KYIV: Russia extended military drills near Ukraine’s northern borders Sunday amid increased fears that two days of sustained shelling along the contact line between soldiers and Russia-backed separatists in eastern Ukraine could spark an invasion. Ukraine’s president appealed for a cease-fire.
The exercises were originally set to end Sunday and brought a sizable contingent of Russian forces to Belarus. The presence of the Russian troops raised concern that they could be used to sweep down on the Ukrainian capital, Kyiv, a city of about 3 million people less than a three-hour drive away.
Western leaders warned that Russia was poised to attack its neighbor, which is surrounded on three sides by about 150,000 Russian soldiers, warplanes and equipment. Russia held nuclear drills Saturday as well as the conventional exercises in Belarus, and has ongoing naval drills off the coast in the Black Sea.
The United States and many European countries have alleged for months that Russia is trying to create pretexts to invade. They have threatened massive, immediate sanctions if it does.
“We’re talking about the potential for war in Europe,” US Vice President Kamala Harris said Sunday at a security conference in Munich, Germany. “It’s been over 70 years, and through those 70 years ... there has been peace and security.”
A top European Union official, Charles Michel, said: “The big question remains: does the Kremlin want dialogue?”
“We cannot forever offer an olive branch while Russia conducts missile tests and continues to amass troops,” said Michel, the president of the European Council.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy called Saturday on Russian President Vladimir Putin to choose a place where the two leaders could meet to try to resolve the crisis and on Sunday appealed for a cease-fire on Twitter. Russia has denied plans to invade, but the Kremlin had not responded to his offer by Sunday, and it was Belarus — not Russia — that announced the extension of the drills.
NATO has estimated there are 30,000 Russian troops in Belarus.
In Kyiv, life continued seemingly as usual on Sunday, with brunches and church services in full swing. Katerina Spanchak, who fled the separatist-occupied Lugansk region years ago, said she prayed for peace.
“We are people, we all love life, and we are all united by our love of life. We should appreciate it every day. That’s why I think everything will be fine,” Spanchak said outside services at St. Michael’s monastery.
But in Lugansk, the area of eastern Ukraine where her parents still live, and neighboring Donetsk, separatist leaders ordered a full military mobilization and sent more civilians to Russia, which has issued about 700,000 passports to residents of the rebel-held territories. Claims that Russian citizens are being endangered might be used as justification for military action.
Officials in the separatist territories claimed Ukrainian forces launched several artillery attacks over the past day and that two civilians were killed during an unsuccessful assault on a village near the Russian border. Ukraine’s military said two soldiers died in firing from the separatist side on Saturday.
Ukraine’s leader criticized the US and other Western nations for holding back on new sanctions for Russia. Zelenskyy, in comments before the conference, also questioned the West’s refusal to allow Ukraine to join NATO immediately. Putin has demanded that NATO reject Ukraine as a member.
In new signs of fears of imminent war, Germany and Austria told their citizens to leave Ukraine, and NATO’s liaison office in Kyiv pulled staff to Brussels and to the western Ukraine city of Lviv.
US President Joe Biden said late Friday that based on the latest American intelligence, he was now “convinced” that Putin has decided to invade Ukraine in coming days and assault the capital.
A US military official said an estimated 40 percent to 50 percent of the ground forces surrounding Ukraine had moved into attack positions closer to the border. The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss internal US assessments, said the change had been underway for about a week and did not necessarily mean Putin was committed to an invasion.
Lines of communication between Moscow and the West remain open: French President Emmanuel Macron spoke with Putin on Sunday for nearly two hours before a 30-minute call with the Ukrainian president. US Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov agreed to meet next week.
Blinken said Sunday the US was still working every lever possible to try to dissuade Putin from invading Ukraine but said recent events, including the extension of the troops in Belarus and the increase in shelling along the contact line, showed Putin well underway in laying the pretexts and groundwork for invasion, in line with findings of US intelligence and previous Russian territorial grabs. “He is following the script almost to the letter,” Blinken told CNN.
“Up to the last minute, there is still an option for him to pull back,” Blinken told NBC’s Meet the Press. He said his offer to meet Lavrov in Europe in the coming days was conditioned on Russia not rolling into Ukraine beforehand.
Macron’s office said both the Ukrainian and Russian leaders had agreed to work toward a diplomatic solution “in coming days and coming weeks.”
Immediate worries focused on eastern Ukraine, where Ukrainian forces have been fighting the pro-Russia rebels since 2014 in a conflict that has killed some 14,000 people.
Ukraine and the separatist leaders traded accusations of escalation. Russia on Saturday said at least two shells fired from a government-held part of eastern Ukraine landed across the border, but Ukraine’s foreign minister dismissed that claim as “a fake statement.”
“When tension is escalated to the maximum, as it is now, for example, on the line of contact, then any spark, any unplanned incident or any minor planned provocation can lead to irreparable consequences,” Putin’ spokesman Dmitry Peskov said in an interview that aired Sunday on Russian state television.
On the front lines, Ukrainian soldiers said they were under orders not to return fire. Zahar Leshushun, peering into the distance with a periscope, had followed the news all day from a trench where he is posted near the town of Zolote.
“Right now, we don’t respond to their fire because ...” the soldier said before being interrupted by the sound of an incoming shell. “Oh! They are shooting at us now. They are aiming at the command post.”
Sporadic violence has broken out for years along the line separating Ukrainian forces from the Russia-backed separatists, but the spike in recent days is orders of magnitude higher than anything recently recorded by international monitors: nearly 1,500 explosions in 24 hours.
Denis Pushilin, the head of the pro-Russia separatist government in Ukraine’s Donetsk region, cited an “immediate threat of aggression” from Ukrainian forces in his announcement of a call to arms. Ukrainian officials vehemently denied having plans to take rebel-controlled areas by force.
A similar statement followed from his counterpart in the Luhansk region. On Friday, the rebels began evacuating civilians to Russia with an announcement that appeared to be part of their and Moscow’s efforts to paint Ukraine as the aggressor.
Metadata from two videos posted by the separatists announcing the evacuation of civilians to Russia show that the files were created two days ago, the AP confirmed. US authorities have alleged that the Kremlin’s effort to come up with an invasion pretext could include staged, prerecorded videos.
Russia extends troop drills; Ukraine appeals for cease-fire
https://arab.news/n7h6m
Russia extends troop drills; Ukraine appeals for cease-fire
- Western leaders warned that Russia was poised to attack Ukraine
- The US and many European countries have threatened massive, immediate sanctions if Russia invades Ukraine
Voter turnout slumps, Modi ‘wave’ missing from India’s 2024 polls
- India’s general election started on April 19 and is taking place in seven phases till June 1
- Voters are battling extreme temperatures as parts of India gripped by heatwave
NEW DELHI: Voter numbers have slumped in the first and second phase of India’s general election, with experts saying that the “wave” of enthusiasm that brought incumbent Prime Minister Narendra Modi to power in 2014 was no longer present in the ongoing polls.
More than 968 million people have been registered to vote in the world’s biggest general election, in which Modi and his Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party are aiming for a rare third consecutive term in power.
The first phase of voting was on April 19 and the polls are taking place over six weeks, with results expected on June 4.
India has a total of 28 states and eight federally governed territories. Some regions complete the process on a single day, while others spread it out over several phases.
The second phase was on April 26 and the other voting dates will be May 7, May 13, May 20, May 25 and June 1.
Friday’s turnout was estimated by the Election Commission of India at 61 percent — compared with 68 percent in the second phase five years ago. In the first phase, it was 65 percent against nearly 70 percent in 2019.
The lower turnout showed “apathy toward politics,” D. Dhanuraj, chairman of the Kerala-based Center for Public Policy Research, told Arab News.
“I think it is clear now that there is no wave in favor of any party as such. In 2014, there was a wave, in 2019 there was a wave,” he said, referring to the enthusiastic pro-Modi balloting in the past two general elections.
“(In) 2024, there was a talk that there was a wave, but I think it is becoming clear that there is no such wave, no wave that would give exponential majority in the parliament to any party.”
Modi and his BJP-led National Democratic Alliance are challenged by an alliance of two dozen opposition parties — the Indian National Developmental Inclusive Alliance, or INDIA — led by the Congress party, which has ruled the country for close to 45 years since independence in 1947.
Congress plunged to a historic low when it was swept out of power by the BJP in the 2014 and 2019 general vote, and won its second-lowest number of 52 seats in 2019, when Modi’s party enjoyed a landslide victory, winning 303 out of 543 seats in the lower house of parliament.
The party or coalition that wins at least 272 parliamentary seats forms the government.
In 2024, Modi has been aiming for 400 seats for the National Democratic Alliance led by his BJP. But the target, often cited ahead of the first phase, has not been repeated.
Although pre-poll surveys suggested Modi would easily win, it is no longer projected to be a landslide as in in the two previous elections.
“It was the electoral rhetoric of the BJP to cross 400 seats, but this reality is not happening, it seems now,” Satish Kumar Singh, political analyst in Delhi, told Arab News.
“The BJP gave that slogan just to galvanize voters. When there is less voting that also means that the BJP might not have a whopping majority, it might be close to a simple majority.”
Another factor deterring voters from standing in long queues at polling stations was the hotter-than-normal summer, with temperatures in some states on Friday exceeding 40 degrees Celsius.
“There is no wave but heatwave in this election,” Singh said. “That is keeping the voters away from the polling booths.”
Not all experts expected the lower turnout to affect the ruling party’s chances in the polls.
“There seems to me no empirical evidence that if voter turnout increases it supports any side — the ruling (party) or the opposition,” said Sandeep Shashtry, political analyst and vice-chancellor of Jagran Lakecity University in Bhopal.
“I think we cannot make a generalization about the wider implications.”
Anti-war protesters dig in as some schools close encampments after reports of antisemitic activity
- Protesters nationwide are demanding that schools cut financial ties to Israel and divest from companies they say are enabling the conflict
- Early Saturday, police in riot gear cleared an encampment on the campus of Northeastern University in Boston while several dozen students shouted and booed at them
NEW YORK: As students protesting the Israel-Hamas war at universities across US dug in Saturday and vowed to keep their demonstrations going, some universities shut down encampments after reports of antisemitic activity among the protesters.
With the death toll mounting in the war in Gaza, protesters nationwide are demanding that schools cut financial ties to Israel and divest from companies they say are enabling the conflict. Some Jewish students say the protests have veered into antisemitism and made them afraid to set foot on campus.
Early Saturday, police in riot gear cleared an encampment on the campus of Northeastern University in Boston while several dozen students shouted and booed at them from a distance, but the scene was otherwise not confrontational.
The school said in a statement that the demonstration, which began two days ago, had become “infiltrated by professional organizers” with no affiliation to the school and protesters had used antisemitic slurs.
“We cannot tolerate this kind of hate on our campus,” the statement posted on the social media platform X said.
The University of Pennsylvania took similar action Friday when interim President J. Larry Jameson called for an encampment of protesters on the west Philadelphia campus to be disbanded, saying it violates the university’s facilities policies.
The “harassing and intimidating comments and actions” by some protesters violate the school’s open expression guidelines as well as state and federal law, Jameson said, and vandalism of a statue with antisemitic graffiti was “especially reprehensible and will be investigated as a hate crime.”
“I am deeply saddened and troubled that our many efforts to respectfully engage in discourse, support open expression, and create a community that is free of hate and inclusive for everyone have been ignored by those who choose to disrupt and intimidate,” he said.
At Columbia University, where protesters have inspired pro-Palestinian demonstrations across the country, negotiations continued with those at the student encampment.
The university’s senate passed a resolution Friday that created a task force to examine the administration’s leadership, which last week called in police in an attempt to clear the protest, resulting in scuffles and more than 100 arrests.
Though the university has repeatedly set and then pushed back deadlines for the removal of the encampment, the school sent an email to students Friday night saying that bringing back police “at this time” would be counterproductive.
Decisions to call in law enforcement, leading to hundreds of arrests nationwide, have prompted school faculty members at universities in California, Georgia and Texas to initiate or pass votes of no confidence in their leadership. They are largely symbolic rebukes, without the power to remove their presidents.
But the tensions pile pressure on school officials, who are already scrambling to resolve the protests as May graduation ceremonies near.
California State Polytechnic University, Humboldt, gave protesters who have barricaded themselves inside a building since Monday until 5 p.m. Friday to leave and “not be immediately arrested.” The deadline came and went. Only some of the protesters left, others doubled down. After protesters rebuffed police earlier in the week, the campus was closed for the rest of the semester.
In Colorado, police swept through an encampment Friday at Denver’s Auraria Campus, which hosts three universities and colleges, arresting about 40 protesters on trespassing charges.
Students representing the Columbia encampment said Friday that they reached an impasse with administrators and intend to continue their protest. After meetings Thursday and Friday, student negotiators said the university had not met their primary demand for divestment.
In the letter sent to Columbia students Friday night, the university’s leadership said “we support the conversations that are ongoing with student leaders of the encampment.”
Columbia’s president, Minouche Shafik, faced significant criticism from faculty Friday, but retained the support of trustees.
A report by the university senate’s executive committee, which represents faculty, found Shafik and her administration took “many actions and decisions that have harmed Columbia University.” Those included calling in police and allowing students to be arrested without consulting faculty, misrepresenting and suspending student protest groups and hiring private investigators.
Also Friday, Columbia student protester Khymani James walked back comments made in an online video in January that recently received new attention. James said in the video that “Zionists don’t deserve to live” and people should be grateful James wasn’t killing them.
“What I said was wrong,” James said in a statement. “Every member of our community deserves to feel safe without qualification.”
James, who served as a spokesperson for the pro-Palestinian encampment as a member of Columbia University Apartheid Divest, was banned from campus Friday, according to a Columbia spokesperson.
Protest organizers said James’ comments didn’t reflect their values. They declined to describe James’ level of involvement with the demonstration.
In France, students at the Paris Institute of Political Studies, which counts President Emmanuel Macron among its many famous alumni, students blocked access to a campus building and classes went online as the wave of protests reached overseas.
Police clashed with protesters Thursday at Indiana University, Bloomington, where 34 were arrested; Ohio State University, where about 36 were arrested; and at the University of Connecticut, where one person was arrested.
The University of Southern California canceled its May 10 graduation ceremony Thursday, a day after more than 90 protesters were arrested on campus. The university said it will still host dozens of commencement events, including all the traditional individual school ceremonies.
Universities where faculty members have initiated or passed votes of no confidence in their presidents include Cal Poly Humboldt, University of Texas at Austin and Emory University.
Russia says it struck Ukrainian energy plants in response to Kyiv targeting its own energy sector
- The strikes were “in response to attempts by the Kyiv regime to damage Russian energy and industrial facilities“
- Ukraine has systematically targeted Russian oil refineries and other facilities in drone attacks in recent weeks
MOSCOW: The Russian Defense Ministry said on Saturday that its forces had carried out 35 strikes in the last week against Ukrainian energy facilities, defense factories, railway infrastructure, air defenses, and ammunition stocks.
It said in a statement that the strikes, which spanned April 20-27, were “in response to attempts by the Kyiv regime to damage Russian energy and industrial facilities.”
Ukraine has systematically targeted Russian oil refineries and other facilities in drone attacks in recent weeks, ignoring US requests not to do so.
Ukrainian officials said Russian missiles had pounded power facilities in central and western Ukraine on Saturday, increasing pressure on the ailing energy system as the country faces a shortage of air defenses despite a breakthrough in US military aid.
The Russian Defense Ministry said its campaign of strikes had been conducted using sea- and air-launched long-range precision weapons, including Kinzhal hypersonic missiles and drones.
It said it had also targeted and hit Ukrainian troop formations as well as what it described as foreign mercenaries.
Philippine capital’s financial center to become halal hub
- Makati Halal Hub to act as a platform for manufacturers, traders and consumers
- Philippines’ central business district is perceived as trendsetter for other regions
MANILA: Philippine businesses in Makati City are joining hands with the Department of Trade and Industry to make the country’s financial center a halal hub, the head of the Philippine Chamber of Commerce and Industry’s Makati branch said on Saturday.
Makati City in Metro Manila is often referred to as the Philippines’ central business district. It has the highest concentration of banks and multinational and local corporations in the country. Foreign embassies are also based there.
The predominantly Catholic Philippines — where Muslims constitute about 10 percent of the nearly 120 million population — plans to raise 230 billion pesos ($4 billion) in investments and generate around 120,000 jobs by expanding its domestic halal industry by 2028.
The DTI signed on Friday a memorandum of understanding with PCCI Makati to join the government’s efforts to tap into the global halal market, which is estimated to be worth more than $7 trillion.
“To be able to implement its policies more effectively — such as the promotion and development of the country’s halal industry — they (the government) have to collaborate or strike a partnership with the business community or the businessmen who will be responsible in making this a reality,” PCCI Makati President Toots Cortez told Arab News.
“We can be the catalyst. We will begin by creating awareness, especially among the MSMEs (micro, small and midsize enterprises) because, according to the records of DTI, 99.5 percent of business in the Philippines are composed of SMEs.”
The agreement on establishing the Makati Halal Hub will position the city as a “central point for innovation and business in the halal sector, spanning a variety of industries including food production, financial services, and more,” the DTI said in a statement, as it expects the initiative to “provide substantial opportunities for Filipino entrepreneurs and international investors alike, fostering a robust economic ecosystem.”
According to the vision, the hub will act as a platform facilitating connections between manufacturers, traders, buyers, distributors and consumers in the halal sector.
“If we can group together and promote halal, I think that will be the best approach … You don’t need a big budget,” Cortez said.
“There are many Muslim embassies in Makati City, many restaurants and major establishments … Many tourists come to Makati, so if we can convince the establishments in Makati to be accredited as halal, that’s a good beginning from our side as a catalyst.”
He believes that the industry’s promotion in the city will make an impact as Makati is widely perceived as a trendsetter for other Philippine regions.
“The others, they follow the lead,” Cortez said. “They follow the lead on what’s happening in Makati City.”
US food regulator gathering information on Indian spices after alleged contamination
- MDH and Everest spices are among the most popular in India and are also sold in Europe, Asia and North America
- Hong Kong this month suspended sales of four MDH and Everest blends, while Singapore recalled Everest spice mix
HYDERABAD: The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is gathering information on products of Indian spice makers MDH and Everest after Hong Kong halted sales of some of their products for allegedly containing high levels of a cancer-causing pesticide.
“The FDA is aware of the reports and is gathering additional information about the situation,” an FDA spokesperson told Reuters on Friday.
Hong Kong this month suspended sales of three MDH spice blends and an Everest spice mix for fish curries. Singapore ordered a recall of the Everest spice mix as well, saying it contains high levels of ethylene oxide, which is unfit for human consumption and a cancer risk with long exposure.
Reuters is the first to report the US FDA’s review of alleged contamination of Indian spice products.
MDH and Everest did not immediately respond to Reuters requests for comment on this matter.
Everest has previously said its spices are safe for consumption. MDH has not responded to queries about its products so far.
MDH and Everest spices are among the most popular in India and are also sold in Europe, Asia and North America. India’s food regulator, the Food Safety and Standards Authority of India (FSSAI), is now checking the quality standards of the two companies, following the moves in Hong Kong and Singapore.
India’s Spices Board, the government’s regulator for spice exports, said on Wednesday it had sought data on MDH and Everest exports from authorities in Hong Kong and Singapore, and was working with the companies to find the “root cause” of the quality issues as inspections started at their plants.
In 2019, a few batches of MDH’s products were recalled in the US for salmonella contamination.
