NEW DELHI: A Pulitzer Prize-winning Kashmiri photojournalist said Wednesday that Indian immigration authorities prevented her from flying to the United States to receive the award even though she had a valid visa and ticket.
Sanna Irshad Mattoo was scheduled to fly to New York on Monday to receive the Pulitzer Prize but was blocked by officials at New Delhi’s airport, she said.
Mattoo said she was stopped without reason and her ticket was canceled.
Mattoo was working on assignment for Reuters, which won the 2022 Pulitzer Prize for Feature Photography for coverage of the COVID-19 crisis in India.
She said she was traveling with two colleagues who were cleared to travel while she was stopped. Mattoo said the immigration official handed her boarding pass back but did not respond when she asked repeatedly what the problem was. She was then taken to the airline counter to collect her luggage.
Mattoo said she has no idea why she was prevented from traveling. “Is it about my work? Is it something else? I should be told. The problem is I don’t know what the problem is,” she said.
There was no immediate comment from Indian authorities.
It was the second such experience for Mattoo, who was stopped from traveling to Paris in July for a book launch and photography exhibition as one of 10 winners of the Serendipity Arles Grant 2020. Again, Mattoo said that immigrations officials gave her no reason but told her she would not be able to travel internationally.
She has been working since 2018 as a freelance photojournalist depicting life in Indian-controlled Kashmir, where insurgents have been fighting for the region’s independence or merger with neighboring Pakistan.
Journalists have long braved threats in the restive region as the Indian government seeks to tighten control over the media. Their situation has grown worse since India revoked the region’s semi-autonomy in 2019, with dozens arrested, interrogated and investigated under harsh anti-terror laws.
India stops journalist from flying to receive Pulitzer Prize
https://arab.news/gm73f
India stops journalist from flying to receive Pulitzer Prize
- Sanna Irshad Mattoo was scheduled to fly to New York on Monday
- Mattoo said she was stopped without reason, ticket was canceled
US defense chief looks to woo allies in Asian security forum debut
- Allies concerned about United States’ commitment
SINGAPORE: US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth will try to convince Asian defense leaders this weekend that the United States is a more trusted partner for the region than China, US officials told Reuters, as questions linger about the Trump administration’s commitment to the region.
Hegseth, who has spent a large portion of his first months on the job focused on domestic issues, countering diversity, equity and inclusion in the military and taking aim at the press, will make his first extended remarks in Singapore on Saturday about how he envisions US defense policy in the Indo-Pacific.
He will be addressing the Shangri-La Dialogue, Asia’s premier security forum, which runs this year from May 31-June 1. Defense ministers, senior military and security officials and diplomats from around the world are expected to attend. French President Emmanuel Macron will deliver the keynote address on Friday.
“Secretary Hegseth is going to make the case to Asian allies about why the United States is a better partner than the CCP,” said a senior US defense official, speaking on condition of anonymity.
The official, who was using an acronym for China’s Communist Party, said Hegseth had the opportunity to take advantage of Chinese Defense Minister Dong Jun’s expected absence from the dialogue, where US and Chinese delegates have locked horns in previous years.
Hegseth’s speech will be closely watched as it comes after President Donald Trump has lashed out at traditional allies, most recently with tariffs.
Hegseth has also roiled allies in Europe. In February, he warned Europe against treating America like a “sucker” while addressing a press conference at NATO headquarters in Brussels.
“There’s certainly uncertainty being expressed, and sometimes I think it’s probably fair to characterize it as a concern,” a second senior US defense official said, referring to anxiety among Asian allies.
General Dan Caine, the recently confirmed US chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, is also expected to attend the dialogue.
Some of the Trump administration’s early moves in the Indo-Pacific have raised eyebrows. The US moved air defense systems from Asia to the Middle East earlier this year as tensions with Iran spiked — an effort which took 73 C-17 flights.
But Hegseth visited the Philippines and Japan in March, a trip in which experts said the secretary stuck by the more traditional importance of allies.
Ely Ratner, who was the Pentagon’s top official on China under the Biden administration, said allies in Asia were seeking a consistent policy from Hegseth.
“The region will be watching closely as to whether the US secretary of defense that shows up at Shangri-la looks like the one that traveled to the Philippines and Japan or has more of the harder edge that we’ve seen from the Trump administration in Europe,” said Ratner.
Hegseth, a former Fox News host, was only narrowly confirmed as defense secretary in January. He has moved with stunning speed to reshape the department, firing top generals and admirals as he seeks to implement Trump’s national security agenda.
His leadership has been under intense scrutiny after it was revealed that he shared sensitive war plans on Yemen’s Iran-aligned Houthis in two signal group chats. Trump has stuck by him through the turmoil.
Hegseth will likely get a friendly audience at the Shangri-La Dialogue, said Greg Poling, with the Center for Strategic and International Studies think-tank.
“Asian allies, and particularly the Philippines, feel a lot more reassured than our European allies, but there’s always going to be that voice in the back of their head,” Poling said.
Democratic Senator Tammy Duckworth, who is co-leading a bi-partisan delegation to the Shangri-la Dialogue, said her aim was to reassure Asian allies that the United States was committed, a message she said Hegseth was not capable of delivering.
“He’s only got this job because he sucked up to President Trump and looked good on Fox News. So let’s be clear about the capabilities of the secretary of defense,” Duckworth told Reuters.
Russia proposes new Ukraine talks, Kyiv demands terms upfront
MOSCOW: Russia said Wednesday it wanted new talks with Ukraine in Istanbul next Monday to present its plan for a peace settlement, but Kyiv said it needed to see the plan in advance for the meeting to yield results.
Diplomatic efforts to end the three-year conflict have accelerated in recent months, but Moscow has repeatedly rejected calls for an unconditional ceasefire and shown no signs of scaling back its maximalist demands.
The two sides previously met in Istanbul on May 16, their first direct talks in over three years. That encounter failed to yield a breakthrough.
US President Donald Trump, who has been pushing for a peace deal, has become increasingly frustrated with Moscow’s apparent stalling and warned Wednesday he would determine within “about two weeks” whether Vladimir Putin was serious about ending the fighting.
Ukraine said it had already submitted its peace terms to Russia and demanded Moscow do the same.
“We are not opposed to further meetings with the Russians and are awaiting their memorandum,” Ukrainian defense minister Rustem Umerov, who negotiated for Kyiv at the last talks, said in a post on X.
“The Russian side has at least four more days before their departure to provide us with their document for review. Diplomacy must be substantive, and the next meeting must yield results.”
Moscow’s offensive, launched in February 2022, has resulted in tens of thousands of deaths and the destruction of large parts of eastern and southern Ukraine.
The Russian army now controls around a fifth of Ukraine’s territory, including the Crimean peninsula, which it annexed in 2014.
Russia said it would present a “memorandum” outlining its peace terms at the talks next Monday, and that its foreign minister Sergei Lavrov had briefed US counterpart Marco Rubio on the proposal.
“Our delegation, led by Vladimir Medinsky, is ready to present a memorandum to the Ukrainian delegation and provide the necessary explanations during a second round of direct talks in Istanbul on Monday, June 2,” Lavrov said in a video statement.
Medinsky, a Russian political scientist and former culture minister, led Russia’s negotiating team during a first round of talks in Istanbul on May 16.
The two sides have traded waves of massive aerial attacks in recent weeks, with Ukraine unleashing one of its largest-ever drone barrages on Russia overnight and Moscow pounding Ukraine with deadly strikes over the weekend.
Trump told reporters on Wednesday he was “very disappointed” at Russia’s deadly bombardment during the negotiating process, but rebuffed calls to impose more sanctions on Moscow.
“If I think I’m close to getting a deal, I don’t want to screw it up by doing that,” he said.
The Kremlin earlier rejected a call by Ukrainian President Zelensky for a three-way summit with Trump and Putin.
Moscow said any meeting involving Russian President Putin and Zelensky would only happen after “concrete agreements” had been struck between negotiators from each side.
In exchange for peace, the Kremlin has demanded Ukraine abandon its ambition of joining NATO as well as cede territory it already controls — a proposition that Ukraine has called unacceptable.
Talks between the two sides in Istanbul earlier this month yielded a 1,000-for-1,000 prisoner exchange and the two sides agreed to work on respective peace proposals.
But Russia has kept up its deadly strikes on Ukraine in the meantime while rejecting calls for a ceasefire.
Zelensky on Wednesday accused Russia of dragging out the peace process and of not wanting to halt its offensive.
“They will constantly look for reasons not to end the war,” he said at a press conference in Berlin alongside German Chancellor Friedrich Merz.
On the battlefield, Zelensky said Russia was “amassing” more than 50,000 troops on the front line around the northeastern Sumy border region, where Moscow’s army has captured a number of settlements as it seeks to establish what Putin has called a “buffer zone” inside Ukrainian territory.
Five arrested in UK for disrupting film starring Israeli actor Gadot
LONDON: London police on Wednesday arrested five people for trying to disrupt the filming of a movie starring Israeli actress Gal Gadot, a statement said.
Gadot, star of “Wonder Woman” and in “Fast and Furious” is in London to film a new thriller “The Runner.” She has been criticized by pro-Palestinian groups for expressing her support of Israel since the Gaza war erupted in 2023.
Police said officers were deployed to a “filming location” in Westminster “to identify suspects wanted in connection with offenses at previous film set protests and to deal with any new offenses.”
The arrests were for blocking an access to a place of work. Police said in a statement posted on social media that two of the arrests were for previous protests and three for action carried out Wednesday.
“While we absolutely acknowledge the importance of peaceful protest, we have a duty to intervene where it crosses the line into serious disruption or criminality,” said Superintendent Neil Holyoak in the statement.
“I hope today’s operation shows we will not tolerate the harassment of or unlawful interference with those trying to go about their legitimate professional work in London,” the officer added.
Pro-Palestinian protesters also disrupted a Hollywood ceremony in March when Gadot’s star on the Walk of Fame was unveiled.
Trump bid to deport Columbia activist Khalil likely unconstitutional, judge says
- Lawsuit says attempted deportation violates Khalil's right to freedom of speech under US Constitution’s First Amendment
- Khalil, a Columbia University student, was arrested on March 8 over his participation in pro-Palestinian protests
NEW YORK: A US judge said on Wednesday the Trump administration’s bid to deport Columbia University student and pro-Palestinian activist Mahmoud Khalil is likely unconstitutional.
US District Judge Michael Farbiarz in Newark, New Jersey said he will issue a further order with next steps later on Wednesday. Khalil is currently in immigration detention in Louisiana.
Khalil was arrested on March 8 after the State Department revoked his green card under a little-used provision of US immigration law granting the US secretary of state the power to seek the deportation of any non-citizen whose presence in the country is deemed adverse to US foreign policy interests.
Khalil and his supporters say his arrest and attempted deportation are violations of his right to freedom of speech under the US Constitution’s First Amendment.
Farbiarz wrote that he would not rule for now on whether Khalil’s First Amendment rights were violated. But he said Khalil was likely to succeed in his argument that the legal provision invoked by the Trump administration is so vague as to be unconstitutional.
The judge wrote that it was unlikely that an “ordinary person” would know that the law “could be used against him based on his speech inside the United States, however odious it might allegedly have been.”
Lawyers for Khalil and spokespeople for the White House, the State Department and the Department of Homeland Security did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Khalil was the first known foreign student to be arrested as part of President Donald Trump’s bid to deport foreign students who took part in pro-Palestinian protests that swept US college campuses after Hamas’ October 7, 2023, attack on Israel and Israel’s subsequent military assault.
Civil rights groups argue that Trump’s administration unlawfully detained the 30-year-old public policy student in retaliation for his criticism of Israel’s military campaign in Gaza.
The Hamas attack killed 1,195 people, according to Israeli tallies, and Israel’s military campaign has killed more than 54,000 Palestinians, according to the Gaza health ministry.
Khalil, a Palestinian who was born and raised in a refugee camp in Syria, entered the US on a student visa in 2022 and became a lawful permanent resident last year through his wife Noor Abdalla, an American citizen.
Federal judges in recent weeks have ordered another Palestinian Columbia student, Mohsen Mahdawi, and a Turkish student at Tufts University in Massachusetts, Rumeysa Ozturk, to be released from immigration detention while they challenge the government’s efforts to deport them.
Elon Musk criticizes Trump’s ‘big beautiful bill,’ a fracture in a key relationship
- Says the “massive spending bill” increases the federal deficit and “undermines the work” of the DOGE
- "A bill can be big or it could be beautiful,” Musk said, “but I don’t know if it could be both.”
WASHINGTON: Elon Musk is criticizing the centerpiece of President Donald Trump’s legislative agenda, a significant fracture in a partnership that was forged during last year’s campaign and was poised to reshape American politics and the federal government.
The billionaire entrepreneur, who supported Trump’s candidacy with at least $250 million and has worked for his administration as a senior adviser, said he was “disappointed” by what the president calls his “big beautiful bill.”
The legislation includes a mix of tax cuts and enhanced immigration enforcement. While speaking to CBS, Musk described it as a “massive spending bill” that increases the federal deficit and “undermines the work” of his Department of Government Efficiency, known as DOGE.
“I think a bill can be big or it could be beautiful,” Musk said. “But I don’t know if it could be both.”
His CBS interview came out Tuesday night. Trump, speaking in the Oval Office on Wednesday, defended his agenda by talking about the delicate politics involved with negotiating the legislation.
“I’m not happy about certain aspects of it, but I’m thrilled by other aspects of it,” he said.
Trump also suggested that more changes could be made.
“We’re going to see what happens,” he said. “It’s got a way to go.”
Republicans recently pushed the measure through the House and are debating it in the Senate.
Musk’s concerns are shared by some Republican lawmakers. Wisconsin Sen. Ron Johnson said he was “pretty confident” there was enough opposition “to slow this process down until the president, our leadership, gets serious” about reducing spending. Speaking at a Milwaukee Press Club event on Wednesday, he added that there was no amount of pressure Trump could put on him to change his position.
Speaker Mike Johnson has asked senators to make as few changes to the legislation as possible, saying that House Republicans reached a “very delicate balance” that could be upended with major changes. The narrowly divided House will have to vote again on final passage once the Senate alters the bill.
On Wednesday, Johnson thanked Musk for his work and promised to pursue more spending cuts in the future, saying “the House is eager and ready to act on DOGE’s findings.”
The White House is sending some proposed rescissions, a mechanism used to cancel previously authorized spending, to Capitol Hill to solidify some of DOGE’s cuts. A spokesperson for the Office of Management and Budget said the package will include $1.1 billion from the Corporation of Public Broadcasting, which funds NPR and PBS, and $8.3 billion in foreign assistance.
Musk’s criticism come as he steps back from his government work, rededicating himself to companies like the electric automaker Tesla and rocket manufacturer SpaceX. He’s also said he’ll reduce his political spending, because “I think I’ve done enough.”
At times, he’s seemed chastened by his experience working in government. Although he hoped that DOGE would generate $1 trillion in spending cuts, he’s fallen far short of that target.
“The federal bureaucracy situation is much worse than I realized,” he told The Washington Post. “I thought there were problems, but it sure is an uphill battle trying to improve things in D.C., to say the least.”
Musk had previously been energized by the opportunity to reshape Washington. He wore campaign hats in the White House, held his own campaign rallies and talked about excessive spending as an existential crisis. He often tended to be effusive in his praise of Trump.
“The more I’ve gotten to know President Trump, the more I like the guy,” Musk said in February. “Frankly, I love him.”
Trump repaid the favor, describing Musk as “a truly great American.” When Tesla faced declining sales, he turned the White House driveway into a makeshift showroom to illustrate his support.
It’s unclear what, if any, impact that Musk’s comments about the bill would have on the legislative debate. During the transition period, he helped whip up opposition to a spending measure as the country stood on the brink of a federal government shutdown.
His latest criticism could embolden Republicans who want bigger spending cuts. Republican Utah Sen. Mike Lee reposted a Fox News story about Musk’s interview while also adding his own take on the measure, saying there was “still time to fix it.”
“The Senate version will be more aggressive,” Lee said. “It can, it must, and it will be. Or it won’t pass.”
Only two Republicans — Reps. Warren Davidson of Ohio and Thomas Massie of Kentucky — voted against the bill when the House took up the measure last week.
Davidson took note of Musk’s comments on social media.
“Hopefully, the Senate will succeed with the Big Beautiful Bill where the House missed the moment,” he wrote. “Don’t hope someone else will cut deficits someday, know it has been done this Congress.”
The Congressional Budget Office, in a preliminary estimate, said the tax provisions would increase federal deficits by $3.8 trillion over the decade, while the changes to Medicaid, food stamps and other services would reduce spending by slightly more than $1 trillion over the same period.
House Republican leaders say increased economic growth would allow the bill to be deficit neutral or reducing, but outside watchdogs are skeptical. The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget estimates the bill would add $3 trillion to the debt, including interest, over the next decade.
