05/08/2025

TUESDAY | AUG 5, 2025 9 Pesticides wiping out bees in East Africa KIGALI: The use of pesticides in East Africa, some sold by European firms despite being banned in the EU, is killing off bees in large numbers and threatening eco-systems, scientists say. Joseph Ruzigana, of Muhanga district in southern Rwanda, woke up one morning to find all the bees in his 20 beehives had died. “Fellow beekeepers have also lost plenty of bees to pesticides,” he said. Ruzigana said many beekeepers, who number more than 100,000 in Rwanda, were giving up. “The few bees left are weak and unproductive. I used to get up to 25kg of honey from one beehive in a month-long season, my family was well taken care of, but all that has collapsed,” he said. Bees pollinate crops including coffee, tea, avocados, mangoes, beans and tomatoes – making them key to an agricultural sector that accounts for 30% of GDP and 70% of employment in Rwanda. Uganda, Ethiopia, Tanzania and Kenya have all reported increasing bee mortality rates due to pesticides. Rwanda is a poor and landlocked country striving to feed its people through improved maize and rice cultivation, and pesticides help control pests like armyworms. But many pesticides affect bees’ navigation and reproduction, and have been linked to colony collapse disorder, when worker bees abandon a hive. Rwanda grows large amounts of pyrethrum, a flower that could be used to make a natural pesticide, but exports all its pyrethrum liquid. Instead, Rwandan farmers use imported synthetic pesticides. A 2022 study by Turkey’s Ondokuz Mayis University found that 72% used Rocket, containing profenofos, which is highly toxic to bees. Jeanne Nyirandahimana, part of a women’s beekeeping cooperative, said average earnings have fallen from around 250,000 Rwandan francs (RM754) per season to around 30,000 (RM89). An earlier study by the University of Rwanda found that 22% of farmers around Lake Kivu used malathion, also deadly to bees. Despite being banned in the EU, malathion is still exported by Denmark, France and Germany – 12.5 tonnes in 2023, according to the European Chemicals Agency. – AFP JAKARTA: A small field clinic in Khan Younis has become a critical lifeline, treating around 1,200 patients each day, the Indonesian humanitarian group MER C said. The Al Aqsa B Clinic in Al Mawasi is among the few facilities still operational, providing a wide range of specialist services to more than 400,000 refugees affected by military attacks and the Israeli blockade. The clinic offers a range of specialist services, including family medicine, internal medicine, paediatrics, obstetrics and gynaecology, surgery, rehabilitation, orthopaedics, neurology, nutrition and psychosocial support. “Despite limited resources, the medical team continues to work on the front line in southern Gaza,” the Medical Emergency Rescue Committee (MER-C) said in a statement. – Bernama MOSCOW: One person was killed and 11 others injured when a bus collided with a freight train in Russia’s Leningrad region, the regional railway administration said yesterday. “The driver of the bus entered the crossing in front of an approaching freight train,” said the railway administration of the Leningrad region, in northwest Russia. “The train driver applied emergency braking, but the distance was too short to prevent a collision.” The railways administration said it was a regular service bus, but RIA news agency cited the local prosecutor’s office as saying it was a tourist bus. – Reuters AL AQSA B CLINIC TREATS 1,200 PATIENTS DAILY ONE KILLED IN RUSSIAN BUS-TRAIN COLLISION

Help end Gaza war, Israeli ex-security chiefs tell Trump

TEL AVIV: Hundreds of retired Israeli security officials including former heads of intelligence agencies have urged US President Donald Trump to pressure their own government to end the war in Gaza. “It is our professional judgment that Hamas no longer poses a strategic threat to Israel,” the former officials wrote in an open letter shared with the media yesterday. “At first this war was a just war, a defensive war, but when we achieved all, this war ceased to be a just war,” said Ami Ayalon, former director of the Shin Bet security service. The war, nearing its 23rd month, “is leading the State of Israel to lose its security and identity”, Ayalon warned in a video released to accompany the letter. o Military objectives met, 550 signatories say in letter

Argaman, Yoram Cohen, Yaakov Peri and Carmi Gilon – and three former military chiefs of staff, including former prime minister Ehud Barak, former defence minister Moshe Yaalon and Dan Halutz. The letter argued that the Israeli military “has long accomplished the two objectives that could be achieved by force: dismantling Hamas’ military formations and governance.” “The third, and most important, can only be achieved through a deal: bringing all the hostages home,” it added. “Chasing remaining senior Hamas operatives can be done later,” the letter said. In the letter, the former officials tell Trump that he has credibility with the majority of Israelis and can put pressure on Netanyahu to end the war and return the hostages. After a ceasefire, the signatories argue, Trump could force a regional coalition to support a reformed Palestinian Authority to take charge of Gaza as an alternative to Hamas rule. – AFP

Signed by 550 people, including former chiefs of Shin Bet and the Mossad spy agency, the letter called on Trump to “steer” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu towards a ceasefire. Israel launched its military operation in the Gaza Strip in response to an attack on Oct 7, 2023. In recent weeks Israel has come under increasing international pressure to agree a ceasefire that could have Israeli hostages released from Gaza and UN agencies distribute humanitarian aid. But some in Israel, including ministers in Netanyahu’s coalition government, are instead pushing for Israeli forces to push on and for Gaza to be occupied in whole or in part. The letter was signed by three former Mossad heads: Tamir Pardo, Efraim Halevy and Danny Yatom. Other signatories include five former heads of Shin Bet – Ayalon as well as Nadav

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Israeli left-wing protesters show solidarity with Gaza and against the occupation in the West Bank, on Sunday. – REUTERSPIC

76 dead after migrant boat sinks off Yemen DUBAI: At least 76 people have been killed and dozens are missing after a boat carrying mostly Ethiopian migrants sank off Yemen, in the latest tragedy on the perilous sea route. Yemeni security officials said yesterday 76 bodies had been recovered and 32 people rescued from the shipwreck in the Gulf of Aden. The UN’s migration agency said 157 people were on board. Abdusattor Esoev, said “the fate of the missing is still unknown”. Despite the civil war that has ravaged Yemen since 2014, the impoverished country has remained a key transit point for irregular migration, in particular from Ethiopia which itself has been roiled by ethnic conflict.

The vessel that sank off Abyan was carrying mostly Ethiopian migrants, according to the province’s security directorate and an IOM source. Yemeni security forces were conducting operations to recover a “significant” number of bodies, the Abyan directorate said on Sunday. On their way to the Gulf, migrants cross the Bab al-Mandab Strait, the narrow waterway at the mouth of the Red Sea that is a major route for international trade, as well as for migration and human trafficking. Once in war-torn Yemen, the Arabian Peninsula’s poorest country, migrants often face other threats to their safety. The IOM says tens of thousands of migrants have become stranded in Yemen and suffer abuse and exploitation during their journeys. – AFP

Each year, thousands brave the “Eastern Route” from Djibouti to Yemen across the Red Sea, in the hope of eventually reaching oil-rich Gulf countries such as Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. The IOM recorded at least 558 deaths on the Red Sea route last year, with 462 from boat accidents. Last month, at least eight people died after smugglers forced migrants to disembark from a boat in the Red Sea, according to the UN’s migration agency.

The accident occurred off Abyan governorate in southern Yemen, a frequent destination for boats smuggling African migrants hoping to reach the Gulf states. Some of those rescued have been transferred to Yemen’s Aden, near Abyan, a security official said. The International Organisation for Migration earlier gave a toll of at least 68 dead. The IOM’s country chief of mission,