Delhi Police on June 27 arrested Mohammed Zubair, the co-founder of Alt News, in a case related to the alleged hurting of religious sentiments and promotion of communal enmity.

Police in the Indian capital have arrested the journalist Mohammed Zubair on charges of hurting religious sentiments for a tweet he posted in 2018.

Zubair, co-founder of fact-checking website Alt News, was arrested on Monday evening in New Delhi and remanded for a day in police custody, officials and media reports said.

Zubair was arrested following a complaint by a Twitter handle @balajikijaiin this month, in which the concerned person alleged the 39-year-old Muslim journalist had insulted Hindus by commenting on the renaming of a hotel after the Hindu monkey god Hanuman.

His arrest came five days after Twitter received a request from the government claiming his account violated Indian laws.

Alt News’s other co-founder, Pratik Sinha, said on Twitter no notice was given to Zubair before his arrest.

“He is currently detained inside a police bus in Burari for more than an hour,” Sinha said, referring to a New Delhi neighbourhood where Zubair was to be produced before a magistrate authorised the arrest.

In another tweet, Sinha wrote: “After the medical examination, Zubair is being taken to an undisclosed location. Neither Zubair’s lawyers or I are being told where. We are in the police van with him. No police is wearing any name tag.”

Zubair, a former telecom engineer from the southern IT hub of Bengaluru, and Sinha, a software engineer from Ahmedabad, founded Alt News in 2017.

Since then, the website has busted numerous fake news stories, mostly pushed by Hindu right-wing portals, and claims made by members of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) or its supporters.

Zubair and Sinha have been facing online trolling and police cases for their work for years.

Delhi Police spokeswoman Suman Nalwa confirmed Zubair’s arrest to Al Jazeera and said Section 153 (giving provocation with intent to cause a riot) and Section 295A (deliberate and malicious acts intended to outrage religious feelings) of the Indian Penal Code have been invoked against the journalist.

When asked about Sinha’s claims on Twitter that no prior notice was given or that Zubair was taken to an undisclosed location, Nalwa said: “I have not seen the tweets and I don’t respond to tweets.”

‘Another low for press freedom’

Journalists, activists and opposition leaders have condemned Zubair’s arrest, demanding his immediate release and calling the police move an “assault on truth”.

In a statement posted on Twitter, DIGIPUB News India Foundation, a network of digital media organisations, said the use of “stringent” laws as tools against journalists must stop.

Steven Butler, Asia programme coordinator at the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), said Zubair’s arrest “marks another low for press freedom in India”.

“Authorities must immediately and unconditionally release Zubair, and allow him to pursue his journalistic work without further interference,” Butler said, according to a statement posted on the CPJ website.

India ranks 150th on the 2022 World Press Freedom Index, published by the press watchdog Reporters Without Borders (RSF).

On World Press Freedom Day last month, 10 rights groups said Indian authorities were prosecuting journalists and critics under stringent laws for criticising the government’s policies.

Soon after Zubair’s arrest, hashtags #IStandWithZubair and #ReleaseZubair started trending on Twitter in India.

Rahul Gandhi, the main opposition leader of the Congress party, said “every person exposing BJP’s hate, bigotry and lies is a threat to them (government)”.

“Arresting one voice of truth will only give rise to a thousand more. Truth ALWAYS triumphs over tyranny,” Gandhi wrote.

Asaduddin Owaisi, parliamentarian and leading Muslim politician, said Zubair has been arrested in “total violation of due process”.

“Delhi Police does nothing about anti-Muslim genocidal slogans but acts swiftly against ‘crime’ of reporting hate speech and countering misinformation,” he tweeted.

New Delhi-based academic and activist Apoorvanand told Al Jazeera Zubair’s arrest “makes it clear that this regime will not tolerate those who keep revealing the sources of hate and violence in India”.

“Zubair was one journalist who kept busting half truths or lies spread by the network of this regime,” said the professor of Hindi literature at Delhi University.

Two days before Zubair’s arrest, prominent Indian rights defender Teesta Setalvad was picked up by the anti-terrorism wing of the police in Gujarat, Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s home state.

Setalvad was picked up from her home in Mumbai hours after federal Home Minister Amit Shah, a close aide of Modi, accused her of giving “baseless information” to the police about the 2002 Gujarat violence, in which at least 1,000 people, an overwhelming majority of them Muslims, were massacred when Modi was the state chief minister.

Setalvad was formally arrested on Sunday, with rights group Amnesty International calling it a “direct reprisal against those who dare to question” the government’s human rights record.

Referring to the two arrests, Apoorvanand said: “This is very dangerous moment for Indian democracy and the lowest point the Indian democracy could have reached. Very alarming and the world must take notice of it.”/Aljazeera and agencies

Aleid Foods Company announced that it will be the exclusive authorized distributor of Freshly Foods brand products in Kuwait in all local sale outlets, central markets, and hypermarkets of various regions, in addition to restaurants and hotels. Freshly Foods brand is distinguished by a wide product offering of frozen high-quality products including beef, poultry, and seafood, made from the finest ingredients carefully selected from the most renowned regional and international suppliers.

The brand also provides delicious food additives and vegetarian substitutes for meat and more. Freshly Foods focuses on the selection and development of food safety-related technology and creating recipes that promote healthy eating habits, following the highest production standards with accredited international certificates.

This valued cooperation supports Aleid Foods Company’s products portfolio development in Kuwait and entering the food services sector of international and local restaurant chains since Freshly Foods products are the choice of various internationally renowned restaurants like Burger King, Pizza Hut, IKEA, and more, in addition to being distinctive for providing innovative frozen products and easy to make meals for the gourmet consumer. Diversifying Aleid Foods’ products portfolio will support the company’s expansion plans in the local market and solidify its operations to achieve continuous growth and sustainable returns for shareholders and partners./KT

A long-delayed conference on how to restore the faltering health of global oceans kicked off in Lisbon on Monday, with the head of the UN saying the world’s seas are in crisis. “Today we face what I would call an ocean emergency,” UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres told thousands of policymakers, experts and advocates at the opening plenary, describing how seas have been hammered by climate change and pollution.

Humanity depends on healthy oceans. They generate 50 percent of the oxygen we breathe and provide essential protein and nutrients to billions of people every day. Covering 70 percent of Earth’s surface, oceans have also softened the impact of climate change for life on land. But at a terrible cost.

Absorbing around a quarter of CO2 pollution – even as emissions increased by half over the last 60 years – has turned sea water acidic, threatening aquatic food chains and the ocean’s capacity to absorb carbon. And soaking up more than 90 percent of the excess heat from global warming has spawned massive marine heatwaves that are killing off precious coral reefs and expanding dead zones bereft of oxygen.

“We have only begun to understand the extent to which climate change is going to wreak havoc on ocean health,” said Charlotte de Fontaubert, the World Bank’s global lead for the blue economy. Making things worse is an unending torrent of pollution, including a garbage truck’s worth of plastic every minute, according to the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP). On current trends, yearly plastic waste will nearly triple to one billion tons by 2060, according to a recent report by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD).

Microplastics – now found inside Arctic ice and fish in the ocean’s deepest trenches – are estimated to kill more than a million seabirds and over 100,000 marine mammals each year. Solutions on the table range from recycling to global caps on plastic production. Global fisheries will also be in the spotlight during the five-day UN Ocean Conference, originally slated for April 2020 and jointly hosted by Portugal and Kenya.

“At least one-third of wild fish stocks are overfished and less than 10 percent of the ocean is protected,” Kathryn Matthews, chief scientist for US-based NGO Oceana, told AFP. “Destructive and illegal fishing vessels operate with impunity in many coastal waters and on the high seas.” One culprit is nearly $35 billion in subsidies. Baby steps taken last week by the World Trade Organization (WTO) to reduce handouts to industry will hardly make a dent, experts said.

The conference will also see a push for a moratorium on deep-sea mining of rare metals needed for a boom in electric vehicle battery construction. Scientists say poorly understood seabed ecosystems are fragile and could take decades or longer to heal once disrupted. Another major focus will be “blue food”, the new watchword for ensuring that marine harvests from all sources – wild caught and farmed – are sustainable and socially responsible.

Aquaculture yields – from salmon and tuna to shellfish and algae – have grown by three percent a year for decades and are on track to overtake wild marine harvests that peaked in the 1990s, with each producing roughly 100 million tons per year. The Lisbon meeting will be attended by ministers and even a few heads of state, including French President Emmanuel Macron, but is not a formal negotiating session.

But participants will push for a strong oceans agenda at two critical summits later this year – the COP27 UN climate talks in November, hosted by Egypt, followed by the long-delayed COP15 UN biodiversity negotiations, recently moved from China to Montreal. Oceans are already at the heart of a draft treaty tasked with halting what many scientists fear is the first “mass extinction” event in 65 million years. A cornerstone provision would designate 30 percent of the planet’s land and ocean as protected areas.

But preparatory negotiations in Nairobi ended on Sunday in deadlock. “The agreement is at risk of collapsing on the question of finance,” the environmental diplomacy lead for WWF France told AFP. For climate change, the focus will be on carbon sequestration – boosting the ocean’s capacity to soak up CO2, whether by enhancing natural sinks such as mangroves or through geoengineering schemes. At the same time, scientists warn, a drastic reduction in greenhouse gases is needed to restore ocean health. – AFP

 The National Assembly’s budgets committee approved on Monday the 2022/2023 fiscal budget, projecting a surplus for the first time in many years on the back of a sharp rise in oil prices, head of the panel said. MP Adnan Abdulsamad said revenues are estimated at KD 23.4 billion, a jump of 114 percent over the last fiscal year’s estimates. Oil income is projected to make up 91 percent of all revenues, while non-oil income is projected at KD 2 billion, he said.

Spending is projected at KD 23.1 billion, leaving a surplus of slightly in excess of KD 300 million, the lawmaker said. Oil revenues were calculated on the basis of $80 a barrel, while actual prices today are $114 a barrel, Abdulsamad said. The conservative price is adopted in case of possible fluctuations in the price of oil, he said.

Kuwait has posted deficits in budgets since the 2015/2016 fiscal year after a crash in oil prices due to abundant supplies and a drop in demand, in addition to economic woes during the years of the coronavirus pandemic, during which demand slumped to unprecedented levels. During those years, accumulated deficits surpassed KD 50 billion, resulting in the government withdrawing funds from the state general reserves, which almost dried up.

Abdulsamad said wages at KD 12.8 billion and subsidies at KD 4.4 billion accounted for as high as 74.5 percent of total spending, a problem that Kuwait’s government finances have been facing for long. Capital spending, which represents expenditures on projects, is estimated at KD 2.9 billion or 12 percent of the budget, according to Abdulsamad.

The lawmaker said reports on the state budget and the budgets of 39 government agencies and departments have been approved and sent to the Assembly for approval. An emergency Assembly session is expected to be convened when the government and the Assembly agree, he said. HH the Amir Sheikh Nawaf Al-Ahmad Al-Jaber Al-Sabah said in a speech last week that he has decided to dissolve the Assembly and call for snap polls. The decree, however, has not been issued yet and the process could take months./agencies

 Secretary General of the Gulf Cooperation Council Dr Nayef Al-Hajraf affirmed on Monday Gulf States support to United Nations’ efforts aiming to boost peace safety and security in Yemen. The secretariat added in statement this came during Dr Hajraf’s meeting with the UN special envoy to Yemen Hans Grundberg, at the GCC headquarters in Riyadh.

The meeting handled discussion of the treaty announced by special envoy, and outcome of Yemeni-Yemeni negotiations. The secretariat further affirmed necessity of executing resolutions relating to the issue at hand, and enforcing regional and international efforts to support development, relief and economy in Yemen. – KUNA