MOSCOW: The Russian military is conducting massive drills involving truck-mounted intercontinental ballistic missile launchers.
The Defense Ministry said maneuvers involving Topol-M and Yars missile launchers began Monday.
Those types of nuclear-tipped ICBMs are mounted on heavy all-terrain vehicles, making it more difficult for an enemy to spot them. The ministry said the drills are being conducted across a vast area from the Ivanovo region just northeast of Moscow to the Irkutsk region in eastern Siberia.
It said the exercise will focus on the deployment of missiles and fending off possible attacks by enemy scouts, but will not involve practice launches.
The maneuvers are the latest in a steady series of Russian military drills. Russia’s armed forces have intensified their combat training amid tensions with NATO over Ukraine.
Russian military conducts massive missile drills
Russian military conducts massive missile drills
Peshawar’s iconic Sunehri Mosque sees surge of devotees in Ramadan
- Foundation stone for mosque laid in 1946, Sunehri Masjid is famous for its gold domes, tall minarets and Mughal architecture
- Worshippers frequent Sunehri Masjid, with capacity for 6,000 people, during Ramadan to offer prayers, recite Qur’an, attend large congregations
Peshawar: The 39-meter tall minaret is the first thing that comes into view when one arrives close to the street in Peshawar’s main Saddar Bazaar where the majestic Sunehri Masjid is located.
Known for its considerable size, built over an impressive 1,670 sq. meters, and Mughal-style architecture, the Sunehri, or Golden, Mosque in the capital of the northwestern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, is one of the most iconic masjids in the region.
The mosque can accommodate at least 6,000 worshippers, making it ideal for the month of Ramadan when believers flock to mosques for Tarawih — special, voluntary prayers performed typically after the Isha (night) prayer, and considered a highly recommended Sunnah, or practice of the Prophet Muhammad.
The foundation stone of the mosque was laid by Habib Ur Rehman, a Peshawar resident, in 1946 but construction work was hit by delays due unavailability of funds and security issues, and was completed in 1992, primarily funded by public donations.
Rehman modeled the mosque after Lahore’s iconic Badshahi Mosque, built by Mughal emperor Aurangzeb, the prayer leader at Sunehri Masjid, Maulana Muhammad Ismail, told Arab News.
“The foundation stone of our mosque was laid in 1946, but the situation deteriorated in Pakistan due to the wars (of 1965 and 1971), so work was stopped for a little time,” he said.
Explaining the architecture, Ismail said that the central minaret, a hallmark of the mosque, was built at 39 meters (128 feet) so it could be seen from far-flung areas in Peshawar at a time when there were few tall buildings in the city.
“The need for the construction of the 128-feet-high minaret at that time was that our organizers thought that the azaan (call to prayer) of the Sunehri Masjid should reach far-flung areas,” Ismail said.
The mosque is built with red bricks and famed for its signature gold domes and intricate Mughal-style architecture that features arches, domes and pointed cupolas atop the minarets.
In Ramadan, more worshippers than usual throng to the Sunehri Masjid, filling up its halls and prayer rooms as they seek to deepen their connection with Allah, earn rewards, and ask for forgiveness from sins.
Imran Khan, 38, is one such devotee who has been offering prayers at the mosque for the past 12 years.
“This is a beautiful mosque, I come here every Ramadan to worship and recite (the Qur’an),” Khan told Arab News. “I especially visit a lot in Ramadan when I get the chance.”
Khawar Rehman, a Peshawar resident who had come for Asr prayers at the mosque, said that he frequented the place as he liked worshiping in a “known mosque” like the Sunehri Masjid.
“This mosque has larger congregations and better rewards,” he said, “so I like to come here.”
King Charles III experiences side effects after receiving medical treatment and is in hospital
- King Charles III engagements for Thursday afternoon and Friday were canceled
LONDON: Britain's King Charles III was hospitalized for observation on Thursday after experiencing “temporary side effects,’’ related to a scheduled cancer treatment, Buckingham Palace said in a statement.
His engagements for Thursday afternoon and Friday were canceled.
“His majesty has now returned to Clarence House and as a precautionary measure, acting on medical advice, tomorrow’s diary program will also be rescheduled,’’ the palace said. “His majesty would like to send his apologies to all those who may be inconvenienced or disappointed as a result.’’
Charles, 76, has been undergoing treatment for an undisclosed form of cancer for more than a year. The king has continued fulfilling his state duties, such as reviewing government papers and meeting with the prime minister, even though he took some time off public duties.
Firefighting helicopter tackles Thailand blazes
- Forest fires are burning in several areas of northern Thailand
CHIANG MAI: A bright orange helicopter races over the jungle to dump water on a raging wildfire that is adding to the air pollution choking Thailand’s northern tourist hub of Chiang Mai.
Chutaphorn Phuangchingngam, the only female captain in Thailand’s national disaster prevention team, draws on two decades of flying to steer the Russian-made chopper through the thick smoke.
Forest fires are burning in several areas of northern Thailand, contributing to the annual spike in air pollution that comes with farmers burning stubble to prepare their land for the next crop.
Chiang Mai had the sixth worst air quality of any major city in the world on Thursday morning, according to monitor IQAir, and the city governor has warned residents against staying outdoors.
Chutaphorn said the dense forest and hilly terrain made helicopters the best tool to fight the blazes.
“We use (helicopters) to put out fire in areas that are difficult to reach, especially in the mountains,” she said.
Chutaphorn and her six-member crew flew over Huai Bok reservoir, collecting 3,000 liters of water each time before heading 2 kilometers to the fire zone, spread across more than 1.6 hectares.
Northern Thailand is the latest area around the world to suffer significant wildfires, after South Korea — currently battling its biggest on record — Japan and California.
While the causes of forest fires can be complex, climate change can make them more likely by creating hotter, drier weather that leaves undergrowth more prone to catching light.
As well as damaging important forests, the fires are fueling Thailand’s anxieties about air pollution, which causes millions of people to need medical treatment each year.
HIGHLIGHT
Forest fires are burning in several areas of northern Thailand, contributing to the annual spike in air pollution that comes with farmers burning stubble to prepare their land for the next crop.
Levels of PM2.5 pollutants — dangerous cancer-causing microparticles small enough to enter the bloodstream through the lungs — were almost 15 times the World Health Organization’s recommended limit in Chiang Mai on Thursday, according to IQAir.
The government banned crop burning early this year to try to improve air quality, with violators facing fines and legal action, but authorities said the measures have proven ineffective.
“There are still large numbers of farmers who continue to burn their fields,” said Dusit Pongsapipat, head of the Department of Natural Disaster Prevention and Mitigation in Chiang Mai.
Danaipat Pokavanich, a clean-air advocate involved in drafting the Clean Air Act — a bill to curb pollution in Thailand — praised the firefighting efforts but called them a “temporary fix.”
“The law alone won’t stop farmers from burning,” he said.
He recommended offering financial incentives to encourage sustainable farming practices and investing in technology to reduce the need for burning.
Until then, Chatuphorn and her team remain ready to take to the skies to do their part to clean up the air by putting out forest fires.
“Flying a helicopter for disaster work is different from flying passengers,” she said, citing limited visibility as a major challenge.
She remains committed to her childhood dream.
“I just wanted to touch the cloud,” she said, after the helicopter landed. “Though now all I feel is just the smoke.”
French FM urges ‘powerful’ ties with China
- China hopes visit will see the countries deepen cooperation
BEIJING: France’s Foreign Minister Jean-Noel Barrot called for a “powerful Franco-Chinese partnership” amid geopolitical turmoil, as he met Chinese counterpart Wang Yi on Thursday for talks on the war in Ukraine and Beijing’s trade row with Europe.
China has said it hopes this week’s visit by Barrot will see the countries deepen cooperation in a world facing “turbulence and transformation.”
It has said the two sides will discuss ways to “jointly resist unilateralism and the resurgence of the law of the jungle” — a veiled reference to US President Donald Trump, whose return to the White House in January has rocked the international order.
Paris expects the talks will focus on a resolution to Russia’s war in Ukraine, which Beijing has never condemned, as well as the Middle East conflict and trade tensions between China and the European Union. Barrot met top Chinese diplomat Wang at Beijing’s ornate Diaoyutai guesthouse on Thursday morning.
The two shook hands in front of large French and Chinese flags, then entered a room for closed-door discussions.
Barrot kicked off the day with a visit to the Beijing Language and Culture University, where he addressed students, touting the benefits of learning French and strong ties between the two countries.
“More than ever, the current context requires a powerful Franco-Chinese partnership in the service of geopolitical stability, prosperity and the future of our planet,” he told the students. In the afternoon, he will hold a meeting with an as-yet-unnamed senior official.
FASTFACT
France and China have sought to boost ties in recent years, but Paris has also pressed Beijing on its relations with Moscow, which have strengthened since the invasion of Ukraine.
Barrot will then head to economic powerhouse Shanghai, where he will on Friday inaugurate a hydrogen production plant built by the Air Liquide group and participate in a Franco-Chinese business forum.
Beijing has said it will use the visit “to consolidate political mutual trust.”
France and China have sought to boost ties in recent years, but Paris has also pressed Beijing on its relations with Moscow, which have strengthened since the invasion of Ukraine.
China says it is a neutral party in the Ukraine conflict.
But China is a close political and economic ally of Russia, and NATO members have branded Beijing a “decisive enabler” of the war, which it has never condemned.
Barrot’s visit to China comes as part of a wider tour of Asia, including stops in Indonesia and Singapore.
In the Southeast Asian city state on Wednesday, he warned the threat of Russian aggression in Europe was “not theoretical.”
“Its aggressivity over the past three years has extended way beyond Ukraine itself,” Barrot told journalists.
Homeland Security Secretary Noem visits El Salvador prison where deported Venezuelans are held
- About a dozen prisoners were lined up by guards near the front of their cell and told to remove their T-shirts and face masks
- Kristi Noem: ‘Know that this facility is one of the tools in our toolkit that we will use if you commit crimes against the American people’
TECOLUCA, El Salvador: US Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem on Wednesday visited the high-security El Salvador prison where Venezuelans who the Trump administration alleges are gang members have been held since their removal from the United States. The tour included two crowded cell blocks, the armory and an isolation unit.
Noem’s trip to the prison — where inmates are packed into cells and never allowed outside — comes as the Trump administration seeks to show it is deporting people it describes as the “worst of the worst.”
The Trump administration is arguing in federal court that it was justified in sending the Venezuelans to El Salvador, while activists say officials have sent them to a prison rife with human rights abuses while presenting little evidence that they were part of the Venezuelan Tren de Aragua gang.
Noem notably dodged questions by the press about if the Venezuelan deportees were going to be in the prison indefinitely and if the Venezuelans could ever be brought back to the US if a court orders the administration to do so.
“We’re going to let the courts play out,” she told reporters following the visit.
Noem toured an area holding some of the Venezuelans accused of being gang members. In the sweltering building, the men in white T-shirts and shorts stared silently from their cell, then were heard shouting an indiscernible chant when she left.
In a cell block holding Salvadoran prisoners, about a dozen were lined up by guards near the front of their cell and told to remove their T-shirts and face masks. The men were heavily tattooed, some bearing the letters MS, for the Mara Salvatrucha gang, on their chests.
After listening to Salvadoran officials, Noem turned her back to the cell and recorded a video message.
If an immigrant commits a crime, “this is one of the consequences you could face,” Noem said. “First of all, do not come to our country illegally. You will be removed and you will be prosecuted. But know that this facility is one of the tools in our toolkit that we will use if you commit crimes against the American people.”
Noem also met with El Salvador President Nayib Bukele, a populist who has gained right-wing admiration in the US due to his crackdown on the country’s gangs, despite the democratic and due process implications that have come with it.
“This unprecedented relationship we have with El Salvador is going to be a model for other countries on how they can work with America,” Noem said to reporters Wednesday.
Since taking office, Noem has frequently been front and center in efforts to highlight the immigration crackdown. She took part in immigration enforcement operations, rode horses with Border Patrol agents and was the face of a television campaign warning people in the country illegally to self-deport.
Noem’s Wednesday visit is part of a three-day trip. She’ll also travel to Colombia and Mexico.
The Venezuelans were removed from the US this month after Trump invoked the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 and said the US was being invaded by the Tren de Aragua gang. The Alien Enemies Act gives the president wartime powers and allows noncitizens to be deported without the opportunity to go before an immigration or federal court judge.
An appeals court Wednesday kept in place an order barring the administration from deporting more Venezuelan immigrants to El Salvador under the Alien Enemies Act.
A central outstanding question about the deportees’ status is when and how they could ever be released from the prison, called the Terrorism Confinement Center, as they are not serving sentences. They no longer appear in US Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s online detainee locator and have not appeared before a judge in El Salvador.
The Trump administration refers to them as the “worst of the worst” but hasn’t identified who was deported or provided evidence that they’re gang members.
Relatives of some of the deportees have categorically denied any gang affiliation. The Venezuelan government and a group called the Families of Immigrants Committee in Venezuela hired a lawyer to help free those held in El Salvador. A lawyer for the firm, which currently represents about 30 Venezuelans, said they aren’t gang members and have no criminal records.
The US government has acknowledged that many do not have such records.
Flights were in the air March 15 when a federal judge issued a verbal order temporarily barring the deportations and ordered planes to return to the US
The Trump administration has argued that the judge’s verbal directions did not count, that only his written order needed to be followed and that it couldn’t apply to flights that had already left the US
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters that about 261 people were deported on the flights, including 137 under the Alien Enemies Act.
Bukele opened the prison in 2023 as he made the Central American country’s stark, harsh prisons a trademark of his fight against crime. The facility has eight sprawling pavilions and can hold up to 40,000 inmates. Each cell can fit 65 to 70 prisoners.
Prisoners can’t have visitors. There are no workshops or educational programs.
El Salvador hasn’t had diplomatic relations with Venezuela since 2019, so the Venezuelans imprisoned there do not have consular support from their government.
Video released by El Salvador’s government after the deportees’ arrival showed men exiting airplanes onto an airport tarmac lined by officers in riot gear. The men, who had their hands and ankles shackled, struggled to walk as officers pushed their heads down.
They were later shown at the prison kneeling on the ground as their heads were shaved before they changed into the prison’s all-white uniform — knee-length shorts, T-shirt, socks and rubber clogs — and placed in cells.
For three years, El Salvador has been operating under a state of emergency that suspends fundamental rights as Bukele wages an all-out assault on the country’s powerful street gangs. During that time, some 84,000 people have been arrested, accused of gang ties and jailed, often without due process.
Bukele offered to hold US deportees in the prison when US Secretary of State Marco Rubio visited in February.
At the prison Wednesday, El Salvador Justice Minister Gustavo Villatoro showed Noem a cell holding Salvadorans he said had been there since the prison opened. “No one expects that these people can go back to society and behave,” he said.
