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Drone crashes on oil depot in Russia’s Stavropol region

Drone crashes on oil depot in Russia’s Stavropol region
Ukrainian law enforcement officers comfort a woman crying over the body of her 15-year-old son following a missile attack in Kharkiv on October 31, 2024 (AFP)
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Updated 56 sec ago
Reuters
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Drone crashes on oil depot in Russia’s Stavropol region

Drone crashes on oil depot in Russia’s Stavropol region
  • There were no casualties in the incident at the Svetlograd oil depot, Vladimirov said on Telegram
Updated 56 sec ago
Reuters
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MOSCOW: A drone fell on an oil depot in Russia’s southern Stavropol region, local governor Vladimir Vladimirov said on Friday.
It was the second suspected Ukrainian attack in consecutive days on Russian fuel and energy targets, following a lull of about seven weeks since a fuel facility in Tula was attacked on Sept. 10.
There were no casualties in the incident at the Svetlograd oil depot, Vladimirov said on Telegram.
Baza Telegram channel, which is close to Russia’s security services, posted a CCTV video purportedly showing the attack on the oil depot. The video showed that at least one of several fuel tanks was swiftly engulfed by a fireball.
On Thursday, several fuel and energy facilities were targeted in a Ukrainian drone attack on the central Russian region of Bashkortostan, home to Bashneft, a major oil company controlled by Russia’s leading oil producer, Rosneft .
Bashneft operates several refineries in the region, playing a significant role in Russia’s energy infrastructure.
The attacks come days after the Financial Times reported early-stage talks between Ukraine and Russia about potentially halting airstrikes on each other’s energy facilities. The Kremlin dismissed the report.
Russia has called such attacks terrorism, while Ukraine, which stepped up the drone strikes on Russian energy facilities since the start of the year, has said it is striking back in retaliation for attacks on its energy infrastructure.
Andrei Kartapolov, chairman of Russia’s lower house of parliament’s defense committee, said in comments to Life media channel earlier this week, that there were no talks on halting the attacks.
“We are not going to spare anyone,” he said.
European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said in September that Russia had knocked out the gigawatt equivalent of over half of Ukraine’s energy infrastructure. The European Union aims to restore 2.5 GW of capacity, about 15 percent of the country’s needs, she said, referring to proposed EU-funded repairs.

Topics: Russia-Ukraine Conflict

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Eight dead as huge fire engulfs cooking oil factory near Jakarta

Eight dead as huge fire engulfs cooking oil factory near Jakarta
Updated 2 sec ago
Reuters
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Eight dead as huge fire engulfs cooking oil factory near Jakarta

Eight dead as huge fire engulfs cooking oil factory near Jakarta
  • The factory is operated by PT Primus Sanus Cooking Oil Industrial (Priscolin)
Updated 2 sec ago
Reuters
JAKARTA: Eight people died in a large fire at a cooking oil factory near the Indonesian capital Jakarta, local fire authorities said on Friday.
Around 20 firefighting trucks are at the site and have contained the blaze in most areas of the factory, authorities said.
Footage from Metro TV showed flames and billowing black smoke coming out of a building in the center of an industrial complex in Bekasi, a city on Jakarta’s eastern edge. The report said roads had been closed around the factory.
All of the bodies had been evacuated from the site, Suhartono, head of Bekasi’s fire department SAID, adding that three other people were injured.
But the number of casualties could still rise, he said.
Local authorities are investigating the cause of the fire.
The factory is operated by PT Primus Sanus Cooking Oil Industrial (Priscolin), said Suhartono.

Schoolgirls, policeman among five killed in roadside blast in Pakistan’s Balochistan

Schoolgirls, policeman among five killed in roadside blast in Pakistan’s Balochistan
Updated 14 min 44 sec ago
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Schoolgirls, policeman among five killed in roadside blast in Pakistan’s Balochistan

Schoolgirls, policeman among five killed in roadside blast in Pakistan’s Balochistan
Updated 14 min 44 sec ago
Saadullah Akhtar

QUETTA: At least five people, including three schoolgirls and a policeman, were killed in a roadside blast in Pakistan’s southwestern Balochistan province on Friday morning, police said, in the latest incident of violence to hit the restive region.
The blast appeared to target a police van passing by a girls school in the Mastung district of the province, according to police and local administration officials.
Fateh Baloch, in-charge of the Mastung police station, said the police mobile van came under attack when it was on a routine patrol on Friday morning.
“Five people, including a police constable and three minor schoolgirls, were killed and 13 others injured in the blast,” Baloch told Arab News.
No group immediately claimed responsibility for the blast.
“We have cordoned-off the area and are shifting the injured to the hospital,” Baz Muhammad Marri, the Mastung deputy commissioner, told Arab News.
Balochistan, which borders Iran and Afghanistan and is home to major China-led projects such as a strategic port and a gold and copper mine, has been the site of a decades-long separatist insurgency by ethnic Baloch militants. The province has lately seen an increase in attacks by separatist militants.
On Tuesday, five people were killed in an attack by armed men on the construction site of a small dam in Balochistan’s Panjgur district. The outlawed Baloch Liberation Army (BLA), the most prominent of several separatist groups, claimed responsibility for the attack along with killing of two other persons in Kech and Quetta districts.
This month, 21 miners working at privately run coal mines were killed in an attack by unidentified gunmen.
The separatists accuse the central government of exploiting Balochistan’s mineral and gas resources. The Pakistani state denies the allegation and says it is working to uplift the region through development initiatives.
Besides Baloch separatists, the restive region also has a presence of religiously motivated militant groups, who frequently target police and security forces.
Islamabad says militants mainly associated with the Pakistani Taliban frequently launch attacks from Afghanistan and has even blamed Kabul’s Afghan Taliban rulers for facilitating anti-Pakistan groups. Kabul denies the allegation.

- This article originally appeared on Arab News Pakistan

Topics: Pakistan Balochistan

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Australian judge rules senator broke race law by telling rival legislator to return to Pakistan

Australian judge rules senator broke race law by telling rival legislator to return to Pakistan
Updated 11 min 52 sec ago
AP
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Australian judge rules senator broke race law by telling rival legislator to return to Pakistan

Australian judge rules senator broke race law by telling rival legislator to return to Pakistan
  • Sen. Mehreen Faruqi, a 61-year-old engineer, moved to Australia with her husband in 1992 as skilled economic migrants
  • Justice Angus Stewart found that Sen. Pauline Hanson had engaged in ‘seriously offensive’ and intimidating behavior
Updated 11 min 52 sec ago
AP

MELBOURNE: An Australian judge ruled on Friday that anti-immigration party leader Sen. Pauline Hanson breached racial discrimination laws by crudely telling Pakistan-born Sen. Mehreen Faruqi to return to her homeland.

Faruqi sued Hanson in the Federal Court over a 2022 exchange on the social media platform X, then called Twitter, under a provision of the Racial Discrimination Act that bans public actions and statements that offend, insult, humiliate or intimidate people because of their race, color or national or ethnic origin.

Following the news that Queen Elizabeth II had died, Faruqi, deputy leader of the Australian Greens party, posted: “I cannot mourn the leader of a racist empire built on stolen lives, land and wealth of colonized peoples.”

The 70-year-old leader of Pauline Hanson’s One Nation party replied that Faruqi had immigrated to take “advantage” of Australia, and told the Lahore-born Muslim to return to Pakistan, using an expletive.

Hanson has been known for her views on race since her first speech to Parliament in 1996 in which she warned Australia was “in danger of being swamped by Asians” because of the nation’s non-discriminatory immigration policy. She once wore a burqa in the Senate as part of a campaign to have Islamic face coverings banned.

Faruqi, a 61-year-old qualified engineer, moved to Australia with her husband in 1992 as skilled economic migrants.

Justice Angus Stewart found that Hanson had engaged in “seriously offensive” and intimidating behavior.

The post was racist, nativist and anti-Muslim, Stewart said.

“It is a strong form of racism,” he said.

Stewart ordered Hanson to delete the offensive post and to pay Faruqi’s legal costs. Stewart expected those costs would “amount to a fairly substantial sum.”

Faruqi welcomed the ruling as a vindication for “every single person who has been told to go back to where they came from. And believe me, there are too many of us who have been subjected to this ultimate racist slur, far too many times in this country. Today’s ruling tells us that telling someone to go back to where they came from is a strong form of racism,” Faruqi told reporters.

Greens Senator Mehreen Faruqi talks to the media outside the Federal Court of Australia, in Sydney, Friday, November 1, 2024. (AAP Image via AP)

“Today is a good day for people of color, for Muslims and all of us who have been working so hard to build an anti-racist society,” she said.

Hanson said she was “deeply disappointed” by the ruling and would appeal.

The verdict demonstrated an “inappropriately broad application”of the section of the Racial Discrimination Act that she had breached, particularly in how that section impinged upon freedom of political expression, Hanson said in a statement.

Hanson’s lawyers argued that that her post was exempt from the law because of constitutionally implied freedom of political communication.

Hanson said she considered the queen’s death a matter of public interest and that Faruqi’s views on the death were also a matter of public interest.

Stewart found that Hanson’s tweet did not respond to any point made in Faruqi’s tweet.

“Sen. Hanson’s tweet was merely an angry ad hominem attack devoid of discernible content (or comment) in response to what Sen. Faruqi had said,” Stewart wrote in his decision.

Stewart described Hanson’s testimony as “generally unreliable,” rejecting her claim that she did not know Faruqi’s religion when she posted.

Hanson told the court she had called for a ban on Muslim immigration in the past, but she described that as her personal opinion rather than her minor party’s policy.

She conceded she had once said in a media interview she would not sell her house to a Muslim, but would not say whether she had meant what she had said.

Australia is an increasingly multicultural society. Australians born overseas or have at least one overseas-born parent became a majority in the latest census in 2021.

Topics: Australia Senator Pauline Hanson racism racial discrimination Muslims in australia

Russia hands former US consulate employee nearly 5-year jail term

Russia hands former US consulate employee nearly 5-year jail term
Updated 36 min 54 sec ago
AFP
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Russia hands former US consulate employee nearly 5-year jail term

Russia hands former US consulate employee nearly 5-year jail term
  • Robert Shonov worked for more than 25 years for the US consulate until 2021, when Moscow imposed restrictions on local staff working for foreign missions
Updated 36 min 54 sec ago
AFP

MOSCOW: A Russian former employee of the US consulate in Russia’s Far Eastern city of Vladivostok has been sentenced to four years and ten months in prison for “secret collaboration with a foreign state,” Russian agencies said Friday.
Robert Shonov worked for more than 25 years for the US consulate until 2021, when Moscow imposed restrictions on local staff working for foreign missions.
Afterward, he worked as a private contractor compiling press accounts from publicly accessible Russian media, according to the US State Department.
He was arrested this year on suspicion of passing secret information about Russia’s war in Ukraine to the United States in exchange for money.
According to the judgment published on the website of Valdivostok’s Primorye court, 400,000 roubles (€4,000) and an electronic device linked to the commission of the offense were seized.
In September 2023, Russia also expelled two US diplomats it accused of acting as liaison agents for Shonov.
According to Washington, Shonov had only been hired by the US consulate to carry out routine monitoring of freely accessible Russian media.
In recent years, several US citizens have been arrested and sentenced to long jail terms in Russia. Others are being held pending trial.
Washington, which supports Ukraine militarily and financially against Russia’s invasion, accuses Moscow of wanting to exchange them for Russians held in the United States.
The United States and Russia exchanged prisoners including The Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich in a landmark swap in August, but several US nationals and dual nationals remain in detention in Russia.

Topics: Russia US

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North Korea says record test was new Hwasong-19 intercontinental ballistic missile

North Korea says record test was new Hwasong-19 intercontinental ballistic missile
Updated 01 November 2024
Reuters
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North Korea says record test was new Hwasong-19 intercontinental ballistic missile

North Korea says record test was new Hwasong-19 intercontinental ballistic missile
  • The Hwasong-19, like North Korea’s other latest ICBMs, demonstrated the range to strike nearly anywhere in the United States
  • The launch drew swift condemnation from Washington and its allies in South Korea, Japan and Europe, as well as the UN chief
Updated 01 November 2024
Reuters

SEOUL: North Korea flexed its military muscle with the test of a huge new solid-fuel intercontinental ballistic missile dubbed Hwasong-19, state media said on Friday, amid international uproar over its troops deployed to aid Russia in Ukraine.
The launch on Thursday flew higher than any previous North Korean missile, according to the North as well as militaries in South Korea and Japan that tracked its flight deep into space before it splashed down in the ocean between Japan and Russia.
State news agency KCNA lauded it as “the world’s strongest strategic missile.”
While questions remain over North Korea’s ability to guide such a missile and protect a nuclear warhead as it reenters the atmosphere, the Hwasong-19, like North Korea’s other latest ICBMs, demonstrated the range to strike nearly anywhere in the United States.
“The new-type ICBM proved before the world that the hegemonic position we have secured in the development and manufacture of nuclear delivery means of the same kind is absolutely irreversible,” North Korean leader Kim Jong Un said while overseeing the launch, KCNA reported.
The launch, days before Tuesday’s US presidential election, drew swift condemnation from Washington and its allies in South Korea, Japan and Europe, as well as the United Nations secretary-general.
“The missile continues to underwrite the growing credibility of North Korea’s strategic deterrent capabilities,” said Ankit Panda, a senior fellow at the US-based Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, adding that Kim appeared specifically interested in communicating that message to the United States.
HEAVIER PAYLOADS
The Hwasong-19 will deploy alongside the Hwasong-18, which was first launched last year and is also powered by solid fuel, KCNA said.
Solid-fuel missiles do not need to be fueled immediately ahead of launch, are often easier and safer to operate and require less logistical support than liquid-fuel weapons.
“It can be stored and moved anywhere, allowing for excellent mobility, stealth and survivability,” said Kim of the University of North Korean Studies.
Photos released by KCNA showed a large, multi-stage missile launched from a canister carried by a transporter-erector-launcher vehicle. The agency showed photos from cameras that appeared to be attached to the missile, taking images of stage separations and the earth.
“The increased length likely means a greater fuel capacity, which directly affects thrust and potentially increases range,” Kim said.
But North Korea’s existing missiles already had the range to reach anywhere in the United States, and the Hwasong-19’s expanded capacity combined with larger payload section is more likely designed to be able to carry heavier, and potentially multiple, nuclear warheads, he said.
“North Korea may continue testing to see if, during the final reentry phase, the warheads can separate and each head toward individual targets,” Kim added.
The Hwasong-19 flew of 1,001.2km for 85 minutes and 56 seconds before landing in the sea off the east coast of the Korean peninsula, with a maximum altitude of 7,687.5km, KCNA said.

Topics: North Korea

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