Nearly all of BFAR payaos put up in Rozul Reef missing;
Pro-Palestinian protests spread throughout U.S. school campuses;
Newly approved military aid to Israel under heavy scrutiny
Pro-Palestinian protests spread throughout U.S. school campuses;
Newly approved military aid to Israel under heavy scrutiny
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NewsTranscript
00:00 Nightly greetings one and all. Sharm Zespina here, homegrown and happy to bring you the major events here at home and elsewhere on the planet that have unfolded in the last 24-hour news cycle.
00:11 And tops on our news leaderboard tonight is the sad but not surprising recent discovery in the country's Rosal Reef.
00:18 Most of the fishing aggregating devices the Bureau of Fisheries and Aquatic Resources, or BFAR, put up recently in and around Rosal Reef are gone.
00:28 So claims BFAR spokesperson Nazario Briguera in today's latest Bagong Pilipinas Presser upon verification Wednesday last week by a BFAR livelihood support mission aboard BFAR's PRP Datu Pagbuaya.
00:42 Briguera said the verification report confirmed at least eight of the ten payaus put in place last week are nowhere to be found.
00:49 Either they've been swept further out to sea or deliberately taken out.
00:53 In addition, Briguera and his team are still mulling when to perform their status check and assessment of the corals in Rosal Reef in the wake of initial reports that indicate a rather good condition of corals there and positive state of marine biodiversity.
01:10 In the meantime, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who is desperately clinging to his premiership post to evade accountability for the October 7 security lapse and his attempts to disempower judicial check and balance, has somehow managed to maintain U.S. support for his continuing brutal war against a hapless Palestinian community in Gaza.
01:30 The continued assault on the helpless Palestinians in Gaza and the slaughter of innocent children, women and civilians has fueled a growing global pushback in U.S. school campuses against the IDF and Netanyahu's government.
01:44 It all began last week in the campus of Columbia University in New York, where hundreds of students and their supporters gathered and set up camp inside school grounds, throwing class schedules out of whack and bringing a state of impasse between school authorities and law enforcement on one side and militant students dug in on the other.
02:03 And the wave of campus protests has radiated to other Ivy schools like Harvard, Brown, Yale to include NYU, and then to the Midwest and the Universities of Michigan, Minnesota all the way to the Southwest, in Texas and the Pacific, as well as California Universities of Berkeley, Stanford and SC.
02:22 It was particularly peaceful in the Trojan country and campus of University of Southern California, where the LAPD arrested scores of student protesters, all of whom did not resist arrests.
02:33 U.S. support for Israel may be ironclad, but it is absolutely not unconditional. In fact, the U.S. law expressly states that any aid intended for a beneficiary nation can be withheld or withdrawn if found to have committed human rights violations.
02:52 And if there is a plethora of documented proof or video or photo evidence of Israel's war crimes in Gaza, as we hear the full report from the U.S. White House Bureau Chief Patsy Whitaker-Swara.
03:03 Israel is the largest recipient of U.S. aid, nearly $4 billion a year, most of it in the form of military assistance. The United States is about to give $26 billion more.
03:17 My commitment to Israel, I want to make clear again, is ironclad. The security of Israel is critical. It will always make sure that Israel has what it needs to defend itself against Iran and terrorists and supports.
03:29 Military aid to Israel comes as the Biden administration conducts an internal review of whether Israel and other partners provided with American weapons comply with international and U.S. laws.
03:41 The Netanyahu government has told the U.S. they did. A volunteer group of academics and former administration officials critical of Israel's war conduct disagrees. It is urging the administration to stop arms transfers.
03:55 Co-chair Nora Erekat is a professor of international law at Rutgers University.
04:00 Out of the 16 incidents we documented, 11 out of the 16, Israel does not even claim that there was a military target, nor does it provide a justification. In half of those incidents, the attacks were on residential homes, sheltering families inside.
04:14 The task force said it reviewed thousands of incident reports, including on IDF airstrikes on two refugee camps, Magazi and Jabalia. Each attack killed dozens of people. An IDF strike on an apartment building in central Gaza that killed at least 106 civilians, including 54 children, was also cited.
04:34 The task force submitted their findings last week to the administration, which must report to Congress by May 8 on whether Israel is complying with international and U.S. laws.
04:44 The State Department is also set to release investigation findings on whether to restrict assistance to an Israeli security unit accused of human rights violations in the West Bank, mostly before the Hamas attack on Israel on October 7. Israel criticized any proposal to restrict aid.
05:02 The State of Israel is a democratic country. It has a government. It has an army. It has a hierarchy. And it seems to me that imposing sanctions on a solid unit is not the right way.
05:17 Israel has been retaliating against an October 7 Hamas attack that killed 1,200 people. More than 34,000 Palestinians have been killed in the war, mostly civilians. The $26 billion aid package for Israel is part of legislations passed by the Senate late Tuesday that also includes $61 billion in aid for Ukraine and $8 billion for U.S. security in the Indo-Pacific.
05:43 Pat Sivida, Huswara Viewing News, Washington.
05:47 And that's all she wrote for tonight. We look forward to you joining us anew tomorrow, same time, same location, on your remote or browser. Always keep in mind to work hard, dream big, give thanks, and stay connected while you catch the news right here on PTV.
06:03 Sharmza Spina here wishing you all a restful night ahead.
06:06 (upbeat music)