World
Australia appoints special envoy to combat anti-Semitism
Jillian Segal will serve a three-year term and report directly to Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese.
Australia has appointed a special envoy to combat anti-Semitism amid concerns that the war in Gaza is fuelling community tensions.
Jillian Segal, a Jewish lawyer and business leader, will engage with Jewish Australians, the wider Australian public, religious discrimination experts and the government on ways to tackle anti-Jewish sentiment, the Australian government said in a statement on Tuesday.
Segal will serve a three-year term and report directly to Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and Minister for Immigration, Citizenship and Multicultural Affairs Andrew Giles.
Albanese said there is “no place” for violence or hatred in Australia.
“Australians are deeply concerned about this conflict, and many are hurting. In times like this, Australians must come together, not be torn apart,” Albanese said.
“We have built our nation’s social cohesion together over generations, and this is why we all must work together to uphold, defend and preserve it.”
Albanese said that his government would also soon announce a special envoy for combating Islamophobia.
In one of her first tasks in her new role, Segal will attend the World Jewish Congress in Argentina next week to discuss anti-Semitism with other envoys from around the world.
Segal on Tuesday warned that anti-Semitism has become “normalised,” citing data from Australia’s peak Jewish body that showed a 700 percent rise in reported hate incidents in the months after Hamas’s October 7 attacks on Israel and the start of Israel’s war in Gaza.
“The Jewish community in Australia is experiencing valid feelings of fear in the face of increasing anti-Semitism,” Segal said.
“Jewish Australians want to feel free to live their day-to-day lives, and also want to feel safe to practise and express their religion without fear. They also want to be able to contribute as they have previously to the vibrant multicultural society that we value in Australia.”
Like other countries, Australia has witnessed heated protests over the war in Gaza, and both the Jewish and Muslim communities have reported a sharp uptick in instances of hate.
More than 38,000 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza since the start of the war, according to Gaza’s Ministry of Health.
More than 1,130 people were killed in Hamas’s October 7 attacks, according to Israeli authorities.
The Executive Council of Australian Jewry, which Segal led until last year, welcomed the appointment of the new envoy to carry out “vital work for the betterment of Australian society”.
However, the Jewish Council of Australia, which has strongly criticised Israel’s actions in Gaza, expressed concern about Segal’s track record “of lobbying for Israel, opposing voices that support Palestinian human rights, and painting all Jews as supportive of Israel’s actions”.
“By appointing a pro-war voice to this position the government risks breeding division, increasing Islamophobia and anti-Palestinian racism, and ultimately making Jews less safe,” the council said in a statement.
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Someone was playing possum — or stuffed animal.
Among plush kangaroos, dingoes and Tasmanian devils ready to be bought by parents of antsy children, a live brushtail possum waited in a gift shop at an Australian airport this week.
The wild animal was first noticed by a shopper in the store on Wednesday, retail manager Liam Bloomfield of Hobart Airport in the state of Tasmania said.
“A passenger reported it to …. one of the staff members on shift who couldn’t quite believe what she was hearing,” Bloomfield told The Associated Press. “She then called the (airport) management and said we’ve got a possum in the store.”
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A live Australian brushtail possum sits on the display shelf at a terminal shop at Hobart Airport in Hobart, Australia, on Wednesday. (Melissa Oddie via AP)
Staff at the airport were able to remove the animal without harming it.
“I’m imaging it saw some of the plush animals that were for sale on the shelf and it decided to make its home with those,” Bloomfield joked of why the possum was hiding with the stuffed toys. “It wanted to blend in.”
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The arrivals area at Hobart Airport in Australia. (Steve Bell/Getty Images)
“Can you spot the imposter?” the airport wrote in a Facebook post Thursday that showed the possum curled up in a cubby with its stuffed counterparts.
“This cheeky lost possum found a clever hiding place among the Aussie plushies in our retail store,” the airport continued. “Luckily it was safely relocated out of the terminal area and the space was cleaned.”
Passengers boarding a plane at Hobart Airport in Australia. (William West/AFP via Getty Images)
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Bloomfield said the possum not only found a way into the airport but also their hearts.
“We’ll have a little shrine to the possum,” he revealed, according to The Independent. “There will be a nice little photo; once it gets a name, we will put a nice little post in front of the store to make sure it’s remembered.”
Published on •Updated
From a start-up founded in Malaga in 2015 with a few thousand euros, Ly Company has become one of Europe’s fastest-growing multinationals, and a global leader in the sustainable water packaging sector.
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With ten factories located across Europe, Latin America and the Middle East, Ly Company produces about 10 million bottles of water in cardboard packaging per month.
Unlike most competitors, Ly Company doesn’t owe its success to mass retail firms.
It sells personalised products to more than 3,000 brands, ranging from airlines and hotel chains to private transport companies and major events organisers. “There is a lot of water in sectors where no one thinks it is consumed”, notes Rodríguez. “An airline, for example, can consume 50 million bottles per year.”
The company is now targeting China and, above all, the United States.
Its positioning is also based on sustainability: factories powered by green energy, cardboard from responsibly managed forest, bioplastic made from sugar cane and water guaranteed to be microplastics-free. Part of the profits fund his “Agua y Vida” Foundation, which is involved in environmental and humanitarian projects.
“I’ve gone through some very difficult times. Now that I’m doing well, I want to give something back to society”, explains Curro Rodríguez.
Behind this rise lies a chaotic journey. While working as a first-responder in emergency medical services for twenty years, he was simultaneously launching businesses, sometimes risky ones. Two successive bankruptcies saw him resort to food aid and doing odd jobs for a while, before he reinvented himself.
“My passion is bringing projects to life”, explains Curro Rodríguez, who has founded a total of 39 companies, 23 of which are currently active within his holding company. “When things are done out of emotion, and not for money, they create value. The money follows. But you have to look for value first”, he concludes, a big smile on his face.
new video loaded: What Tunnel Entrances Reveal About a Key Iranian Nuclear Site
transcript
transcript
What Tunnel Entrances Reveal About a Key Iranian Nuclear Site
Satellite images show how Iran has tried to bolster its defenses at parts of the Isfahan nuclear facility.
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What you’re seeing here are buried tunnel entrances at a nuclear facility in Iran. It’s one of the most important sites in the country for U.S. and Israeli forces. U.N. inspectors think that roughly half of Iran’s highly enriched uranium is buried here. And these three entrances are the only known ways to access it. If you think about nuclear sites in Iran, three main sites come to mind. They’re pretty well known: Fordo, Natanz and Isfahan. Natanz and Fordo, They were largely taken out in U.S. strikes last year. So I’ve been focusing on Isfahan. The uranium here is still relatively accessible. It’s actually a pretty large complex. This area here was very important for uranium processing, but it was heavily hit by the U.S. and Israel last June. If you go a little bit further north, that is underground and that requires tunnels to enter. In a terrain view, it gets quite interesting. There are three roads that lead to these tunnel entrances, and these tunnel entrances have become very important, both last year, but also right now. They lead to the underground facility where U.N. inspectors say uranium is stored and a new enrichment site could be located. If this falls into the wrong hands, that would be a problem in the long term. Here’s a great example of how very recent satellite imagery gives us new insights. This is from late January of this year, and what you see here is a line of trucks. And they’re filled with soil, and they’re lining up to go to some of these tunnel entrances. If you look a little bit closer here, you see another one of these trucks that’s just unloading some of the soil and some earthmoving equipment. Iran in preparation for any possible attacks at that point. They try to protect this facility a little bit more. So this is Jan. 29. And if you just look a few days later, we go to Feb. 2. This is the completely buried tunnel entrance, completely covered in soil to protect from any attack. And this is how it still looks in mid-March. The U.S. and Israel have basically two options here: The first one is to heavily bombard the entrances to this underground complex that would block any access, at least in the near future. They haven’t done that yet. So that’s very, very interesting — a little bit surprising. And it might point towards a second option: That would be to go in with ground forces and to extract the uranium. But that would require a really large amount of troops to secure the vast area, bringing in earthmoving equipment to clear the tunnels and a lot of time in hostile territory.
By Christoph Koettl and Alexander Cardia
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