ST. PETERSBURG, Russia: A prominent Russian military blogger was killed Sunday and 25 others injured in an explosion at a cafe in Russia’s second-largest city of Saint Petersburg, the interior ministry said.
“One person was killed in the incident. He was military correspondent Vladlen Tatarsky,” the ministry said on Telegram.
Investigators later said they had confirmed “an unidentified explosive device exploded in a cafe in central St. Petersburg,” and had opened a murder inquiry.
The health ministry said that a total of 25 people were injured in the blast, 24 of whom were taken to hospital.
Six of the injured were said to be in serious condition.
The explosion occurred at “Street Food Bar No. 1,” located along the Neva river not far from the historic city center, with the interior ministry saying police had been called to the scene at 6:13 p.m. (1513 GMT).
Officers cordoned off the street outside the building with around 20 police cars, alongside six ambulances as well as fire trucks, according to an AFP journalist at the scene.
The TASS news agency quoted a law enforcement source as saying the blast was “caused by an improvised explosive device hidden inside a statue given to Tatarsky as a gift.”
The Ria Novosti agency, quoting a source close to the inquiry, said “a girl” had supposedly dropped off a package with a “figurine” inside intended for the blogger.
“She gave it to him... and all of a sudden there was an explosion,” Alissa Smotrova, a woman who was at the cafe, told AFP.
“There was blood and pieces of glass...”
Another source told Ria Novosti that Tatarsky “knew” the suspected deliverer of the package, and that they had crossed paths at other “events,” without giving further details.
Tatarsky, whose real name is Maxim Fomin, has more than 500,000 followers on Telegram and is in favor of Russia’s campaign in Ukraine.
He made his name early in the operation by publishing videos analizing the military situation on the ground and offering advice for mobilized troops, according to TASS.
A group called Cyber Front Z, which refers to itself on social media as “Russia’s information troops,” said it had hired out the cafe for the evening.
A local media outlet, Fontanka, said there were at least 100 people at the event.
“There was a terrorist attack. We took certain security measures but unfortunately they were not enough,” the group said on Telegram.
“Condolences to everyone who knew the excellent war correspondent and our friend Vladlen Tatarsky,” it said.
The 40-year-old Tatarsky came from the Donetsk region in eastern Ukraine, which Russia claims to have annexed and which is currently mostly held by Russian troops.
Reacting to the attack, Ukrainian presidential aide Mykhaylo Podolyak said on Twitter the “question of when domestic terrorism would become an instrument of internal political fight was a matter of time.”
In August 2022, Russia’s FSB security services accused Ukraine of being behind a car bombing outside Moscow that killed the daughter of hard-line Russian ideologue Alexander Dugin — charges denied by Kyiv.
Russian foreign ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said bloggers like Tatarsky “are defenders of the truth,” and lashed out at Western governments for not reacting quickly to the bombing.
A failure to comment “despite their concerns for the welfare of journalists and the free press speaks for itself,” she said, an apparent reference to widespread condemnation of the arrest of US reporter Evan Gershkovich.
St. Petersburg cafe blast kills top Russian military blogger
https://arab.news/mepdn
St. Petersburg cafe blast kills top Russian military blogger
- News reports said blogger Vladlen Tatarsky was killed and 16 people were hurt in the explosion at the Street Food Bar No. 1 cafe
Blinken’s Manila visit triggers protest against US presence in Philippines
- Philippines allowed US troops last year to increase their footprint in the country
- Blinken says US stands by ‘ironclad’ commitments to defend Philippines
Manila: Protesters rallied against American presence in the Philippines on Tuesday as US Secretary of State Antony Blinken visited Manila to reinforce support against Chinese influence in the region.
The Philippines is Washington’s key security partner in Asia under a decades-long alliance, which allows the US to rotate troops into the Philippines for extended stays and build and operate facilities on Philippine military bases.
In the past two years, the partnership has expanded under President Ferdinand Marcos Jr., who in February last year permitted American troops to increase their footprint in the country.
China claims the disputed area almost in entirety and its military activity in the territory has been increasing, regularly encroaching on the Philippine part of the waters, the West Philippine Sea.
“These waterways are critical to the Philippines, to its security, to its economy, but they’re also critical to the interests of the region, the United States and the world,” Blinken said at a joint press conference with his Philippine counterpart Enrique Manalo.
“That’s why we stand with the Philippines and stand by our ironclad defense commitments, including under the mutual defense treaty.”
The 1951 agreement obliges the US to defend its ally in the case of external attack.
Philippine vessels have been regularly attacked by Chinese ships in the parts of the South China Sea that are internationally recognized as belonging to the Philippines.
American troops have been patrolling the maritime area with Philippine forces since November, despite protests from Beijing, which says the US is not a party to the maritime dispute.
“Article 4 of that treaty extends to any armed attacks on Filipino armed forces, on public vessels, on aircraft, and that would include its coast guard and that would also be anywhere in the South China Sea,” Blinken said.
As he told reporters that the two countries have seen an “extraordinary expansion” in their partnership, protesters in Manila carried banners reading: “US troops out of the Philippines,” “Blinken war criminal, not welcome,” “No to US intervention in PH and Asia.”
The demonstration was organized by civil society, including BAYAN — the Philippines’ largest alliance of grassroots groups — near the Presidential Palace, ahead of Blinken’s meeting with Marcos.
BAYAN said in a statement that Marcos was “advancing the geopolitical interest of the US in the region” and “offering the Philippines as an extension” of the US military network.
“The country’s assertion of sovereignty in the West Philippine Sea against China’s aggression should not involve the opportunistic meddling of a former colonizer whose real motive is to preserve and expand its imperialist hegemony in the Asia-Pacific,” the group said.
It also drew attention to Gaza, where Washington’s other key ally, Israel, has killed over 30,000 Palestinians in daily airstrikes and land assaults since October.
BAYAN said the US was “the main supporter and enabler of the ongoing genocide in Palestine” and was “actively fanning proxy wars and conflicts in various parts of the world.”
Afghan refugee convicted in murder case that shocked Albuquerque Muslim community
- Muhammad Syed faces life in prison for killing Aftab Hussein in 2022
- Syed also will stand trial in the coming months for two other slayings
Trump says Jews who vote for Democrats ‘hate Israel’ and their religion
- Trump: “They should be ashamed of themselves because Israel will be destroyed”
NEW YORK: Former President Donald Trump on Monday charged that Jews who vote for Democrats “hate Israel” and hate “their religion,” igniting a firestorm of criticism from the White House and Jewish leaders.
Trump, in an interview, had been asked about Democrats’ growing criticism of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu over his handling of the war in Gaza as the civilian death toll continues to mount.
“I actually think they hate Israel,” Trump responded to his former aide, Sebastian Gorka. “I think they hate Israel. And the Democrat party hates Israel.”
Trump, who last week became the Republican Party’s presumptive nominee, went on to charge: “Any Jewish person that votes for Democrats hates their religion. They hate everything about Israel and they should be ashamed of themselves because Israel will be destroyed.”
The comments sparked immediate backlash from the White House, President Joe Biden’s campaign and Jewish leaders. The vast majority of Jewish Americans identify as Democrats, but Trump has often accused them of disloyalty, perpetuating what critics say is an antisemitic trope.
At the White House, spokesperson Andrew Bates cast the comments as “vile and unhinged Antisemitic rhetoric” without mentioning Trump by name.
“As Antisemitic crimes and acts of hate have increased across the world — among them the deadliest attack committed against the Jewish people since the Holocaust — leaders have an obligation to call hate what it is and bring Americans together against it,” he said. “There is no justification for spreading toxic, false stereotypes that threaten fellow citizens. None.”
Biden’s campaign said, “The only person who should be ashamed here is Donald Trump.”
“Trump is going to lose again this November because Americans are sick of his hateful resentment, personal attacks, and extreme agenda,” said spokesman James Singer.
Jonathan Greenblatt, who heads the Anti-Defamation League, said, “Accusing Jews of hating their religion because they might vote for a particular party is defamatory & patently false.”
“Serious leaders who care about the historic US-Israel alliance should focus on strengthening, rather than unraveling, bipartisan support for the State of Israel,” he wrote on X, formerly known as Twitter.
Trump’s comments come as Biden has been facing mounting pressure from the progressive wing of his party over his administration’s support for Israel in its retaliatory offensive in Gaza. More than 30,000 Palestinians have been killed since Hamas attacked Israel on Oct. 7, according to the Health Ministry in the Hamas-ruled territory.
While Biden continues to back Israel’s right to defend itself, he has increasingly criticized Netanyahu. After his State of the Union speech, he said he needed to have a “come to Jesus” conversation with the Israeli leader. He has also accused Netanyahu of “hurting Israel more than helping Israel,” saying, “he must pay more attention to the innocent lives being lost as a consequence of the actions taken.”
Trump took particular issue with recent comments from Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, the country’s highest-ranking Jewish official. In a speech last week, Schumer sharply criticized Netanyahu’s handling of the war in Gaza, warning that the civilian toll was damaging Israel’s standing around the world. He also called for Israel to hold new elections.
While the White House formally distanced itself from Schumer’s comments, the Democratic leader and key ally was voicing an opinion increasingly held across Biden’s administration.
Schumer — whom Trump accused of being “very anti-Israel now” — responded by accusing Trump of “making highly partisan and hateful rants.”
“To make Israel a partisan issue only hurts Israel and the US-Israeli relationship,” he wrote on X.
The Pew Research Center reported in 2021 that Jews are “among the most consistently liberal and Democratic groups in the US,” with 7 in 10 Jewish adults identifying with or leaning toward the Democratic Party. In 2020, it found that nearly three-quarters of American Jews disapproved of Trump’s performance as president, with just 27 percent rating him positively.
Americans have also increasingly soured on Israel’s military operation in Gaza, according to surveys from The Associated Press and the NORC Center for Public Affairs Research. In January, 50 percent of US adults said the military response from Israel in the Gaza Strip had gone too far, up from 40 percent in November.
That number was higher among Democrats, 6 in 10 of whom said the same thing in both surveys.
UN chief warns against ‘sequel to ‘Oppenheimer“
- Israel, the Middle East’s only nuclear-armed power albeit an undeclared one, has been at war since an October 7 attack by Hamas militants
UNITED NATIONS, United States: UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres invoked Oscar-winning film “Oppenheimer” on Monday as he warned that the world faced the highest risk of nuclear war in decades.
At a Security Council session called by Japan, Guterres said that the biopic about the morally conflicted father of the atomic bomb “brought the harsh reality of nuclear doomsday to vivid life for millions around the world.”
“Humanity cannot survive a sequel to Oppenheimer,” Guterres said.
“We meet at a time when geopolitical tensions and mistrust have escalated the risk of nuclear warfare to its highest point in decades,” he said.
Russian President Vladimir Putin has made thinly veiled threats to use nuclear weapons as he warns the West against its support for Ukraine, which Moscow invaded more than two years ago.
Without naming Putin, Guterres said, “Nuclear saber-rattling must stop.”
“Threats to use nuclear weapons in any capacity are unacceptable,” he said.
Elsewhere in the world, tensions surrounding nuclear-armed North Korea have continued to rise and Iran has been enriching uranium closer to the level needed if it decides to build an atom bomb.
Israel, the Middle East’s only nuclear-armed power albeit an undeclared one, has been at war since an October 7 attack by Hamas militants.
Guterres called on the United States and Russia to resume negotiations, at a standstill since the Ukraine war, on a successor to the New START nuclear arms reduction treaty which expires in early 2026.
He also called for progress on other initiatives including the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, which entered into force in 2021 but has little practical effect as no nuclear-weapons states are party to it.
“Investments in the tools of war are outstripping investments in the tools of peace. Arms budgets are growing, while diplomacy and development budgets are shrinking,” Guterres said.
The United States, the only country to have used nuclear weapons in warfare, said it would work on one area with ally Japan, whose cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were devastated by atomic weapons in 1945.
The United States as well as France said they would join Japan in a coalition to push through the Fissile Material Cut-off Treaty, which would ban production of plutonium and highly enriched uranium, the key ingredients in nuclear weapons.
Most nuclear states have already stopped production. Discussions on a treaty have been blocked by Pakistan, which believes it would fall behind rival India and which enjoys diplomatic support from China.
“To forestall a potential arms race, we need to see an end to the production of fissile material for use in nuclear weapons, and continue pursuing negotiations on a Fissile Material Cut-off Treaty,” said the US ambassador to the United Nations, Linda Thomas-Greenfield.
Japanese Foreign Minister Yoko Kamikawa, who led the meeting, vowed that Tokyo “will further increase international and political attention” toward the treaty.
Kamikawa also called for work to ensure that nuclear weapons are not placed in space.
The United States said last month that Russia was developing a system to send nuclear weapons to space, an assertion denied by Putin.
“During the Cold War, despite the confrontational environment at that time, the international community established legal frameworks to ensure the peaceful and sustainable use of outer space, which prohibit placing nuclear weapons or any other kinds of weapons of mass destruction in outer space,” Kamikawa said.
“Even now, Japan firmly believes that outer space must remain a domain free of nuclear weapons,” she said.
An Afghan refugee has been convicted of murder in a case that shocked Albuquerque’s Muslim community
An Afghan refugee has been convicted of murder in a case that shocked Albuquerque’s Muslim community
- Syed, who speaks Pashto and required the help of translators throughout the trial, settled in the US with his family several years before the killings
- Defense attorneys said the conviction would be appealed once the other two trials are complete
ALBUQUERQUE, N.M.: An Afghan refugee was found guilty Monday of first-degree murder in one of three fatal shootings that shook Albuquerque’s Muslim community during the summer of 2022.
Muhammad Syed faces life in prison for killing 41-year-old Aftab Hussein on July 26, 2022. He also will stand trial in the coming months in the other two slayings.
During the trial, prosecutors presented cellphone data that showed his phone was in the area when the shooting occurred, and a ballistics expert testified that casings and projectiles recovered from the scene had been fired from a rifle that was found hidden under Syed’s bed.
Defense attorneys argued that prosecutors had no evidence that Syed was the one who pulled the trigger. They said others who lived in his home could also access his phone, the vehicle and the rifle.
The defense called no witnesses; Syed tearfully declined to testify in his own defense.
Prosecutors on Monday said they were pleased that jurors agreed it was a deliberate killing. However, they acknowledged that no testimony during the weeklong trial nor any court filings addressed a possible motive or detailed any interactions that Syed might have had with Hussein before the killing.
“We were not able to uncover anything that we would indicate would be a motive that would explain this,” Deputy District Attorney David Waymire said outside the courthouse. “As best we can tell, this could be a case of a serial killer where there’s a motive known only to them and not something that we can really understand.”
Defense attorneys said the conviction would be appealed once the other two trials are complete. They too said a motive has yet to be uncovered.
The three ambush-style killings happened over the course of several days, leaving authorities scrambling to determine if race or religion might have been behind the crimes. It was not long before the investigation shifted away from possible hate crimes to what prosecutors described to jurors as the “willful and very deliberate” actions of another member of the Muslim community.
Syed, who speaks Pashto and required the help of translators throughout the trial, settled in the US with his family several years before the killings. Prosecutors described him during previous court hearings as having a violent history. His public defenders argued that previous allegations of domestic violence never resulted in convictions.
Syed also is accused of killing Muhammad Afzaal Hussain, a 27-year-old urban planner who was gunned down Aug. 1, 2022, while taking his evening walk, and Naeem Hussain, who was shot four days later as he sat in his vehicle outside a refugee resettlement agency on the city’s south side.
Muhammad Afzaal Hussain’s older brother, Muhammad Imtiaz Hussain, was there Monday to hear the verdict. He has been following the cases closely and like others in the community is troubled that there’s still no answer as to why his brother and the others were targeted.
A student leader at the University of New Mexico who was active in politics and later worked for the city of Española, Muhammad Afzaal Hussain had a bright future, his brother said. They had come to the United States from Pakistan for educational and economic opportunities.
He said the life they had planned was just starting to come to fruition when his brother was killed.
“It was a big loss,” he said.
Police also identified Syed as the suspect in the killing of another Muslim man in 2021, but no charges have been filed in that case.
Authorities issued a public plea for help following the third killing in the summer of 2022. They shared photographs of a vehicle believed to be involved in the crimes, resulting in tips that led to Syed.
Syed denied involvement in the killings after being stopped more than 100 miles (160 kilometers) from Albuquerque. He told authorities he was on his way to Texas to find a new home for his family, saying he was concerned about the killings in Albuquerque.
The judge prohibited prosecutors from directly introducing as evidence statements Syed made to a detective while being questioned. Defense attorneys argued that Syed’s rights were violated because the detective, through an interpreter, did not adequately inform Syed of his right to a court-appointed attorney.
During the trial, prosecutors gave jurors a rundown of what happened the night of the first killing: Hussein parked at his apartment complex at around 10 p.m. and had just stepped out of his vehicle with his keys still in his hand when gunfire erupted.
“He stood no chance,” prosecutor Jordan Machin said during closing arguments. Machin said Syed had been lying in wait and that he continued to shoot even as Hussein lay on the ground.
Officers found Hussein with multiple wounds that stretched from his neck down to his feet. Investigators testified that some of the high-caliber rounds went through his body and pierced the car.
Prosecutors showed photos of Hussein’s bullet-riddled car and said the victim was killed nearly instantly.