified in recent days, fuelling tensions beyond the Taiwan Strait.

Beijing claims democratically ruled Taiwan as a Chinese province.

Chinese President Xi Jinping warned his U.S. counterpart Joe Biden on Thursday that Washington should abide by the one-China principle and “those who play with fire will perish by it.”

Shen said on Sunday: “The air force has the firm will, full confidence and sufficient capability to defend national sovereignty and territorial integrity.”

White House national security spokesperson John Kirby said on Friday the United States has seen no evidence of looming Chinese military activity against Taiwan.

(Reporting by Yew Lun Tian; Editing by William Mallard)

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SYDNEY (Reuters) – Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese on Saturday unveiled the wording of a draft referendum question as part of moves to enshrine an Indigenous voice in parliament.

The government is seeking a referendum, which is necessary to make changes to the constitution, on recognising indigenous minorities in the constitution and requiring governments to consult Aboriginal people on decisions that impact their lives.

The change is a commitment Albanese’s centre-left Labor Party took to May’s general election, where it defeated the conservative Liberal-National coalition. The coalition had wanted to establish indigenous representation in parliament through legislation.

Albanese, who will reveal the plan in a speech at an Indigenous festival in remote Arnhem Land, in the Northern Territory, will propose the draft referendum question: “Do you support an alteration to the Constitution that establishes an Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Voice?”

According to speech notes released before the event, the prime minister will suggest three sentences be added to the constitution if the referendum succeeds, enabling the voice to be set-up.

“I ask all Australians of goodwill to engage on this,” he will say.

“Respectfully, purposefully we are seeking to secure support for the question and the associated provisions in time for a successful referendum, in this term of parliament.”

The voice will be a source of advice and accountability, but “not a third chamber” in the parliament, according to his speech.

Australia’s constitution makes no reference to indigenous people, whose leaders have toiled for generations to win recognition for injustices suffered since European colonisation in the 1700s.

Altering the constitution is difficult, requiring support of a majority of votes in a majority of states. The feat has only occurred eight times in 44 attempts since federation in 1901.

A successful referendum would bring Australia in line with Canada, New Zealand and the United States in formally recognising indigenous populations.

(Reporting by Samuel McKeith; Editing by Lincoln Feast.)

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Oscar-winner Richard Trank: Shimon Peres Biopic an ‘Embarrassment of Riches’

His film Never Stop Dreaming: The Life and Legacy of Shimon Peres is currently streaming on Netflix

Award-winning filmmaker Richard Trank, the director of Never Stop Dreaming: The Life and Legacy of Shimon Peres, now running on Netflix, describes his career as “accidental.” Initially, his goal was to be a novelist. But to make a living, he worked as a writer-producer in news and public affairs programming for radio. That got the attention of the Simon Wiesenthal Center. Coming on board, he produced a show for the center that ran on around 125 commercial radio stations across the United States. That led to a number of projects documenting the oral histories of Holocaust survivors, educational and promotional films, and museum films.

In 1991, Trank co-produced Echoes That Remain, a film on Eastern European Jewry before the Holocaust. Since then, he has worked as a writer, director, and producer on around 15 projects for the Wiesenthal Center’s Moriah Films, including The Long Way Home, a documentary on the post–World War II Jewish refugee situation from liberation to the establishment of the State of Israel, which won an Academy Award as best documentary feature film in 1997.

He also works as the director of content for the Wiesenthal Center’s Museum of Tolerance in Los Angeles and for the new Museum of Tolerance in Jerusalem, which is scheduled to open to the public in 2023.

Trank joined The Media Line’s Felice Friedson for an in-depth discussion about Never Stop Dreaming, his 2018 film on Israel’s storied statesman, president, and twice prime minister, Shimon Peres.

For Israel watchers or anyone with an affinity for the Middle East, it won’t seem unusual to see a film about an old man with a thick accent being fêted by celebrities and world figures half his age. But Shimon Peres was larger than life and to many the face of the Jewish state. By way of the example before us, there aren’t a whole lot of biopics about Israeli leaders taking up space on the Netflix playlist. But Never Stop Dreaming: The Life and Legacy of Shimon Peres is on the list and is being viewed by people around the world.

TML: Thank you for joining me at The Media Line.

Trank: It’s a pleasure to be here.

TML: Richard, your filmography is an impressive tribute to leadership and peace. You did the Peres film several years ago, so how did Netflix become interested in this project, and who decided on the release date?

Trank: We began working on this film in 2016. We had been working on a film, starting a film on David Ben-Gurion, and in December of 2015, we interviewed Shimon Peres for that film, because he was the last living link to Ben-Gurion. And as we were tweaking lights and doing final things on the cameras, one of the aides came up to me and said, “You know, you’ve made all these films about different people. Why don’t you want to make a film about Shimon?” – everybody there called him by his first name. And I said I would love nothing more than to do that. In fact, I asked him when he was president in 2012, because we interviewed him for another project, about Theodor Herzl, I said to him, “Mr. President, you don’t have to tell me an answer today, or tomorrow, or even a week from tomorrow, but I’d love to make a film about your life.” And he started chuckling and he said, “Ugh, who would want to see such a film.” And I told that to his aide, and she said, “Well, you asked the wrong person. You should have asked one of us. Because he’s very modest, he’s not interested in doing things like that.” Are you serious? My boss was with me, Rabbi Marvin Hier. And he said nothing would be more of an honor for us than to do that. So, we stayed around for a couple of days and worked out an understanding, and, starting that January, we began doing interviews with Shimon Peres. I did about 50, 60 hours of interviews with him from January of 2016 until late-ish July of 2016. We finished all of our principal interviews, and then that fall I was supposed to be going on a lecture tour with him to Canada, excuse me, to China. We were with him in Canada for one of his last public appearances, and then we were going to follow him to China. And then he suffered the stroke that took his life.

TML: Richard, your film on one level is an obituary, delivered by the man himself. It presents material from many hours of on-camera interviews with Shimon Peres filmed shortly before his death. Which came first, the desire to tell the story, or the opportunity you had in the form of access?

Trank: It was the access, and the idea when we started to film – he was a very vibrant 92-year-old man, he was almost 93. And the idea was we would make this film about this vibrant man in his 90s who is still inspiring people all over Israel and around the world, advising world leaders. And the idea was we’d have it finished and Shimon Peres would be sitting in the audience for the premiere in Israel.

But then he suffered the stroke that took his life, and it became a legacy film as opposed to the kind of film I started out doing. I always say that documentary filmmaking is kind of like improvisational theater – you never quite know what somebody is going to throw at you, and you have to go with what’s been thrown at you. So, in this case, it took some rethinking, and we spent the next … we finished the film actually just before … in 2019, so a few months before the pandemic. And then everything kind of stopped, because the idea was to put it out for theatrical release. And I always had this desire that it should be on Netflix. I told that to President Peres. I had told him that my idea for a narrator was George Clooney, and he loved that idea. So, it was just as the pandemic was happening that Netflix saw a version of the film and they loved it and they decided that they’d take it on as an “[Netflix] original” rather than just licensing it. Part of what I was doing in the early part of the pandemic was things that we needed to do in order to meet all the requirements that Netflix had for the movie.

TML: Had you ever met Shimon Peres at a younger point of his life, or was it only towards the end?

Trank: I met Shimon Peres for the first time in the late ’80s. I was a radio reporter. I was actually doing a radio series at the time for the Wiesenthal Center. That’s when I went to work there. So, I interviewed him – he was on a trip to LA and I interviewed him for that. And then I was working on another project in the ’90s, when he had lost to [Binyamin] Bibi Netanyahu [in the 1996 election] and was out of office, and interviewed him at Labor party headquarters in Tel Aviv. It was at a time in his life that wasn’t a particularly happy time for him politically or personally. But he gave this amazing interview for a film of mine called In Search of Peace. And then, over the years, I would interview him for various things and see him at events that we did. It’s not like I could say, oh, he was a good friend, but I knew Shimon Peres from a professional perspective for, I guess, more than 30 years.

TML: What is your search for peace?

Trank: My search for peace? My search for peace is searching to see how peace can be made. Because a lot of my films have dealt with Israel’s ongoing attempt to find a way to live peacefully with its neighbors. This is why Shimon Peres was such an inspiration to me. Because he was always somebody who always took the long view of history, the long view of things. And considering how complicated the political landscape is, not just in the Middle East as a macro, but in Israel as a micro, sometimes deciding simple things is very difficult. So, making peace, which is a much bigger issue, is something that isn’t going to happen overnight. That was one thing he and I talked about was that just because you don’t achieve something the first time, that doesn’t mean you can’t keep trying. And you can’t keep dreaming that you’ll get there one day.

TML: There are two tracks to your film: the personality, and the public servant, separate and together. Was it difficult to write?

Trank: It was an interesting thing to write. And, luckily, because he’d written a number of books and there was Michael Bar-Zohar’s biography and a couple of other biographies. So, there was a lot there. And then these interviews were incredible. He really opened up about all sorts of different stories. I think he had a sense that he didn’t have much time left. His son, Chemi, had told me – because at the same time we were doing these interviews he was writing what became his last book. And Chemi said to me that he thought his father had this premonition that he wasn’t going to be around much longer and there was this sense of urgency to really tell the story, which is why he opened up the way that he did. Because other people had tried to do films with him, but I don’t think anyone has done a film like the one we did. Part of it was because I got this access and got other people to speak to us as well about him.

TML: Peres had the knack of being in the right place, that is holding the right portfolio at the right time so that he himself became part of the story. As a writer and director, did you have to choose between history and the man?

Trank: Well, you don’t want this to just be a dry recitation of historical facts. So, I tried to balance telling some history, because there are people who are watching the film who know very little about Israeli history. But, also, I wanted people to get to know this man who, at a time when Israel was this country struggling to just provide the essentials to its population, he was dreaming these dreams of Israel as a high-tech center, Israel as a scientific and a medical center. People thought he was talking like a crazy person because the country was struggling economically. So, I wanted people to also get to know this dreamer, in addition to learning a little bit about Israeli history.

TML: The two-hour running time is indicative of Peres’ long and productive life. But while there are allusions to political battles, and even the humiliation of his loss to Moshe Katsav in his first presidential bid, we didn’t hear his political foes explain what made him so formidable an opponent. What about Shimon Peres do you think got under their skin?

Trank: I think part of it was his refusal to give up. He kept going. Bill Clinton says in this movie that no matter what it was that knocked him down, he always got up. My favorite sports are tennis and baseball. So, maybe look at it like Rafael Nadal and Roger Federer are playing in the finals at Wimbledon, and they’re tied 6-6, and then 7-6, and then 7-7, and it keeps going on and on and on, and neither one of them ever gives up until somebody makes the wrong move. And it was kind of that refusal to give up. But, also his ability to adapt and consider changing sometimes. And that in some respects caused him to be criticized by political allies who felt that he was too willing to bend. If you look at what happened in the early 2000s when he joined [the] Kadima [party] with Ariel Sharon. There were a lot of people in the Labor party who didn’t ever forgive him for doing that, but he saw the opportunity that Kadima presented and he went with it. And I think that was a lot of his life. Seeing an opportunity, taking advantage of it, and moving ahead. And it wasn’t about him, it was about whatever the issue was. So, one time he said to me, “Look, like anyone else I have an ego.” But at the same time, as much as he might have had an ego, his ego never got in the way of what was best for the State of Israel.

TML: What was it like for you, as the filmmaker with the concept, sitting with former presidents, on this particular issue?

Trank: It was interesting. I was lucky in that I had interviewed Bill Clinton twice before. So, I kind of knew what to expect with Bill Clinton. Like what they tell you: Don’t expect him to be on time. If they tell you you’ve got 15 minutes with him, you’re going to have 45 minutes with him. Which is always great, because you always want more than less, although when you’ve got a staff that wants him to only stick with 15 minutes and you’re dealing with that. So, I knew with Bill Clinton, I knew he’d be great, I knew howhe’d jumped at the opportunity to do this. With Barack Obama, I was hoping he’d say yes. He had just come out of office and we were fortunate enough to get the second interview that he gave after leaving office. What I was told about Barack Obama was, he’ll be on time. If they tell you he’s got 20 minutes, you are going to get 20 minutes, but it’s going to be a really good 20 minutes. And that’s what we got. He was excellent, he gave a perspective that I thought was an important perspective. It was very interesting interviewing George W. Bush, because I didn’t know quite what to expect, and it was such a wonderful experience. He had these nice memories of him [Peres] because he knew him from the time that his father was vice president and president. So, there was another perspective there. Tony Blair, the same thing. He was very open to doing it. He so looked up to Shimon Peres as a model. I call this like an embarrassment of riches that I got with this movie, because as soon as they knew who it was going to be about, very few people, I mean, nobody said no. I mean Barbra Streisand, who is not an easy get, she said yes. It was wonderful.

TML: You paint a picture of achievements whose impact remains for a long period. Building of a new nation’s defense industries, enabling Israel’s nuclear program, the ill-fated Jerusalem Agreement, and the Oslo Accords. How do you think Peres always landed in the epicenter of events?

Trank: Well, because from the beginning he was in the middle of it all, as a young man. He helped to build Israel’s navy in the War of Independence years. He was there working with people like Teddy Kollek bringing in weapons, illegally, to help Israel during the War of Independence. And he saw a door opening a little – he opened it a big way. Because when he began a relationship, a military relationship, with the French, Golda Meir was the foreign minister. And she was focusing on America, not on Europe. And people don’t realize that at the time Israel had no way of getting the weapons it needed to defend itself. When he saw this opening with the French, he jumped on it. It upset Golda tremendously. She would complain to [Prime Minister] Levi Eshkol that “he doesn’t respect me, he’s going around me.” But he saw these openings, and it wasn’t because he was trying to get attention for himself, he saw something that was going to help the State of Israel. So, he just happened to always be in the right place at the right time. But,ironically, even being in the right place at the right time didn’t assure him of political success all the time. He was oftentimes on the outside, always coming up short when it came to the prime minister’s office. Even at a point in his life when he shouldn’t have had to worry about winning the presidency in the Knesset [vote], he was humiliated when they brought Katsav in at the last moment and he became president. So, even though he was never out of the public eye, sometimes he was in the public eye but not for reasons that somebody would want to be.

TML: Each story you told involved a supporting cast. How do you decide what gets chopped? There are people that are left out, too, and definitely part of the story.

Trank: Right. You know, it’s a difficult situation. I was lucky that I could take two hours. I could have made a miniseries about this. But you look at certain moments and you have to go with those moments. We did deal, I think, with every single prime minister. We dealt with a lot of major things. But we also, I look for things that people didn’t know about as well. And I also wanted to give people a sense of his background, where he came from, who his grandfather was. People sometimes forget that this was a man who came to this country before it was Israel, when he was, 10, 11 years old, from a place that nobody has ever really ever heard of, Vishnyeva, in what is now Belarus. He wasn’t a sabra; in some ways that was held against him. So, there were parts of the story that I felt it was important for people to know because this was the only time I was going to tell this story.

TML: As exciting as his public life was, the status he achieved in his later years as an international icon was fascinating. What made Shimon Peres so attractive to the young, the powerful and famous?

Trank: You know, I think that sometimes as people get older, certain things that might have been held against them when they were younger, people let it go. And the fact is, I don’t think people today give enough respect to experience. In the movie business, television business, if you’re over 45, you’re considered a has-been. In politics it’s a little bit different – look, we have a 79-year-old [US] president right now who defeated a 75-year-old president. So sometimes in politics, there’s a little bit more forgiveness. But I think, because of what he represented, the kind of leadership that he represented, he became an inspiration in his 80s and his 90s in a way that he didn’t when he was in his 40s and his 50s. In fact, it’s interesting, I think he really hit his stride around the time he hit 70. Because if you look back, let’s say, at Oslo, he was about 70 years old when he was in the center of the Oslo Agreement. There are not a lot of people at 70 that are achieving things like that. And then you take a look at him as president, and he was well into his 80s, and he redefined what that position was in the State of Israel. He made it an important office in a way that it never had been because it had been a ceremonial office. So, he laid the groundwork for President [Reuven] Rivlin, and now President [Isaac] Herzog.

TML: As I mentioned earlier, you very much like filmmaking around presidents, leaders, and peace. So, what’s undone? What’s the next big project you still want to do?

Trank: Well, there’s a few. The one that I’m now finishing was the one we started when we first embarked on this journey, and that was the film about David Ben-Gurion. So hopefully by year’s end, we’ll be finished with that movie, and we’ll see where we go with that one. There’s a limited series that I’ve been kicking around on the issue of antisemitism around the world. That’s something that I’m hoping to interest either Netflix or Amazon – one of the big… hopefully, we’ll have an ongoing relationship with Netflix. But there’s that movie. There are some other stories that I’d love to tell, stories about Israel. I always thought I’ll never do another film about the Shoah because I’ve done five or six films about the Holocaust. And every time I think there’s no more stories to tell, you find a story that you didn’t know about that might open up the subject to people who don’t know much about it.

TML: Richard Trank, I really appreciate you joining us here at The Media Line and sharing a little bit of behind the scenes of this new movie that is out by Netflix. Well not so new but it’s new to the audience, and I wish you lots of success.

Trank: Thank you.

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By Anna Mehler Paperny

TORONTO (Reuters) – A Cree woman who captured global attention with her anguished song before Pope Francis on Monday said she was moved to do so when he donned a gifted feathered headdress without first removing his skullcap – something she saw as disrespectful.

Si Pih Ko, a Cree woman from Manitoba, stood in her beaded regalia and belted out an ancient Cree song – “Our village” – with a rhythm similar to the Canadian national anthem as tears streamed down her face.

“He didn’t remove his law before allowing our law to be placed on his head,” she told Reuters by phone from Winnipeg, adding the pope could have given the headdress back instead.

Shaking with emotion, Si Pih Ko, 45, ended her song with a statement on indigenous law, fist raised, before turning her back and walking away.

As she sang, Francis stood and watched. The pontiff is in Canada to apologize to indigenous people for abuse in government schools run by the Roman Catholic church.

The poignancy of singing before the pope in a language priests and nuns beat indigenous children for speaking was not lost on her, Si Pih Ko said.

“It felt good, being able to just sing it and speak it. And he could not destroy it in me.”

She said she had wanted to be at the event in Maskwacis, Alberta, not to hear the pope’s apology but “to have that opportunity to speak the law to him. No apology will ever make things right.”

She said she knew she would be “speaking the law” to the pope somehow, but added: “I didn’t think it would be right in the centre, hand up like that.”

She said that in her mind as she sang were the indigenous women, men and children who would never come home.

“Everyone who lost their lives fighting against the system, with all odds against them, that’s who I was there for.”

(Reporting by Anna Mehler Paperny; Editing by Daniel Wallis)

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MEXICO CITY (AP) — A Roman Catholic priest was wounded in a shooting on a highway in the southern Mexico state of Guerrero, the Mexican Council of Bishops said late Thursday.

The council said the Rev. Felipe Vélez Jiménez was shot in the cheek and was “out of danger.”

Vélez Jiménez serves as a parish priest in the city of Iguala. His diocese said in a statement that Vélez Jiménez was in “delicate but stable” condition at a hospital.

Guerrero state prosecutors said the priest was driving near the violence-plagued town of Chilapa on Thursday when gunmen on a motorcycle approached his vehicle and opened fire. Prosecutors said the vehicle was hit by at least four rounds.

The shooting comes about one month after two Jesuit priests and a tour guide were slain in the mountains of the northern state of Chihuahua. The priests were allegedly killed by a local drug gang leader on June 20 as they tried to protect the guide.

Parishes nationwide are still celebrating a month of special prayers for the Jesuits, their killers and the victims of violence.

The Diocese of Chilpancingo-Chilapa said, “We call for our brothers whose crimes cause so much suffering and death, to convert. … Stop doing evil.”

The church’s Catholic Multimedia Center said seven priests have been slain during the current administration, which took office in December 2018, and at least two dozen in the six years of the previous president.

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MADRID (AP) — Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez asked government officials and people working in the private sector to save energy by giving up neckties.

Appearing at a news conference in an open-necked white shirt and blue shirt, Sánchez explained he dressed less formally not as a nod to the casual Friday custom but to curb utility use. He did not say how going tieless conserved energy.

“I´d like you to note that I am not wearing a tie. That means that we can all make savings from an energy point of view,” the prime minister said at the news conference called to summarize his government’s annual performance.

He said he encouraged his ministers and public officials, “that if not necessary, don’t use a tie.”

Spain has sweltered for more than a month, with temperatures in parts of the country often surpassing 40 degrees Celsius (104 degrees Fahrenheit). The government has urged people to reduce electricity costs by not overusing air conditioning.

Rising energy costs for households and businesses in Spain has been a major issue in recent months, especially since the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Sánchez said the government would present a new energy-saving plan next week, but he gave no details.

He said the plan was designed to cut utility bills and to reduce energy dependency on “the aggressor, (Russian President Vladimir) Putin.”

In June, Spain approved economic relief measures worth more than 9 billion euros ($9,2 billion), including reductions in electricity taxes and a one-time payment of 200 euros ($200) for people with low-incomes.

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RAMALLAH, West Bank (AP) — Israeli forces opened fire at Palestinian protesters in the occupied West Bank on Friday, killing a 16-year old and wounding five people, the Palestinian Health Ministry said.

According to the ministry, Amjad Abu Alia was shot in the chest by a live bullet and pronounced dead after he was brought to the hospital. He was shot as some 250 Palestinians gathered to protest against Israeli settlement expansion in the village of Mughayer, north of the city of Ramallah.

There was no immediate statement from the Israeli military.

The protesters closed a road used by settlers with burning tires, after which scuffles erupted with the settlers, according to an Associated Press reporter at the scene. The Israeli military stepped in, firing stun grenades and tear gas to disperse the protesters.

Shortly after, both settlers and soldiers fired live shots, according to Wafa, the official Palestinian news agency.

Abu Alia was shot as he was running away with a group of protesters. The ministry said five protesters were wounded; three by live fire and two by rubber-coated bullets.

Demonstrations against Israeli settlement expansions are a weekly occurrence in several parts of the West Bank, which Israel occupied in the 1967 Mideast war.

The Palestinians want the West Bank and the Gaza Strip for a future state, along with a capital in east Jerusalem. They say the building of settlements, which house half a million settlers, hinders an independent, contiguous Palestinian state in the future.

Most of the international community does not recognize settlements and considers them illegal.

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WASHINGTON (Reuters) -The United States and 37 other countries are establishing an expert mission to review the human rights situation in Russia, U.S. State Department spokesperson Ned Price said on Thursday.

The review, triggered by the invocation of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe’s “Moscow Mechanism,” is in response to recent actions by Russia to restrict freedom of expression and peaceful assembly, and reports of torture of those held in detention in Russia, Price said in a statement.

The expert mission will release its report to the public in September, he said.

The OSCE is an organization of 57 countries that includes former Cold War foes the United States and Russia as well as various countries in Europe, Central Asia and North America.

This is the third time the Moscow Mechanism has been invoked since Russia invaded Ukraine on Feb. 24.

In April, an OSCE mission said it had found evidence of war crimes and crimes against humanity committed by Russia in Ukraine. Russia’s mission to the OSCE called the report “unfounded propaganda.”

(Reporting by Eric Beech; Editing by Sandra Maler)

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LONDON (Reuters) -Russia said on Thursday that negotiations with the United States on exchanging prisoners are ongoing but there is no deal to swap detained U.S. basketball star Brittney Griner for jailed Russian arms dealer Viktor Bout.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters that “so far there are no agreements in this area”.

Foreign ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova indicated that talks on prisoner exchanges had been going on for some time but without producing a result.

They were responding to comments by U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken that Washington had made Moscow a “serious offer” to secure the release of Griner and former U.S. marine Paul Whelan, also detained in Russia.

“The issue of the mutual exchange of Russian and American citizens in detention on the territory of the two countries was at one time discussed by the presidents of Russia and the United States,” Zakharova said, apparently referring to conversations pre-dating Russia’s Feb. 24 invasion of Ukraine.

“They gave instructions to the relevant authorized structures to carry out negotiations. These are being conducted by the competent departments. A concrete result has not yet been achieved.”

Negotiations would need to take into account the interests of both sides, she said.

Blinken said on Wednesday he would discuss the Griner and Whelan cases with his Russian counterpart in the coming days.

“When discussing such topics, you don’t conduct information attacks,” Peskov said in an comment that appeared to reflect irritation with Washington’s very public diplomacy on the issue.

On Wednesday, a source familiar with the situation confirmed a CNN report that Washington was willing to exchange Russian dealer Bout, who is serving a 25 year-prison sentence in the United States, as part of a deal.

A Russian lawyer for Whelan has previously said he believed Moscow wanted Bout to be part of a swap for Whelan.

Griner, detained at Moscow’s Sheremetyevo airport in February with vape cartridges containing cannabis oil in her luggage, was in the courtroom on Wednesday in the latest hearing of her trial on drug charges. The next hearing is set for Aug. 2.

“From a legal point of view, an exchange is only possible after a court verdict,” Griner’s lawyer in Russia, Maria Blagovolina, said in a statement.

Whelan was sentenced in 2020 to 16 years in prison in Russia, accused of spying. He denied spying and said he was set up in a sting operation.

(Reporting by Reuters; editing by Guy Faulconbridge)

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