KYIV, Ukraine: The sense of dread deepened Tuesday in Ukraine because of warnings that Russia may try to spoil the country’s Independence Day holiday and mark the war’s six-month point with intensified attacks. The US reinforced the worry with a security alert citing “information that Russia is stepping up efforts to launch strikes against Ukraine’s civilian infrastructure and government facilities in the coming days.” As it has done previously, it urged American citizens to “depart Ukraine now.” Several European countries issued similar warnings. Kyiv authorities banned mass gatherings in the capital through Thursday for fear of missile attacks around Independence Day, which, like the six-month mark in the war, falls on Wednesday. The holiday celebrates Ukraine’s independence from the Soviet Union in 1991. “Our country is having a very hard time, and we need to be careful,” 26-year-old Vlad Mudrak said in support of the ban. Anxiety also mounted after the weekend car bombing outside Moscow that killed the daughter of a leading right-wing Russian political theorist. Russia accused Ukraine of carrying out the attack. While Ukraine denied involvement, the bloodshed stirred fears of Russian retaliation. Hundreds of people paid tribute at a memorial service Tuesday to the bombing victim, Darya Dugina, 29, the daughter of Alexander Dugin, a writer dubbed “Putin’s brain” and “Putin’s Rasputin” because of his purported influence on Russian President Vladimir Putin. Dugina, a pro-Kremlin TV commentator, died when the SUV she was driving blew up Saturday night as she was returning home from a patriotic festival. Her father, a strong supporter of the invasion of Ukraine, was widely believed to be the intended target. Over the weekend, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky warned that Russia “may try to do something particularly nasty, something particularly cruel” this week. On Tuesday, however, Zelensky stressed defiance rather than worry when he raised the national flag at a memorial one day ahead of Independence Day. “The blue and yellow flag of Ukraine will again fly where it rightfully should be — in all temporarily occupied cities and villages of Ukraine,” he said, including the Crimea Peninsula, which Russia annexed in 2014. He added: “It is necessary to liberate Crimea from occupation. It will end where it had started.” At a separate event, Zelensky appeared to downplay the threats this week, indicating that at most, he expected increased intensity rather than new targets, and he added, “No one wants to die, but no one is afraid of Russia, and this is the most important signal.” NATO, meanwhile, said Zelensky can continue to count on the 30-nation alliance for help in defending itself in what Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg called “a grinding war of attrition.” The war broke out on Feb. 24. “This is a battle of wills and a battle of logistics. Therefore, we must sustain our support for Ukraine for the long term so that Ukraine prevails as a sovereign, independent nation,” Stoltenberg said at an international conference on Crimea. One particular source of foreboding is Europe’s largest nuclear power plant, in southeastern Ukraine, where shelling has raised fears of a catastrophe. Shelling close to the Zaporizhzhia plant continued early Tuesday. Regional Gov. Valentyn Reznichenko said Russian forces fired on Marhanets and Nikopol, two towns less than a dozen kilometers (7 miles) from the power station. The UN Security Council was scheduled to meet Tuesday to discuss the danger. Another source of concern is the fate of Ukrainian prisoners of war. Michelle Bachelet, UN high commissioner for human rights, cited reports that Russia and its separatist allies in eastern Ukraine are planning to put Ukrainian POWs on trial, possibly in the coming days. The Kremlin has denounced Ukrainian prisoners as Nazis, war criminals and terrorists, and several prisoners have been sentenced to death. In the eastern Ukrainian city of Donetsk, Russian authorities reported four people were killed and nearly a dozen wounded in Ukrainian shelling of a separatist headquarters and other buildings. In other developments, the US plans to announce on Wednesday an additional $3 billion or so in aid to train and equip Ukrainian forces, according to American officials speaking on condition of anonymity. They said the money will fund contracts for drones and other weapons. A small bright spot emerged in Ukraine: A new soccer season started Tuesday in Kyiv. Shakhtar Donetsk and Metalist 1925 from Kharkiv — teams from eastern cities fighting for their existence — played to a 0-0 draw in a 65,000-capacity downtown stadium with no fans allowed. “This is work ... to show the world that life in Ukraine does not stop but continues,” Shakhtar coach Igor Jovicevic said.
QUETTA: Hussain Bakhsh, displaced from his village in Pakistan’s southwestern Jaffarabad district after his home was washed away in floods, has been living with 20 relatives in makeshift accommodation on a highway for over a week.
Bakhsh is one of over 30 million people in Pakistan left homeless by this year’s monsoon rains, killing more than 930 people. The southwestern Balochistan province, and Sindh in the south of the country, have been the worst hit by rain damage and floods.
The country’s climate change minister called the situation a “climate-induced humanitarian disaster of epic proportions” on Thursday.
“I have been living with my children for the last eight days in a small camp, which has a plastic roof,” Bakhsh, 70, told Arab News. “I don’t have a tent or food items for my family.
“There was so much flooding and it’s been eight days that we are lying on the roads,” he said.
“Government has done nothing at all and we didn’t get any relief. We are poor people and we are dying due to hunger.”
Indeed, Balochistan, the country’s most impoverished province, has suffered the most from the recent rains, with much of its territory submerged in water and main roads and highways cut off from the rest of the country. Rains have claimed at least 230 lives in the province since mid-June.
Funding and reconstruction efforts will be a challenge for cash-strapped Pakistan, which is having to cut spending to ensure the International Monetary Fund approves the release of much-needed bailout money.
The National Disaster Management Authority said in a report that in the last 24 hours, 150 km of roads had been damaged across the country, and over 82,000 homes damaged.
Since mid-June, when the monsoon began, over 3,000 km of road, 130 bridges and 495,000 homes have been damaged, according to the NDMA’s last situation report.
Balochistan’s main districts, including Jaffarabad, Naseerabad and Sibi, have been inundated, and residents have been sitting in the open air near highways with their belongings and livestock.
Muhammad Suleman, 37, who lost his home, crops and cattle in the Murad Colony neighborhood of Dera Allah Yar, said the floods had completely destroyed his village.
“The government has left us to die under the sky,” he told Arab News. “We are surrounded by water since it has been raining for the last three days. Our children are falling sick, and there is a danger of major outbreak of disease in the entire Naseerabad division.
“One hundred percent of our villages are destroyed. Livestock has died. Wheat stock is finished. Rice fields are destroyed. Houses are damaged. Nothing is left.”
Another resident, Amanullah, said more than five feet of water had entered his home last week, and his family had no option but to leave and find a safer place.
“We have waited for 24 hours, but not a single government representative has come to see our plight. Now, we are moving toward the bypass to seek refuge,” the 18-year-old said, pointing towards the main thoroughfare.
The deputy commissioner of Jaffarabad, Abdul Razzaq Khajak, said about half a million people in the district had been affected by floods, but that the administration was doing its best to provide relief.
“Jaffarabad is not the only district hit by floods but the entire province is drowned,” he told Arab News. “The Provincial Disaster Management Authority has provided us 800 tents and we have distributed them among our people, but the scale of the floods is huge and it will take us time to deliver relief goods in all corners of the district.”
Balochistan Chief Minister Abdul Quddus Bizenjo told reporters the government would provide compensation.
“We will make houses for all these people. Whoever lost their livestock, we will give them animals. Whoever lost their agricultural lands, we will help them revive them,” he said. “Whatever damages have occurred, we will provide the compensation.”
BRUSSELS: A van driver plowed through a crowded cafe terrace in Brussels’ city center shopping and tourism district on Friday, lightly wounding six people before escaping the scene. Belgium’s terrorism tracking Coordination Unit for Threat Analysis (OCAM) briefly raised the threat level in the capital from “medium” to “serious” — from two to three on a scale of four. But the level was dropped back to medium a few hours later after officials found “reassuring elements in their investigation,” an OCAM spokesman told AFP. Initially, police had said it was too soon to speculate on whether the driver had deliberately targeted the diners, but that investigators had found the van and were hunting for the suspect. “Shortly before 1:00 p.m. a van drove into a terrace on Saint Michel street. The driver fled in his vehicle, the emergency services were very quickly on the spot,” a spokeswoman told AFP. “There were six minor injuries that were treated at the scene,” she said. Brussels mayor Philippe Close told the daily Le Soir there had been a mixture of tourists and local shoppers on the terrace and that some of the witnesses were in a state of shock. “What is certain is that the vehicle was traveling at an extremely high speed,” he said. Brussels prosecutors were to hold a news conference later on Friday to provide an update in their investigation.
LONDON: British Iranian businessman Anoosheh Ashoori, held captive by Iran for nearly five years, plans to run the London Marathon on Oct. 2.
The 68-year-old Londoner, who was released with fellow British Iranian detainee Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe in March, said he had thought about running the marathon while in the notorious Evin prison, north of Tehran.
He took to running around the jail’s exercise yard, building up stamina to eventually be able to run for two hours.
While incarcerated, he also read a book on running and now intends to take part in the London event in support of human rights advocacy and campaign group Amnesty International.
“When I read that, I decided it was so inspiring that anytime I was released, I promised myself, whatever age I am, I am going to participate in the London Marathon. By running you can fight going insane, it is magic,” he said.
Ashoori was arrested in August 2017 and convicted of spying for Mossad, Israel’s intelligence service, charges he has always denied. He had been living in the UK for 20 years and was in Iran to visit his elderly mother.
He plans to run the marathon alongside his son, Aryan, and pointed out that they were also doing it to, “let all the ones who are left behind know they are not forgotten.”
He also urged the UK government to do more to secure the release of other dual nationals being held in Iran, including conservationist Morad Tahbaz.
Amnesty International UK described Ashoori’s story as an “amazing turnaround.”
Jo Atkins-Potts, of the group’s UK operation, said: “Since his release in March, Anoosheh has always been clear that he wouldn’t rest until Morad Tahbaz, Mehran Raoof, and others unjustly detained in Iran were released.
“He’s an inspiration and we’re delighted and honored to be campaigning with him.”
DUBAI: Moderna is suing Pfizer and its German partner BioNTech for patent infringement in the development of the first COVID-19 vaccine approved in the United States, alleging they copied technology that Moderna developed years before the pandemic. Pfizer shares fell 1.4 percent before the bell while BioNTech was down about 2 percent. The lawsuit, which seeks undetermined monetary damages, was being filed in US District Court in Massachusetts and the Regional Court of Dusseldorf in Germany, Moderna said in a news release on Friday. “We are filing these lawsuits to protect the innovative mRNA technology platform that we pioneered, invested billions of dollars in creating, and patented during the decade preceding the COVID-19 pandemic,” Moderna Chief Executive Stephane Bancel said in the statement. Moderna Inc, on its own, and the partnership of Pfizer Inc. and BioNTech SE were two of the first groups to develop a vaccine for the novel coronavirus. Just a decade old, Moderna, based in Cambridge, Massachusetts, had been an innovator in the messenger RNA (mRNA) vaccine technology that enabled the unprecedented speed in developing the COVID-19 vaccine. An approval process that previously took years was completed in months, thanks largely to the breakthrough in mRNA vaccines, which teach human cells how to make a protein that will trigger an immune response. Germany-based BioNTech had also been working in this field when it partnered with the US pharma giant Pfizer. The US Food and Drug Administration granted emergency use authorization for the COVID-19 vaccine first to Pfizer/BioNTech in December 2020, then one week later to Moderna. Moderna’s COVID vaccine — its lone commercial product — has brought in $10.4 billion in revenue this year while Pfizer’s vaccine brought in about $22 billion. Moderna alleges Pfizer/BioNTech, without permission, copied mRNA technology that Moderna had patented between 2010 and 2016, well before COVID-19 emerged in 2019 and exploded into global consciousness in early 2020. Early in the pandemic, Moderna said it would not enforce its COVID-19 patents to help others develop their own vaccines, particularly for low- and middle-income countries. But in March 2022 Moderna said it expected companies such as Pfizer and BioNTech to respect its intellectual property rights. It said it would not seek damages for any activity before March 8, 2022. Patent litigation is not uncommon in the early stages of new technology. Pfizer and BioNTech are already facing multiple lawsuits from other companies who say the partnership’s vaccine infringes on their patents. Pfizer/BioNTech have said they will defend their patents vigorously. Germany’s CureVac, for instance, also filed a lawsuit against BioNTech in Germany in July. BioNTech responded in a statement that its work was original. Moderna has also been sued for patent infringement in the United States and has an ongoing dispute with the US National Institutes of Health over rights to mRNA technology. In Friday’s statement, Moderna said Pfizer/BioNTech appropriated two types of intellectual property. One involved an mRNA structure that Moderna says its scientists began developing in 2010 and were the first to validate in human trials in 2015. “Pfizer and BioNTech took four different vaccine candidates into clinical testing, which included options that would have steered clear of Moderna’s innovative path. Pfizer and BioNTech, however, ultimately decided to proceed with a vaccine that has the same exact mRNA chemical modification to its vaccine,” Moderna said in its statement. The second alleged infringement involves the coding of a full-length spike protein that Moderna says its scientists developed while creating a vaccine for the coronavirus that causes Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS). Although the MERS vaccine never went to market, its development helped Moderna rapidly roll out its COVID-19 vaccine. Pfizer said the company had not been served and that they were unable to comment at this time.
MANILA, Philippines: A Philippine ferry carrying 82 passengers and crew caught fire as it was approaching a port south of Manila on Friday and at least 73 of those aboard have been rescued, the coast guard said. Search and rescue efforts were continuing after nightfall for the passengers and crew of the M/V Asia Philippines, an inter-island cargo and passenger vessel which came from nearby Calapan city in Oriental Mindoro province, the coast guard said. A 44-year-old woman who was among those rescued was taken to a hospital with unspecified injuries. Video released by the coast guard showed flames and black smoke billowing from the ferry, which was near other ships more than a kilometer (about a mile) from anchorage waters off Batangas port, coast guard officials said. A ship was assisting two coast guard vessels in the rescue efforts, they said. The cause of the fire was not immediately clear. The ferry can carry up to about 400 passengers, the coast guard said. There have been instances in the past of ferries carrying unlisted passengers in defiance of regulations. Sea accidents are common in the Philippine archipelago because of frequent storms, badly maintained boats, overcrowding and spotty enforcement of safety regulations, especially in remote provinces. In December 1987, the ferry Dona Paz sank after colliding with a fuel tanker, killing more than 4,300 people in the world’s worst peacetime maritime disaster.