Russia forces Ukrainians in occupied territories to take its passports – and fight in its army

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An election commission official inspects the passport of a person who came to vote at a polling station, during a presidential election in Makiivka, Russian-controlled Donetsk region, eastern Ukraine, on March 15, 2024. (AP)
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42-year-old Vyacheslav Ryabkov, an internally displaced person from Kozachi Laheri in the Kherson region of Ukraine, is pictured in Kolomyya, Ukraine on Feb. 13, 2024. (AP)
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50-year-old Natalia Zhyvohliad, an internally displaced person from Nova Petrivka in the Zaporizhzhia region of Ukraine, with her children, daughter-in-law and grandson in their temporary modular house in Kolomyya, Ivano-Frankivsk region on Feb. 13, 2024. (AP)
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Updated 17 March 2024
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Russia forces Ukrainians in occupied territories to take its passports – and fight in its army

  • Almost 100 percent of the whole population who still live on temporary occupied territories of Ukraine now have Russian passports: Ukraine’s rights ombudsman
  • The Russian government has seized at least 1,785 homes and businesses in the Donetsk and Zaporizhzhia regions alone, AP probe finds

KYIV, Ukraine: He and his parents were among the last in their village to take a Russian passport, but the pressure was becoming unbearable.

By his third beating at the hands of the Russian soldiers occupying Ukraine’s Kherson region, Vyacheslav Ryabkov caved. The soldiers broke two of his ribs, but his face was not bruised for his unsmiling passport photo, taken in September 2023.
It wasn’t enough.
In December, they caught the welder on his way home from work. Then one slammed his rifle butt down on Ryabkov’s face, smashing the bridge of his nose.
“Why don’t you fight for us? You already have a Russian passport,” they demanded. The beating continued as the 42-year-old fell unconscious.
“Let’s finish this off,” one soldier said. A friend ran for Ryabkov’s mother.
Russia has successfully imposed its passports on nearly the entire population of occupied Ukraine by making it impossible to survive without them, coercing hundreds of thousands of people into citizenship ahead of elections Vladimir Putin has made certain he will win, an Associated Press investigation has found. But accepting a passport means that men living in occupied territory can be drafted to fight against the same Ukrainian army that is trying to free them.




Vyacheslav Ryabkov of Ukraine's Kherson region shows the scars on his arms caused by Russian soldiers who cut him with a knife to coerce into accepting Russian domination. (AP)

A Russian passport is needed to prove property ownership and keep access to health care and retirement income. Refusal can result in losing custody of children, jail – or worse. A new Russian law stipulates that anyone in the occupied territories who does not have a Russian passport by July 1 is subject to imprisonment as a “foreign citizen.”
But Russia also offers incentives: a stipend to leave the occupied territory and move to Russia, humanitarian aid, pensions for retirees, and money for parents of newborns – with Russian birth certificates.
Every passport and birth certificate issued makes it harder for Ukraine to reclaim its lost land and children, and each new citizen allows Russia to claim a right – however falsely – to defend its own people against a hostile neighbor.
The AP investigation found that the Russian government has seized at least 1,785 homes and businesses in the Donetsk and Zaporizhzhia regions alone. Ukraine’s Crimean leadership in exile reported on Feb. 25 that of 694 soldiers reported dead in recent fighting for Russia, 525 were likely Ukrainian citizens who had taken Russian passports since the annexation.
AP spoke about the system to impose Russian citizenship in occupied territories to more than a dozen people from the regions, along with the activists helping them to escape and government officials trying to cope with what has become a bureaucratic and psychological nightmare for many.
Ukraine’s human rights ombudsman, Dmytro Lubinets, said “almost 100 percent … of the whole population who still live on temporarily occupied territories of Ukraine” now have Russian passports.
Under international law dating to 1907, it is forbidden to force people “to swear allegiance to the hostile Power.” But when Ukrainians apply for a Russian passport, they must submit biometric data and cell phone information and swear an oath of loyalty.
“People in occupied territories, these are the first soldiers to fight against Ukraine,” said Kateryna Rashevska, a lawyer who helped Ukraine bring a war crimes case against Putin before the International Criminal Court. “For them, it’s logical not to waste Russian people, just to use Ukrainians.”
Changing the law
The combination of force and enticement when it comes to Russian passports dates to the annexation of Crimea in 2014. Russian citizenship was automatically given to permanent residents of Crimea and anyone who refused lost rights to jobs, health care and property.
Nine months into the Russian occupation of the peninsula, 1.5 million Russian passports had been issued there, according to statistics issued by the Russian government in 2015. But Ukrainians say it was still possible to function without one for years afterward.
Beginning in May 2022, Russia passed a series of laws to make it easier to obtain passports for Ukrainians, mostly by lifting the usual residency and income requirements. In April 2023 came the punishment: Anyone in the occupied territories who did not accept Russian citizenship would be considered stateless and required to register with Russia’s Internal Affairs Ministry.

Russian officials threatened to withhold access to medical care for those without a Russian passport, and said one was needed to prove property ownership. Hundreds of properties deemed “abandoned” were seized by the Russian government.
“You can see it in the passport stamps: If someone got their passport in August 2022 or earlier, they are most certainly pro-Russian. If a passport was issued after that time – it was most certainly forced,” said Oleksandr Rozum, a lawyer who left the occupied city of Berdyansk and now handles the bureaucratic gray zone for Ukrainians under occupation who ask for his help, including property records, birth and death certificates and divorces.
The situation is different depending on the whims of the Russian officials in charge of a particular area, according to interviews with Ukrainians and a look at the Telegram social media accounts set up by occupation officials.
In an interview posted recently, Yevgeny Balitsky, the Moscow-installed governor in Zaporizhzhia, said anyone who opposed the occupation was subject to expulsion. “We understood that these people could not be won over and that they would have to be dealt with even more harshly in the future,” he said. Balitsky then alluded to making “some extremely harsh decisions that I will not talk about.”
Even children are forced to take Russian passports.
A decree signed Jan. 4 by Putin allows for the fast-tracking of citizenship for Ukrainian orphans and those “without parental care,” who include children whose parents were detained in the occupied territories. Almost 20,000 Ukrainian children have disappeared into Russia or Russian-held territories, according to the Ukrainian government, where they can be given passports and be adopted as Russian citizens.
“It’s about eradication of identity,” said Rashevska, the lawyer involved in the war crimes case.
Natalia Zhyvohliad, a mother of nine from a suburb of Berdyansk, had a good idea of what was in store for her children if she stayed.
Zhyvohliad said about half her town of 3,500 people left soon after for Ukrainian-held lands, some voluntarily and some deported through the frontlines on a 40-kilometer (25-mile) walk. Others welcomed the occupation: Her goddaughter eagerly took Russian citizenship, as did some of her neighbors.




50-year-old Natalia Zhyvohliad, an internally displaced person from Nova Petrivka in the Zaporizhzhia region of Ukraine, with her children, daughter-in-law and grandson in their temporary modular house in Kolomyya, Ivano-Frankivsk region on Feb. 13, 2024. (AP)

But she said plenty of people were like her – those the Russians derisively call “waiters”: People waiting for a Ukrainian liberation. She kept her younger children, who range in age from 7 to 18, home from school and did her best to teach them in Ukrainian. But then someone snitched, and she was forced to send them to the Russian school.
At all hours, she said, soldiers would pound on her door and ask why she didn’t have a passport yet. One friend gave in because she needed medicine for a chronic illness. Zhyvohliad held out through the summer, not quite believing the threats to deport her and send her brood to an orphanage in Russia or to dig trenches.
Then last fall, the school headmaster forced her 17-year-old and 18-year-old sons to register for the draft and ordered them to apply for passports in the meantime. Their alternative, the principal said, was to explain themselves to Russia’s internal security services.
By the end of 2023, at least 30,000 Crimean men had been conscripted to serve in the Russian military since the peninsula was annexed, according to a UN report. It was clear to Zhyvohliad what her boys risked.
With tears in her eyes and trembling legs, she went to the passport office.
“I kept a Ukrainian flag during the occupation,” she said. “How could I apply for this nasty thing?”
She hoped to use it just once — at the last Russian checkpoint before the crossing into Ukrainian-held territory.
When Zhyvohliad reached what is known as the filtration point at Novoazovsk, the Russians separated her and her two oldest boys from the rest of the children. They had to sign an agreement to pass a lie detector test. Then Zhyvohliad was pulled aside alone.
For 40 minutes, they went through her phone, took fingerprints and photos and questioned her, but they ultimately let her through. The children were waiting for her on the other side. She misses her home but doesn’t regret leaving.
“I waited until the last moment to be liberated,” she said. “But this thing with my kids possibly being drafted was the last straw.”
Weaponizing health care
Often the life-or-death decision is more immediate.
Russian occupation officials have said the day is coming soon when only those with Russian passports and the all-important national health insurance will be able to access care. For some, it’s already here.
The international organization Physicians for Human Rights documented at least 15 cases of people being denied vital medical care in occupied territories between February 2023 and August 2023 because they lacked a Russian passport. Some hospitals even featured a passport desk to speed the process for desperate patients. One hospital in Zaporizhzhia oblast was ordered to close because the medical staff refused to accept Russian citizenship.
Alexander Dudka, the Russian-appointed head of the village of Lazurne in the Kherson region, first threatened to withhold humanitarian aid from residents without Russian citizenship. In August, he added medicine to the list of things the “waiters” would no longer have access to.




A woman is seen in front of posters and photographs of servicemen at a polling station during Russia's presidential election in Donetsk, Russian-controlled Ukraine, on March 16, 2024. (AFP)

Residents, he said in the video on the village Telegram channel, “must respect the country that ensures their safety and which is now helping them live.”
As of Jan. 1, anyone needing medical care in the occupied region must show proof they have mandatory national health insurance, which in turn is only available to Russian citizens.
Last year, “if you weren’t scared or if you weren’t coerced there were places where you could still get medical care,” said Uliana Poltavets, a PHR researcher. “Now it is impossible.”
Dina Urich, who arranges the escapes from occupied territory with the aid group Helping to Leave, said about 400 requests come in each month, but they only have the money and staff for 40 evacuations. Priority goes to those who need urgent medical care, she said. And Russian soldiers at the last checkpoints have started turning back people without the Russian passports.
“You have people constantly dying while waiting for evacuation due to a lack of health care,” she said. ““People will stay there, people will die, people will experience psychological and physical pressure, that is, some will simply die of torture and persecution, while others will live in constant fear.”
Importing loyalty
Along with turning Ukrainians into Russians throughout the occupied territories, the Russian government is bringing in its own people. It is offering rock bottom mortgage rates for anyone from Russia who wants to move there, replacing the Ukrainian doctors, nurses, teachers, police and municipal workers who are now gone.
Half of Zhyvohliad’s village left, either at the start of the war when things looked dark for the Kherson region or after being deported across the frontline by occupation officials. The school principal’s empty home was taken over by a Russian-appointed replacement.
Artillery and airstrikes damaged thousands of homes in the port city of Mariupol, which was besieged by Russian forces for months before falling under their control. Most of the residents fled into Ukrainian-held territory or deep inside Russia. Russians often take over the property.
Russia also offered “residential certificates” and a 100,000 ruble ($1,000) stipend to Ukrainians willing to accept citizenship and live in Russia. For many people tired of listening to the daily sounds of battle and afraid of what the future might bring, it looked like a good option.
This again follows Russia’s actions after the annexation of Crimea: By populating occupied regions with Russian residents, Russia increasingly cements its hold on territories it has seized by force in what many Ukrainians describe as ethnic cleansing.
The process is only accelerating. After capturing the town of Adviivka last month, Russia swooped in with the passports in a matter of days.




Local resident Sergey casts his vote into a mobile ballot box in the basement of a destroyed apartment building in the town of Avdiivka in Russian-controlled Donetsk Region, during Russia's presidential election on March 16, 2024. (REUTERS)

The neighboring Kherson town of Oleshky essentially emptied after the flooding caused by the explosion of the Kakhovka Dam. The housing stipend in Russia looked fabulous by comparison to the shelling and rising waters, said Rima Yaremenko.
She didn’t take it, instead making her way through Russia to Latvia and then to Poland. But she believes the Russians took the opportunity to drive the “waiters” from Oleshky.
“Maybe they wanted to empty the city,” she said. “They occupied it, maybe they thought it would be theirs forever.”
Ryabkov said he was offered the housing stipend when he filled out his passport paperwork but turned it down. He knows plenty of people who accepted though.
By the time the Russian soldiers caught Ryabkov in the street, in December, everyone in his village was either gone or had Russian citizenship. When his mother arrived, he was barely recognizable beneath all the blood and the Russian guns were trained on him. She flung herself over his body.
“Shoot him through me,” she dared them.
They couldn’t bring themselves to shoot an elderly woman, and she eventually dragged him home. They started preparations to leave the next day.
It took time, but they made it out using the Russian passports.
“When I saw our yellow and blue flag, I started to cry,” he said. “I wanted to burn the Russian passport, destroy it, trample it.”
 


Mission specialist for Titan sub owner tells Coast Guard goal was to ‘make dreams come true’

Updated 19 September 2024
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Mission specialist for Titan sub owner tells Coast Guard goal was to ‘make dreams come true’

  • Five people were killed last year when Titan submersible imploded last year enroute to Titanic wreck
  • The deadly accident set off a worldwide debate about the future of private undersea exploration

A mission specialist for the company that owned the Titan submersible that imploded last year told the US Coast Guard on Thursday that the firm was staffed by competent people who wanted to “make dreams come true.”

Renata Rojas was the latest person to testify who was connected to Titan owner OceanGate. An investigatory panel had previously listened to two days of testimony that raised questions about the company’s operations before the doomed mission. OceanGate co-founder Stockton Rush was among five people who died when the submersible imploded en route to the site of the Titanic wreck in June 2023.

Rojas’ testimony struck a different tone than some of the earlier witnesses, who described the company as troubled from the top down and focused more on profit than science or safety.

“I was learning a lot and working with amazing people,” Rojas said. “Some of those people are very hardworking individuals that were just trying to make dreams come true.”

Rojas also said she felt the company was sufficiently transparent during the run-up to the Titanic dive. Her testimony was emotional at times, with the Coast Guard panel proposing a brief break at one point so she could collect herself.

Rojas is a member of the Explorers Club, which lost members Hamish Harding and Paul-Henri Nargeolet in the Titan implosion. The club described Rush as “a friend of The Explorers Club” after the implosion.

“I knew what I was doing was very risky. I never at any point felt unsafe by the operation,” Rojas said in testimony Thursday.

Earlier this month, the Coast Guard opened a public hearing that is part of a high-level investigation into the cause of the implosion. The public hearing began on Sept. 16 and some of the testimony has focused on problems the company had prior to the fatal 2023 dive.

During the hearing, former OceanGate operations director David Lochridge said he frequently clashed with Rush and felt the company was committed only to making money.

“The whole idea behind the company was to make money,” Lochridge testified. “There was very little in the way of science.”

Also expected to testify on Thursday is former OceanGate scientific director Steven Ross. The hearing is expected to run through Friday with more witnesses still to come and resume next week.

Lochridge and other witnesses have painted a picture of a company led by people who were impatient to get the unconventionally designed craft into the water. The deadly accident set off a worldwide debate about the future of private undersea exploration.

Coast Guard officials noted at the start of the hearing that the submersible had not been independently reviewed, as is standard practice. That and Titan’s unusual design subjected it to scrutiny in the undersea exploration community.

OceanGate, based in Washington state, suspended its operations after the implosion. The company has no full-time employees currently, but has been represented by an attorney during the hearing.

During the submersible’s final dive on June 18, 2023, the crew lost contact after an exchange of texts about the Titan’s depth and weight as it descended. The support ship Polar Prince then sent repeated messages asking if the Titan could still see the ship on its onboard display.

One of the last messages from Titan’s crew to Polar Prince before the submersible imploded stated, “all good here,” according to a visual recreation presented earlier in the hearing.

When the submersible was reported missing, rescuers rushed ships, planes and other equipment to an area about 435 miles (700 kilometers) south of St. John’s, Newfoundland. Four days later, wreckage of the Titan was found on the ocean floor about 330 yards (300 meters) off the bow of the Titanic, Coast Guard officials said.

No one on board survived. Shahzada Dawood and his son Suleman were the other two people killed in the implosion.

OceanGate said it has been fully cooperating with the Coast Guard and NTSB investigations since they began. The Titan had been making voyages to the Titanic wreckage site going back to 2021.


UK urged to scrap ‘racist’ visa route

Updated 19 September 2024
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UK urged to scrap ‘racist’ visa route

  • Long and expensive visa route for immigrants has been labeled ‘racist’ after analysis showed most applicants who feel forced to go through it are people of color
  • Analysis of Home Office data showed that all but one country in the top 10 nationalities who felt forced to use the route were those with predominantly non-white populations

LONDON: The UK has been urged to scrap a 10-year visa route and cap all routes to settlement in the country at five years.

The long and expensive visa route for immigrants has been labeled “racist” after analysis showed most applicants who feel forced to go through it are people of color, according to a report in The Guardian.

The 10-year route to a visa is used by hundreds of thousands of people who are not eligible for other immigration schemes because of a lack of income or professional qualifications. Many work in low-paid jobs, such as cleaning or care work. Other common routes to settlement in the UK take five years.

According to freedom of information data obtained by the charity Ramfel, there are 218,110 people on the 10-year route.

Analysis of Home Office data showed that all but one country in the top 10 nationalities who felt forced to use the route were those with predominantly non-white populations. The top five were Nigeria, Pakistan, India, Ghana and Bangladesh. Overall, 86 percent of people using the route were from Asian or African countries, while 6 percent were from Europe.

People seeking to gain a visa via the 10-year route must renew their leave to remain with the Home Office every 30 months, meaning four renewals. The fee for each renewal is £3,850 ($5,095). The Home Office can grant a fee waiver but many requests are refused.

According to a 2023 report on the 10-year route by the legal advice and support service Greater Manchester Immigration Aid Unit, the think tank the Institute for Public Policy Research and the charity Praxis, the most common way of covering the fees was to borrow money, with many people remaining in debt afterward and struggling to pay for basic living costs.

A GMIAU spokesperson said: “These numbers confirm what people on the 10-year route already know: It is a racist policy. People are being driven into debt, forced to choose between paying thousands of pounds in visa fees to keep their legal status and keeping their families fed and warm.

“Ten years is far too long for anyone to wait to settle. The route must be scrapped. A good place to start would be to cap all routes to settlement at five years.”

Nick Beales, of Ramfel, said: “The 10-year route is an enduring legacy of the hostile environment. Like many other Conservative policies from this period, the racist intent is clear, with African and South Asian nationals far more likely to be placed on this arduous and often brutal route toward securing permanent immigration status.”


New hope in Rohingya camps as Bangladesh’s Nobel-winning leader pledges support

Updated 19 September 2024
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New hope in Rohingya camps as Bangladesh’s Nobel-winning leader pledges support

COX’S BAZAR: Mohammad Jamal heard about Dr. Muhammad Yunus long before the economist became the head of Bangladesh’s new government last month. Like many other Rohingya refugees, he is now pinning his hopes on the Nobel prizewinner changing his life.

An internationally renowned microfinance pioneer who in 2006 was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for his work, Yunus was appointed to lead Bangladesh’s interim administration following the ousting of veteran prime minister Sheikh Hasina.

With strong ties to the international community, donors and Western governments, he has promised reforms and also support to the 1.2 million Rohingya refugees that Bangladesh is hosting.

“We have heard of Dr. Yunus earlier many times. He raised his voice for our wellbeing in different international media earlier also. Since he is a Nobel laureate, people know him across the world as well (as) in Bangladesh. He is a very good person,” said Jamal, a 27-year-old living in a refugee camp in Cox’s Bazar.

A coastal district in Bangladesh’s east, Cox’s Bazar became the world’s largest refugee settlement with the arrival of hundreds of thousands of Rohingya fleeing death in neighboring Myanmar during a military crackdown in 2017.

Referred to as ethnic cleansing and genocide by various UN agencies, International Criminal Court officials, human rights groups and governments, the global outrage over the violence against the Rohingya initially brought robust aid to Bangladesh to help it support them, but it has rapidly declined over the years, especially since the COVID-19 pandemic.

The World Food Programme last year even resorted to reducing the value of its food assistance to those living in Cox’s Bazar camps.

As Yunus has been credited with lifting millions of Bangladeshis out of poverty through his microlending programs, the Rohingya believe he will find a way to help them, too.

“Refugee life is not a dignified one. For everything, we need to ask or depend on aid. If we could be provided with some livelihood training and then informal working opportunities, it would make us self-reliant to some extent,” said Amena Begum, a 38-year-old mother of three.

“I heard that he spent years of his life for the well-being of the rural people, especially for empowering the women. So, I hope that he will take some initiatives for changing the fate of the Rohingya women also.”

In his first major government policy address in late August, Yunus pledged that his government “will continue to support the million-plus Rohingya people sheltered in Bangladesh” and that it needs the “sustained efforts of the international community for Rohingya humanitarian operations and their eventual repatriation to their homeland, Myanmar, with safety, dignity and full rights.”

Despite multiple attempts from Bangladeshi authorities, a UN-backed repatriation and resettlement process for the Rohingya has failed to take off for the past few years, as in Myanmar they are denied the most basic rights.

Currently, it is also not possible as violence in their home Rakhine state has escalated in recent months amid fighting between Myanmar’s ruling junta and the Arakan Army, a powerful ethnic militia.

With a new wave of those fleeing Myanmar for Bangladesh, Yunus earlier this month called for a fast-tracked third-country resettlement of Rohingya — a plan that has been on the table for years but has so far resulted in insignificant response abroad.

But before that happens, refugees hope there are ways in which Yunus’s government will improve on the previous regime’s handling of the crisis.

With Bangladesh not being a signatory to the 1951 UN Refugee Convention, the Rohingya do not have access to formal education and cannot be legally employed to earn their livelihood.

“As a Nobel peace laureate, I hope he will stand beside the genocide survivors and oppressed Rohingyas, (that) he will provide us with better education opportunities until we get the chance of repatriation,” said Mohammad Rizwan, 26-year-old Rohingya volunteer and activist in Cox’s Bazar.

“As a Nobel laureate, he understands the importance of the rights for human beings and the agony of having a life without rights. That’s why we are expecting that, Dr. Yunus will do something new for us.”


India’s Modi to visit US for Quad meeting, UN summit

Updated 19 September 2024
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India’s Modi to visit US for Quad meeting, UN summit

NEW DELHI:Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi will take part in the Quad Leaders’ Summit hosted by US President Joe Biden and attend the UN’s Summit of the Future in New York as part of his upcoming visit to America, the Ministry of External Affairs said on Thursday.

Modi’s three-day visit to the US will begin on Sept. 21 in Wilmington, Delaware — Biden’s hometown — for the Quad meeting comprising also Japan and Australia.

“The Quad has a very, very full and substantive agenda on this occasion,” India’s Foreign Secretary Vikram Misri told journalists at a press conference in New Delhi.

Misri added that the leaders would also cover health security, climate change, critical and emerging technologies, maritime security and counter-terrorism.

“This upcoming visit offers … the Quad leaders the opportunity to review progress achieved in the last one year and set the agenda for the next year.”

Modi is expected to hold bilateral meetings with Biden, Japanese PM Fumio Kishida and Australian PM Anthony Albanese on the sidelines of the Quad summit.

This is the fourth leaders’ summit of the Quad — a four-state strategic security dialogue — which positions itself against China’s growing-assertiveness in the Asia-Pacific region.

Modi’s US trip will also see the 74-year-old premier attend a gathering organized by the Indian diaspora in Long Island, New York, as well as a business roundtable with leaders of US tech companies.

“The prime minister will also be attending a business roundtable with CEOs of leading US companies in the cutting-edge areas of artificial intelligence, semiconductors, quantum computing and biotechnology,” Misri said, adding that details of attendees are still being finalized.

On his last day in the US, Modi will speak at the UN’s Summit of the Future, where world leaders are expected to address current and emerging global challenges.

India’s foreign ministry did not confirm that Modi would meet with former US President Donald Trump as a part of the visit, after the Republican presidential nominee announced it on Wednesday.

In 2019, Trump joined Modi at a “Howdy Modi” rally in Houston, Texas, that drew about 50,000 people and was billed as one of the largest receptions of a foreign leader in the US.

When Trump made his inaugural visit to India in February 2020, Modi hosted him in his home state of Gujarat, where the “Namaste Trump” welcome event was attended by around 100,000 people.


Portugal tackles last of deadly northern forest fires

Updated 19 September 2024
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Portugal tackles last of deadly northern forest fires

  • The wildfires, which sprang up over the weekend fed by crushing heat and strong winds, have killed five people, four of them firefighters
  • Another 77 people were injured, 12 of them seriously

AGUEDA, Portugal: Portugal’s firefighters have mastered most of the deadly forest fires in the north of the country, according to official data Thursday.
And improving weather conditions have raised hopes that they could extinguish the last of the blazes by the end of the day.
The wildfires, which sprang up over the weekend fed by crushing heat and strong winds, have killed five people, four of them firefighters. Another 77 people were injured, 12 of them seriously.
By late morning on Thursday the civil protection service website said 1,200 firefighters were battling the six remaining fires in the northern districts of Aveiro and Viseu.
A day earlier, 3,900 firefighters were tackling 42 active fires, supported by more than a thousand vehicles and around 30 aircraft.
But overnight, the teams brought several blazes in villages in the Aveiro region covering a front of around 100 kilometers (60 miles) under control.
Temperatures have dropped since the weekend and rain is forecast for Friday.
But there has been extensive damage in the north and center of the country, much of it to the eucalyptus groves there.
One estimate issued Wednesday by the Copernicus observatory said at least 15,000 hectares (37,000 acres) of vegetation had been destroyed.
And data from the European Forest Fires Information System (Effis) said the total area hit by the recent fires came to 100,000 hectares: 10 times more than the area burnt since the beginning of summer.
Dozens of houses were also destroyed or damaged.