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Ukrainian Billionaire, Wife Killed In Russian Attacks

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Ukrainian Billionaire, Wife Killed In Russian Attacks

Russian billionaire Oleksiy Vadatursky and the owner of one of the country’s largest grain producing and exporting companies has been killed by Russian strikes.

The heavy Russian strikes hit the southern Ukrainian port city of Mykolaiv overnight and early on Sunday.

Vadatursky, founder and owner of agriculture company, Nibulon, and his wife, were killed in their home, Mykolaiv Governor Vitaliy Kim said on Telegram.

Headquartered in Mykolaiv, a strategically important city that borders the mostly Russia-occupied Kherson region, Nibulon specialises in the production and export of wheat, barley and corn, and it has its own fleet and shipyard.

President Volodymyr Zelenskiy described Vadatursky’s death as “a great loss for all of Ukraine”, saying the billionaire businessman had been in the process of building a modern grain market involving a network of transhipment terminals and elevators.

Three people were also wounded in the attacks on Mikolaiv, the city’s Mayor Oleksandr Senkevych told Ukrainian television, adding 12 missiles had hit homes and educational facilities.

He earlier described the strikes as “probably the most powerful” on the city of the entire five-month-old war.

Up to 50 Grad rockets hit residential areas in the southern city of Nikopol on Sunday morning, Dnipropetrovsk governor Valentyn Reznichenko wrote on Telegram. One person was wounded.

Ukrainian forces hit Russia’s Black Sea Fleet headquarters in Russian-held Sevastopol early on Sunday, the Crimean port city’s governor Mikhail Razvozhayev told Russian media.

Five staff members were wounded in the attack when what was presumed to be a drone flew into the courtyard at the headquarters, he said.

The Sevastopol attack coincided with Russia’s Navy Day, which President Vladimir Putin marked by announcing that the navy would receive what he called “formidable” hypersonic Zircon cruise missiles in coming months.

Those missiles can travel at nine times the speed of sound.

He did not mention the conflict in Ukraine during a speech after signing a new naval doctrine which cast the U.S. as Russia’s main rival and set out Russia’s global maritime ambitions for crucial areas such as the Arctic and in the Black Sea.

Putin sent tens of thousands of troops over the border on February 24, setting off a conflict that has killed thousands, uprooted millions and deeply strained relations between Russia and the West.

The biggest conflict in Europe since World War II has also stoked an energy and food crisis that is shaking the global economy.

Both Ukraine and Russia are leading suppliers of grain.

Zelenskiy said on Sunday the country may harvest only half its usual amount this year due to the invasion.

“Ukrainian harvest this year is under the threat to be twice less,” suggesting half as much as usual, Zelenskiy wrote in English on Twitter.

“Our main goal — to prevent global food crisis caused by Russian invasion.

“Still grains find a way to be delivered alternatively,” he added.

Ukraine has struggled to get its product to buyers via its Black Sea ports because of the war.

READ ALSO: Fourth Russian General Dies In  Ukraine

But an agreement signed under the stewardship of the United Nations and Turkey on July 22 provides for safe passage for ships carrying grain out of three southern Ukrainian ports.

There is a high possibility that the first grain-exporting ship will leave Ukraine’s ports on Monday, a spokesperson for Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan said on Sunday.

Zelenskiy late on Saturday said hundreds of thousands of people were still exposed to fierce fighting in the Donbas region, which contains Donetsk and Luhansk provinces and which Russia seeks to control completely.

Swathes of the Donbas were held before the invasion by Russian-backed separatists.

“Many refuse to leave but it still needs to be done,” Zelenskiy said.

“The more people leave the Donetsk region now, the fewer people the Russian army will have time to kill,” he added.

Russia said on Sunday it had invited UN and Red Cross experts to probe the deaths of dozens of Ukrainian prisoners held by Moscow-backed separatists.

Ukraine and Russia have traded accusations over a missile strike or explosion early on Friday that appeared to have killed dozens of Ukrainian prisoners of war in the front-line town of Olenivka in eastern Donetsk.

The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), on Sunday, condemned the attack and said it had not yet received permission to visit the site, while adding it was not its mandate to publicly investigate alleged war crimes.

“Families must receive urgent news of and answers on what happened to their loved ones,” it said in a statement.

“The parties must do everything in their power, including through impartial investigations, to help determine the facts behind the attack and bring clarity to this issue,” he added.

 

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French Schools Send Home Schoolgirls For Wearing Muslim Dress Abayas

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French President Emmanuel Macron

French schools sent dozens of girls home for refusing to remove their abayas – an over-garment from the shoulders to the feet worn by Muslim women – on the first day of the school year, a government minister said on Tuesday.

Defying a ban on the Muslim dress, nearly 300 girls showed up on Monday morning wearing an abaya, education secretary Gabriel Attal told the BFM broadcaster.

The Daily Mail quoted Attal as saying that most agreed to change out of the dress, but 67 refused and were sent home.

The government announced last month it was banning the abaya in schools, saying it broke the rules on secularism in education that have already seen Muslim headscarves banned on the grounds they constitute a display of religious affiliation.

The move gladdened the political Right but the hard-Left argued it represented an affront to civil liberties.

French schools sent dozens of girls home for refusing to remove their abayas – an over-garment from the shoulders to the feet worn by Muslim women – on the first day of the school year, a government minister said on Tuesday.

Announcing the ban last month, Attal said at the time: ‘When you walk into a classroom, you shouldn’t be able to identify the pupils’ religion just by looking at them. I have decided that the abaya can no longer be worn in schools.’

Attal said the girls refused entry were given a letter addressed to their families saying that ‘secularism is not a constraint, it is a liberty’.

If they showed up at school again wearing the dress there would be a ‘new dialogue’, the minister said.

On Monday evening, president Emmanuel Macron defended the controversial measure, saying there was a ‘minority’ in France who ‘hijack a religion and challenge the republic and secularism’, leading to the ‘worst consequences’ such as the murder three years ago of teacher Samuel Paty for showing Mohammed caricatures during a civics education class.

‘We cannot act as if the terrorist attack, the murder of Samuel Paty, had not happened,’ he said in an interview with Youtube channel HugoDecrypte.

An association representing Muslims has filed a motion with the State Council, France’s highest court for complaints against state authorities, for an injunction against the ban on the abaya and the qamis, its equivalent dress for men.

The Action for the Rights of Muslims (ADM) motion is to be examined later on Tuesday.

Abdallah Zekri, vice-president of the French Council for Muslim Worship, said last month the abaya ‘has never been a religious symbol’ and should not be banned.

He said the ban was yet another example of politicians using dress favoured by women and girls to attack some five million Muslims living in France.

‘I think the minister could have asked the opinion of religious leaders,’ said Zerkri.

‘For me, the abaya is not a religious dress, it is a form of fashion.

‘If you go to some stores, you find abayas. It’s a long and loose dress at the same time. It has nothing to do with religion.’

A law introduced in March 2004 banned ‘the wearing of signs or outfits by which students ostensibly show a religious affiliation’ in schools.

This includes large Christian crosses, Jewish kippas and Islamic headscarves.

Unlike headscarves, abayas occupied a grey area and had faced no outright ban until now.

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Gabon’s BREAKING:Military Leader Sworn In As President

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Gen. Brice Clotaire Oligui Nguema

Gabon ‘s new military leader was sworn in as the head of state Monday less than a week after ousting the president whose family had ruled the Central African nation for more than five decades.

Gen. Brice Clotaire Oligui Nguema, took the oath in the presidential palace in front of a packed, boisterous room of government officials, military and local leaders in Gabon’s capital, Libreville. Oligui is a cousin of the ousted President Ali Bongo Ondimba, served as a bodyguard to his late father and is head of the republican guard, an elite military unit.

Speaking to applause and standing ovations Monday, Oligui said the military had seized power without bloodshed and promised to return power to the people by organizing free, transparent and credible elections.

“With the new government, made up of experienced people, we’re going to give everyone a chance to hope,” he said.

.AP

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BREAKING: Gabonese Military Officers Sack President

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President Ali Bongo

Senior Gabonese military officers appeared on national television to announce they have taken power.

The group of 12 officers made the announcement shortly after Gabon’s election body reported early on Wednesday morning that President Ali Bongo had won a third term in office.

After observing “irresponsible, unpredictable governance resulting in a continuing deterioration in social cohesion that risks leading the country into chaos… we have decided to defend peace by putting an end to the current regime”, one of the soldiers said, speaking on the Gabon 24 TV channel.

There was no immediate comment from the Gabon government, the Reuters news agency reported.

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