VOI - Voice of Indonesia | RRI - Radio Republik Indonesia

VOI, Jakarta - Social media platform TikTok said on Friday accusations by the Malaysian government that it was blocking pro-Palestinian content were "unfounded".

Muslim-majority Malaysia on Thursday warned of action against social media firms TikTok and Meta, saying their platforms had been accused of restricting content supporting Palestinians.

Meta responded on Thursday, saying there was "no truth" to the accusation and it was not deliberately suppressing voices on its Facebook platform.

A TikTok spokesperson, in an email to Reuters on Friday, also rejected Malaysia's accusation that it was blocking pro-Palestinian content.

"The claim is unfounded. Our community guidelines apply equally to all content on TikTok, and we're committed to consistently enforcing our policies to protect our community," the spokesperson said.

Both Meta and TikTok designate Hamas, the Palestinian Islamist movement that governs Gaza, a "dangerous organisation" and ban content praising it.

Hamas members attacked communities in southern Israel on Oct. 7. Israel says some 1,400 people including children were killed, and more than 200 people, some of them infants, were taken hostage in the assault.

The Hamas-controlled Gaza health ministry said on Thursday that 7,028 Palestinians had been killed in Israel's retaliatory air strikes, including 2,913 children.

Reuters could not independently verify the tolls.

Since the violence erupted, both social media firms have taken steps to improve moderation, and remove or label graphic visuals.

Meta said in mid-October that it had taken down or labelled nearly 800,000 pieces of content in Hebrew and Arabic in the days after the Oct. 7 attack.

Similarly, TikTok said this week it had removed more than 775,000 videos and 14,000 livestreams since the attack.(Reuters)

VOI, Jakarta - Dr. Richard King was driving home from the Central Maine Medical Center on Wednesday night when he received an urgent call from a fellow trauma surgeon alerting him that victims of a mass casualty event were flooding the hospital.

King, the trauma medical director, immediately turned around and sped through Lewiston's streets with his hazard lights flashing, arriving to discover what he later described in an interview as a nightmarish scene. The emergency room was overflowing with wounded and bleeding patients, casualties of the latest mass shooting to hit an American city.

Within minutes, King went to work performing a "damage control" surgery on one gunshot victim to stop their bleeding and save their life before hustling into a different operating room to begin work on another.

"It was a situation of organized chaos," King said. "It was really quite surreal. We read about these events all too frequently, and then to be a part of one ..."

The staff of Central Maine Medical Center on Wednesday joined a growing list of fellow doctors, nurses, orderlies and technicians working in cities from Colorado Springs, Colorado to Highland Park, Illinois and El Paso, Texas, who have seen their hospitals upended by incessant mass shootings in recent years.

King told Reuters by phone from inside the heavily guarded hospital that the 250-bed medical center had never seen anything resembling the fallout from the Lewiston shooting, which left 18 people dead and more than a dozen wounded.

Lewiston, a former textile hub, is home to only about 38,000 people, but still stands as the second largest city in Maine, the state ranked by the FBI as the least violent in the nation.

The number of those killed on Wednesday was only slightly below the average number of homicides in Maine for an entire year.

But King said the medical center's staff has undergone mass casualty event training and that it felt like "the entire hospital" rushed into the facility to help out. Eight shooting victims, including five who are stable and three in critical condition, remained in the hospital on Thursday.

"We really just did what we would normally do, just at maximum capacity and with maximum effort," King said. "It was inspiring to see how all our staff responded, how everybody stepped up to the plate."

While there is one on-call after hours surgeon, upward of 30 surgeons were on site within minutes of the first ambulances arriving at the hospital, King said.

As one victim after another was rushed into the emergency room - more than a dozen gunshot victims eventually arrived - doctors grew concerned that the medical center's blood supply would not hold out. That forced King and other surgeons to do everything medically possible to stem the loss of blood among patients.

Supplies held out, King said, in large part due to work by the medical center's trauma program manager, Tammy Lachance, to quickly secure extra blood from nearby hospitals.

In the aftermath of the shooting, King said the most difficult thing for him and other staff members, some of whom had family and loved ones who were killed, is coming to terms with the loss of life and tragedy that befell Lewiston, especially as the adrenaline of treating victims wears off.

With the shooter still at large on Thursday, law enforcement officers outside the hospital carrying long guns and wearing bulletproof vests were seen guarding entrances and keeping onlookers away.

"This is a close-knit community. Maine is fairly small, everybody knows everybody to some extent," King said. "This shooting hits really hard in a city like Lewiston and a state like Maine."(Reuters)

VOI, Jakarta - The United States has information that the Russian military is executing soldiers who do not follow orders related to the war with Ukraine, the White House said on Thursday.

"We have information that the Russian military has been actually executing soldiers who refuse to follow orders," White House spokesperson John Kirby told reporters.

"We also have information that Russian commanders are threatening to execute entire units if they seek to retreat from Ukrainian artillery fire," Kirby said.

Representatives from the Kremlin, the Russian defense ministry, and the Russian embassy to the United States did not immediately respond to requests for comment about the issue.

Russia's ambassador to Washington, Anatoly Antonov, in a comment on the Telegram messaging app, made no reference to the White House allegations.

But referring to the latest military aid package to Ukraine of $150 million, Antonov branded the U.S. move as "provocative and inflammatory actions in the international arena that look more like pouring oil on the fire" than trying to ease conflict.

"It is long past time to halt the mindless multi-billion dollar flow to the bankrupt Kyiv regime," Antonov wrote on Telegram. "Time to stop showing total disdain towards the opinions of your own citizens and indifference to the growing number of victims dying from American weaponry."

Ukrainian officials said on Wednesday that Russian forces were disregarding heavy losses and pressing on with a drive to capture the eastern Ukrainian city of Avdiivka.

The United States has strongly condemned Russia's invasion of Ukraine and has been providing significant aid to Kyiv.

Kirby said Russia's mobilized forces were undertrained, underequipped, and unprepared for combat. He said the military was using "human wave tactics" by throwing groups of poorly trained soldiers into the fight.

Kirby said threats to execute the soldiers was barbaric.

"I think it's a symptom of ... how poorly Russia's military leaders know they're doing and how bad they have handled this from a military perspective," he said. (Reuters)

VOI, Jakarta - EU leaders called on Thursday for pauses in Israeli bombing and Hamas rocket attacks to get humanitarian aid into Gaza after days of wrangling that highlighted divisions within the bloc over the broader Israel-Palestinian conflict.

In a declaration agreed at a summit in Brussels, the leaders of the Union's 27 nations expressed the "gravest concern for the deteriorating humanitarian situation in Gaza".

They called for "continued, rapid, safe and unhindered humanitarian access and aid to reach those in need through all necessary measures including humanitarian corridors and pauses for humanitarian needs".

The summit was the leaders' first in-person meeting since the deadly Oct. 7 assault on Israel by Palestinian militant group Hamas, which prompted Israel to bombard and blockade Hamas-run Gaza.

While EU leaders have strongly condemned Hamas' attack, they have struggled to stick to the same message beyond that, with some stressing Israel's right to self-defence and others emphasising concern about Palestinian civilians.

The leaders' differences were still clear as they arrived for the summit.

"Israel is a democratic state guided by very humanitarian principles and so we can be certain that the Israeli army will respect the rules that arise from international law in everything it does," said German Chancellor Olaf Scholz. "I have no doubt about that."

Scholz's remarks contrasted sharply with comments in recent days by EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell and Charles Michel, the chairman of EU leaders' summits, who have said that a total blockade of Gaza and attacks on civilian infrastructure already contravene international law.

Rights groups such as Human Rights Watch have also accused Israel of violating international humanitarian law.

Israel insists it is acting within international law and that its attacks are intended to destroy Hamas, which operates among the civilian population.

Belgian Prime Minister Alexander De Croo warned Israel against starving Gaza.

"Israel has a right to take action and to prevent future attacks. But that is never an excuse for blocking a whole region, for blocking humanitarian aid. It cannot be an excuse to starve a population," he said.

PAUSE VERSUS PAUSES

Ahead of the summit, diplomats spent days debating whether to call for a "humanitarian pause" or "pauses".

Countries such as France, the Netherlands, Spain, Portugal, Belgium and Ireland had endorsed calls from the United Nations for a break in the conflict for humanitarian reasons.

But others such as Germany, the Czech Republic and Austria resisted, arguing such a measure could curb Israel's ability to defend itself and let Hamas regroup, according to diplomats.

The compromise on "pauses" in the plural was meant to signal short breaks in fighting for missions such as hostage releases or aid convoys, rather than a formal ceasefire, diplomats said.

While the EU's influence on the conflict is modest, the bloc fears that an escalation could have grave consequences for Europe, including a rise in tensions between communities, possible Islamist militant attacks and a flow of refugees.

The crisis erupted with the EU already grappling with the fallout from another war in its immediate neigbourhood - the conflict triggered by Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy addressed the summit by video link as the EU leaders pledged they will continue to support Ukraine even amidst another major crisis.

"We must clearly see this scenario of a larger fire in the Middle East and counter it together," Zelenskiy said.

"The sooner security prevails in the Middle East, the sooner we will restore security here in Europe."

Some officials and diplomats have voiced fears that Ukraine may now struggle to get the same political attention and resources from the West, particularly the United States, due to the new crisis in the Middle East. (Reuters)