Metro Observer Daily

  White House rejects Ukraine’s appeal, saying implementing a no-fly zone could draw US into war with Russia. A satellite image shows a blaze at warehouse 'Epicentr K' and destroyed fields in Chernihiv, Ukraine  Ukraine’s President Volodymr Zelenskyy calls for no-fly zone to stop Russian bombardment, but White House says US is not considering such a move. ICC prosecutor says he plans to launch investigation into alleged war crimes, crimes against humanity in Ukraine. High-level talks between Kyiv and Moscow end with no agreement except to keep talking. US, UK, EU, Canada impose sanctions on Russia’s central bank. Civilian death toll now stands at 352 people, including 14 children, Ukraine’s health ministry says. More than 520,000 people have fled Ukraine since Russian invasion began, UN says. FIFA and UEFA suspend Russia from international football.

           The UN Security Council on Monday imposed an arms embargo on Yemen's Houthis.   NEW YORK: The UN Security Council on Monday voted to adopt a draft resolution on Yemen that expands the scope of an existing arms embargo targeting the leaders of the Houthi militia, including Abdulmalik Al-Houthi, to encompass the entire membership of the Iran-backed group. In addition, the resolution labels the Houthis as a terrorist group for the first time, following an ongoing series of cross-border drone and missile attacks targeting the UAE and Saudi Arabia, and a wide range of violations affecting the Yemeni people and the international community. It also renews financial sanctions and a travel ban on senior members of the Houthi militia for an additional year Security Council Resolution 2624, which was tabled by the UAE, condemns the continuing supply of weapons and weapon components to the Houthis from outside Yemen in violation of the arms embargo est...

  An Indian director and writer, Shyam Maheshwari is  noted for his work primarily in the Marathi TV and film industry . He started his career as an assistant director with the popular TV series, Kyunki. Saas Bhi Kabhi Bahu Thi (2000-02), he made his directorial debut with Kuchh Jhuk Palkein in 2002.   A movie titled Charandas Chor directed and written by Shyam Maheshwari Shyam Maheshwari is an Indian director and writer, who is noted for his work primarily in the Marathi TV and film industry. From 2000 to 2002, he assisted directors like Ashish Patil, Nivedita Basu, Suraj Rao, Santosh Badal, and the famous television series Kyunki Saas Bhi Kabhi Bahu Thi. He started his career as an assistant director with the popular TV series, Kyunki. Saas Bhi Kabhi Bahu Thi (2000-02), he made his directorial debut with Kuchh Jhuk Palkein in 2002. His other notable directorial credits include Maat Ki Banno (2010), a TV series, and eventually made his feature film directorial debut...

 The Ukrainian and Russian delegations arrived Monday at the Belarus border for talks aimed at halting the conflict as the Russian invasion entered a fifth day. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said he was sceptical about the outcome of the talks but said they were worth a "try". Follow our live blog for all the latest developments.  Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky delivering an address in Kyiv  The rouble plunged to an all-time low on Monday after Western nations announced fresh sanctions and Russian President Vladimir Putin put nuclear-armed forces on high alert. Ukraine is due to talks with Russia at its border with Belarus on Monday from 3pm GMT. President Volodymyr Zelensky said he was sceptical about the outcome of the talks, but that they were worth a “try”. The UN General Assembly on Monday holds a rare emergency special session of the 193-member body on Russia’s invasion of Ukraine . Also on Monday, the UN Security Council holds a meeting on the h...

 The General Assembly will take up the issue at 10 a.m. New York time on Feb. 28, Secretary General Antonio Guterress announced India’s Permanent Representative to the United Nations T.S. Tirumurti speaks during the UNSC meeting, in New York The United Nations Security Council (UNSC), on February 27 afternoon, voted to convene an emergency special session of the General Assembly to consider a resolution, vetoed by Russia on Friday, on the situation in Ukraine. The resolution condemned Russia’s aggression and calling for it to withdraw from Ukraine unconditionally. The General Assembly will take up the issue at 10 a.m. New York time on Feb. 28, Secretary General Antonio Guterress announced. India, along with China and the U.A.E., abstained from Sunday’s vote, as was the case on Friday. Russia voted against the resolution and eleven UNSC members voted in favour of it. Given the vote was procedural, no country had a veto, and the resolution was adopted. “The global order is anchore...

Sethurathnam Ravi (S Ravi) is a chartered accountant (CA) based in India, promoter and managing partner of Ravi Rajan & Co and the former Chairman of Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE). He also serves as an Independent Director of Tourism Finance Corporation of India. In 2019, Ravi also joined SBI Payments Services Pvt. Ltd as one of the Board Directors. Before joining BSE, Ravi served on boards of various companies such as, UTI Company Pvt Ltd., SMERA Ratings, SBI-SG Global Securities, STCI Finance, and BOI Merchant Bankers. He also serves as a member of SEBI’s takeover panel and Institute of Chartered Accountants of India. Sethurathnam Ravi, former BSE chairman, shares some tips for smart investing to reduce investment risk. Sethurathnam Ravi BSE Former Chairman Sethurathnam Ravi (S Ravi) is a chartered accountant (CA) based in India, promoter and managing partner of Ravi Rajan & Co, a consultancy and accountancy firm based in New Delhi, India and the former Chairman of Bombay St...

 The Commission expects that all stakeholders will cooperate and will provide valuable suggestions so that the task of delimitation is completed timely. New Delhi : Delimitation Commission will meet on Thursday in Delhi to discuss suggestions of Jammu and Kashmir MPs, who are associate members of the panel on its delimitation draft proposal. The meeting will be chaired by Justice (Retd) Ranjana Prakash Desai and attended by Chief Election Commissioner (CEC), Jammu and Kashmir state EC chief, and the chief electoral officer of the Union Territory.                    The Delimitation Commission was constituted in March 2020. On February 23, the Central government had extended the tenure of the Delimitation Commission, tasked with redrawing the Lok Sabha and Assembly constituencies in Jammu and Kashmir by two more months until May 5, 2022. The Delimitation Commission was constituted in March 2020. Third Member of the Commission is the...

 A spat between Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and Biden is pushing gas prices ever higher. It started under Obama. Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, right, and Russian President Vladimir Putin at the G-20 summit in Buenos Aires, Argentina, in 2018 AS RUSSIA ORDERED troops into Ukraine on Monday, gas prices soared to their highest levels in over seven years. While the media focuses on the conflict in Ukraine, a major cause of the gas price spike has gone overlooked: Moscow’s partnership with Saudi Arabia has grown dramatically in recent years, granting the two largest oil producers in the world the unprecedented ability to collude in oil export decisions. The desert kingdom’s relationship with the U.S. has chilled in the meantime, as demonstrated earlier this month, when President Joe Biden pleaded with the Saudis to increase oil production — a move that would not only have helped to alleviate rising inflation and gas prices, but also reduced Russia’s extravagant pr...

Girl students wearing Hijab who came to attend degree classes also left the campus.  Trouble erupted at the MGM college in Udupi on Thursday when some girl students wearing hijabs were sent out of the institution premises by the college principal. Postgraduate students who sought entry into the college wearing hijabs complained that they are not even allowed to attend the classes or enter the college premises which is in violation of the High Court order. The students said they could not appear for their examinations earlier due to the row over the hijab issue. Girl students wearing hijab who came to attend degree classes also left the campus after the order from the principal. Meanwhile, the six students of government pre-university college for women in Udupi, who approached the High Court seeking to allow them to wear hijab and attend classes, have appealed to the pre-university board to postpone their practical examinations starting from February 28. In their request, the stud...

Senate Foreign Affairs Committee Chair Bob Menendez (D-N.J.) said in a statement late Wednesday night that Russia’s military operation in Ukraine brings the “need to expel the current” leadership in Moscow “into sharp focus.” The statement was issued soon after Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered a military operation in Ukraine, following weeks of speculation about a potential invasion.  Committee Chair Bob Menendez (D-N.J.)  “This unprovoked attack has brought into sharp focus the need to expel the current Kremlin leadership from the international community,” Menendez said. “Today must mark a historical shift in how the world views and deals with the despot in Moscow.” Putin, in a televised address Thursday morning Moscow time, said the military operation was meant to protect Ukraine from what he called a “regime.” Russia incrementally amassed up to 190,000 troops at the Ukrainian border in recent weeks, stoking fear in the U.S. and among allies of a large-scale offensi...

India’s second Moon mission Chandrayaan-2 lifts off from Satish Dhawan Space Center at Sriharikota in Andhra Pradesh. The instrument on January 18 also recorded coronal mass ejections, a powerful stream of ionised material and magnetic fields. A Large Area Soft X-ray Spectrometer (CLASS), a payload on-board Chandrayaan-2 Orbiter, has detected solar proton events which significantly increase the radiation exposure to humans in space, the Indian Space Research Organisation has said. The instrument on January 18 also recorded coronal mass ejections (CMEs), a powerful stream of ionised material and magnetic fields, which reach the Earth a few days later, leading to geomagnetic storms and lighting up the polar sky with auroras, the ISRO said on Wednesday. "Such multi-point observations help us understand the propagation and its impact on different planetary systems," it said. When the sun is active, spectacular eruptions called solar flares occur that sometimes also spew out ener...

 KYIV, Ukraine: Ukraine said early on Thursday it had closed its airspace to civilian flights because of a “high risk” to safety, hours after a conflict zone monitor warned airlines should stop overflights over the risk of an unintended shootdown or cyberattack. Russian President Vladimir Putin attends a wreath-laying ceremony at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, near the Kremlin Wall during the national celebrations in Moscow Russian President Vladimir Putin authorized a military operation in eastern Ukraine on Thursday in what appeared to be the start of war in Europe. “The provision of air traffic services to civilian users of the airspace of Ukraine is suspended,” Ukrainian State Air Traffic Services Enterprise said on its website. “We will additionally inform about changes in the use of Ukraine’s airspace,” the agency added, without providing further details. Eurocontrol, which coordinates air traffic in Europe, said that Ukraine’s airspace was not available because of militar...

S Ravi, the former BSE chairman and the independent Director of Tourism Finance Corporation of India sheds light into the common drawbacks of startups. From his vast experience as a policy maker, S Ravi also gives his comments on the common flaws of the young entrepreneurship and how to rectify them. S Ravi Bse The former BSE chairman S Ravi  feels that first of all these entrepreneurs are too obsessed with their ideas. So the first and foremost mistake is that they might have a very good idea but they have to be flexible and very fertile in their imagination to change the business model according to the requirements. Because any idea to be converted into reality requires capital, growth, marketing and above all one need to have a story to tell people. So it’s a package that makes the company successful. And if a company personal has a good idea and they fail, it is because they are so obsessed with their idea and are not willing to change it with the market conditions.   A...

The International Cricket Council’s Elite Panel of Umpires will not have an Indian representation after Sundaram Ravi got the axe.  Michael Gough  of England and Joel Wilson of the West Indies are the new entrants for the 2019-20 season. England pacer James Anderson and umpire S. Ravi during a Test match in Headingley Ravi, whose below par performance both on-field and as a TV umpire during various assignments came under scanner, has been predictably dropped and non-representation was a reflection of poor quality of Indian umpires. The 53-year-old Ravi has officiated in 33 Tests including Ashes, 48 ODIs and 18 T20 Internationals. He has stood at multiple World Cups and World T20s. Gough and Wilson have been elevated from the Emirates ICC International Panel of Umpires by the selection panel consisting of ICC General Manager – Cricket, Geoff Allardice, former player and now commentator Sanjay Manjrekar, and match referees Ranjan Madugalle and David Boon. READ| S Ravi, the lone ...

The next leader of ISIS is likely to be from a close circle of battle-hardened Iraqi extremists who emerged in the aftermath of the 2003 US invasion, two Iraqi security officials and three independent analysts said. A member loyal to ISIS waves an ISIL flag in Raqqa June The group of potential successors to  Abu Ibrahim al-Quraishi , who blew himself up during a US operation to capture him in Syria last week, includes one commander whom Washington and Baghdad declared killed last year, the Iraqi officials said. The death of Quraishi, 45, was another crushing blow to ISIS two years after the violent group lost longtime leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi in a similar raid in 2019. Quraishi, an Iraqi, never publicly addressed his fighters or followers, avoided electronic communications, and oversaw a move to fighting in small devolved units in response to intense pressure from Iraqi and US-led forces. But those following ISIS closely expect it to name a successor in coming weeks, as the grou...

THE FIRST GUN control organization  in the United States was formed after the Civil War by white Southerners bothered by the fact that enslaved people were now free, entitled to vote, and arming themselves to defend that freedom. The group called itself the Ku Klux Klan and organized for the first time in 1866. They were often made up of local leaders like sheriffs and judges, and would use the force of law to disarm Black communities before rampaging through them. A demonstrator holds sign reading “Justice for Amir Locke” during a protest of his killing by police, outside the Hennepin County Government Center in Minneapolis “Before these midnight marauders made attacks upon peaceful citizens, there were very many instances in the South where the sheriff of the county had preceded them and taken away the arms of their victims,” said Rep. Benjamin Butler in 1871, pushing for passage of laws aimed at taking down the Klan. “This was especially noticeable in Union County, where all the...

 Schrader owns a farm in his home district, but there’s little indication that he spends much time there. WHEN REP. KURT SCHRADER voted against the initial passage of the American Rescue Plan last year, he faced intense backlash from fellow Democrats in his Central Oregon district. The vote was Schrader’s third controversial action in as many months, following his opposition to the overwhelmingly popular $2,000 stimulus checks and a statement that compared the second impeachment of former President Donald Trump to a “lynching” earlier that year. For local Democrats, it was the last straw. Rep. Kurt Schrader, D-Ore., arrives at the Rayburn Building in Washington, D.C In a blistering letter signed by the party chairs from the five counties that make up Schrader’s current district, local leaders lambasted their representative for not “consulting with communities in this district” before his vote. They labeled Schrader’s actions a “betrayal of [his] duty to best serve [his] constituen...