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    R.S.F. in Sudan Declare Parallel Government Amid Assault on Zamzam Camp

    The United Nations said that at least 300 people were killed when the armed group, the Rapid Support Forces, stormed a camp in Darfur.A Sudanese paramilitary group declared its own government on Wednesday, even as its fighters pressed an all-out offensive on a city in the western Darfur region that has sent hundreds of thousands of civilians fleeing from a famine-stricken camp.The announcement of a parallel government by the Rapid Support Forces, or R.S.F., stoked fears that Sudan’s two-year civil war is rapidly pushing the country toward a potentially disastrous territorial split. The R.S.F. controls much of western and southern Sudan, while the military holds the north and east, including the capital Khartoum. Both sides have been accused of atrocities.The R.S.F. leader, Gen. Mohamed Hamdan, gave few details about the composition of what he called his “government of peace and unity,” other than to say it would include a wide range of ethnic groups reflecting “the true face of Sudan.”Such calls for inclusivity echo longstanding demands by Sudanese pro democracy activists, who oppose the military’s tightfisted grip on power. But as often in Sudan’s brutal conflict, the R.S.F.’s high-minded rhetoric was at odds with the actions of its troops.The paramilitaries launched a large-scale offensive on Friday, storming the Zamzam camp in El Fasher, the last major city in Darfur that the R.S.F. does not control, as part of a broader assault. On Tuesday, the United Nations said that at least 300 people had been killed and as many as 400,000 others forced to flee the camp in a matter of days.Zamzam, which housed at least 500,000 people and where a famine was declared last August, is now largely empty, according to aid workers. They say that at least 30,000 people have fled to Tawila, 50 miles by road to the west — with many arriving dehydrated, malnourished and traumatized by the scenes they witnessed in the camp.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    Sudan Clinic Workers Killed in Zamzam Camp

    Relief International said nine employees were killed when gunmen stormed the Zamzam camp in El Fasher, in the western Darfur region.Sudanese paramilitaries killed the entire staff of the last medical clinic in a famine-stricken camp in the western region of Darfur, Sudan, as part of a broader assault that killed at least 100 people, aid groups and the United Nations said on Saturday.The assault on the Zamzam camp, which holds 500,000 people in the besieged city of El Fasher, was notable even by the standards of a civil war that has seen countless atrocities as well as accusations of genocide.Paramilitaries with the Rapid Support Forces, or R.S.F., broke through the camp perimeter on Friday evening after hours of shelling. They then destroyed hundreds of homes and the camp’s main market before turning their attack on the camp’s last remaining medical clinic, according to Relief International, the aid group that runs the facility.Nine hospital employees were killed, including the head doctor, the aid group said in a statement on Saturday. “We have learned the unthinkable,” the statement said. “This is a profound tragedy for our organization.”Kashif Shafique, the group’s Sudan director, said in a phone interview that the aid workers — five medics and four drivers, his entire staff at the clinic — had been shot dead.Paramilitaries had warned the medics to leave the day before the attack, Mr. Shafique said. But they had to treat civilians wounded by shelling and, in any event, the main routes out of the camp were closed.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    Sudan’s Military Sweeps Across Capital, Hoping to Turn the War

    At the battle-scarred presidential palace in the heart of Sudan’s shattered capital, soldiers gathered under a chandelier on Sunday afternoon, rifles and rocket launchers slung over their shoulders, listening to their orders.Then they trooped out, down a red carpet that once welcomed foreign dignitaries, and into the deserted center of the city on a mission to flush out the last pockets of resistance from the paramilitary fighters with whom they have been clashing for two years.Since Sudan’s military captured the presidential palace on Friday, in a fierce battle that left hundreds dead, it has taken control of most of central Khartoum, marking a momentous change of fortunes that is likely to change the course of Sudan’s ruinous civil war.By Sunday, the military had seized the Central Bank, the headquarters of the national intelligence service and the towering Corinthia Hotel along the Nile.Journalists from The New York Times were the first from a Western outlet to cross the Nile, into central Khartoum, or to visit the palace, since the war erupted in April 2023. What we saw there made clear how decisively the events of recent days have shifted the direction of the war, but offered little hope that it will end soon.“We will never leave our country to the mercenaries,” said Mohamed Ibrahim, a special forces officer, referring to the R.S.F. — the paramilitary force that Sudan’s army once nurtured, but is now its rival for supreme control.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    Amid Regional Diplomatic Furor, Sudan’s Paramilitaries Forge a Rival Government

    The Rapid Support Forces said it was paving the way to an end to the civil war. Critics called it an audacious gambit by a group that the United States has accused of genocide.The Rapid Support Forces, the paramilitary group fighting Sudan’s military in the country’s calamitous civil war, signed a political charter with its allies late Saturday that aimed to establish a parallel Sudanese government in areas under their control.The paramilitaries said the agreement, which was signed in Nairobi, the Kenyan capital, would pave the way for peace after nearly two years of a war that has killed thousands of people and set off a devastating famine. Critics called it an audacious gambit by a group that the United States has accused of genocide, and warned that the charter could further splinter Sudan.The charter’s signatories included the deputy leader of the S.P.L.M.-N., a secular-minded rebel group that stayed out of the war until last week. Now it is firmly aligned with the Rapid Support Forces, more often referred to as the R.S.F.The most immediate effect, though, was diplomatic. Triumphant appearances by R.S.F. leaders — many of them accused of war crimes and under American sanctions — in Kenya’s capital this past week set off a bitter public row between the two countries. Sudan’s military-led government accused Kenya of “disgraceful” behavior that it said was “tantamount to an act of hostility” and withdrew its ambassador from Nairobi in protest.Kenya’s Foreign Ministry said it sought only to provide “a platform for key stakeholders” from Sudan, and to halt “the tragic slide of Sudan into anarchy.” Still, many in Kenya condemned the talks as a political blunder by President William Ruto, and called on him to reverse course.The Kenyan chapter of the International Commission of Jurists said Mr. Ruto was “complicit in mass atrocities against the Sudanese people.” One Kenyan newspaper denounced the R.S.F.’s leader, Lt. Gen. Mohamed Hamdan, as “The Butcher” on its front page.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    A Super Bowl Halftime Performer Surprised Organizers With a Sudan-Gaza Flag

    There it was, in the corner of the screen during the climactic moment of Kendrick Lamar’s Super Bowl halftime show on Sunday: A protester unfurling a combined Palestinian and Sudanese flag just as Lamar — and the entire stadium — sang the “it’s probably A-minooooor” punchline from his chart-topping diss track “Not Like Us.”The N.F.L. said in a statement that the protester was part of the 400-member field cast.“The individual hid the item on his possession and unveiled it late in the show,” the league said. “No one involved with the production was aware of the individual’s intent.”A representative for Roc Nation, the entertainment company behind the halftime show, said in a statement, “The act by the individual was neither planned nor part of the production and was never in any rehearsal.”Amid the dozens of dancers in red, white, blue and black, the individual could be seen standing on the hood of the stage’s centerpiece, a Buick Grand National GNX, the rare car for which Lamar named his latest album, “GNX.” Images from the ground and clips on social media showed a person in black sweats — matching the extras onstage — with “Sudan” and “Gaza” written on the white swath of the flags, alongside a heart and a solidarity fist.As Lamar transitioned into his final song, “TV Off,” from “GNX,” the flag-bearer could be seen jumping from the car and leaving the stage, running in circles with the flag waving in his hands until being tackled by security and removed from the field.Emmanuel Morgan More

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    When Trump says he’s going to ‘protect’ women, he means ‘control’ them | Arwa Mahdawi

    Could Republicans take away a woman’s right to a credit card?“Hello, I’d like a line of credit, please.”“Well, before we can even consider that, are you married? Are you taking a contraceptive pill? And can your husband co-sign all the paperwork so we know you have a man’s permission?”That may not be an exact rendition of an actual conversation between a woman and a US bank manager in 1970, but it’s close enough. Before the Equal Credit Opportunity Act (ECOA) was passed in 1974, it was considered good business practice for banks to discriminate against women. It didn’t matter how much money she had – a woman applying for a credit card or loan could expect to be asked invasive questions by a lender and told she needed a male co-signer before getting credit. All of which severely limited a woman’s ability to build a business, buy a house or leave an abusive relationship.Then came the ECOA, which was signed into law 50 years ago on Monday. Banking didn’t magically become egalitarian after that – discriminatory lending practices are still very much an issue – but important protections were enshrined in law. A woman finally had a right to get a credit card in her own name, without a man’s signature.When things feel bleak – and things feel incredibly bleak at the moment – it is important to remember how much social progress has been made in the last few decades. Many of us take having access to a credit card for granted, but it’s a right that women had to fight long and hard for. Indeed, the ECOA was passed five years after the Apollo 11 mission. “Women literally helped put a man on the moon before they could get their own credit cards,” the fashion mogul Tory Burch wrote for Time on the 50th anniversary of the ECOA being signed.If feels fitting that such an important anniversary is so close to such an important election. While we must celebrate how far we’ve come, it’s also important to remember that progress isn’t always linear. Rights that we have taken for granted for decades can, as we saw with the overturning of Roe v Wade, be suddenly yanked away.Is there any chance that, if Donald Trump gets into power again, we might see Republicans take away a woman’s right to her own credit card? It’s certainly not impossible. Trump’s entire campaign is, after all, about taking America back. The former president has also cast himself as a paternalistic protector of women.“I’m going to do it, whether the women like it or not,” Trump said at a rally on Wednesday. “I’m going to protect them.”Of course, we all know what “protect” really means in this context: it means “control”. Should he become president again, Trump and his allies seem intent on massively expanding the power of the president and eliminating hard-won freedoms. Conservative lawmakers and influencers want to control a woman’s access to reproductive healthcare. They want to control the sorts of books that get read and the type of history that gets taught. They want to control how women vote. They want to control whether a woman can get a no-fault divorce. They might not take away women’s access to credit, but they will almost certainly try to chip away at a woman’s path to financial independence.Elon Musk denies offering sperm to random acquaintancesA recent report from the New York Times alleges that he wants to build a compound to house his many children and some of their mothers. “Three mansions, three mothers, 11 children and one secretive, multibillionaire father who obsesses about declining birthrates when he isn’t overseeing one of his six companies: It is an unconventional family situation, and one that Mr Musk seems to want to make even bigger,” the Times notes. Apparently, in an effort to do this, he has been offering his sperm to friends and acquaintances. Musk has denied all this. This joins a growing list of sperm-based denials. Over the summer, he denied claims in the New York Times that he’d volunteered his sperm to help populate a colony on Mars.Martha Stewart criticises Netflix film that ‘makes me look like a lonely old lady’The businesswoman was also upset that director RJ Cutler didn’t put Snoop Dogg on the soundtrack: “He [got] some lousy classical score in there, which has nothing to do with me.”JD Vance thinks white kids are pretending to be trans so they can get into collegeLike pretty much everything the vice-presidential candidate says, this is insulting and nonsensical. Rather than having advantages conferred on them, trans people in the US are subject to dehumanizing rhetoric and laws that want to outlaw their existence. Meanwhile, it is well-documented that there are plenty of privileged children whose parents spent a lot of money so their kids could pretend to be athletes to get into college.What happened to the young girl captured in a photograph of Gaza detainees?The BBC tells the story of a young girl photographed among a group of men rounded up by Israeli forces. In her short life, Julia Abu Warda, aged three, has endured more horror than most of us could imagine.Pregnant Texas teen died after three ER visits due to medical impact of abortion banNevaeh Crain, 18, is one of at least two Texas women who have died under the state’s abortion ban.Sudan militia accused of mass killings and sexual violence as attacks escalateThe war in Sudan, which has displaced more than 14 million people, is catastrophic – particularly for girls and women. In a new report, a UN agency said that paramilitaries are preying on women and sexual violence is “rampant”. And this violence is being enabled by outside interests: many experts believe that, if it weren’t for the United Arab Emirates’ alleged involvement in the war, the crisis would already be over. The UAE, you see, is interested in Sudan’s resources. Meanwhile, the Guardian reported back in June that UK government officials have attempted to suppress criticism of the UAE for months.The week in pawtriarchyYou’ve almost certainly heard of the infinite monkey theorem: the idea that, given all the time in the world, a monkey randomly hitting keys on a typewriter would eventually produce the complete works of Shakespeare. Now, two Australian mathematicians have declared the notion im-paw-ssible. Indeed, they only found a 5% chance that a single monkey would randomly write the word “bananas” in their lifetime. Meanwhile, the Guardian notes that Shakespeare’s canon includes 884,647 words – none of them “banana”. More

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    Hundreds Killed in Days in Sudan as War Surges

    Paramilitary forces ransacked villages and killed hundreds of people, activists said, hastening calls for the United Nations to deploy a mission to protect civilians.A major surge in fighting in Sudan has taken a searing toll on civilians, killing hundreds of people in aerial bombings and revenge attacks in the past week, as Africa’s largest war shifts into a higher gear after the end of seasonal rains.Territory has changed hands, a prominent commander has switched sides and retreating fighters have sexually assaulted, kidnapped and killed villagers as they have moved through contested countryside, according to activists, democracy groups and accounts on social media.A military cargo plane slammed into the desert in the western region of Darfur, with at least two Russian crew members on board, offering direct evidence of the growing role of foreign contractors in the fighting.And Sudan’s military, after losing control of vast areas of Sudan, has finally seemed to regain the advantage over the Rapid Support Forces, the powerful paramilitary group that it has been battling for the past 18 months. Both sides face a barrage of war crimes accusations from the United States and rights groups, although only the R.S.F. has been accused of ethnic cleansing.“The fighting season has just restarted, and both sides want to jostle for an early advantage,” said Kholood Khair, the founding director of Confluence Advisory, a policy think tank.The escalating violence comes against a vast tableau of suffering. Over 10 million have been forced from their homes, famine is raging and diseases like cholera and dengue fever are rapidly spreading.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    The Guardian view on foreign powers in Sudan: struggling for advantage while civilians starve | Editorial

    The often denied but obvious involvement of foreign powers in Sudan’s deadly civil war is now firmly in the spotlight. Tens of thousands of people, including many civilians, have been killed since it began last April. Now, the United Arab Emirates (UAE) has accused the Sudanese armed forces (SAF) of bombing its ambassador’s residence in Khartoum, causing “extensive damage”. The SAF denied it, claiming that last month’s strike was the work of the rival paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF), backed by the UAE.What’s not in doubt is that both sides are committing war crimes and that they are able to do so because foreign governments are supporting them. The ceaseless flow of arms has resulted in a vast, growing humanitarian disaster. Last week, UN-appointed experts accused combatants of using “starvation tactics” against 25 million civilians. Additionally, 10 million people have been displaced, and diseases such as cholera are rapidly spreading amid the world’s largest hunger crisis.While the autumn harvest should somewhat alleviate immediate food shortages for many, the longer-term prognosis is catastrophic. Both factions have targeted volunteers working to feed the hungry, many of whom are former members of the resistance committees that led the pro-democracy protests a few years ago.Wars between would-be strongmen punish and kill the powerless. But there is something especially grotesque about seeing the citizens of Sudan, having seen off a dictator and attempted to transition to civilian government, sacrificed to the cynical interests of outsiders.Though the UAE denies supporting the RSF under Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, known as Hemedti, UN experts have laid out “credible” allegations of arms shipments. The UAE is interested in strategically valuable Red Sea ports and resources from gold to land. Saudi Arabia and Egypt support the SAF, led by Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, who has also sought closer ties with Iran.All this has been described as “a Middle East war being played out in Africa”. But diplomatic energy is focused on the spiralling Middle East war in the Middle East. When the UAE’s leader, Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, visited Mr Biden in Washington recently, Sudan merited just two paragraphs in their lengthy joint statement. Sudan has not always been the priority even when it comes to Sudan. A new paper by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace notes that the US never matched rhetorical support for the democratic opening there with adequate strategic planning, engagement or assistance. The Trump administration’s priority was pressuring the transitional government to recognise Israel as it tried to advance its Abraham accords.The latest plans for informal talks to resolve the struggle between the two generals fell through. Having recently launched a counteroffensive to retake Khartoum, Gen Burhan appears in denial about the strength of his hand. A resolution in Sudan seems unlikely unless key external actors – namely the UAE, Saudi Arabia and Egypt – reach an agreement. With the US showing no sign of turning up the pressure, the UK government, which leads on the issue at the UN security council, should step up. But so should others. The UAE was dismayed when the US rapper Macklemore pulled out of a concert in Dubai over its role in Sudan. Its keenness to burnish its international standing means that a cultural boycott and protests by sports stars and fans could have real impact.

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