UN CHIEF SENDING ENVOY OVER ‘UNPRECEDENTED’ SUDAN CRISIS

NEW YORK AFP

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres is sending an envoy to the Sudan region amid the “unprecedented” situation there, as deadly hostilities enter a third week, his spokesman said Sunday.

The announcement came as the army and heavily armed paramilitaries in Khartoum continued fighting, even as a widely breached ceasefire was extended for 72 hours.

UN emergency relief coordinator Martin Griffiths, who will serve as the envoy, said in a separate statement Sunday that Sudan’s “humanitarian situation is reaching breaking point.”

“I am on my way to the region to explore how we can bring immediate relief to the millions of people whose lives have turned upside down overnight,” he said.

However, massive looting of humanitarian offices and warehouses had “depleted most of our supplies. We are exploring urgent ways to bring in and distribute additional supplies,” he said.

British people urged to swear allegiance to the king

LONDON AFP

All Britons will be called on to swear allegiance to King Charles III at his coronation, an oath hitherto reserved for British nobility, in a move that has upset antiroyalists. The office of the Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, who will lead the coronation ceremony on May 6 at Westminster Abbey, announced on Saturday that the traditional “Homage of Peers” — during which representatives of the nobility kneel before the king and pledge allegiance to him — would be scrapped.

Instead, the ceremony will include a “Homage of the People”, with the archbishop calling on all people in the United Kingdom and other places where King Charles is the head of state to swear allegiance.

The archbishop will call on “all persons of goodwill in the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, and of the other realms and the territories to make their homage, in heart and voice, to their undoubted king, defender of all”.

The order of service will read: “All who so desire, in the abbey, and elsewhere, say together: I swear that I will pay true allegiance to Your Majesty, and to your heirs and successors according to law. So help me God.”

British parliamentarians, but also Canadians since the British sovereign is their head of state, already swear allegiance to the monarch when they take office.

On Sunday, several elected representatives interviewed in the British media indicated that they will take the new oath during the coronation.

However, the plans to ask the public to pledge their allegiance to the king during the coronation have been branded “offensive, tone-deaf and a gesture that holds the people in contempt” by an anti-monarchy group.

Graham Smith, a spokesman for Republic, which campaigns for the abolition of the British monarchy, said: “In a democracy, it is the head of state who should be swearing allegiance to the people, not the other way around.” The anti-monarchist movement plans to demonstrate on Saturday.

The introduction of the new oath is one of the changes to the centuries-old ceremony, which the palace wants to evolve, particularly to reflect the country’s diversity. The last coronation was 70 years ago when Charles’ mother, Queen Elizabeth II, was crowned. She died in September aged 96.

The “obvious solution,” he added, would be to “stop the fighting.”

More than 500 people have been killed and tens of thousands of people forced to leave their homes for safer lo- cations within the country or abroad since battles erupted on April 15.

“In light of the rapidly deteriorating humanitarian crisis in Sudan,” spokesman Stephane Dujarric said in a statement announcing Griffiths’ deployment, the envoy would travel “to the region immediately.”

“The scale and speed of what is unfolding is unprecedented in Sudan,” his statement said. “We are extremely concerned.” Griffiths said that families were struggling to access water, food, fuel and other commodities, with some unable to relocate due to the cost of transportation out of the worst-hit areas.

Urgent health care, he said “is severely constrained, raising the risk of preventable death.”

Five containers of intravenous fluids and other emergency supplies were docked in Port Sudan awaiting clearance by authorities, he added.

China vows to deepen BRI cooperation with Mongolia

HONG KONG

AGENCIES

Chinese State Councilor and Foreign Minister Qin Gang on Monday called to deepen the Belt and Road Initiative with Mongolia during his meeting with Mongolian Foreign Minister Battsetseg Batmunkh in Beijing. Calling Mongolia China’s good neighbor, friend and partner,

Germany hopes to help climate with discount travel card

BERLIN

AFP

Germany launches on Monday a new flat-rate public transport ticket valid across the country, but the 49-euro ($54) price point has raised doubts about the pass’s potential impact.

Touting the monthly pass as a “revolution”, policymakers hope it will bring some relief for consumers amid soaring inflation, and encourage people to favour mass transit in the name of the environment. The “Deutschlandticket” offers unlimited access to Germany’s bus and metro systems, as well as local and regional trains — with only long-distance high-speed services not included.

Transport Minister Volker Wissing was quick to call the new initiative “the biggest public transport reform in German history”, but the pass’s success is far from assured. The association of German transport companies (VDV) expects 16 million of the country’s 84 million inhabitants to take up the offer. Roughly 750,000 tickets have been sold already, without counting people who will switch over from their current transport subscriptions.

Qin said China will continue to view China-Mongolia relationship in a strategic stance and a longterm view. He also stressed the need for improvement of political mutual trust between the two countries, urging in-depth coordination of development strategies.

For her part, the Mongolian foreign minister stressed the country’s diplomatic priority remains to be developing a partnership that features stability, friendliness and comprehensiveness. She doubled down on the country’s stance of adhering to the one-China principle, adding that the Taiwan question, and issues related to Hong Kong and Tibet are purely China’s internal affairs. The two sides also agreed to strengthen cooperation on the management of sandstorms so as to push for sustainable development jointly.

WASHINGTON AFP

The hoax that rape was legal for a day was knocked down by fact-checkers two years ago. But it went viral again this year on TikTok, illustrating what researchers call “zombie” misinformation.

The stomach-churning falsehood that groups of men have declared April 24 as “National Rape Day,” giving them free rein to commit sexual violence, crept its way to TikTok fame in 2021, sparking alarm in countries including the United States and Britain.

In a sea of videos, many with millions of views, terrified women declared plans to lock themselves in their rooms all day and men vowed to protect them against imaginary assailants.

In one, a hulking bare-torsoed man appeared to sharpen an axe with a whetstone, warning troublemakers not to “touch anyone I know.”

An 11-year-old girl in Britain “afraid of being raped” went to school armed with knives, local media reported citing police officials.

TikTok users seized on reports of unrelated sexual crimes just before April 24 that year as evidence of the lurking threat, lending further credence to the myth.

Multiple fact-checking organizations debunked the misinformation. But that did not nip it in the bud.

This year, the hoax went viral on the same platform once again, the watchdog group Media Matters for America said, underlining what researchers say are the limits of debunking to stop or even slow the spread of misinformation.

“We call these kinds of situations zombie claims, meaning they are rumours that keep popping up, no matter how many times you debunk it,” said Laura Duclos, from MediaWise, a digital media literacy initiative of the nonprofit Poynter Institute.

“Some zombie claims pop up because they are related to a certain event or date,” Duclos told AFP.

‘FODDER FOR MISINFORMATION’

Raising alarm about the return of “Rape Day” this year, TikTok users declared their intention to carry tasers, handguns, and in one video, a firearm “with the safety (catch) off.”

While AFP is not aware of any official reports of violent crimes because of the hoax, it lays bare the dangerous potential of even debunked falsehoods to whip up threats, hysteria and chaos.

When asked about TikTok’s response to the hoax, a spokesman told AFP that “content promoting this despicable behaviour would be removed if it was found on our platform.” Words such as “rape” are suppressed by TikTok, with a search redirecting users to a helpline and educational resources. But some videos can go completely undetected if they use no obvious keywords in their posts.

Users promoting the hoax also found workarounds such as “r@pe” and “national r day.”

Last week, the platform appeared to crack down on the loopholes immediately after AFP shared with the TikTok spokesman a screenshot of multiple “Rape Day” videos that came up using those search words.

Searches using those two workarounds now yield “no results found.”

TikTok “ought to get smarter” about preventing such hoaxes by rigorously studying patterns of how they spread, said S. Shyam Sundar, co-director of the Media Effects Research Laboratory at Pennsylvania State University. “Sensational stories that prey on people’s innate fears and desires are always going to be a fodder for misinformation, regardless of whether they have been debunked in the past,” Sundar told AFP.

“Hoaxes may have a short shelf life but can linger in the warehouse for decades only to be recycled every now and then.”

‘GAME OF TELEPHONE’

The precise origin of this hoax in April — observed as sexual assault awareness month — is unclear.

How to finance the new policy was the subject of months of debate, delaying the roll-out of the ticket.

An agreement was reached between the federal government and Germany’s states, which will both contribute 1.5 billion euros towards the ticket’s financing to avoid adding to the national rail operator’s debt pile.

The expenditure has come in for heavy criticism from the opposition, who argue the money could have been used to “improve and renovate rail infrastructure”, in the words of conservative (CDU) parliamentarian Michael Donth. Germany’s rail network is indeed creaking, with investment needs totalling around 8.6 billion euros a year for the next 10 years, according to official estimates.

RAIL DEAL: With services packed and facing regular technical problems, only 65.2 percent of long-distance trains arrived on time in 2022.

The issues on Germany’s rail system were put on full display last summer when the government first experimented with a heavily discounted flat-rate ticket. Between June and August, locals were able to travel the length and breadth of the country for just nine euros a month.

Interest in the pass was understandably great, with 52 million people signing up for the offer. But operators struggled to manage the stampede.

“The solution is certainly not reducing the cost of subscriptions,” Christian Boettger, a rail expert from the Technical University Berlin, told AFP.

Transport Minister Wissing has not ruled out an increase to the price of the new-model ticket in future to ensure it remains financially viable.

Similarly, getting people to abandon their cars to use public transport is often easier said than done. Many commuters who live far from the city centre do not have “rail infrastructure that could replace the car”, said Boettger.

‘CLIMATE TICKET’: According to the federal statistics agency Destatis, the introduction of the nineeuro offer saw road traffic “stagnate” compared with 2019, instead of rising.

Overall, road vehicles emitted 0.8 million additional tonnes of greenhouse gases in 2022, compared with the year before, according to the federal environment agency. The 49-euro ticket will particularly benefit “urban residents who already have a more expensive subscription”, transport expert Oliver Wittig told AFP. Germany is not alone in its efforts to boost rail use in order to reduce emissions from transport.

In Spain, free passes for local and regional trains were launched in September to try and get residents to leave their cars at home and ease the pressure from inflation. According to Spanish operator Renfe, 2.1 million tickets were handed out in the first quarter of 2023.

In Austria, a “climate ticket” gives users the chance to use virtually all of the alpine nation’s public transport network, including high-speed trains, for just over 1,000 euros a year. The success of the ticket has led to a “boom” in rail traffic, the Austrian operator OBB said.