Feb 21,2023: President Vladimir Putin today said Russia was suspending its participation in the New START treaty with the U.S. that limits the two sides’ strategic nuclear arsenals. U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken later dubbed the decision “deeply unfortunate and irresponsible.”
Putin provided an assessment of Moscow’s so-called “special military operation” in Ukraine and the impact on Russia’s economy during his state of the nation address Tuesday.
Putin accused Ukraine and the West of provoking the conflict with the expansion of NATO and new European anti-rocket defense systems.
“They started the war, and we used the force in order to stop it,” Putin said according to a translation of the speech in Moscow.
Elsewhere, China’s top diplomat, Wang Yi, is due to visit Moscow Tuesday. He may meet with Putin, according to Russian officials.
The visit follows a surprise trip by U.S. President Joe Biden to Kyiv Monday, when he met with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy ahead of the invasion’s one-year anniversary on Friday.
During the visit, Biden pledged to deliver a new package of U.S. aid to Ukraine worth $500 million. The funding includes artillery ammunition, anti-armour systems and air surveillance radars.
U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Tuesday that Russia’s decision to suspend its participation in a nuclear arms control treaty was “deeply unfortunate and irresponsible.”
“The announcement by Russia that it’s suspending participation is deeply unfortunate and irresponsible,” Blinken told reporters in Athens.
“We’ll be watching carefully to see what Russia actually does. We’ll of course make sure that in any event, we are postured appropriately for the security of our own country and that of our allies,” he added.
Putin’s state of the nation address Tuesday proved that he is in “a completely different reality,” a senior aide to Ukrainian President Zelenskyy said.
During his speech, Putin said Ukraine and the West had “started the war,” citing the expansion of NATO and new European anti-rocket defense systems as justification for Russia’s invasion of its neighbor.
Feb 18,2023:Russia’s Wagner mercenary group has suffered more than 30,000 casualties since Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine last February, with about 9,000 of those fighters killed in action, the United States has claimed.
The US estimates that 90 percent of Wagner Group fighters killed in Ukraine since December 2022 were convicts, White House National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby told reporters at a regular briefing on Friday.
Half of the overall deaths among Wagner mercenaries have occurred since mid-December, as fighting in Ukraine’s eastern city of Bakhmut intensified, according to US intelligence.
Kirby said the mercenary group had made incremental gains in and around Bakhmut over the last few days but those advances had taken many months to achieve and came at a “devastating cost that is not sustainable”.
“It is possible that they may end up being successful in Bakhmut but it will prove of no real worth to them because it is of no real strategic value,” he said, adding that Ukrainian forces would maintain strong defensive lines across the Donbas region.
Kirby told reporters that Wagner continued to rely heavily on convicts, who were sent to war without training or equipment, despite recent comments from Wagner’s founder Yevgeny Prigozhin that he had stopped recruiting Russian prisoners to fight in Ukraine.
Feb 15,2023: Scotland’s First Minister Nicola Sturgeon resigned after serving eight years in the job.
Sturgeon became the leader of the ruling Scottish National Party (SNP) in the wake of its 2014 independence referendum when the country voted 55 percent to remain as part of the United Kingdom.
“I will remain in office until my successor is elected,” Sturgeon said at a press briefing on Wednesday.
Under her tenure, Sturgeon led her party to a resounding success at the 2015 UK election, winning 56 of 59 seats in Scotland and establishing it as Britain’s third-largest party, before she retained control over the devolved parliament at more recent elections.
She had recently become embroiled in a row over transgender policies after Scotland passed a Gender Recognition Reform Bill, making it easier for people to change their legal gender.
She was also a scathing critic of UK’s departure from the European Union – a move opposed by a majority of voters in Scotland – and said she wants a new referendum to be held before the end of 2023.
New Delhi, Feb 15,2023: In one of the biggest aviation deals, Tata Group-owned Air India on Tuesday announced orders for the purchase of 250 aircraft from Airbus and 220 from Boeing. While Prime Minister Narendra Modi and French President Emmanuel Macron in a video conference hailed the deal with Airbus, PM Modi later spoke with US President Joe Biden to applaud the agreement with Boeing, and UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak in a statement praised the deal with Airbus.
Air India and Airbus have signed a contract for the supply of 250 aircraft, 210 single-aisle A320neos and 40 widebody A350s to Air India.
Boeing in a tweet said that Air India has ordered 190 737 MAXs, including 737-8 and 737-10, and 20 787-9 Dreamliners, and 10 777-9s, with the option for 70 more Boeing jets.
Prime Minister Modi participated in a video call with President of France Emmanuel Macron, Ratan Tata, Chairman Emeritus, Tata Sons, N. Chandrasekaran, Chairman of the Board, Tata Sons, Campbell Wilson, CEO, Air India and Guillaume Faury, CEO Airbus on the occasion of the launch of a partnership between Air India and Airbus.
WASHINGTON, Feb 14,2023 :The U.S. military said on Monday it had recovered critical electronics from the suspected Chinese spy balloon downed by a U.S. fighter jet off South Carolina’s coast on Feb. 4, including key sensors presumably used for intelligence gathering.
“Crews have been able to recover significant debris from the site, including all of the priority sensor and electronics pieces identified as well as large sections of the structure,” the U.S. military’s Northern Command said in a statement.
The Chinese balloon, which Beijing denies was a government spy vessel, spent a week flying over the United States and Canada before President Joe Biden ordered it shot down. The episode strained ties between Washington and Beijing, leading America’s top diplomat to postpone a trip to China.
New Delhi, Feb 13,2023: The Centre on Monday agreed for a committee which will examine the existing regime and regulator’s role in preventing meltdown situation of shares, as happened to Adani, after Hindeburg Research report, but it stressed that the SC could choose the composition of experts committee from names suggested by the Centre.
The Solicitor General (SG) Tushar Mehta, senior law officer appearing for the UOI (Union of India) told the Supreme Court that the SEBI is competent to handle the Hindenburg Report fallout. The Centre agreed before the Supreme Court that the SC may constitute a committee to protect investor interests and requested it to that the SC should consider the names/members for the committee, as suggested by it to deal with the issue.
Mehta also said that the composition would be in such a manner made, it doesn’t affect the flow of money and investments.
The Supreme Court bench, headed by the Chief Justice of India (CJI) Dr Dhananjaya Yeshwant Chadrachud, asked the Centre to submit a note on the proposed terms of reference by Wednesday, and fixed the matter for further hearing on February 17, Friday.
A petition has been filed before the Supreme Court by Manohar Lal Sharma seeking directions to Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) and the Union Home Ministry to conduct a thorough probe and register a First Information Report (FIR) against founder of Hindenburg Research, Nathan Anderson, and his associates in India for “exploiting innocent investors”, of its recent report on Adani Group.
The petition of Sharma, filed before the Supreme Court, said that Anderson and his associates in India hatched an alleged criminal conspiracy by short selling Adani stocks in hundreds of billion dollars before ‘concocting’ a research report related to the Adani Group in order to crash the stock market and square up their short sell position at the lowest rate.
Sharma’s petition, filed before the Apex Court sought directions to conduct an enquiry to prosecute and register an FIR against Anderson and his associates under sections 420 (Cheating) and 120-B (Criminal Conspiracy) of the Indian Penal Code (IPC) for ‘exploiting innocent investors via short selling under the garb of artificial crashing via short selling’.
“They secured billions of profits by butchering citizen of India. However, SEBI did not suspend trading in the stock specially qua to the Adani group of the companies and allowed short sellers to exploit innocent investors,” the plea of Sharma said.
He also sought recovery of Anderson’s alleged turnover with penalty to compensate investors in the interest of justice.
Sharma also prayed to the Supreme Court for a declaration that short selling is an offence of fraud against the investors to be prosecuted under section 420 of the IPC read with section 15-HA (Penalty for fraudulent and unfair trade practices) of SEBI Act.
Feb 13,2023:NATO chief Jens Stoltenberg says Russia’s feared new offensive in Ukraine has already started, with Moscow deploying more troops and weapons for its war effort.
Ukraine’s energy minister says the country’s power system is meeting people’s “electricity needs” despite the latest wave of Russian attacks on critical infrastructure.
NATO’s secretary-general says a feared new major Russian offensive in Ukraine has already started.
“We see no sign whatsoever that [Russian] President [Vladimir] Putin is preparing for peace … What we see is president Putin and Russia still wanting to control Ukraine,” Jens Stoltenberg told reporters at a news conference in Brussels.
“We see how they are sending more troops, more weapons, more capabilities,” he added. “The reality is that we are seeing the start [of a new offensive] already.”
Moldova’s president has accused Russia of planning to use foreign saboteurs to bring down her country’s leadership, stop it joining the European Union and use it in the war against Ukraine.
Tehran, Iran ,Feb 13,2023: Iran’s President Ebrahim Raisi is expected to depart from Tehran late on Monday as he leads a large delegation to China at the invitation of President Xi Jinping.
The three-day trip is Raisi’s first state visit to the Asian economic giant and the first by an Iranian president in 20 years, according to Iranian state media.
Raisi and Xi had first met as presidents on the sidelines of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) summit in Uzbekistan in September. China had supported Iran’s now-successful bid to become a full member of the organisation.
The Iranian president, who assumed office in August 2021, is accompanied by a wide-ranging team, including the new central bank governor, pointing to his priorities during the trip.
Six members of Raisi’s cabinet, including ministers of economy, petroleum, foreign affairs, trade, transport and urban development, and agriculture are also part of the delegation.
An op-ed by Raisi was published on Monday in a leading Chinese publication, in which he welcomed expanding bilateral ties. Raisi will hold a meeting with Xi, followed by negotiations between delegations that are expected to lead to the signing of several agreements in the presence of the presidents.
ANTAKYA, Turkey/JANDARIS, Syria, Feb 10,2023: Rescue crews saved a 10-day-old baby and his mother trapped in ruins of a building in Turkey on Friday and dug several people from other sites as President Tayyip Erdogan said authorities should have reacted faster to this week’s huge earthquake.
The confirmed death toll from the deadliest quake in the region in two decades stood at more than 22,000 across southern Turkey and northwest Syria four days after it hit.
Hundreds of thousands more people have been left homeless and short of food in bleak winter conditions and leaders in both countries have faced questions about their response.
Syrian President Bashar al-Assad made his first reported trip to affected areas since the quake, visiting a hospital in Aleppo with his wife Asma, state media reported.
His government also approved humanitarian aid deliveries across the frontlines of the country’s 12-year civil war, a move that could speed up the arrival of help for millions of desperate people. The World Food Programme said earlier it was running out of stocks in rebel-held northwest Syria as the state of war there complicated relief efforts.
Erdogan on Friday visited Turkey’s Adiyaman province, where he acknowledged the government’s response was not as fast as it could have been.
“Although we have the largest search and rescue team in the world right now, it is a reality that search efforts are not as fast as we wanted them to be,” he said.
He also said looting of shops had taken place in some areas.
Erdogan is standing for re-election in a vote scheduled for May 14 and his opponents have seized upon the issue to attack him. The election may now be postponed due to the disaster.
Feb 10,2023:The United States has issued a six-month sanctions exemption for all transactions related to providing disaster relief to Syria after earthquakes killed more than 22,000 people in the war-battered country and neighbouring Turkey.
“I want to make very clear that US sanctions in Syria will not stand in the way of life-saving efforts for the Syrian people,” Deputy Secretary of the Treasury Wally Adeyemo said after the US Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) issued the exemption on Thursday.
Adeyemo pointed out that US sanctions already provide exemptions for humanitarian efforts, and according to Karam Shaar, a Syrian economist and non-resident scholar at the Middle East Institute, the most recent exemption will have “a limited positive impact”.
“This makes it easier still to send humanitarian funding to Syria,” Shaar told Al Jazeera. “Now you don’t have to prove to OFAC that your transaction is exempt from sanctions. You do the transaction, and then if you’re asked to, you need to prove it.”
Simply put, this means that donors and organisations don’t need to spend resources and time proving an exemption from sanctions before sending aid.
It was unclear, however, whether it will do much to assuage the fears of private institutions making money transfers, which often avoid working with Syria out of fear they will run afoul of sanction rules, the analyst said.
Feb 03,2023:The definition of broadband now requires a minimum speed of 2Mbps from telecom operators, after previously requiring a fourth of that bandwidth, 512Kbps, since 2009. The Department of Telecommunications (DoT) notified the change in a January 25 gazette notification published on Thursday.
“Broadband is a data connection that is able to support interactive services including Internet access and has the capability of the minimum download speed of 2 Mbps to an individual subscriber from the point of presence (POP) of the service provider intending to provide Broadband service,” the new definition says.
While broadband is generally understood to mean home WiFi connections, government statistics include faster mobile internet connections in the category. Wired broadband and wireless broadband will both be subject to this 2Mbps limit.
The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) had formally recommended the new speed to the DoT in September 2021. By the previous definition, there were 825.38 million broadband users in India in November 2022, according to TRAI data.
Feb 20,2023:United Nations members will gather in New York City in the United States on Monday to resume efforts to forge a long-awaited and elusive treaty to safeguard the world’s marine biodiversity.
Nearly two-thirds of the ocean lies outside national boundaries on the high seas, where fragmented and unevenly enforced rules seek to minimise human impacts.
The goal of the UN meetings, which will start on Monday and run through March 3, is to produce a unified agreement for the conservation and sustainable use of those vast marine ecosystems. The talks, formally called the Intergovernmental Conference on Marine Biodiversity of Areas Beyond National Jurisdiction, resume negotiations suspended last year without agreement on a final treaty.
“The ocean is the life support system of our planet,” said Boris Worm, a marine biologist at Canada’s Dalhousie University.
“For the longest time, we did not feel we had a large impact on the high seas. But that notion has changed with expansion of deep-sea fishing, mining, plastic pollution, climate change,” and other human disturbances, he said.
The UN talks will focus on key questions. How should the boundaries of marine protected areas be drawn, and by whom? How should institutions assess the environmental impacts of commercial activities such as shipping and mining? And who has the power to enforce rules?
“This is our largest global commons,” said Nichola Clark, an oceans expert who is following the negotiations for the non-partisan Pew Research Center in Washington, DC. “We are optimistic that this upcoming round of negotiations will be the one to get a treaty over the finish line.”
The aim of the talks is not to actually designate marine protected areas, but to establish a mechanism for doing so.
“The goal is to set up a new body that would accept submissions for specific marine protected areas,” Clark said.
Marine biologist Simon Ingram of the University of Plymouth in England said there is an urgent need for an accord.
“It’s a really pressing time for this – especially when you have things like deep-sea mining that could be a real threat to biodiversity before we’ve even been able to survey and understand what lives on the ocean floor,” Ingram said.
Experts say a global oceans treaty is needed to actually enforce the UN Biodiversity Conference’s recent pledge to protect 30 percent of the planet’s oceans, as well as its land, for conservation.
“We need a legally binding framework that can enable countries to work together to actually achieve these goals they’ve agreed to,” said Jessica Battle, an expert on oceans governance at the World Wildlife Fund (WWF).
US Assistant Secretary of State for Oceans and International Environmental and Scientific Affairs Monica Medina said the treaty was a priority for her country.
“This agreement seeks to create, for the first time, a coordinated approach to establishing marine protected areas on the high seas,” she said. “It’s time to finish the job.”
Officials, environmentalists and representatives of global industries that depend on the sea are also watching negotiations closely.
Gemma Nelson, a lawyer from Samoa who is currently an Ocean Voices fellow at the University of Edinburgh, said that small Pacific and Caribbean island countries are “especially vulnerable to global ocean issues”, such as pollution and climate change, which they generally do not cause or have the resources to easily address.
“Getting the traditional knowledge of local people and communities recognised as valid” is also essential to protect both ecosystems and the ways of life of Indigenous groups, she said.
With nearly half the planet’s surface covered by high seas, the talks are of great importance, said Gladys Martinez de Lemos, executive director of the non-profit Interamerican Association for Environmental Defense, which focuses on environmental issues across Latin America.
“The treaty should be strong and ambitious, having the authority to establish high and fully protected areas in the high seas,” she said. “Half of the world is at stake these weeks at the United Nations.”
Feb 15,2023:Chinese leader Xi Jinping expressed support for Iran during a visit to China by President Ebrahim Raisi as Tehran tries to expand relations with Beijing and Moscow to offset Western sanctions over its nuclear development.
“China supports Iran in safeguarding national sovereignty” and “resisting unilateralism and bullying,” Xi said in a statement carried by Chinese state TV on its website on Tuesday.
His comments came as China hosted Raisi on his first state visit to the Asian economic giant and the first by an Iranian president in 20 years.
Xi called for a proper resolution to the Iran nuclear issue as he expressed Beijing’s “solidarity” with Iran amid global uncertainty.
China will continue to “participate constructively” in talks to resume negotiations on implementing the Iran nuclear agreement, Xi told Raisi in talks in Beijing.
A 2015 nuclear agreement limited Iran’s uranium enrichment programme to make it harder for Tehran to develop nuclear arms in return for lifting international sanctions. Iran says it was further developing nuclear energy for peaceful reasons.
But in 2018, then-United States President Donald Trump unilaterally abandoned the deal, saying it had not done enough to curb Tehran’s nuclear activities, and reimposed sanctions.
China has criticised Washington for withdrawing from the deal and insists the US should make the first move in reviving the pact.
In September, the US imposed new sanctions on companies involved in Iran’s oil exports, including five based in China. Washington said it would continue enforcing sanctions on Iran’s oil and petrochemical sales so long as Tehran continues to accelerate its nuclear programme.