CARACAS: Venezuela has expelled five visiting European lawmakers, an act opposition leader Juan Guaido branded “irrational” as his showdown with President Nicolas Maduro over the arrival of international aid intensifies.
The members of the European Parliament were being tossed out with no explanation, said Spanish MEP Esteban Gonzalez Pons, who led the group.
“We are being expelled from Venezuela. Our passports have been seized. They have not informed us of the reason for the expulsion,” Pons said.
The incident on Sunday is the latest point of tension between the international community and Maduro, who is in the grip of a power struggle with Guaido, the head of the National Assembly who proclaimed himself interim president last month.
Guaido has the backing of more than 50 countries including 30 in Europe.
Pons’ fellow Spaniards Jose Ignacio Salafranca and Gabriel Mato Adrover, as well as Esther de Lange of the Netherlands and Paulo Rangel of Portugal, were also expelled. All are members of the conservative European People’s Party (PPE).
Writing on Twitter, Guaido said the MEPs were being “deported by an isolated and increasingly irrational regime.”
Foreign Minister Jorge Arreaza said the Europeans had “conspiratorial aims” and were sent back from the country’s main Maiquetia airport.
Earlier Sunday, Guaido set a goal of enlisting a million volunteers within a week to confront a government blockade that has kept tons of humanitarian aid, most of it from the US, from flowing into the country where residents can’t get enough food and say they are dying because of a shortage of medicines.
Guaido has given next Saturday — one month to the day after he proclaimed himself acting president — as the date for a showdown with Maduro over the aid.
Food supplies, hygiene kits and nutritional supplements have been stockpiled near the Venezuelan border in Cucuta, Colombia.
Additional storage centers are supposed to open this week in Brazil and Curacao, a Dutch island off Venezuela’s northern Caribbean coast.
“Our principal task is to reach a million volunteers by February 23,” Guaido said in a message to the 600,000 supporters who have signed up so far for the push to bring aid in.
Caravans of buses are being planned to carry volunteers to border entry points to meet and transport arriving cargo. Guaido has kept to himself how he plans to overcome the border barriers put up by the Venezuelan military, on Maduro’s orders.
Volunteer groups have begun meeting in “humanitarian camps” in several Venezuelan states to organize and prepare for the aid arrival.
They have started to identify the most vulnerable and have begun caring for the needy in accordance with Guaido’s promises.
Sometimes working under awnings or tents, doctors, nurses, dentists and pediatricians have attended to local residents who can receive donated medications.
Patients arrive with respiratory, skin or other ailments, and suffering from malnutrition.
An imploding economy has driven an estimated 2.3 million Venezuelans to migrate from the oil-rich country. Those who remain have been punished by hyperinflation that has put scarce food and medicine out of reach for many.
Andrea Hernandez, a physical therapy student whose mother is a pediatric nurse, is among those offering her help. Hernandez said her mother often “cried from seeing her patients die from lack of medicine.”
Yorger Maita, a helper from the aid group Rescate Venezuela, said that if foreign aid does not enter “other people will continue to die.”
Maduro, who denies the existence of a humanitarian crisis, dismisses the opposition moves as a “political show” and a cover for a US invasion.
US Senator Marco Rubio arrived Sunday in Cucuta for a first-hand look at the aid operations.
“Whoever prevents the entry of humanitarian aid is condemned to spend the rest of their lives fleeing international justice, because that is an international crime,” Rubio said in Spanish.
Three US military cargo planes delivered several dozen more tons of food assistance to Cucuta on Saturday.
Another US aircraft is due in Curacao from Miami on Tuesday, and a collection center for Brazilian aid will open Monday on the border, Guaido’s team said.
Venezuelans based in Miami held their own drive, putting together 1,000 crates of food to send to their homeland.
On Friday, Maduro instructed his army to prepare a “special deployment plan” for the 2,200-kilometer (1,370-mile) border with Colombia.
Guaido appealed for the military to let the aid pass.
Maduro has dismissed the humanitarian assistance as “crumbs” and “rotten and contaminated food” while blaming shortages of food and medicine on US sanctions.
Europe lawmakers expelled as aid showdown intensifies
Europe lawmakers expelled as aid showdown intensifies
- Volunteer groups have begun meeting in ‘humanitarian camps’
Microsoft workers say they’ve been fired after 50th anniversary protest over Israel contract
- Among the participants at the 50th anniversary of Microsoft’s founding were co-founder Bill Gates and former CEO Steve Ballmer
- AI models from Microsoft and OpenAI had been used as part of an Israeli military program to select bombing targets during the recent wars in Gaza and Lebanon
Microsoft has fired two employees who interrupted the company’s 50th anniversary celebration to protest its work supplying artificial intelligence technology to the Israeli military, according to a group representing the workers.
Microsoft didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment Monday.
The protests began Friday when Microsoft software engineer Ibtihal Aboussad walked up to a stage where an executive was announcing new product features and a long-term vision for Microsoft’s AI ambitions.
“You claim that you care about using AI for good but Microsoft sells AI weapons to the Israeli military,” Aboussad shouted at Microsoft AI CEO Mustafa Suleyman. “Fifty-thousand people have died and Microsoft powers this genocide in our region.”
The protest forced Suleyman to pause his talk, which was livestreamed from Microsoft’s campus in Redmond, Washington. Among the participants at the 50th anniversary of Microsoft’s founding were co-founder Bill Gates and former CEO Steve Ballmer.
“Thank you for your protest, I hear you,” Suleyman said. Aboussad continued, shouting that Suleyman and “all of Microsoft” had blood on their hands. She also threw onto the stage a keffiyeh scarf, which has become a symbol of support for Palestinian people, before being escorted out of the event.
A second protester, Microsoft employee Vaniya Agrawal, interrupted a later part of the event.
Aboussad was invited on Monday to a video call with a human resources representative at which she was told she was being terminated immediately. Agrawal was notified over email, according to the advocacy group No Azure for Apartheid, which has protested the sale of Microsoft’s Azure cloud computing platform to Israel.
An investigation by The Associated Press revealed earlier this year that AI models from Microsoft and OpenAI had been used as part of an Israeli military program to select bombing targets during the recent wars in Gaza and Lebanon. The story also contained details of an errant Israeli airstrike in 2023 that struck a vehicle carrying members of a Lebanese family, killing three young girls and their grandmother.
In February, five Microsoft employees were ejected from a meeting with CEO Satya Nadella for protesting the contracts.
“We provide many avenues for all voices to be heard,” said a statement from the company Friday. “Importantly, we ask that this be done in a way that does not cause a business disruption. If that happens, we ask participants to relocate. We are committed to ensuring our business practices uphold the highest standards.”
Microsoft had declined to say Friday whether it was taking further action. Aboussad told the AP she lost access to her work accounts shortly after the protest and had not been able to log back in.
Dozens of Google workers were fired last year after internal protests surrounding a contract that the technology company has with the Israeli government. Employee sit-ins at Google offices in New York and Sunnyvale, California were targeting a $1.2 billion deal known as Project Nimbus providing AI technology to the Israeli government.
The Google workers later filed a complaint with the National Labor Relations Board in an attempt to get their jobs back.
Tajikistan to jail people for illegal electricity use
- Electricity consumption in Tajikistan is limited for about six months per year, as its outdated energy infrastructure struggles to keep up with rising demand
DUSHANBE: Tajikistan has introduced 10-year prison sentences for the illegal use of electricity, as a decades-long energy crisis caused by water shortages worsens in the poor Central Asian country.
Electricity consumption in Tajikistan is limited for about six months per year, as its outdated energy infrastructure struggles to keep up with rising demand.
The country’s Energy and Water Resources Ministry on Saturday announced measures to introduce “criminal liability for violations of regulations on the use of electricity.”
In a sign of how tightly the country controls the press and flow of information, it was only reported by independent media outlets on Monday.
Under the new rules, anybody found trying to disconnect or bypass an electricity meter will face up to 10 years in prison.
Ex-Soviet Tajikistan is ruled by President Emomali Rakhmon, a former state farm boss who has held power since 1992.
Justice Minister Rustam Shoemurod said earlier in April that those who alter meter readings or bypass them to avoid payments are “seriously damaging the country’s economic interests.”
A shortage of water needed to fuel hydroelectric plants, which generate about 95 percent of electricity output in Tajikistan, has led to years of regular power outages.
American trying to make contact with isolated tribe in India arrested
- Polyakov was fascinated by the mystique of the Sentinelese people
NEW DELHI: Indian police have arrested a 24-year-old American YouTuber who visited an off-limits island in the Indian Ocean to try to make contact with an isolated tribe known for attacking intruders.
Mykhailo Viktorovych Polyakov, from Scottsdale, Arizona, was arrested on March 31, two days after he set foot on the restricted territory of North Sentinel Island — part of India’s Andaman and Nicobar Islands — in a bid to meet people from the reclusive Sentinelese tribe, police said.
A local court last week sent Polyakov to a 14-day judicial custody and he is set to appear again in the court on April 17. The charges carry a possible sentence of up to five years in prison and a fine. Indian authorities said they had informed the US Embassy about the case.
Visitors are banned from traveling within 5 kilometers of the island, whose population has been isolated from the rest of the world for thousands of years. The inhabitants use spears and bows and arrows to hunt the animals that roam the small, heavily forested island. Deeply suspicious of outsiders, they attack anyone who lands onto their beaches.
Police said Polyakov was guided by GPS navigation during his journey and surveyed the island with binoculars before landing. He stayed on the beach for about an hour, blowing whistle to attract the attention but got no response from the islanders.
He later left a can of Diet Coke and a coconut as an offering, made a video on his camera, and collected some sand samples before returning to his boat.
On his return he was spotted by local fishermen, who informed the authorities and Polyakov was arrested in Port Blair, the capital of Andaman and Nicobar Islands, an archipelago nearly 1,207 kilometers east of India’s mainland. A case was registered against him for violation of Indian laws that prohibit any outsider to interact with the islanders.
Police said Polyakov had conducted detailed research on sea conditions, tides and accessibility to the island before starting his journey.
“He planned meticulously over several days to visit the island and make a contact with the Sentinel tribe,” Senior Police Officer Hargobinder Singh Dhaliwal said.
An initial investigation revealed Polyakov had made two previous attempts, in October last year and January, to visit the islands, including in an inflatable kayak.
Police said Polyakov was drawn to the island due to his passion for adventure and extreme challenges, and was fascinated by the mystique of the Sentinelese people.
Survival International, a group that protects the rights of Indigenous peoples, said Polyakov’s attempted contact with the tribes of North Sentinel was “reckless and idiotic.”
“This person’s actions not only endangered his own life, they put the lives of the entire Sentinelese tribe at risk,” the group’s director Caroline Pearce said in a statement.
Children found malnourished in Greek migrant camp
- MSF doctors diagnosed six children from Syria and Afghanistan aged between six months and six years with acute malnutrition
- EU-funded Samos camp, a sprawling, heavily-surveilled facility surrounded by barbed wire, was opened by the government in 2021
ATHENS: Medical charity Doctors Without Borders (MSF) said on Monday it had identified the first cases of malnourished children in a migrant camp on the Greek island of Samos, which has been criticized by rights groups for dangerous living conditions.
MSF doctors have diagnosed six children from Syria and Afghanistan aged between six months and six years with acute malnutrition needing immediate help, it said.
While it could not say if their malnutrition was due to living in the camp, conditions there — including insufficient food and medical care — endangered their health, MSF said.
“No child should suffer from malnutrition due to systemic neglect,” said Christina Psarra, director general of MSF Greece, calling for immediate action and adding that about a quarter of the camp’s residents were children.
The Greek migration ministry said the cases were isolated.
“Under no circumstances is there generalized malnutrition due to living conditions,” the ministry said, adding that asylum-seekers were provided with three meals a day.
On the forefront of Europe’s 2015-16 migration crisis, Greece saw a surge in arrivals in 2024, according to UN data. This year, nearly a third of arrivals to southern Europe from the Middle East and Africa were to Greece.
The EU-funded Samos camp, a sprawling, heavily-surveilled facility surrounded by barbed wire, was opened by the government in 2021 to replace the former camp of Vathy — once an overcrowded, rat-infested tent city of 7,000 people.
The six malnourished children arrived this year, MSF said.
Rights group Amnesty International has called conditions at Samos “inhumane and degrading” during periods of overcrowding, with water shortages and a lack of other basic services.
In December, a UN human rights expert accused Greece of failing to identify victims of sex trafficking in the camp.
MSF called on Greece and the EU to ensure adequate pediatric care and nutritional support in Samos and to restore financial support to asylum seekers suspended last June.
Thousands of Bangladeshi students join global strike in solidarity with Gaza
- Student leaders call for more action from international community, Bangladeshi government
- Protest comes in wake of Israel’s new massacres, after unilaterally breaking Gaza ceasefire
DHAKA: Thousands of Bangladeshi students took to the streets of Dhaka on Monday to call for an end to Israel’s war on Gaza, joining a global strike in solidarity with Palestine.
The student protesters skipped classes and rallied in different parts of the capital throughout the day, with the biggest crowd gathering at Dhaka University, Bangladesh’s largest and oldest tertiary institution.
“We are observing today’s strike as part of a global solidarity call with the people of Palestine,” Mostafa Mushfiq, an anthropology student at Dhaka University, told Arab News.
“We want to demonstrate to everyone that all students and people from different professions and classes are united against the mass killing in Gaza.”
The call for a global strike for Gaza comes after Israel unilaterally broke the ceasefire agreement with the Palestinian group Hamas on March 18, launching a wave of deadly airstrikes that have since killed more than 1,300 people.
Gaza’s Health Ministry estimates that at least 50,752 Palestinians have been confirmed dead and 115,475 wounded in Israel’s war on Gaza since October 2023. The real toll is likely to be much higher as thousands of people are missing under the rubble.
Monday’s strike and protests were joined by students from various universities across Bangladesh, many with the support of their lecturers and college administrators.
“Our protests and struggles will continue … We are feeling a new spirit now. Our teachers are completely on our side in this movement,” Mushfiq said.
Bangladeshi students have previously led other rallies in solidarity with Palestine, demanding more action from the international community to stop Israel’s relentless attacks on Gaza.
“As a Bangladeshi, as a Muslim, it is my duty to be here to tell the world what is really going on, to let the Gaza people know that we are here, we hear them, we are praying for them,” Arafat Hossain Siam, a student from the Shanto-Mariam University in Dhaka, told Arab News.
“Don’t lose hope. Allah is watching. God willing, they will be free.”
The students were joined by ordinary Bangladeshis as they waved Palestinian flags, carried posters and chanted slogans in solidarity with Gaza. Some demanded that the Bangladeshi government do more.
“We demand a strong stance from the Bangladeshi government on the issue of ongoing mass killing in Gaza,” Tahmid Hossain, a master’s student in Dhaka University, told Arab News.
“The Palestinians are being suppressed for a long time. For around 100 years, we have noticed that day by day, aggression continues on the Palestinian land and their land is occupied by the Israelis … The Israeli attack on Gaza people, which began over a year ago, has crossed all the limits now.”
