LAHORE, Pakistan: Pakistan’s most populated province of Punjab ordered public spaces closed in smog-hit main cities, authorities said Friday, as the country battles record air pollution.
Access to parks, zoos, playgrounds, historic monuments, museums and recreational areas will be banned until November 17 due to poor air quality, according to a local government directive seen by AFP.
The concentration of fine particulate matter (PM2.5) in Lahore’s air was more than 20 times higher than the level deemed acceptable by the World Health Organization (WHO). In Multan, it was up to 48 times higher on Friday.
Punjab residents have been trapped in thick smog for over a week ever since the air quality index (AQI), which measures a range of pollutants, spiked above 1,000 — well above the level of 300 considered ‘dangerous’ — according to data from IQAir.
Schools in some of Punjab’s major cities were ordered shut on Tuesday until November 17.
The province extended that order on Wednesday to several more cities enveloped by smog, a mix of fog and pollutants caused by low-grade diesel fumes, smoke from seasonal agricultural burning and winter cooling.
The decision follows restrictions imposed last month on four “hot spots” in Lahore that banned tuk-tuks with polluting two-stroke engines, along with restaurants that operate barbecues without filters.
Seasonal crop burn-off by farmers on the outskirts of Lahore also contributes to toxic air, which the WHO says can cause strokes, heart disease, lung cancer and respiratory diseases.
Excess pollution shortens the life expectancy of Lahore residents by an average of 7.5 years, according to the University of Chicago’s Energy Policy Institute.
According to UNICEF, nearly 600 million children in South Asia are exposed to high levels of air pollution, which is also linked to half of childhood pneumonia deaths.
Pakistan’s Punjab province shuts public spaces in smog-hit cities
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Pakistan’s Punjab province shuts public spaces in smog-hit cities
- Access to parks, zoos, playgrounds, historic monuments, museums and recreational areas banned until November 17 due to poor air quality
- Punjab residents have been trapped in thick smog for over a week ever since the air quality index spiked above 1,000
Top Trump officials visit prolific Alaska oil field amid push to expand drilling
- For years, state leaders have dreamed of such a project but cost concerns, shifts in direction, competition and questions about economic feasibility have hindered progress
DEADHORSE, Alaska: President Donald Trump wants to double the amount of oil coursing through Alaska’s vast pipeline system and build a massive natural gas project as its “big, beautiful twin,” a top administration official said Monday while touring a prolific oil field near the Arctic Ocean.
The remarks by US Energy Secretary Chris Wright came as he and two other Trump Cabinet members — Interior Secretary Doug Burgum and Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lee Zeldin — visited Prudhoe Bay as part of a multiday trip aimed at highlighting Trump’s push to expand oil and gas drilling, mining and logging in the state that drew criticism from environmentalists.
During the trip, Burgum’s agency also announced plans to repeal Biden-era restrictions on future leasing and industrial development in portions of the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska that are designated as special for their wildlife, subsistence or other values.
The petroleum reserve is west of Prudhoe Bay and Deadhorse, the industrial encampment near the starting point of the trans-Alaska pipeline system. The pipeline, which runs for 800 miles (nearly 1,300 kilometers), has been Alaska’s economic lifeline for nearly 50 years.
Government and industry representatives several Asian countries, including Japan, were expected to join a portion of the US officials’ trip, as Trump has focused renewed attention on the gas project proposal, which in its current iteration would provide gas to Alaska residents and ship liquefied natural gas overseas. Matsuo Takehiko, vice minister for International Affairs at Japan’s Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry, was among those at Prudhoe Bay on Monday.
For years, state leaders have dreamed of such a project but cost concerns, shifts in direction, competition and questions about economic feasibility have hindered progress. US tariff talks with Asian countries have been seen as possible leverage for the Trump administration to secure investments in the proposed gas project.
Oil and natural gas are in significant demand worldwide, Wright told a group of officials and pipeline employees in safety hats and vests who gathered near the oil pipeline on a blustery day with 13-degree Fahrenheit (-10 Celsius) windchills. The pipeline stretched out over the snow-covered landscape.
“You have the big two right here,” he said. “Let’s double oil production, build the big, beautiful twin, and we will help energize the world and we will strengthen our country and strengthen our families.”
Oil flow through the trans-Alaska pipeline peaked at about 2 million barrels in the late 1980s. In 2011 — a year in which an average of about 583,000 barrels of oil a day flowed through the pipeline, then-Gov. Sean Parnell, a Republican, set a goal of boosting that number to 1 million barrels a day within a decade. It’s never come close in the years since: last year, throughput averaged about 465,000 barrels a day.
The Trump officials were joined Monday by a group that included US Sen. Dan Sullivan and Gov. Mike Dunleavy, both Republicans, who also took part in meetings Sunday in Anchorage and Utqiagvik.
In Utqiagvik, an Arctic community that experiences 24 hours of daylight at this time of year, many Alaska Native leaders support Trump’s push for more drilling in the petroleum reserve and to open the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil development. They lauded the visit after lamenting that they felt ignored by former President Joe Biden’s administration.
Alaska political leaders have long complained about perceived federal overreach by the US government, which oversees about 60 percent of lands in Alaska. Sullivan, Dunleavy and Alaska’s senior US senator, Lisa Murkowski, often complained that Biden’s team was too restrictive in its approach to many resource development issues.
Murkowski, an at-times vocal critic of Trump, joined for the Sunday meeting in Anchorage, where she said Alaska leaders “want to partner with you. We want to be that equal at the table instead of an afterthought.”
Environmentalists criticized Interior’s planned rollback of restrictions in portions of the petroleum reserve. While Sullivan called the repeal a top priority, saying Congress intended to have development in the petroleum reserve, environmentalists maintain that the law balances allowances for oil drilling with a need to provide protections for sensitive areas and decried Interior’s plans as wrong-headed.
Erik Grafe, an attorney with Earthjustice, called the Trump administration’s intense focus on oil and gas troubling, particularly in a state experiencing the real-time impacts of climate change. He called the continued pursuit of fossil fuel development “very frustrating and heartbreaking to see.”
The Interior Department said it will accept public comment on the planned repeal.
The three Trump officials also plan to speak at Dunleavy’s annual energy conference Tuesday in Anchorage.
Ukraine and Russia agree to swap dead and wounded troops but report no progress toward ending war
- As an alternate way of reaching a truce, the memorandum presses Ukraine to halt its mobilization efforts and freeze Western arms deliveries
ISTANBUL: Representatives of Russia and Ukraine met Monday for their second round of direct peace talks in just over two weeks, but aside from agreeing to swap thousands of their dead and seriously wounded troops, they made no progress toward ending the 3-year-old war, officials said.
The talks unfolded a day after a string of stunning long-range attacks by both sides, with Ukraine launching a devastating drone assault on Russian air bases and Russia hurling its largest drone attack of the war against Ukraine.
At the negotiating table, Russia presented a memorandum setting out the Kremlin’s terms for ending hostilities, the Ukrainian delegation said.
Defense Minister Rustem Umerov, who led the Ukrainian delegation, told reporters that Kyiv officials would need a week to review the document and decide on a response. Ukraine proposed further talks on a date between June 20 and June 30, he said.
After the talks, Russian state news agencies Tass and RIA Novosti published the text of the Russian memorandum, which suggested that Ukraine withdraw its forces from the four regions that Russia annexed in September 2022 but never fully captured as a condition for a ceasefire.
As an alternate way of reaching a truce, the memorandum presses Ukraine to halt its mobilization efforts and freeze Western arms deliveries, conditions were suggested earlier by Russian President Vladimir Putin. The document also suggests that Ukraine stop any redeployment of forces and ban any military presence of third countries on its soil as conditions for halting hostilities.
The Russian document further proposes that Ukraine end martial law and hold elections, after which the two countries could sign a comprehensive peace treaty that would see Ukraine declare its neutral status, abandon its bid to join NATO, set limits on the size of its armed forces and recognize Russian as the country’s official language on par with Ukrainian.
Ukraine and the West have previously rejected all those demands from Moscow.
In other steps, the delegations agreed to swap 6,000 bodies of soldiers killed in action and to set up a commission to exchange seriously wounded troops.
Kyiv officials said their surprise drone attack Sunday damaged or destroyed more than 40 warplanes at air bases deep inside Russia, including the remote Arctic, Siberian and Far East regions more than 7,000 kilometers (4,300 miles) from Ukraine.
The complex and unprecedented raid, which struck simultaneously in three time zones, took over a year and a half to prepare and was “a major slap in the face for Russia’s military power,” said Vasyl Maliuk, the head of the Ukrainian security service, who led its planning.
Zelensky called it a “brilliant operation” that would go down in history. The effort destroyed or heavily damaged nearly a third of Moscow’s strategic bomber fleet, according to Ukrainian officials.
Russia on Sunday fired the biggest number of drones — 472 — at Ukraine since its full-scale invasion in 2022, Ukraine’s air force said, in an apparent effort to overwhelm air defenses. That was part of a recently escalating campaign of strikes in civilian areas of Ukraine.
Hopes low for peace prospects
US-led efforts to push the two sides into accepting a ceasefire have so far failed. Ukraine accepted the proposed truce, but the Kremlin effectively rejected it. Recent comments by senior officials in both countries indicate they remain far apart on the key conditions for stopping the war.
The previous talks on May 16 in the same Turkish city were the first direct peace negotiations since the early weeks of Moscow’s 2022 invasion. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said the fact that the two sides met again Monday was an achievement in itself amid the fierce fighting.
“The fact that the meeting took place despite yesterday’s incident is an important success in itself,” he said in a televised speech.
Zelensky said during a trip to Lithuania on Monday that a new release of prisoners of war was being prepared after the Istanbul meeting. The May 16 talks also led to a swap of prisoners, with 1,000 on both sides being exchanged.
During the talks, Zelensky said, the Ukrainian delegation handed over a list of nearly 400 abducted children. Russia responded by proposing to “work on up to 10 children.”
“That’s their idea of addressing humanitarian issues,” Zelensky said Monday during an online briefing with journalists.
The International Criminal Court issued an arrest warrant in 2023 for Putin and the country’s commissioner for children’s rights, Maria Lvova-Belova, accusing them of abducting children from Ukraine.
The head of the Russian delegation, Vladimir Medinsky, an aide to Putin, said Kyiv had made a “show” out of the topic and that children would be returned if their parents or guardians could be located.
Zelensky also told journalists that the Russian side said it was ready for a two- to three-day ceasefire to collect bodies from the battlefield, not a full ceasefire.
“I think they’re idiots, because the whole point of a ceasefire is to prevent people from being killed in the first place. So you can see their mindset — it’s just a brief pause in the war for them,” he added.
The relentless fighting has frustrated US President Donald Trump’s goal of bringing about a quick end to the war. A week ago, he expressed impatience with Putin as Moscow pounded Kyiv and other Ukrainian cities with drones and missiles for a third straight night. Trump said on social media that Putin “has gone absolutely CRAZY!”
Ukraine upbeat after strikes on air bases
Ukraine was triumphant after targeting the distant Russian air bases. The official Russian response was muted, with the attack getting little coverage on state-controlled television. The Russia-1 television channel on Sunday evening spent a little over a minute on it with a brief Defense Ministry statement read out before images shifted to Russian drone strikes on Ukrainian positions.
Zelensky said the setbacks for the Kremlin would help force it to the negotiating table, even as its pursues a summer offensive on the battlefield.
“Russia must feel what its losses mean. That is what will push it toward diplomacy,” he said Monday in Vilnius, Lithuania, meeting with leaders from the Nordic nations and countries on NATO’s eastern flank.
Ukraine has occasionally struck air bases hosting Russia’s nuclear-capable strategic bombers since early in the war, prompting Moscow to redeploy most of them to the regions farther from the front line.
Because Sunday’s drones were launched from trucks close to the bases in five Russian regions, military defenses had virtually no time to prepare for them.
Many Russian military bloggers chided the military for its failure to build protective shields for the bombers despite previous attacks, but the large size of the planes makes that challenging.
The attacks were “a big blow to Russian strategic air power” and exposed significant vulnerabilities in Moscow’s military capabilities, said Phillips O’Brien, a professor of strategic studies at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland.
Edward Lucas, a senior fellow at the Washington-based Center for European Policy Analysis, called it “the most audacious attack of the war” and “a military and strategic game-changer.”
“Battered, beleaguered, tired and outnumbered, Ukrainians have, at minimal cost, in complete secrecy, and over vast distances, destroyed or damaged dozens, perhaps more, of Russia’s strategic bombers,” he said.
Front-line fighting and shelling grinds on
Fierce fighting has continued along the roughly 1,000-kilometer (620-mile) front line, and both sides have hit each other’s territory with deep strikes.
Russian forces shelled Ukraine’s southern Kherson region, killing three people and wounding 19 others, including two children, regional officials said Monday.
Also, a missile strike and shelling around the southern city of Zaporizhzhia killed five people and wounded nine others, officials said.
Suspect in Colorado attack told police he researched for a year
- Mohammed Sabry Soliman, 45, yelled “Free Palestine” and said he was targeting what he described as a 'Zionist group'
- He was charged with a federal hate crime after using makeshift flamethrower and incendiary devices to attack protesters
BOULDER, Colorado: A man accused of throwing Molotov cocktails into a Colorado group that had gathered to bring attention to Israeli hostages in Gaza planned the attack for more than a year and specifically targeted what he described as a “Zionist group,” authorities said in court papers unsealed Monday charging him with a federal hate crime.
Witnesses in Boulder said the suspect, Mohammed Sabry Soliman, 45, yelled “Free Palestine” and used a makeshift flamethrower and incendiary devices. Eight people were injured in the attack, some with burns, as a group was concluding their weekly demonstration.
An FBI affidavit says Soliman confessed to the attack after being taken into custody Sunday and told the police he was driven by a desire “to kill all Zionist people,” a reference to the movement to establish and protect a Jewish state in Israel.
Federal court records don’t list the name of an attorney who could speak on Soliman’s behalf and no one answered the door at a Colorado Springs townhouse where public records show he lived.
The burst of violence at the popular Pearl Street pedestrian mall, a four-block area in downtown Boulder, unfolded against the backdrop of a war between Israel and Hamas that continues to inflame global tensions and has contributed to a spike in antisemitic violence in the United States. The attack happened on the beginning of the Jewish holiday of Shavuot, which is marked with the reading of the Torah and barely a week after a man who also yelled “Free Palestine” was charged with fatally shooting two Israeli embassy staffers outside a Jewish museum in Washington.
Six victims hospitalized
The eight victims who were wounded range in age from 52 to 88 and the injuries spanned from serious to minor, officials said.
Six of the injured were taken to hospitals, and four have since been released, said Miri Kornfeld, a Denver-based organizer connected to the group. She said the clothing of one of those who remains hospitalized caught on fire.
The attack occurred as people with a volunteer group called Run For Their Lives was concluding their weekly demonstration to raise visibility for the hostages who remain in Gaza. Video from the scene shows a witness shouting, “He’s right there. He’s throwing Molotov cocktails,” as a police officer with his gun drawn advances on a bare-chested suspect who is holding containers in each hand.
Alex Osante of San Diego said he was having lunch on a restaurant patio across the pedestrian mall when he heard the crash of a bottle breaking on the ground and a “boom” followed by people yelling and screaming.
In video of the scene captured by Osante, people could be seen pouring water on a woman lying on the ground who Osante said had caught on fire during the attack.
Molotov cocktails found
After the initial attack, Osante said the suspect went behind some bushes and then reemerged and threw a Molotov cocktail but apparently accidentally caught himself on fire as he threw it. The man then took off his shirt and what appeared to be a bulletproof vest before the police arrived. The man dropped to the ground and was arrested without any apparent resistance in the video Osante filmed.
Law enforcement found more than a dozen unlit Molotov cocktails near where Soliman was arrested. The devices were made up of glass wine carafe bottles or jars with clear liquid and red rags hanging out of the them, the FBI said. Inside his car, law enforcement found papers with the words “Israel,” “Palestine,” and “USAID,” the affidavit says.
Soliman told investigators he constructed homemade Molotov cocktails after doing research on YouTube and buying the ingredients.
“He stated that he had been planning the attack for a year and was waiting until after his daughter graduated to conduct the attack,” the affidavit says.
Suspect hospitalized after attack
Authorities said they believe Soliman acted alone. He was also injured and taken to a hospital. Authorities did not elaborate on the nature of his injuries, but a booking photo showed him with a large bandage over one ear.
State and federal authorities planned to hold a news conference Monday afternoon.
Soliman was living in the US illegally after entering the country in August 2022 on a B2 visa that expired in February 2023, Department of Homeland Security Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin said in a post on X. McLaughlin said Soliman filed for asylum in September 2022 and was granted a work authorization in March 2023 that had expired. DHS did not immediately respond to requests for additional information.
Public records listed Soliman as living in a modest rented townhouse in Colorado Springs, where local media outlets reported federal law enforcement agents were on the scene Sunday.
Colorado Springs neighbors recognized suspect
Shameka Pruiett knew Soliman and his family as kindly neighbors with five children, three young kids and two teenagers, who’d play with Pruiett’s kids in front of their building, share food and hellos.
Another neighbor, Kierra Johnson, who lives in the apartment next to Soliman’s, said she could often hear shouting at night from his apartment and once called police because of the screaming and yelling.
On Sunday, Pruiett saw law enforcement vehicles waiting on the street throughout the day until the evening, when they spoke through a megaphone telling anyone in Soliman’s home to come out. Nobody came out and it did not appear anyone was inside, said Pruiett.
An online resume under Soliman’s name said he was employed by a Denver-area health care company working in accounting and inventory control, with prior employers listed as companies in Egypt. Under education, the resume listed Al-Azhar University, a historic center for Islamic and Arabic learning located in Cairo.
Soliman also worked as an Uber driver and had passed the company’s eligibility requirements, which include a criminal background check, according to a spokesperson for Uber.
The war in Gaza
Israel’s war in Gaza began when Hamas-led militants stormed into southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, killing some 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and abducting about 250 others. They are still holding 58 hostages, around a third believed to be alive, after most of the rest were released in ceasefire agreements or other deals.
Israel’s military campaign has killed more than 54,000 people in Hamas-run Gaza, mostly women and children, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry, which does not say how many of the dead were civilians or combatants.
Erdogan proposes new Putin-Zelensky-Trump meeting in Turkiye
- Ukraine and Russia agreed on Monday to exchange severely injured prisoners of war as well as those under 25
ANKARA: Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Monday reiterated his willingness to host a meeting between the American, Russian and Ukrainian leaders in an effort to end the war in Ukraine.
“My greatest wish for both sides is to bring both (Russia’s) Vladimir Putin and (Ukraine’s Volodymyr) Zelensky together in Istanbul or Ankara, and even to bring (US President) Mr. (Donald) Trump to their side, if they accept,” he said.
Turkiye, he said, would “take steps” to facilitate such a meeting, following direct talks between the two sides in Istanbul on Monday.
Erdogan said it was a big achievement that Monday’s talks even took place.
Ukraine carried out one of its most brazen and successful attacks ever on Russian soil on the weekend, its drones ambushing dozens of strategic bombers at bases deep inside Russia.
“It is a success in itself that the meeting happened despite what happened yesterday,” he said, hailing the talks as “magnificent.”
At Monday’s meeting, which lasted just over an hour, Ukraine and Russia agreed to exchange severely injured prisoners of war as well as those under 25, alongside the remains of 6,000 troops killed in combat, Kyiv said.
“These figures given by both Russia and Ukraine... (are) very, very important in terms of showing how important these Istanbul meetings are. And we are proud of this,” Erdogan added.
‘Without a doubt true that Israel has committed war crimes’ in Gaza: Biden official
- Matthew Miller: Biden administration debated whether to cut off arms supply
- Denies genocide taking place, but Israeli military not being held ‘accountable’
LONDON: A senior official in the administration of former US President Joe Biden told Sky News on Monday that he believes Israel has committed war crimes in Gaza.
Former State Department spokesman Matthew Miller said he does not believe genocide is taking place, but it is “without a doubt true that Israel has committed war crimes,” and Israeli forces are not being held “accountable” for their actions.
“There are two ways to think about the commission of war crimes,” he told the “Trump 100” podcast. “One is, if the state has pursued a policy of deliberately committing war crimes or is acting recklessly in a way that aids and abets war crimes. Is the state committing war crimes?
“That, I think, is an open question. I think what’s almost certainly not an open question is that there have been individual incidents that have been war crimes — where Israeli soldiers, members of the Israeli military, have committed war crimes.”
Miller said there had been internal clashes between senior White House staff about the US stance on the war almost from the beginning of the conflict.
“There were disagreements all along the way about how to handle policy. Some of those were big disagreements, some of those were little disagreements,” he added.
“The administration did debate, at times, whether and when to cut off weapons to Israel. You saw us in the spring of 2024 stop the shipment of 2,000-pound bombs to Israel because we didn’t believe they’d use those in a way that was appropriate in Gaza.”
He hinted that in particular, there had been tension between Biden and Antony Blinken, his secretary of state, but said: “I’ll probably wait and let the secretary speak for himself … but I will say, speaking generally … it’s true about every senior official in government that they don’t win every policy fight that they enter into. And what you do is you make your best case to the president.”
Miller added that Biden’s staunch military support of Israel was also a source of contention, but that public dissent against it may have also encouraged Hamas.
“There were debates about whether to suspend other arms deliveries, and you saw at times us hold back certain arms while we negotiated the use of those arms … But we found ourselves in this really tough position, especially in that time period when it really came to a head … We were at a place where — I’m thinking of the way I can appropriately say this — the decisions and the thinking of (the) Hamas leadership weren’t always secret to the US and to our partners.”
He added: “It was clear to us in that period that there was a time when our public discussion of withholding weapons from Israel, as well as the protests on college campuses in the US, and the movement of some European countries to recognize the state of Palestine — appropriate discussions, appropriate decisions, protests are appropriate — but all of those things together were leading the leadership of Hamas to conclude that they didn’t need to agree to a ceasefire, they just needed to hold out for a little bit longer and they could get what they always wanted.
“Now, the thing that I look back on, that I’ll always ask questions of myself about, and I think this is true for others in government, is in that intervening period between the end of May and the middle of January (2025), when thousands of Palestinians were killed, innocent civilians who didn’t want this war, had nothing to do with it, was there more that we could’ve done to pressure the Israeli government to agree to that ceasefire? I think at times there probably was.”
Biden’s popularity waned as the 2024 presidential election approached, with the war in Gaza weighing heavily on his polling.
Miller called US President Donald Trump’s Middle East envoy, Steve Witkoff, “an extremely capable individual,” adding: “I know the people in the Biden administration who worked with him during the first negotiations for a Gaza ceasefire thought that he was capable.”
Miller continued: “I do think it’s extremely important that when people sit down with an envoy of the United States, they know that that envoy speaks for the president of the United States, and it’s very clear that Witkoff has that, and that’s an extremely valuable asset to bring to the table.”
