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Tension rises as Turkey sends troops to Syria's Afrin

Agencies
January 22, 2018

Jan 22: The US has urged Turkey to use restraint in its ongoing military operation in northern Syria as Turkish ground forces pressed ahead against the Syrian Kurdish group YPG in the enclave of Afrin.

Washington considers the YPG its closest ally in Syria, viewing it as the most effective ground force in the fight against the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) group.

Heather Nauert, spokeswoman for the US State Department, said on Sunday that Secretary of State Rex Tillerson spoke with his Turkish and Russian counterparts on the phone and called against an escalation in fighting in northern Syria.

"We urge Turkey to exercise restraint and ensure that its military operations remain limited in scope and duration and scrupulous to avoid civilian casualties," said Nauert.

The statement on Sunday came just hours after Turkey said its ground troops had crossed into northern Syria.

Ankara considers Syria's Kurdish Democratic Union Party (PYD) and its armed wing, the YPG, "terrorist groups" with ties to the banned Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), which has waged a decades-long fight inside Turkey.

It fears the establishment of a Kurdish corridor along its border.

Speaking in Istanbul earlier on Sunday, Binali Yildirim, Turkey's prime minister, said Turkish forces had  crossed into the YPG-controlled region in Syria at 08:05 GMT from the Turkish village of Gulbaba.

He said Turkey intended to establish a 30km "safe zone" in Afrin.

"Throughout the day we've heard the sound of jets in the sky, intense artillery and machine gun fire," Al Jazeera's Stefanie Dekker, reporting from the Turkey-Syria border, said.

The Turkish army has said it is targeting only "terrorist" positions and "utmost importance" was being given to not harm civilians.

'Well-trained' force

According to estimates, there are between 8,000 to 10,000 Kurdish YPG fighters in the Afrin area.

"Turkey says it will continue its operation until it has pushed the YPG away from its borders," our correspondent said.

No one knows how long this will take or what the implications may be.

"The YPG are extremely well trained. They know the terrain in Afrin but Turkey has superiority in the skies and that is a huge advantage."

Reacting to Turkey's ground advance into Syria, France called for an emergency meeting of the UN Security Council.

"Ghouta, Idlib, Afrin - France asks for an urgent meeting of the Security Council," Jean-Yves Le Drian, the French foreign minister, said on Twitter on Sunday.

Le Drian said he had talked to his Turkish counterpart in the day and called for a complete ceasefire in Syria.

France's request for the emergency meeting comes one day after the Turkish operation against the YPG began.

On Saturday, Turkish jets carried out air strikes against targets in Afrin.

Russia, which controls the airspace over Afrin, withdrew hundreds of its soldiers deployed near the city before Turkey's operation began.

Several diplomats and mission chiefs of the permanent members of Security Council - the US, Russia, the UK, France and China - were brought up to speed on the developments in Afrin.

Erdogan's warning

For his part, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said on Sunday he hoped the military operation will be completed "in a very short time".

But Erdogan also warned pro-Kurdish opposition supporters in Turkey not to hold protests.

"Know that if you go out on the streets, authorities are on your necks," he told thousands of supporters in Bursa.

"This is a national struggle and we will crush anyone who opposes our national struggle."

Earlier, Anadolu news agency reported that Turkish-backed Free Syrian Army (FSA) fighters had advanced towards Afrin in the early hours of Sunday, supported by Turkish troops.

The YPG confirmed the advance, saying two villages in Afrin's Bilbil district near the Turkish border came under attack.

About 25,000 Free Syrian Army (FSA) rebels were joining the Turkish military operation in northern Syria with the goal of recapturing Arab towns and villages held by the YPG, a Syrian rebel commander told Reuters news agency on Sunday.

As early as Friday, thousands of FSA fighters had already been mobilised in Turkey's Hatay province and Syrian locations east of Afrin.

Major Yasser Abdul Rahim, who is also the commander of Failaq al-Sham, a main FSA rebel group in the operations room of the campaign, said the rebels did not seek to enter Afrin but encircle it and expel the YPG.

"We have no interest in entering the city only the military targets inside the city and the villages around it. We aim to encircle the city and ensure the militias are evicted. We won't fight in the city as we have no problem with civilians," he said.

A main goal of the military operation was to recapture Tel Rifaat, a town southeast of Afrin, and a string of Arab villages the YPG captured from rebels in February 2016, driving out tens of thousands of inhabitants, Abdul Rahim said.

"The task of the Free Syrian Army is first to regain sixteen Arab towns and villages occupied by the foreign militias [YPG] with the help of the Russian air force," Abdul Rahim told Reuters in a phone interview from inside Syria.

The fighting Abdul Rahim was referring to forced at least 150,000 residents of these villages to flee to Azaz.

They are sheltering in camps at the Turkish border and rebels say they have not been allowed to go back to their homes.

On Saturday, Erdogan said the operation in Afrin would be followed by a push in the northern town of Manbij, which the US-backed Kurdish forces captured from ISIL in 2016.

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Agencies
August 7,2020

Russia boasts that it's about to become the first country to approve a Covid-19 vaccine, with mass vaccinations planned as early as October using shots that are yet to complete clinical trials -- and scientists worldwide are sounding the alarm that the headlong rush could backfire.

Moscow sees a Sputnik-like propaganda victory, recalling the Soviet Union's launch of the world's first satellite in 1957.

But the experimental Covid-19 shots began first-in-human testing on a few dozen people less than two months ago, and there's no published scientific evidence yet backing Russia's late entry to the global vaccine race, much less explaining why it should be considered a front-runner.

“I'm worried that Russia is cutting corners so that the vaccine that will come out may be not just ineffective, but also unsafe,” said Lawrence Gostin, a global public health law expert at Georgetown University. “It doesn't work that way... Trials come first. That's really important.”

According to Kirill Dmitriev, head of Russia's Direct Investment Fund that bankrolled the effort, a vaccine developed by the Gamaleya research institute in Moscow may be approved in days, before scientists complete what's called a Phase 3 study.

That final-stage study, usually involving tens of thousands of people, is the only way to prove if an experimental vaccine is safe and really works.

Health Minister Mikhail Murashko said members of “risk groups,” such as medical workers, may be offered the vaccine this month.

He didn't clarify whether they would be part of the Phase 3 study that is said to be completed after the vaccine receives “conditional approval.”

Deputy Prime Minister Tatyana Golikova promised to start “industrial production” in September, and Murashko said mass vaccination may begin as early as October.

Dr Anthony Fauci, the top US infectious disease specialist, questioned the fast-track approach last week.

“I do hope that the Chinese and the Russians are actually testing a vaccine before they are administering the vaccine to anyone, because claims of having a vaccine ready to distribute before you do testing I think is problematic at best," he said.

Questions about this vaccine candidate come after the US, Britain and Canada last month accused Russia of using hackers to steal vaccine research from Western labs.

Delivering a vaccine first is a matter of national prestige for the Kremlin as it tries to assert the image of Russia as a global power capable of competing with the US and China.

The notion of being “the first in the world” dominated state news coverage of the effort, with government officials praising reports of the first-step testing.

In April, President Vladimir Putin ordered state officials to shorten the time of clinical trials for a variety of drugs, including potential coronavirus vaccines.

According to Russia's Association of Clinical Trials Organizations, the order set “an unattainable bar” for scientists who, as a result, "joined in on the mad race, hoping to please those at power.”

The association first raised concern in late May, when professor Alexander Gintsburg, head of the Gamaleya institute, said he and other researchers tried the vaccine on themselves.

The move was a “crude violation of the very foundations of clinical research, Russian law and universally accepted international regulations" the group said in an open letter to the government, urging scientists and health officials to adhere to clinical research standards.

But a month later, the Health Ministry authorized clinical trials of the Gamaleya product, with what appeared to be another ethical issue.

Human studies started June 17 among 76 volunteers. Half were injected with a vaccine in liquid form and the other half with a vaccine that came as soluble powder.

Some in the first half were recruited from the military, which raised concerns that servicemen may have been pressured to participate.

Some experts said their desire to perform well would affect the findings. “It's no coincidence media reports we see about the trials among the military said no one had any side effects, while the (other group) reported some," said Vasily Vlassov, a public health expert with Moscow's Higher School of Economics.

As the trials were declared completed and looming regulatory approval was announced last week, questions arose about the vaccine's safety and effectiveness.

Government assurances the drug produced the desired immune response and caused no significant side effects were hardly convincing without published scientific data describing the findings.

The World Health Organization said all vaccine candidates should go through full stages of testing before being rolled out.

“There are established practices and there are guidelines out,” WHO spokesman Christian Lindmeier said Tuesday.

“Between finding or having a clue of maybe having a vaccine that works, and having gone through all the stages, is a big difference.”

Offering an unsafe compound to medical workers on the front lines of the outbreak could make things worse, Georgetown's Gostin said, adding: “What if the vaccine started killing them or making them very ill?”

Vaccines that are not properly tested can cause harm in many ways — from a negative impact on health to creating a false sense of security or undermining trust in vaccinations, said Thomas Bollyky, director of the global health program at the Council on Foreign Relations. 

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Agencies
June 18,2020

New Delhi, Jun 18: Vodafone Idea on Thursday told the Supreme Court that it has incurred Rs 1 lakh crore losses as it insisted it is not in a position to furnish bank guarantees.

A bench comprising Justices Arun Mishra, S. Abdul Nazeer, and M.R. Shah, taking up the adjusted gross revenue (AGR) matter through video conferencing, directed the telecom companies to submit their financial documents and books for the last 10 years.

Asking Vodafone if it was a foreign company, the bench said that how can the company say it would not furnish any bank guarantee.

"What if you fly away overnight in future without paying anything?" it asked.

Senior advocate Mukul Rohatgi, representing Vodafone Idea, denied his client is a completely foreign firm and cited before the bench its tie-ups and investments.

Vodafone owes over Rs 58,000 crore as AGR dues and so far, has paid close to Rs 7,000 crore.

Rohatgi contended before the court that the telecom company is in a tough situation, and cannot furnish any fresh bank guarantee, as profits have eluded the company in past many quarters. He submitted before the bench that Rs 15,000 crore bank guarantees are lying with the government, and his client's losses are over Rs 1 lakh crore.

"I cannot offer any more surety," he informed the bench.

Justice Mishra noted that this is public money and these dues should be recovered. "Do not tell us that you will pay if you were to make profits... the money must come," he noted.

Justice Shah observed that the telecom industry is the only industry which earned during the Covid-19 pandemic. "After all, this money will be used for public welfare", he said.

Rohatgi argued that his client would have to fold up if orders were issued to clear dues tomorrow. "11,000 employees will have to go without notice, as we cannot pay them," he added.

Senior advocate Abhishek Manu Singhvi, appearing for Bharti Airtel, contended before the court that out of Rs 21,000 crore AGR dues, the company has already deposited a sum of Rs 18,000 crore.

He argued that his client has given a bank guarantee, in excess of demand, to DoT, and supported the proposal for phased repayment of remaining AGR dues. He insisted that the company needs to sit down with the government and calculate the dues. Airtel owes Rs 25,976 crore after paying Rs 18,000 crore, as per the government.

Senior advocate Arvind Datar, representing Tata Telecom, informed the bench that his client has paid Rs 6,504 crore in AGR dues so far, and furnishing a bank guarantee may adversely impact investments in the sector.

The total AGR dues are close to Rs 1.5 lakh crore.

The top court will now take up the matter in the third week of July.

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News Network
February 10,2020

New Delhi, Feb 10: Former Jammu and Kashmir chief minister Omar Abdullah's sister on Monday moved the Supreme Court to challenge his detention under the Public Safety Act.

Senior advocate Kapil Sibal, appearing for the petitioner, mentioned the matter for urgent listing before a bench headed by Justice N V Ramana.

Sibal told the bench that they have filed a habeas corpus petition challenging the detention of Abdullah under the PSA and the matter should be heard this week.

The bench agreed for urgent listing of the matter.

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