SUMY, Ukraine: The roar of artillery fire was deafening as Tetyana conferred with neighbors in her small village, which hugs the Russian border, over whether they should hold tight or flee.
The days were relatively calm in Myropillya, she said, but the nightly bombardments had become so unbearable that even sheltering in basements no longer felt safe.
“You know what they say, it’s only when we start to feel the burning ourselves that we leave,” the 59-year-old told AFP.
Finally prompted to flee after Ukraine’s shock border incursion into Russia’s Kursk region, she was at a gathering point for evacuees in the eastern city of Sumy.
The offensive has been one of Ukraine’s speediest operations since Moscow invaded in February 2022. Analysts say it is the most significant ground operation by a foreign army inside Russia since World War II.
Moscow has been forced to redeploy troops and carry out mass civilian evacuations as it struggles to stem the advance.
For Ukraine, it has been a morale boost at an otherwise perilous moment in the war.
But Russia has also responded by pounding Ukrainian border areas — where it says troops and equipment are stationed — prompting Ukrainian officials to order the evacuation of some 20,000 people on its side of the new frontline.
Sitting alone and disoriented at the Sumy evacuation center, 80-year-old Anna was tearful as she described the intensifying artillery fire in her village of Yunakivka, near the border.
“I was about to hang myself. But God saved me,” she told AFP.
“But I don’t know what to do now,” she added, perched on a temporary bed next to the few plastic bags of belongings she had been able to bring with her.
Overseeing efforts to help those who fled, aid worker Vitaliy Kaporukhin said the Ukrainian attack — planned in secret and launched without warning — had caught border residents off guard.
“People are upset,” said Kaporukhin, who works with the aid organization, Pluriton. “They’re having to leave their homes. They’re having to leave everything behind.
“Fortunately, it’s an operation from our side, and Russian forces didn’t come here. That would have been worse.”
AFP journalists saw dozens of Ukrainian military vehicles daubed with white triangles, the insignia apparently used to identify forces involved in Kursk operation, kicking up dust on roads in the Sumy border territory.
Kyiv has been tight-lipped about the operation but a top Ukrainian official told AFP its aim was to destabilize Russia by showing up its weaknesses.
In one frontier village, servicemen who spoke to AFP on condition of anonymity said they had been deployed inside Russia. They described intensive Russian bombardments along the border and in the Kursk region.
Another group preparing to cross into Kursk voiced confidence they could hold ground there, citing weak Russian resistance — for now.
Ukrainian troops have carved rows of new defensive lines into the Sumy region’s landscape.
Closer to the Russian border, smoke trails from Ukrainian projectiles could be seen marking the sky above sweeping fields of bright sunflowers.
The fresh scrutiny on Sumy represents a dramatic shift for a region that, compared with other eastern regions, has been spared the brunt of more than two years of devastating fighting with Russia.
But windows covered by plywood and gutted carcases of Soviet-era buildings point to frequent and deadly aerial attacks on Sumy and the surrounding area.
Air raid sirens and explosions rang out over the city, itself just 30 kilometers (18 miles) from the Russian border, at regular intervals.
Russian President Vladimir Putin’s army stormed into the surrounding region when he ordered the invasion in February 2022, but within several weeks had been pushed by an unexpectedly resolute Ukrainian resistance.
This weekend the Ukrainian army said it was the region most heavily targeted by Russian aerial attacks, retaliatory strikes for the ongoing offensive.
“The border villages have already been wiped out,” said Tetyana, whose first regret was having to leave behind the pickles she had spent the summer preparing. “There is nothing left there.”
Despite the evacuations and the looming threat of Russian retaliation, life has seemed relatively normal in the region’s main civilian hub in recent days.
Shouting children played in a water fountain in the center of the Sumy, which had a population of around 250,000 before the war. Residents enjoyed evening meals on restaurant terraces dotting the historic center.
At the evacuation center, residents who had fled reported that Moscow had stepped up attacks, using devastating glide bombs on border areas.
Retired metal worker Mykola, who left his village of Khotyn some 10 kilometers (6 miles) from Russia, admitted it had pained him to have to leave his home.
But he found some consolation from Ukraine’s offensive in Kursk.
“Let’s let them find out what it’s like,” the 70-year-old said. “They don’t understand what war is.
“Let them have a taste of it.”
‘God saved me’: Kursk rout sparks panic, bombs along Ukraine border
https://arab.news/8w64x
‘God saved me’: Kursk rout sparks panic, bombs along Ukraine border
- Moscow has been forced to redeploy troops and carry out mass civilian evacuations as it struggles to stem the advance
Greek police arrest third suspect over bombing as minister warns of new generation of extremists
- The intended target and timing of the planned attack remain under investigation. All three suspects – as well as the man killed in the blast – are Greek nationals
ATHENS, Greece: Greek police arrested a third suspect Monday in connection with an explosion in central Athens last week that authorities have blamed on an alleged aspiring domestic extremist group.
The 30-year-old woman surrendered to Greek authorities Monday at Athens International Airport after being located in Switzerland, authorities said.
The Oct. 31 blast gutted a third-floor apartment in the central Ambelokipi neighborhood, killing a 36-year-old man believed to have been assembling an explosive device. A 33-year-old woman was severely injured and remains hospitalized under police guard. A 31-year-old male suspect surrendered to authorities.
“It was a monstrous bomb with concentrated explosive material,” Minister of Citizen Protection Michalis Chrisochoidis told private Skai television. “It would have caused great destruction, because it was very powerful.” The apartment block has been declared uninhabitable due to blast damage.
Chrisochoidis said those allegedly involved were young people who appeared to aspire to become a new generation of domestic terrorists in Greece.
Anti-terrorism units searching the blast site, three additional locations and a vehicle seized two handguns with magazines, digital devices, disguise materials including wigs and rubber masks, and handwritten diagrams.
Greece has a history of far-left extremism dating to the 1970s, with militants carrying out multiple bombings and assassinations, though major groups have been dismantled.
Recent years have seen reduced activity, with the last significant incident occurring in December 2023 when police defused a bomb at riot police headquarters following an anonymous warning.
“I think we are dealing with an attempt of some young people who are aiming to become a third generation of terrorism in Greece,” Chrisochoidis said.
The intended target and timing of the planned attack remain under investigation. All three suspects – as well as the man killed in the blast – are Greek nationals.
Some Republican-led states refuse to let Justice Department monitors into polling places
- Officials in Florida and Texas have said they won’t allow federal election monitors into polling sites on Tuesday
WASHINGTON: Some Republican-led states say they will block the Justice Department’s election monitors from going inside polling places on Election Day, pushing back on federal authorities’ decades-long practice of watching for violations of federal voting laws.
Officials in Florida and Texas have said they won’t allow federal election monitors into polling sites on Tuesday. And on Monday, Missouri filed a federal lawsuit seeking a court order to block federal officials from observing inside polling places.
The Justice Department announced last week that it’s deploying election monitors in 86 jurisdictions across 27 states on Election Day. The Justice Department declined to comment on Monday on the Missouri lawsuit and the moves by other Republican-led states.
The race between Democratic nominee Kamala Harris and Republican nominee Donald Trump is a dead heat, and both sides are bracing for potential legal challenges to vote tallies. The Justice Department’s election monitoring effort, a long practice under both Democratic and Republican administrations, is meant to ensure that federal voting rights are being followed.
Here’s a look at election monitors and the states’ actions:
Who are the election monitors?
Election monitors are lawyers who work for the Justice Department, including in the civil rights division and US attorney’s offices across the country. They are not law enforcement officers or federal agents.
For decades, the Justice Department’s civil rights division has sent attorneys and staff members to monitor polling places across the country in both federal and non-federal elections. The monitors are tasked with ensuring the compliance of federal voting rights laws.
The Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division enforces a number of statutes protecting the right to vote. That includes Voting Rights Act, which prohibits intimidation and threats against those who are casting ballots or counting votes. And it includes the Americans with Disabilities Act, which mandates that election officials ensure people with disabilities have the full and equal opportunity to vote.
Where are election monitors being sent?
The 86 jurisdictions that the Justice Department will send monitors to on Tuesday include Maricopa County, Arizona and Fulton County, Georgia, which in 2020 became the center of election conspiracy theories spread by Trump and other Republicans. Another place on the list is Portage County, Ohio, where a sheriff came under fire for a social media post in which he said people with Harris yard signs should have their addresses recorded so that immigrants can be sent to live with them if the Democrat wins the presidency
Other areas where federal monitors will be sent include Detroit, Michigan; Queens, New York; Providence, Rhode Island; Jackson County, South Dakota; Salem, Massachusetts; Milwaukee, Wisconsin; Manassas, Virginia; Cuyahoga County, Ohio and Northwest Arctic Borough, Alaska. The Justice Department’s monitors will be in St. Louis, Missouri; four jurisdictions in Florida and eight jurisdictions in Texas.
What’s happening in Missouri?
In filing the lawsuit on Monday, Missouri Secretary of State Jay Ashcroft said state law “clearly and specifically limits who may be in polling places.” He also accused the federal government of “attempting to illegally interfere in Missouri’s elections.”
The lawsuit states that Missouri law “permits only certain categories of persons to be present in voting locations, including voters, minor children accompanying voters, poll workers, election judges, etc.,” and not federal officials.
The Justice Department also sought to monitor polling places in Missouri in 2022. The agency planned to have officials at Cole County, which includes Jefferson City, the state capital. County Clerk Steve Korsmeyer had said he wouldn’t let them in if they show up.
The federal agency backed down after Ashcroft showed Justice Department officials the state law, Ashcroft said. He says the Justice Department is now “trying to go through the back door” by contacting local election officials for access.
Messages were left Monday with the St. Louis Board of Election Commissioners.
The St. Louis Board of Election Commissioners reached a settlement in 2021 with the Justice Department aimed at ensuring people with mobility and vision impairments can access to polling places after federal officials found problems, such as ramps that were too steep and inaccessible parking, according to the court papers. The settlement, which expires next year, says the board must “cooperate fully” with Justice Department’s efforts to monitor compliance, “including but not limited to providing the United States with timely access to polling places (including on Election Day).”
What are the other states saying?
In a letter to the Justice Department on Friday, Texas Secretary of State Jane Nelson said wrote that “Texas law is clear: Justice Department monitors are not permitted inside polling places where ballots are being cast or a central counting station where ballots are being counted.”
“Texas has a robust processes and procedures in place to ensure that eligible voters may participate in a free and fair election,” Nelson wrote.
In a similar letter Friday, Florida Secretary of State Cord Byrd told the Justice Department that Florida law lists who is allowed inside the state’s polling places and that Justice Department officials are not included. Byrd said that Florida is sending its own monitors to the four jurisdictions the Justice Department plans to send staff to and they will “ensure there is no interference with the voting process.”
Arab America decides as Trump and Harris remain tied in final stretch of election race
- Recent Arab News/YouGov survey revealed Arab American frustration with US policy in the Middle East
- In swing states with large concentrations of Arab Americans, their votes have become as valuable as gold dust
LONDON: They are in a minority of about 1 percent.
In the US census carried out in 2020 — the first that specifically sought information about MENA origins — just 3.5 million of America’s 334 million citizens reported being of Middle East and North African descent.
But as Americans go to the polls today to select their next president, that 1 percent is poised to have a 100 percent impact on one of the most important US elections for a generation.
No one would suggest that this is a homogeneous group. Culturally, historically and linguistically, being “Arab” is an umbrella term for peoples as diverse as the 22 nations that comprise the League of Arab States.
But as an exclusive Arab News/YouGov survey revealed last month, in the run-up to the 2024 US presidential election all Arab Americans have been united — in grief and outrage and in disappointment at the performance of the current US administration over the shocking events that have taken place in Gaza and Lebanon over the past year.
The survey also found that Arab Americans were preparing to vote in unprecedented numbers — underscoring just how important their swing-state vote will have been today for Kamala Harris and Donald Trump.
What the survey also revealed, however, is that Arab Americans have been divided over which of the two main candidates to vote for.
This explains the last-minute efforts to woo the Arab American vote by both Harris and former President Donald Trump.
Right up to the wire, the election race has been too close to call, which is why in the crucial swing states that happen to be home to the largest concentrations of Arab Americans, their votes have become like gold dust.
On Sunday Harris was in Detroit, announcing: “I am honored to have the support of many Arab American leaders who represent the interests and the concerns of the Arab American community.”
She also made sure to repeat a line she has delivered frequently during the campaign as she sought to distance herself from association with the perception that the Biden administration had failed to hold Israel in check over the past year.
“The level of deaths of innocent Palestinians is unconscionable,” she said.
The Arab News/YouGov survey revealed the extent to which traditional Arab American support for the Democratic Party has ebbed away over the Palestine issue.
In October, Harris met community leaders in Flint, Michigan, in a clear attempt to make the point that, although she served as his vice president, she is not Biden.
But some community leaders declined the invitation to meet Harris, and not everyone who took part in a virtual meeting with Harris’ national security adviser, Phil Gordon, was reassured by the overture.
Ali Dagher, a Lebanese-American community leader who did not attend the meeting, described Harris’ outreach to the Arab community as “too little, too late.”
Both campaigns have been very aware that of all seven battleground states, the result in Michigan appears to have been the most finely balanced, and on Friday it was Trump’s turn to assure the 200,000 Arab American voters in the state there that he was on their side.
In messages found on billboards along Michigan’s highways, Trump portrayed himself as pro-peace in the Middle East, while casting Harris as pro-Israel. Skeptics saw it as a curious flight of fancy for a man whose record as president was entirely pro-Israel, and not all of them were falling for it.
“We’re not naive about what he means for our community,” Rexhinaldo Nazarko, executive director of Michigan advocacy group the American Muslim Engagement and Empowerment Network, told the BBC.
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Nazarko and doubtless many other Arab Americans have not forgotten Trump’s 2017 “Muslim ban,” his recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and his Abraham Accords, widely perceived in the Arab world as favoring Israel and patronizing Palestinians.
Regardless, several influential Arab Americans have declared for Trump, including Amer Ghalib, the mayor of Hamtramck, near Detroit. He has said his decision to endorse the former president was “a combination of both disappointment and hope” — disappointment with Biden’s handling of the Middle East situation and “hope that some change will bring peace to the Middle East, and we found President Trump is so determined about that.”
However, one of the latest polls of American voters suggests that Harris is beginning to pull ahead of Trump in five of the crucial seven swing states.
But it is in the three remaining swing states where the election is likely to be won and lost — including in Michigan, where the two candidates are neck-and-neck with exactly 47 percent of the vote each.
This echoes almost precisely the result of the Arab News/YouGov poll, which was published last week, and which also found that the Arab American vote is virtually polarized. Asked which candidate they were most likely to vote for, 45 percent said Trump, while 43 percent opted for Harris.
This was a big surprise, especially as 40 percent of those polled described themselves as natural Democrats, only 28 percent as Republicans and 23 percent as independents.
The poll made clear just how many Arab Americans appear to have switched their allegiance from the Democrats to the Republicans in response to the disappointment engendered by the Biden administration’s handling of Israel and the catastrophe in Gaza.
It will soon be clear whether Harris has been able to shake off that association among Arab American voters.
Whether she has or not, and whoever will be heading for the White House in January following today’s vote, the 2024 presidential election is already a historic one for Arab Americans. Their wholehearted embrace of the US democratic process — on a scale far outweighing that of the American electorate overall — has been on an unprecedented scale, reflecting not only their concern for their familial homelands but also their engagement with the politics of America.
Because make no mistake: Although the world categorizes them as Arab Americans, they see themselves as American Arabs — and their stake in the country that can lay claim to being the world’s greatest melting pot of immigrants is as deeply embedded as any.
In 2023 Dearborn, Michigan, became the first Arab-majority city in America. The fact that it did, and that Michigan’s Arabs have been in a position to play such a vital role in the selection of America’s next president, is down to something as all-American as the Model T Ford — literally.
At the start of the 20th century there was nothing much other than farmland in and around Dearborn. In 1908 Henry Ford began producing his revolutionary Model T cars in Detroit, and among the first workers he hired on the production line were Arabs who had recently emigrated from Syria.
They were followed by others, chiefly from Palestine, Lebanon, Iraq and Yemen, who all settled in and around Dearborn, working for the gigantic Ford factory that grew up there, and where the company still has its headquarters today.
There have been 21 presidents since the first Arab immigrants began working on Ford’s Model T production lines in Michigan 116 years ago. When the last polls close in Michigan today at 9 p.m. Eastern Time, their descendants will have the satisfaction of knowing that in the race to become the 47th president of the United States they have been firmly in the driver’s seat.
Spain dreads more flood deaths as rain pounds Catalonia
- The toll stands at 217 dead — almost all in the eastern Valencia region — with the country dreading the discovery of more corpses
VALENCIA: Rescuers plunged into inundated garages on Monday to find victims of Spain’s deadliest floods in a generation as fresh downpours sparked transport chaos in the northeastern region of Catalonia.
The toll stands at 217 dead — almost all in the eastern Valencia region — with the country dreading the discovery of more corpses as an unknown number of people remain missing.
National weather service AEMET announced the end of the emergency for Valencia but torrential rain struck Catalonia, where residents received telephone alerts urging the utmost caution.
Barcelona’s El Prat airport, Spain’s second busiest, said 50 flights were canceled or delayed and 17 diverted on Monday, while the city closed some flooded metro stations and regional trains were suspended.
Images on social media showed cars plowing through flooded roads in the Barcelona suburbs of Castelldefels and Gava and bare-footed travelers wading through water that had seeped into El Prat.
Spain also grappled with the aftermath of an extraordinary outburst of popular anger in which crowds heckled and hurled mud at King Felipe VI, Queen Letizia and Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez.
The Civil Guard has opened an investigation into the chaos in the ground-zero town of Paiporta that cut short their visit on Sunday, Interior Minister Fernando Grande-Marlaska told public broadcaster TVE.
He blamed “marginal groups” for instigating the violence where mud spattered the monarchs’ face and clothes and a window of Sanchez’s car was broken.
The incident underscored growing anger at the authorities’ preparation for and reaction to the catastrophe.
Experts have questioned the warning systems that failed to alert the population in time and the speed of the response.
“They were saying ‘alert for water’, but they should have said it was a flood,” Teresa Gisbert, 62, told AFP in the destroyed town of Sedavi, saying she had “lost everything.”
Thousands of soldiers, police officers, civil guards and firefighters spent a sixth day distributing aid and clearing mud and debris to find bodies.
But relief works only reached some towns days after the disaster and in many cases volunteers were the first to provide food, water, sanitation and cleaning equipment.
“We shouldn’t romanticize it: the people saved the people because we were abandoned,” said Jorge, 25, a resident of the town of Chiva where the royals canceled their visit on Sunday.
Divers on Monday concentrated their search for missing bodies in garages and a multi-story car park in the town of Aldaia.
The storm caught many victims in their vehicles on roads and in underground spaces such as car parks, tunnels and garages where rescue operations are particularly difficult.
Local authorities in Valencia extended travel restrictions for another two days, canceled classes and urged residents to work from home to facilitate the work of the emergency services.
The unity that bound Spain’s polarized politics when the tragedy struck started to fray as attention turned to those responsible for handling the crisis.
Far-right party Vox slammed Spain’s “failed” state, blaming Sanchez for the slow deployment of troops and “demonizing” volunteers. The hard-left Podemos demanded the resignation of the Valencia region’s conservative leader Carlos Mazon.
Sanchez has said now is not the time to scrutinize the management of the disaster during urgent rescue and reconstruction work.
The main opposition Popular Party urged the left-wing government to go further by declaring a national emergency and approving aid packages for individual citizens.
Storms coming off the Mediterranean are common during this season. But scientists have warned human-induced climate change is increasing the ferocity, length and frequency of extreme weather events.
“Politicians haven’t acted on climate change, and now we’re paying the consequences of their inaction,” environmental activist Emi, 21, told AFP in Chiva.
India’s Rajasthan state seeks Saudi investment with roadshow in Riyadh, Jeddah
- Rajasthan is aiming to double its state GDP to $350 billion in next five years
- State seeks Saudi investment in engineering, food processing, agro-solutions
NEW DELHI: The government of India’s Rajasthan state is seeking Saudi investment in its growing industries, its minister told Arab News on Monday as he leads an official delegation to meet investors and business leaders in the Kingdom.
Rajasthan, India’s largest state by area, is gearing up to host a global investment summit in its capital Jaipur next month as part of the goal to double the state’s gross domestic product to $350 billion in the next five years.
The summit is aimed at attracting international investors and fostering new partnerships in various sectors, including renewable energy, electric vehicles, infrastructure, startups and tourism.
Ahead of the event, the state government has organized a roadshow in Riyadh and Jeddah this week to invite Saudi officials and business players to invest in Rajasthan.
“Saudi Arabia is one of the largest and key economies in the West Asian region that is of immense significance to Rajasthan from the perspective of furthering trade and other partnerships,” Rajasthan’s Minister of State for Industry and Commerce K. K. Vishnoi, told Arab News.
“The sectors that remain our key focus from the perspective of seeking Saudi investment include engineering, machinery and equipment, investment advisory, agro solutions, food processing and FMCG (fast-moving consumer goods) distribution, among others.”
Rajasthan officials are scheduled to meet leading Saudi companies operating in these sectors, and will present the state’s strategic advantages while also offering key incentives to potential investors, he added.
As part of his visit to the Kingdom, Vishnoi held talks on Monday with the Saudi Assistant Minister of Investment Ibrahim Yousef Al-Mubarak, according to a release issued by the state government.
“The delegation will also extend an invitation to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia to participate in the investment summit as a partner country,” it said.
Saudi Arabia is India’s fifth-largest trading partner, with bilateral trade valued at about $43 billion in the 2023-2024 financial year, accounting for more than 4.5 percent of India’s total trade.
