Month: June 2022

Mohammed Zubair of AltNews has been accused of insulting religious beliefs on Twitter, a network of media organisations said.

Opposition leaders and journalists have condemned the arrest.

They said it was a clear attempt by the Hindu-nationalist government to clamp down on those who expose hate speech.

Mr Zubair recently highlighted comments of a spokesperson of the governing Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) allegedly insulting the Prophet Muhammad during a television debate. His tweet was widely shared and led to several Muslim countries lodging strong protests with India.

In recent weeks, Hindu nationalists have drawn attention to past comments made by Mr Zubair and demanded that he be prosecuted for hurting their religious feelings.

A prominent Indian journalist, Mohammad Zubair started the fact-checking website AltNews with former engineer Pratik Sinha in 2017.

The website quickly rose to prominence for its diligent work in combating misinformation and fake news in the country.

Fact checks from AltNews are frequently shared by Mr Zubair on Twitter where he has more than half a million followers.

Last week, Mr Zubair posted an e-mail from Twitter saying the microblogging site had received a request from the government claiming that his account had violated Indian laws.

He later received another e-mail saying his tweets on provocative comments made by a Hindu group had been withheld in India under the country’s IT laws.

On Monday, Mr Zubair was detained over a complaint from a Twitter account that said he insulted Hindus in a 2018 post commenting on the renaming of a hotel after the Hindu monkey god Hanuman, the ANI news agency reported, citing senior Delhi police officials.

A statement by the police later said that the tweet had been amplified by Mr Zubair’s Twitter followers and “created a series of debates/hate mongering”.

Police claim their investigation found Mr Zubair’s conduct “questionable” which “warranted his custodial interrogation”.

Pratik Sinha, also a co-founder of AltNews, who accompanied him to the police, said neither he nor Mr Zubair’s lawyers were provided with a copy of the complaint on which the arrest was made.

They were also initially not told where he was being taken after being detained.

Mr Zubair was produced before a local magistrate late Monday night who granted the police one day’s custody. Following this, he was allowed to meet his lawyer.

Mr Zubair is known to keep a hawk eye on hate speech and Twitter posts on comments made by supporters of the BJP have invited intense backlash.

Many journalists and activists have been demanding his immediate release.

“Zubair who routinely busted fake news, exposed the hate machinery in India has just been arrested,” said Rana Ayyub, a Muslim journalist. “The country is punishing those who reported, documented the decline.”

Opposition Congress party leader Rahul Gandhi tweeted: “Every person exposing BJP’s hate, bigotry and lies is a threat to them. Arresting one voice of truth will only give rise to a thousand more.”

Police say the arrest is based on a Twitter post by an account called Hanuman Bhakt, meaning worshipper of the monkey god Hanuman.

The anonymous account, created last October, had just one follower until Tuesday morning. It has since risen rapidly to cross 1,400 followers.

The complaint against Mr Zubair is based on a 2018 tweet in which he had shared a photo of a hotel signboard modified from ‘Honeymoon Hotel’ to ‘Hanuman Hotel’.

Many pointed out that the photo was actually a screengrab from a 1983 Bollywood comedy by acclaimed director Hrishikesh Mukherjee.

On 19 June, the Hanuman Bhakt account shared this four-year-old tweet, saying it was a “direct insult” to Hindus. The account also tagged the Delhi Police, asking them to take “immediate action” against Mr Zubair.

For the next two weeks only buses, trains, and vehicles used for medical services and transporting food will be allowed to fill up with fuel.

Schools in urban areas have shut and officials have told the country’s 22 million residents to work from home.

The South Asian nation is in talks over a bailout deal as it struggles to pay for imports such as fuel and food.

On Monday, the government said it will ban private vehicles from buying petrol and diesel until 10 July.

Bandula Gunewardena, a spokesperson for Sri Lanka’s cabinet, said Sri Lanka “has never faced such a severe economic crisis in its history”.

The cash-strapped country has also sent officials to the major energy producers Russia and Qatar in a bid to secure cheap oil supplies.

Sri Lanka’s economy has been hit hard by the pandemic, rising energy prices, and populist tax cuts.

Without enough foreign currencies to pay for imports of essential goods, an acute shortage of food, fuel and medicines has helped to push the cost of living to record highs.

Over the weekend, officials said the country had only 9,000 tonnes of diesel and 6,000 tonnes of petrol to fuel essential services in the coming days.

It has been estimated that the stocks would last for less than a week, under regular demand.

“We are doing everything we can to get new stocks but we don’t know when that will be,” power and energy minister Kanchana Wijesekera told reporters on Sunday.

Alex Holmes, a senior economist at Oxford Economics, told the BBC the fuel restrictions were “yet another small sign of a worsening crisis”.

“Mobility appears to have already been severely limited given that people were waiting in [long] queues for fuel. But the complete ban for private vehicles goes one step further, and will compound the economic pain,” he added.

In May, the country defaulted on its debts with international lenders for the first time in its history.

Last week, a team from the International Monetary Fund arrived in Sri Lanka for talks over a $3bn (£2.4bn) bailout deal.

The government is also seeking assistance from India and China to import essential items.

Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe said earlier this month that the country needed at least $5bn over the next six months to pay for essential goods such as food, fuel and fertiliser.

In recent weeks, the government has also called on farmers to grow more rice and given government officials an extra day off a week to grow food, amid fears of a shortage.

Two people were killed and 21 injured on Saturday after a gunman opened fire outside multiple city centre bars.

Police described the attack as “Islamist terrorism” and said all upcoming Pride events should be cancelled for safety reasons.

Extremists consider LGBT people “the enemy”, the national police chief said.

Law enforcement officials requested that all Pride events be indefinitely postponed on Monday because the gatherings remained a target.

“The threat-assessment is still standing. We have an unclear terror situation,” Oslo police official Martin Strand pleaded on Monday, urging people not to attend an event outside Oslo’s city hall to remember the victims of Saturday’s attack.

But thousands ignored that advice and gathered there anyway, holding up placards with defiant messages such as “you can’t cancel us” and “sexual freedom”.

“I feel much safer here than anywhere else right now,” protester Marie Sværen told Norwegian public broadcaster NRK at Monday’s unofficial rally.

Another attendee Rain Vangen Dalberg explained her decision to attend: “It is to show that the fight is progressing.”

Other activists criticised the police’s attempt to cancel the event, arguing it was the police’s job to protect people from extremists rather than cave in to their wishes.

The shootings happened in the early hours of Saturday in and around Oslo’s London Pub – a popular LGBTQ+ venue – the Herr Nilsen jazz club, and another pub.

On Monday, Oslo District Court remanded in custody for four weeks the 43-year-old suspect accused of carrying out Saturday’s deadly attack.

Zaniar Matapour, who has been charged with terrorist acts, murder, and attempted murder, has been ordered to have no contact with the outside world in that time.

Police said they were still investigating Mr Matapour’s motive and that the suspect had so far refused to be interrogated.

The country’s intelligence services has described the attack as “an act of Islamist extremism”.

The suspect had been known to Norwegian intelligence since 2015, with concerns about his radicalisation and membership of “an extremist Islamist network”.

Last month intelligence officers interviewed him but did not detect any “violent intent”.

Eyewitnesses said the attacker took out a gun from his bag and started firing in and around three venues on Saturday in Oslo’s city centre, forcing terrified people to either throw themselves to the ground or flee.

The attacker was arrested by police officers minutes later, helped by bystanders. Two weapons were retrieved at the crime scene by police, one of them a fully automatic gun.

On Saturday the terror alert level in Norway was raised to its highest level.

Some 1,000 civilians were estimated to be inside the busy mall at the time of the attack at around 15:50 (12:50 GMT), President Volodymyr Zelensky said.

The leaders of the G7 group of richest nations – who are meeting in Germany – condemned the attack as “abominable”.

“Indiscriminate attacks on innocent civilians constitute a war crime,” they said in a joint statement.

Russia has been blamed for the attack, which also injured at least 59 people, and there are fears the death toll will continue to rise.

Pictures online showed the building engulfed in flames and thick black smoke billowing into the sky.

Ukraine’s President Zelensky described the attack as one of the “most brazen terrorist acts in European history”.

He said the mall had no strategic value to Russia and posed no danger to its forces – “only the attempt of people to live a normal life, which so angers the occupiers”.

“Only totally insane terrorists, who should have no place on earth, can strike missiles at such an object,” he added.

Russia’s Deputy Ambassador to the UN, Dmitry Polyanskiy, called the attack a “Ukrainian provocation”, but cited no evidence to suggest that the missile strike had been staged.

The local governor, Dmytro Lunin, described the attack as a crime against humanity, writing on Telegram that is was “an obvious and cynical act of terror against the civilian population”.

Authorities say 440 people from emergency services are working on location, including 14 psychologists brought in to support those affected.

Photos from the scene show the blackened and charred shell of the building with the roof caved in.

In one video taken shortly after the strike, a man can be heard calling out: “Is anybody alive… anybody alive?” Soon after, ambulances arrived to take the injured to hospital.

But there are still people missing and as night fell, family members gathered at a hotel over the road, where rescue crews have set up a base to wait for any news. Lights and generators have been brought to the site so crews can continue the search overnight, Reuters news agency reports.

The central-eastern city of Kremenchuk is located about 130km (81 miles) from Russian areas of control.

Sophie Williams, BBC News

Here in Kremenchuk, you can still smell the smoke throughout the town, hours after the missile strike on the shopping mall.

All that is left is the mangled shell of the building.

The area is eerily quiet: the only sound is that of the rescuers moving debris as they search for people underneath.

An official informs us that the fire has been fully extinguished, but smoke is still billowing from the building.

The mall was struck at 16:00 local time and it is not yet clear how many people were inside when it happened. But there are fears that the death toll could rise.

The Ukrainian Air Force command said the shopping centre was struck by Kh-22 missiles launched from Tu-22M3 long-range bombers. However, the BBC has been unable to verify this.

“The centre was just destroyed. Before, we had strikes on the outskirts of the city, this time around, this is the centre of the city,” an eyewitness, Vadym Yudenko told the BBC.

“I’m out of words,” he added. “I did not expect that something like this could happen in my town.”

The missile strike took place as the leaders of Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the US and UK gathered in Germany for the G7 summit to discuss – among other things – toughening sanctions against Russia.

In addition to strongly condemning the attack, a joint statement issued by the Western leaders vowed to “continue to provide financial, humanitarian as well as military support for Ukraine, for as long as it takes”.

Kremenchuk, in the Poltava province of Ukraine, is one of Ukraine’s largest industrial cities, with a population of nearly 220,000 people in a 2021 census.

It is not the first time the city has been hit by missiles – there was one strike recorded in April and another 10 days ago at a nearby oil refinery.

A fire official said 16 people, including four children, had also been taken to hospital.

The survivors were “hot to the touch” and suffering from heat stroke and heat exhaustion.

San Antonio, which is 250km (150 miles) from the US-Mexican border, is a major transit route for people-smugglers.

Human traffickers often use lorries to transport undocumented migrants after meeting them in remote areas once they have managed to cross into the United States.

“They had families… and were likely trying to find a better life,” San Antonio Mayor Ron Nirenberg said. “It’s nothing short of a horrific, human tragedy.”

Emergency responders initially arrived at the scene at about 18:00 local time (23:00 GMT) after responding to reports of a dead body, San Antonio fire chief Charles Hood told reporters.

“We’re not supposed to open up a truck and see stacks of bodies in there. None of us come to work imagining that,” he said.

He added that the vehicle, which had been abandoned by its driver, had no working air conditioning and there was no drinking water inside it.

San Antonio’s climate is blisteringly hot in the summer months, with temperatures there reaching 39.4C (103F) on Monday.

Mexico’s Foreign Minister, Marcelo Ebrard, said that two Guatemalans were among those taken to hospital. The nationalities of the other victims was not immediately clear.

Three people are being held in custody and the investigation has been handed over to federal agents.

Mexican Consul General Rubén Minutti has been dispatched to the scene, while the consulate in San Antonio said it would provide “all the support” if Mexican citizens are among the dead.

Angelica Casas in San Antonio

It’s dark now and only a few law enforcement vehicles and some police tape cordoning off a dark road make evident that this is the scene of a mass casualty event.

The victims, presumed to be migrants, likely died of heat exhaustion or dehydration.

Edward Reyna, a security guard at a lumber yard just yards away, said he was not surprised to arrive for his night shift and hear this news.

He’s lost count of the times he’s seen migrants jumping off the train that passes right next to where the lorry was found.

“I thought sooner or later, somebody was going to get hurt,” Mr Reyna said. “The cartels that bring them over don’t care about them.”

This story has played out in San Antonio before, but not to this magnitude.

In 2017, 10 immigrants were found dead inside a similar tractor trailer outside a Walmart – also on the city’s south side.

San Antonio’s far south side is a corridor with two main highways connecting the city to Texas border towns.

Mostly rural communities, a few junkyards and a handful of developing neighbourhoods in this part of San Antonio make it easy for a lorry this size to go unnoticed – until it doesn’t.

US Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas, whose department has taken over the investigation, said: “Human smugglers are callous individuals who have no regard for the vulnerable people they exploit and endanger in order to make a profit.”

Texas’s Republican Governor Greg Abbott blamed US President Joe Biden for the deaths, describing them as a “result of his deadly open border policies”.

Beto O’Rourke, the Democratic candidate running against Mr Abbott, said the reports were devastating and called for urgent action to “dismantle human smuggling rings and replace them with expanded avenues for legal migration”.

Immigration is a contentious political issue in the United States, where in May a record 239,000 undocumented migrants were detained crossing into the country from Mexico – many traveling along extremely risky and unsafe routes.

US law enforcement officials are on track to exceed the record 1.73 million border arrests made in 2021, with large numbers of people continuing to cross from Central American countries such as Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador.

Fleeing poverty and violence in Central America, many of the undocumented migrants end up paying huge sums of cash to people-smugglers to get them across the US border.

Over recent years, there have been many similar examples of migrants perishing during their journey, but no single event as deadly as what was discovered on Monday.

After the tragedy was discovered, the Catholic Archbishop of San Antonio, Gustavo Garcia-Siller tweeted: “Lord have mercy on them. They hoped for a better life.”

“Once again, the lack of courage to deal with immigration reform is killing and destroying lives,” he added.

Speaking to the BBC from San Antonio, KENS5 local reporter Matt Houston said: “It is our understanding right now that if this is a human smuggling incident – as it appears – it would be the deadliest of its kind in American history.”

He said the risks faced by families crossing into the United States were formidable – and in recent days, the area had been struck by a heatwave.

By 295 votes to 221, MPs gave initial approval to a controversial bill allowing ministers to scrap parts of the Northern Ireland Protocol.

It comes despite warnings, including from former PM Theresa May, that it breaches international law.

The move also risks fresh tensions with the EU, which has taken legal action.

But Foreign Secretary Liz Truss said there was no other option to “fix” problems the deal has created.

The bill would allow ministers to change the part of 2019 deal that introduced post-Brexit checks on goods sent from Great Britain to Northern Ireland.

Those were designed to avoid checks at the UK’s border with the Republic of Ireland, but they are highly unpopular among unionists in Northern Ireland.

The bill began its journey through Parliament on Monday, with MPs voting to give it initial approval and allowing it to progress for further scrutiny.

The government won the vote with a majority of 74, with Northern Ireland’s Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) MPs supporting the bill.

Voting lists showed no Conservative MPs voted against the bill. However during the debate, some joined opposition MPs in warning that the legislation breaches international law.

Ms Truss argued the bill was justified because the EU had not shown enough “flexibility” during negotiations change the relevant part of the 2019 deal, known as the Northern Ireland Protocol.

She told MPs that ministers expected the passing of the bill to lead to the resumption of power-sharing in Northern Ireland, which has been put on hold since May’s assembly elections.

Nationalist party Sinn Féin won the most seats in May’s elections, but the DUP, which came second, is refusing to re-enter a power-sharing executive until its concerns about the protocol are addressed.

Speaking to reporters earlier, DUP leader Sir Jeffrey Donaldson said the party would “consider what steps we can take” in terms of returning, if the bill gets through all its Commons stages intact.

Speaking in favour of the bill during the Commons debate, he said the protocol had had a “devastating impact” on Northern Ireland.

Ms Truss added that the bill was justified by the “worsening situation” in Northern Ireland, and the UK had been left with “no other choice” because the EU had ruled out changes to the text of the 2019 agreement the UK had signed.

She added that the move was legal because changes to the protocol were required to preserve Northern Ireland’s 1998 Belfast/Good Friday peace agreement.

However, Ms May – who as prime minister started Brexit negotiations in 2017 before quitting in 2019 after failing to get her exit deal passed in Parliament – said the bill would fail to achieve its aims.

She questioned the argument that a legal principle of necessity allows for the government’s plans, saying: “Necessity suggests urgent… There is nothing urgent about this bill.

“It has not been introduced as emergency legislation. It’s likely to take not weeks but months to get through Parliament.”

She said she had concluded it was “not legal”, and would “diminish the standing of the United Kingdom in the eyes of the world”.

She told MPs she “cannot support” the plans. Voting lists show she did not take part in the vote, suggesting she may have abstained.

Fellow Tory Simon Hoare, who chairs the Commons Northern Ireland Committee, said the bill represented “playing fast and loose with our international reputation” – whilst former Tory international development secretary Andrew Mitchell said it “brazenly breaks” the UK’s obligations.

Labour opposed the bill, with shadow foreign secretary David Lammy saying it would alienate the UK’s allies, and risk a trade war with the EU during a cost-of-living crisis.

Although stating that the EU had been “too rigid as well,” he said it would be better for the UK to continue negotiations with the EU.

Earlier, Prime Minister Boris Johnson said he believed the bill on the Northern Ireland Protocol could be passed by the end of the year.

Speaking to the BBC at the G7 summit in Germany, Mr Johnson said the government’s plan could be carried out “fairly rapidly”.

The government is aiming to fast-track the bill through the House of Commons before the summer recess in mid-July.

It is expected to face stern opposition in the House of Lords, however – with Mr Hoare predicting it could take until next spring to get it through Parliament.

The bill has also prompted a backlash from the EU, which said it would be restarting legal action against the UK after the legislation was published.

He will give a speech on Tuesday – but has reportedly already asked the prime minister to increase defence spending to 2.5% of GDP by 2028.

The UK is currently spending around 2% of GDP on defence, matching the target set by the Nato for member nations.

The government announced an increase in military spending in 2020.

Mr Wallace will tell a conference organised by the Royal United Services Institute think tank that, in light of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the threat has changed and governments must be prepared to invest more to keep people safe.

Defence sources have told the BBC’s defence correspondent Jonathan Beale that Mr Wallace wants an increase in the defence budget by the middle of this decade.

In a letter to Prime Minister Boris Johnson, the defence secretary also urged the PM to call on other Nato leaders to raise the spend per country to 2.5% of national income, Talk TV repots.

In response to questions about the letter’s contents, a defence source told the PA Media news agency that the Ministry of Defence does not comment on leaks.

“The defence secretary and the prime minister have always said that the government will respond to any changes in threat which is why in 2020 the Ministry of Defence received a record defence settlement,” the source said.

The worsening security situation for the UK will also be highlighted by the new head of the armed forces in his first major speech.

General Sir Patrick Sanders will say he has never known such a clear threat “as the brutal aggression of President Putin”.

He is set to liken the war in Ukraine to the build up to World War Two, describing the Russian invasion of Ukraine as a “1937 moment” for the UK.

The speeches come ahead of a summit of Nato leaders in Madrid, which is also expected to address allies readiness and spending on defence.

The defensive alliance’s secretary general Jens Stoltenberg has already made clear he wants a target of members spending 2% of their annual national income on defence to be a base line, rather than a ceiling.

The first minister will make a statement in the Scottish Parliament shortly after 14:00 BST.

She is expected to lay out her plan for holding a lawful vote in October next year, with or without the formal consent of UK ministers.

The UK government has held firm its view that “now is not the time” for another referendum.

The statement comes after Ms Sturgeon published the first in a series of papers earlier this month aimed at making a fresh case for independence.

In the 2014 referendum on Scottish independence, the “no” side won with 55% of the vote.

Ms Sturgeon claims that she has a democratic mandate for a referendum as independence-supporting parties – the SNP and the Scottish Greens – have a majority at Holyrood.

And she said the UK government’s “continued efforts to thwart the will of the people” would weaken its standing at home and on the international stage.

Ms Sturgeon explained: “Bluntly, the UK government is in no position to lecture any other country about the need to respect democratic norms if it is intent on trying to thwart democracy at home.

“The UK is either a partnership of consent or it is not a partnership worthy of the name.”

She added: “Westminster rule over Scotland cannot be based on anything other than a consented, voluntary partnership.

“It is time to give people the democratic choice they have voted for, and then with independence to build a more prosperous, fairer country in a true partnership of equals between Scotland and our friends in the rest of the UK.”

Scottish Secretary Alister Jack has said he does not consider the pro-independence majority at Holyrood a mandate because “less than a third of the electorate” voted for the SNP.

The 2014 independence referendum went ahead after the UK government agreed to a section 30 order, allowing Holyrood to pass laws in areas normally reserved to Westminster.

UK minsters have said they would consider any request for a section 30 order but they have indicated they would be unlikely to grant the request.

Ahead of her statement to Holyrood later, Ms Sturgeon promised a “significant update” on how a “lawful” vote could be held without the UK government agreeing to the power transfer.

She has said her plan would show how the Scottish government intends to “forge a way forward, if necessary without a section 30 order”.

It has led to speculation that she could be a preparing a “consultative” referendum on independence.

This could see proposals for people to be asked a different question to the 2014 referendum’s “yes/no” on whether Scotland should become an independent country.

For example, voters could instead be asked if they believed the Scottish government should begin negotiations with the UK government on Scotland leaving the UK.

Some commentators believe this is less likely to be successfully blocked by the UK government through the courts

There have been suggestions that the pro-UK parties could boycott any referendum that was held without the consent of the UK government – which could potentially refuse to recognise the result.

On Sunday, Scottish Conservative leader Douglas Ross said he would not take part in a “pretend referendum”.

He accused Ms Sturgeon of playing “games” when there were more important issues facing the country.

A spokesman for the UK government said it was not the time to be talking about another referendum.

He said: “People across Scotland rightly want and expect to see both of their governments working together with a relentless focus on the issues that matter to them, their families and communities.

“That means tackling the cost of living, protecting our long-term energy security, leading the international response against Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and growing our economy so that everyone has access to the opportunities, skills and jobs for the future.”

Meanwhile, Labour’s Ian Murray, the shadow Scotland secretary, said: “This is a transparent attempt to whip up division and distract from the chaos engulfing the SNP.

“Nicola Sturgeon is in no position to lecture anyone about listening to the people of Scotland, as she ignores the cost of living crisis hanging over people’s lives and ploughs ahead with a costly, unwanted and damaging referendum.

“The reality is the Tories and the SNP are working hand in hand to tear communities apart in a bid to distract from their own failures.”

Plan A was to win a Holyrood majority for indyref2 and watch Westminster opposition crumble. That hasn’t worked.

The SNP and Greens have their majority but it has not produced a referendum deal with the UK government and there’s not one in prospect.

Plan B was to introduce a referendum bill at Holyrood anyway and fight any legal challenge in court. That’s still possible.

It may be there is a further initiative but exactly what that is and whether it amounts to a plan C or not is not clear.

The details are being kept really tight. Nicola Sturgeon is only sharing details with her full Cabinet on Tuesday morning.

Ahead of her statement, she’s warned UK ministers not to “thwart democracy” but the Conservatives accuse her of an “obsessive push” for an unwanted referendum.