NEW DELHI: An Indian woman who returned from Rafah weeks earlier, has recounted her horrific experience and the stress and strain that even international humanitarian workers and medics are forced to face daily with the threat of death looming large as the Israel-Hamas war continues.

32-year-old Reema Angel Sharma was part of an international charity-powered group of volunteers providing medical and humanitarian aid to the people of Rafah – the city presently under seize by the Israeli army. The mission of their group of about 20 to 25 volunteers from different nations, including doctors and para medics, was to provide food and administer medicines to the sick and dying.

Rafah is a Palestinian city in the southern Gaza Strip and is the capital of the Rafah Governorate of the State of Palestine, located 30 kilometers south-west of Gaza City. Right now it is under attack by Israeli forces with the IDF or Israeli army capturing the vital Rafah crossing on the border with Egypt. Israel had initially planned a full scale invasion or attack on Rafah, but has now scaled it down to what it calls a strategic offensive to root out the Hamas and its fighters.

Reema who has even dabbled in modeling and acting was in Rafah for a few weeks. “I joined the international aid group because I wanted to help people in distress. There was no pay, but we were provided food. We lived in tents or wherever we could find accommodation – in hospitals and closed schools or places of worship. The invasion by Israel caused immense hardship to the poor, elderly and those in need of medical treatment. There are hundreds, if not thousands of people who are going without food for days, surviving on a little water and whatever bread or biscuits available. The fear of getting killed with crashing rockets, collapsing structures and exploding bombs is ever present and the horrendous reality that a person who was alive and well just a few minutes earlier, becomes merely a number (among the dead) within hours is something that people have come to accept,” she told this reporter.

Reema who returned back to India before Israeli forces attacked Rafah has thanked Prime Minister Narendra Modi for ensuring peace in India. “Those who live in peaceful times (and places) do not know or understand the dangers and throbbing fear of war. Fortunately for me, as India is seen as a more or less neutral party in the conflict, it was not so difficult to move out of the war zone and travel to another country where I could take a flight to Delhi. But for others, it was almost impossible, in spite of being aid workers, to leave the conflict zone. Even aid workers were detained in dingy rooms, subjected to several rounds of questioning by the military, not provided food and basic human needs like toilet facilities or medicines. As an Indian, I am proud of my PM who has ensured us safety even on foreign soil,” Reema said, adding that she fears greatly for the safety of her co-workers, some of them who have not been able to move out of the Rafah area.

Back in India, she is gearing up for a pageant through which she wants to spread the message of peace. “Nobody wins in a war. There is damage on both sides. Fighting must stop. Peace must prevail,” is Reema’s message for the world.

VATICAN CITY, (PTI): Lingering respiratory and mobility problems are continuing to take their toll on the Pope.

Pope Francis again asked an aide to read his remarks and was unable to get back onto his popemobile Wednesday, as lingering respiratory and mobility problems continued to take their toll on the 87-year-old pontiff.

Francis presided over his weekly general audience, held outside for the first time this year in a chilly St Peter’s Square. But he had an aide read his catechism lesson, as he has done for the past several days.

Last Wednesday, Francis went to the hospital for unspecified diagnostic tests, the results of which have not been released. He has been suffering on and off this winter from what he and the Vatican have said was a cold, bouts of bronchitis and the flu.

Late last year, Francis underwent a CAT scan that ruled out pneumonia, but the pope was still forced to call off a trip to the Gulf because of a bad bout of acute, infectious bronchitis.

Francis has also been suffering from a fracture in the knee and inflammation of its ligaments that starting in 2022 pushed him to use a wheelchair. But he has usually managed to get around with a cane or walker and the help of aides to get him to a standing position.

On Wednesday, however, Francis appeared unable to climb up the few steps to board his popemobile at the end of his audience, even while grasping onto the handrails. Aides quickly brought back his wheelchair and he sat back down. He then greeted the crowd before being wheeled out of the piazza.

The Argentine pope had part of one lung removed as a young man because of a respiratory infection, and he often speaks in a whisper even when not sick. In 2021, he had a chunk of his colon removed and last year had surgery to repair an abdominal hernia and remove intestinal scar tissue. (PTI)

GWALIOR, (PTI): The sister of one of the eight jailed former Indian Navy personnel released by Qatar expressed happiness on Monday over the development and thanked the Indian government and Qatar authorities for their release.

Dr Meetu Bhargava, the sister of Commander (retired) Purnendu Tiwari who has not yet reached India, told PTI that she kept patient during this stressful time and would have been happier had he also returned to the country, and added that he would come back soon.

Qatar has released eight jailed former Indian Navy personnel, 46 days after their death sentences handed last October were commuted to jail terms of varying duration. Seven of them returned home early Monday.

They apparently faced charges of espionage but neither the Qatari authorities nor New Delhi made the charges against them public.

The Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) in a statement on Monday said India appreciates the decision by the Emir of Qatar to enable the release and homecoming of the Indians, who were arrested in August 2022.

”All the eight personnel have been released because of the government’s efforts and seven of them have come to India. I am very happy about it,” said Bhargava, a resident of Gwalior in Madhya Pradesh. Bhargava said she would have been happier had her brother also returned with them.

”But I am happy for him now. We also spoke (to him). He is fine in the embassy and has now gone back home to Doha. I came to know that he will be coming soon and I will be very happy once he returns,” she said.

Bhargava thanked the central government, Prime Minister Narendra Modi, External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar and the Emir of Qatar for the release of the former Navy personnel.

”I am also grateful to India’s Ambassador to Qatar Vipulji for his efforts and patience in dealing with the situation. We also maintained patience during this stressful time,” she said.

The seven nationals who have returned to India are – Captains (retired) Navtej Gill and Saurabh Vasisht, Commanders (retired) Amit Nagpal, SK Gupta, BK Verma, and Sugunakar Pakala, and sailor Ragesh.

On October 26, the Navy veterans were given death sentences by Qatar’s Court of First Instance.

On December 28, the Court of Appeal in the Gulf nation commuted the capital punishment and sentenced them to jail terms for durations ranging from three years to 25 years.

The Court of Appeal had also given 60 days to appeal against the prison terms.

In December last year, Prime Minister Narendra Modi met Qatari Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al-Thani on the sidelines of the COP28 Summit in Dubai and discussed the well-being of the Indian community in Qatar.

It is learnt that National Security Adviser Ajit Doval played a role in the negotiations with the Qatari authorities in securing the release of the Indians. (PTI)

MANILA, (Reuters): The number of people killed by a landslide in the southern Philippines has risen to 54, the provincial government said on Sunday, as rescue workers dug more bodies from the mud.

The landslide struck on Tuesday night near a gold mine in Maco town in the province of Davao de Oro, burying homes and vehicles ferrying employees to the site operated by Apex Mining . Davao de Oro’s provincial government said in a Facebook post that 54 people had died in the landslide, raising its previous death toll of 37 earlier in the day as rescue workers found more bodies.

The tally of missing people stood at 63 people, with the provincial government saying the number remains unverified. A total of 32 people were injured in the landslide. Edward Macapili, an official at Davao de Oro, said over 300 people were involved in the rescue, but operations were being hampered by heavy rain, thick mud and the threat of further landslides. Rescue work resumed on Sunday morning, Macapili said.

Asked if there were still survivors, Macapili said it was already “unlikely”, but the search would continue. “The rescue team is doing its best, even if it’s very difficult,” Macapili said by phone.

Torrential rains have battered Davao de Oro in recent weeks, triggering floods and landslides. (Reuters)

KYIV, (Reuters): Russian forces in occupied Ukraine are using Starlink terminals produced by Elon Musk’s SpaceX for satellite internet in what is beginning to look like their “systemic” application, Kyiv’s main military intelligence agency said on Sunday.

The terminals were rushed in to help Ukraine after Russia’s February 2022 invasion and have been vital to Kyiv’s battlefield communications. Starlink says it does not do business of any kind with Russia’s government or military. “Cases of the Russian occupiers’ use of the given devices have been registered. It is beginning to take on a systemic nature,” the Ukrainian defence ministry’s Main Directorate of Intelligence (GUR) quoted spokesman Andriy Yusov as saying.

In a statement, the agency said the terminals were being used by units like Russia’s 83rd Air Assault Brigade, which is fighting near the embattled towns of Klishchiivka and Andriivka in the partially-occupied eastern region of Donetsk. The remarks were Ukraine’s first official statement about Russia’s alleged use of Starlink.

Russia’s defence ministry did not immediately reply to a Reuters request for comment. Two Ukrainian government sources told Reuters earlier this week that Russian use of Starlink had been detected in occupied Ukrainian territory. One said they were trying to obtain data on the scale of such use.

The GUR agency said it had intercepted an exchange between two soldiers discussing setting up the terminals. It posted what it said was an audio clip of the exchange on the Telegram messenger by way of evidence. GUR did not say how it thought the terminals had been obtained by Russian forces – whether for instance they had been procured from abroad or captured from Ukrainian forces.

Starlink said on Feb. 8 that its terminals were not active in Russia and that SpaceX had never sold or marketed the service in Russia, nor shipped equipment to locations in Russia. In a statement posted on X, Starlink did not say anything about their possible use in occupied areas of Ukraine.

“If SpaceX obtains knowledge that a Starlink terminal is being used by a sanctioned or unauthorized party, we investigate the claim and take actions to deactivate the terminal if confirmed,” it said. (Reuters)

KABUL: An Iranian director Ali Zafar Abbasi’s controversial silent film “Sex Inside A Burkha” based on true incidents of prostitution among married Muslim women in certain Muslim societies across the world has stirred protests in some parts of the world.

The short film of 45 minutes duration was partly short in Rajasthan and Old Delhi and features two Indian actors. The rest of the film’s cast includes actors of different nationalities including Iranian and Pakistani actors.

“The film is based on true incidents wherein young and good-looking married women from poor families are “hired” out by their husbands to satisfy the carnal needs of rich men from the Gulf countries for varying periods of time ranging from three to 24 months. The women are paid decent sums of money, but sometimes are physically or brutally abused by the men hiring them who want to get their money’s worth. This illegal practice is prevalent in several Muslim nations in very poor communities and is spoken of in hushed tones, although the entire family knows what is actually happening. It’s considered a ‘job’ or ‘service’ rendered by the woman to take care of the financial needs of her family and in some cultures is sort of revered,” explained Abbasi.

The practice has no legitimacy in Islam and yet is defended by some Conservative religious leaders in some places as a “noble service”. Abbasi says he wants to expose this practice through his short silent film and give it international coverage.

WASHINGTON DC, (Reuters): A New York grand jury was expected on Wednesday to resume its closed-door investigation of whether Donald Trump made illegal hush-money payments to a porn star, which could yield the first-ever criminal charges against any U.S. president.

The panel has been meeting regularly on Mondays and Wednesdays to consider evidence in one of the many legal probes swirling around the former president as he mounts a comeback bid for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination.

Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s office has been investigating $130,000 paid to porn star Stormy Daniels in the final weeks of Trump’s 2016 election campaign. Trump’s former fixer Michael Cohen has said he made the payments at Trump’s direction to buy her silence about Trump’s extramarital affair. Trump has denied the affair took place, and others in his orbit have said Cohen acted on his own.

Security was high around the courthouse where the grand jury has been meeting, with court officers out early and barricades up around the building. Tuesday, the day Trump had predicted he would be arrested, came and went without action.

About half of Americans believe the New York investigation is politically motivated, but a large majority find it believable that he paid hush money to a porn star, according to a Reuters/Ipsos opinion poll concluded on Tuesday.

Cohen went to prison after pleading guilty to federal charges stemming from the payoff, but prosecutors in that case did not charge Trump. Manhattan has started and stopped its own investigation into the matter several times. If charges were filed, Trump would have to travel to New York from his Florida home for a mug shot and fingerprinting. Security officials are bracing for possible unrest, but so far few of Trump’s supporters have heeded his call for protests.

On Monday, the grand jury heard from a witness, lawyer Robert Costello, who said that Cohen acted on his own. Cohen has publicly said that Trump directed him to make the payments and has appeared twice before the grand jury. Trump’s fellow Republicans have criticized the probe by Bragg, a Democrat, as politically motivated.

Republicans in the House of Representatives launched an investigation of Bragg’s office on Monday with a letter seeking communications, documents and testimony related to the effort. Bragg’s office said that would not affect its work. Trump and his political allies also face two criminal investigations, one in Georgia and one by the federal government, stemming from their attempts to overturn his 2020 presidential election defeat.

He also faces another federal probe into his handling of sensitive government documents after leaving office, two investigations in New York into his business practices, and a defamation case by a woman who claims he raped her in the 1990s, a claim Trump denies. Trump has escaped legal peril numerous times. In the White House, he weathered two attempts by Congress to remove him from office as well as a years-long probe into his campaign’s contacts with Russia in 2016.

Trump and allied groups have tried to capitalize on news of the probe, sending a flurry of fundraising messages based on the potential indictment over the last few days. One such email, on Tuesday, was titled, “Barricades arrive at Manhattan Criminal Court” and included a picture that appeared to show a metal barrier being unloaded from an NYPD truck. It was not immediately clear how much Trump may have raised from the indictment-linked fundraising appeals. Some moderate Democrats worried that an indictment would carry political risk.

“You have to be very careful. The court system should not be perceived to be involved in the political process,” Senator Joe Manchin, a Democrat, told reporters. “I think it’d have the reverse effect of what people might be thinking. It just emboldens him. I mean, he’s the type of person that’s sometimes emboldened by more outrageous things.” (Reuters)

NANGAN, (PTI): In the past month, bed and breakfast owner Chen Yu-lin had to tell his guests he couldn’t provide them with the internet.

Others living on Matsu, one of Taiwan’s outlying islands closer to neighbouring China, had to struggle with paying electricity bills, making a doctor’s appointment or receiving a package.

For connecting to the outside world, Matsu’s 14,000 residents rely on two submarine internet cables leading to Taiwan’s main island. The National Communications Commission, citing the island’s telecom service, blamed two Chinese ships for cutting the cables.

It said a Chinese fishing vessel is suspected of severing the first cable some 50 kilometres (31 miles) out at sea. Six days later, on February 8, a Chinese cargo ship cut the second, NCC said.

Taiwan’s government stopped short of calling it a deliberate act on the part of Beijing, and there was no direct evidence to show the Chinese ships were responsible.

The islanders in the meantime were forced to hook up to a limited internet via microwave radio transmission, a more mature technology, as backup.

It means one could wait hours to send a text. Calls would drop, and videos were unwatchable.

“A lot of tourists would cancel their booking because there’s no internet. Nowadays, the internet plays a very large role in people’s lives,” said Chen, who lives in Beigan, one of Matsu’s main residential islands.

Apart from disrupting lives, the loss of the internet cables, seemingly innocuous, has huge implications for national security.

As the full-scale invasion of Ukraine has shown, Russia has made taking out internet infrastructure one of the key parts of its strategy.

Some experts suspect China may have cut the cables deliberately as part of its harassment of the self-ruled island it considers part of its territory, to be reunited by force if necessary.

China regularly sends warplanes and navy ships toward Taiwan as part of tactics to intimidate the island’s democratic government. Concerns about China’s invasion, and Taiwan’s preparedness to withstand it, have increased since the war in Ukraine.

The cables had been cut a total of 27 times in the past five years, but it was unclear which country the vessels hailed from, based on data from Chunghwa Telecom.

Taiwan’s coast guard gave chase to the fishing vessel that cut the first cable on February 2, but it went back to Chinese waters, according to an official who was briefed on the incident and was not authorised to discuss the matter publicly.

Authorities found two Chinese ships in the area where the cables were cut, based on automated identification system data, similar to GPS, which shows a vessel’s location.

“We can’t rule out that China destroyed these on purpose,” said Su Tzu-yun, a defense expert at the government think tank, Institute for National Defence and Security Research, citing a research that only China and Russia had the technical capabilities to do this.

“Taiwan needs to invest more resources in repairing and protecting the cables.” Internet cables, which can be anywhere between 20 millimetres to 30 millimetres (0.79 inches to 1.18 inches) wide, are encased in steel armour in shallow waters where they’re more likely to run into ships.

Despite the protection, cables can get cut quite easily by ships and their anchors, or fishing boats using steel nets.

Even so, “this level of breakage is highly unusual for a cable, even in the shallow waters of the Taiwan Strait,” said Geoff Huston, chief scientist at Asia Pacific Network Information Centre, a non-profit that manages and distributes Internet resources like IP addresses for the region.

Without a stable internet, coffee shop owner Chiu Sih-chi said seeing the doctor for his toddler son’s cold became a hassle because first they had to visit the hospital to just get an appointment.

A breakfast shop owner said she lost thousands of dollars in the past few weeks because she usually takes online orders.

Customers would come to her stall expecting the food to be ready when she hadn’t even seen their messages.

Faced with unusual difficulties, Matsu residents came up with all sorts of ways to organize their lives.

One couple planned to deal with the coming peak season by having one person stay in Taiwan to access their reservation system and passing the information on to the other via text messages. Wife Lin Hsian-wen extended her vacation in Taiwan during the off-season when she heard the internet back home wasn’t working and is returning to Matsu later in the week.

Some enterprising residents went across to the other shore to buy SIM cards from Chinese telecoms, though those only work well in the spots closer to the Chinese coast, which is only 10 kilometres (6.21 miles) away at its closest point.

Others, like the bed and breakfast owner Tsao Li-yu, would go to Chunghwa Telecom’s office to use a Wi-Fi hot spot the company had set up for locals to use in the meantime.

“I was going to work at (Chunghwa Telecom),” Tsao joked.

Chunghwa had set up microwave transmission as backup for the residents. Broadcast from Yangmingshan, a mountain just outside of Taipei, Taiwan’s capital, the relay beams the signals some 200 kilometres (124 miles) across to Matsu.

Since Sunday, speeds were noticeably faster, residents said.

Wang Chung Ming, the head of Lienchiang County, as the Matsu islands are officially called, said he and the legislator from Matsu went to Taipei shortly after the internet broke down to ask for help, and was told they would get priority in any future internet backup plans.

Taiwan’s Ministry of Digital Affairs publicly asked for bids from low-Earth orbit satellite operators to provide the internet in a backup plan, after seeing Russia’s cyberattacks in the invasion of Ukraine, the head of the ministry, Audrey Tang, told The Washington Post last fall.

Yet, the plan remains stalled as a law in Taiwan requires the providers to be at least 51 per cent owned by a domestic shareholder.

A spokesperson for the Digital Ministry directed questions about the progress of backup plans to the National Communications Commission. NCC said it will install a surveillance system for the undersea cables, while relying on microwave transmission as a backup option.

Many Pacific island nations, before they started using internet cables, depended on satellites — and some still do — as backup, said Jonathan Brewer, a telecommunications consultant from New Zealand who works across Asia and the Pacific.

There’s also the question of cost. Repairing the cables is expensive, with an early estimate of USD 30 million New Taiwan Dollars (USD 1 million) for the work of the ships alone.

“The Chinese boats that damaged the cables should be held accountable and pay compensation for the highly expensive repairs,” said Wen Lii, the head of the Matsu chapter of the ruling Democratic Progressive Party.

Wang, the head of Lienchiang County, said he had mentioned the cables on a recent visit to China, where he had met an executive from China Mobile. They offered to send technicians to help. But compensation, he said, will require providing hard proof on who did it.

China’s Taiwan Affairs Office did not respond to a faxed request for comment.

For now, the only thing residents can do is wait. The earliest cable-laying ships can come is April 20, because there are a limited number of vessels that can do the job.

A month without functional internet has its upsides too. Chen Yu-lin, the bed and breakfast owner, has felt more at peace.

It was hard in the first week, but Chen quickly got used to it.

“From a life perspective, I think it’s much more comfortable because you get fewer calls,” he said, adding he was spending more time with his son, who usually is playing games online.

At a web cafe where off-duty soldiers were playing offline games, the effect was the same.

“Our relationships have become a bit closer,” said one soldier who only gave his first name, Samuel. “Because normally when there’s internet, everyone keeps to themselves, and now we’re more connected.” (PTI)