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ATHENS: Greece has pledged military assistance to Ukraine for “as long as it takes” but officials cautioned that the country needs to keep much of its Russian-made weaponry for its own defensive needs.
Ukrainian Defense Minister Oleksii Reznikov visited Athens Thursday as part of regular meetings with officials from NATO countries. He was promised more artillery and small arms ammunition shipments, access to Greek hospitals for wounded military personnel and additional Soviet-era BMP infantry fighting vehicles.
Greece “will provide every support to Ukraine at this very important, crucial stage of the war,” Greek Defense Minister Nikos Panagiotopoulos said during a joint appearance with Reznikov. “We will continue to support Ukraine for as long as it takes — that’s a very clear position that we have taken from the outset.”
Military officials said Greece has also provided trainers for Ukraine’s special forces and tank operators, as a contribution to the massive military assistance effort led by the United States and its allies.
Russia, which had traditionally close ties with Greece before the war in Ukraine, for decades had been a supplier of arms to the NATO member, including the S-300 air defense missile system. Moscow has singled out Athens for criticism over its support for Ukraine.
Panagiotopoulos, speaking in Parliament on the eve of Reznikov’s visit, said Greece would not provide any military assistance that could compromise its own defense, and stressed that major arms procurement plans remain unchanged despite a recent thaw in tension with neighbor and fellow NATO member Turkiye.
German-made Leopard tanks, the minister said, could not be provided.
“The rumors are running rampant: That we will send fighter jets, and S-300s, and this and that. For goodness’ sake,” he told lawmakers. “We give what we can give, but nothing that would weaken in the slightest our own defense capabilities given our own national security challenges.”
Reznikov said Greece had offered assistance to Ukraine to better integrate its navy with NATO.
“After this war, after the victory of Ukraine in this war, together with our partners we will continue to develop our defense capability,” Reznikov said.
KARACHI, Pakistan: Pakistan Finance Minister Ishaq Dar on Saturday said he had canceled his trip to Washington for the spring meetings of the International Monetary Fund and World Bank on the orders of the prime minister due to the political situation in the country.
However, Dar said he would attend important bilateral and multilateral meetings virtually and a Pakistani delegation would be present in Washington.
Pakistan is in danger of defaulting on its debt, with an International Monetary Fund bailout program stalled since November, while a bruising political battle is raging between the government and former Prime Minister Imran Khan.
Dar said that the crisis had been compounded by a recent Supreme Court order striking down plans to delay elections to two provincial assemblies scheduled for next month. The order has created a standoff between the government and the court.
Pakistan is in danger of defaulting on its debt, with an International Monetary Fund bailout program stalled since November, while a bruising political battle is raging between the government and former Prime Minister Imran Khan.
“We are stuck in a strange mess as a country … so under these circumstances, on the orders of the prime minister, I have dropped plans to be there (in Washington) physically,” Dar said in a televised address.
The minister rejected reports of the canceled trip being linked to a holdup in Pakistan’s IMF bailout program.
He added that a “constitutional crisis” was created by the Supreme Court, which has demanded that the government provide 21 billion Pakistani rupees ($74 million) to the election authorities by Monday to conduct the polls.
Dar said that Pakistan, on its part, had completed all requirements of the IMF’s program review for the release of over $1.1 billion in critical funding for the cash-strapped country.
He said all that remained was a confirmation by one country that it would provide Pakistan $1 billion to shore up its external account requirements. Another country had already confirmed it would provide $2 billion, he added.
While Dar did not name the two countries, Pakistan’s junior finance minister on Thursday said Saudi Arabia had conveyed to the IMF its commitment to provide financing to Pakistan.
Local media has widely reported that $2 billion have been committed by Saudi Arabia, while a confirmation of $1 billion was awaited by the United Arab Emirates.
The minister said once the $1 billion was confirmed, a staff level agreement would be reached. He denied that there were any other pending issues.
Pakistan is in dire need of funds with its foreign exchange reserves hovering around $4.2 billion which provides barely one month of import cover.
LONDON: It’s about the size of a modest hen’s egg, but it weighs in at 40g and delivers a hefty 177 kilocalories — more than in an actual egg and, comprised almost entirely of fats and sugars, an altogether less healthy option.
Meet the Creme Egg, the iconic product of the British-based global Cadbury chocolate company, which in 2010 was bought by US food and drinks giant Mondelez International for $19.5 billion.
With a thick milk chocolate shell stuffed with gooey white fondant and yellow “yolk,” the foil-wrapped egg is a “Marmite” product — with the equivalent of six teaspoons of sugar in every egg, you either find it too sickly-sweet to stomach or you’re addicted to the massive chocolate-clad calorie hit it delivers.
Either way, in Christian countries the Creme Egg comes into its own at Easter, but it also has a loyal following of fans around the world, including in the Middle East.
It is available in supermarkets such as Tamimi Markets and Carrefour in countries including Saudi Arabia and the UAE, where it is especially popular as a sweet treat during Ramadan, which this year happens to coincide with Easter.
In the UK, Easter is silly season for a media obsessed with all things “eggcellent,” and it is a mark of the fondness for the fondant-filled Creme Egg that it is frequently the star of many articles at this time of year.
Take the following headlines, from the past week alone:
“Police crack case of 200,000 stolen Creme Eggs.”
“I cooked a Cadbury’s Creme Egg in an air fryer and it was the best Easter recipe I’ve tried.”
“An East London cocktail bar is dipping French fries into a Cadbury Creme Egg.”
And, “Man accidentally eats Cadbury Creme Egg worth £10,000.”
That last one deserves an “eggsplanation.”
As part of an Easter promotion that runs until April 9, Cadbury has planted 280 limited-edition, half-white, half-milk chocolate eggs in stores across the UK. With the slogan “Cadbury Creme Egg — How Do You Not Eat Yours?” the winning eggs must remain uneaten for the buyer to win the prize.
Unfortunately, YouTuber Adam Davis, broadcasting on his channel Adz Ventures, unwittingly wolfed one down live on camera before viewers pointed out his expensive mistake.
One could be forgiven for suspecting that any one of these stories — or, indeed, all of them, and many more besides, at this time of year — might well have originated in Cadbury’s PR department.
But even if they did, the willingness of mainstream media to swallow them whole is a measure of the affection felt for a confection that has been a bestseller in the UK for more than half a century.
The Cadbury Creme Egg made its debut in 1971, but its story began in 1824, when John Cadbury, the son of a wealthy Quaker family, opened a grocery shop in Birmingham and started selling cocoa and drinking chocolate.
From the outset, the company’s values reflected Cadbury’s convictions as a member of the Quakers, a Christian sect founded on the belief that “each individual can experience inner light, or the voice of God, without needing a priest, or the Bible.”
The Quakers frowned on the use of tobacco and alcohol — as they still do today — and the Cadbury company says its founder’s products “weren’t just inspired by his tastes, they were driven by his beliefs. Tea, coffee, cocoa and drinking chocolate were seen as healthy, delicious alternatives to alcohol, which Quakers deemed bad for society.”
There are two ironies here.
The first is that sugar and sugar-based products, such as chocolate, are now also considered to be bad for people’s health. In a bid to reduce children’s sugar intake as part of a drive to tackle Britain’s growing obesity problem, the UK government is expected this year to introduce plans to restrict the advertising of foods high in sugar, while the positioning of sweets and chocolates at check-outs has already been banned.
The other irony is that whereas Quakers such as John Cadbury preached that there was “no need for churches, rituals, holy days, or sacraments, to practice religion,” the Creme Egg his company created is today linked inextricably with Easter, one of the principal festivals of the Christian church.
For those confused by the association of chocolate eggs and the attendant Easter imagery of chicks and rabbits with the holiday, there is rather more to it than the cynical commercial exploitation of a Christian festival marking the rebirth of Christ.
In fact, the association of eggs, chicks and bunnies with the pagan forerunner of Easter predates the Christian era.
For the Christian church, Easter Day, which this year falls on Sunday, April 9, marks the beginning of 50 days of celebrating the resurrection of Jesus Christ. But the very word “Easter” reflects the influence of pre-Christian paganistic beliefs and practices on the Christian religious calendar.
Academics and theologians continue to debate the precise origin of the word. But many argue that it is derived from “Eostre,” the name of a fertility goddess worshipped in Britain by pre-Christian Anglo-Saxons and, under various similar names, by Germanic pagans across northern Europe.
The Christian festival of Easter, goes the argument, was originally a pagan celebration of the return of spring, co-opted as a compromise by an early Christian church keen to win over converts from the old ways.
This association was first made in the eighth century by the English monk known as the Venerable Bede. In his treatise “The Reckoning of Time” he described some of the calendars of the ancient world, including that used by the Anglo-Saxons, for whom the month of “Eosturmonath,” corresponding to April, was named for the pagan goddess.
As for the Church of England today, it quietly acknowledges that “the eggs we give and receive at Easter have many different symbols attached to them.” At the very least, it adds, “they represent new life.”
John Cadbury retired in 1861, handing over the running of the company to his two sons, Richard and George. In 1878, inspired by their family’s Quaker principles and social conscience, they began building a new factory, out in the country and far from the squalid surroundings of its original plant in central Birmingham.
They named it Bournville, a model “factory in a garden,” complete with housing for the workers. “No man,” said George Cadbury, “ought to be condemned to live in a place where a rose cannot grow.”
Today the Bournville factory is still in operation, churning out an average of 1.5 million Creme Eggs — every single day.
The Cadbury Creme Egg was first marketed in 1963 as Fry’s Creme Egg, branded under the name of another British company, J.S. Fry & Sons of Bristol, which merged with Cadbury in 1919. In 1971 it was rebranded as Cadbury Creme Egg.
Another product, Fry’s Turkish Delight, which was launched in 1914, has retained its original name, but thankfully Cadbury long ago dropped the offensive advertising for the brand.
In one commercial shown on British TV in the ’60s, a turbaned “sheikh,” attended in his tent by black slaves, is presented with the gift of a slave girl, wrapped in a carpet. He frees her from her chains when she offers him a bar of Fry’s Turkish Delight, “Exotic, delicious, full of eastern promise.”
The company is famous for other brands that are still big sellers today — Bournville Chocolate, launched in 1908, Fry’s Turkish Delight (1914), Milk Tray (1915), Cadbury’s Flake (1920).
But it’s the Creme Egg, wrapped in its blue, red and yellow foil, that has won the hearts of Britain’s chocoholics — and quite possibly has pushed more than a few of them on the road to diabetes.
The UK’s National Health Service recommends that adults should consume no more than 30g of free sugars a day, which is equivalent to about seven teaspoons of sugar — about the same amount found in every single Creme Egg.
And in case that is not sickly enough for your tastes, according to Guinness World Records there is even a record for the most Creme Eggs eaten in one minute.
Reflecting the product’s international appeal, it’s held by Canadian Pete Czerwinski, aka “Furious Pete,” a “competitive eater” who on April 11, 2014, stuffed down six of the things in 60 seconds.
It gets worse.
RecordSetter is a US site dedicated to “raising the bar of human achievement” in a range of fields, but we’re not talking medical breakthroughs or rocket science here.
An inventory of hundreds of dubious records includes “Longest wall sit while holding a 10-pound weight at shoulder height” (3 minutes, 16 seconds), “Most balloon bounces on alternate sides of a table tennis paddle in one minute while balancing a book on head” (170) and “Most toothpicks stuck in a grape in 30 seconds” (38).
And it also has an entire section dedicated to record attempts involving Creme Eggs.
In one particularly disturbing video filmed in Las Vegas in March 2013 and posted on the site, American competitive eater Miki Sudo (who also holds the women’s record for hot dogs, eating 40 at Nathan’s Famous International Hot Dog Eating Contest on Coney Island in 2022) can be seen consuming 50 Cadbury Creme Eggs in 6 minutes, 15 seconds.
This particular record comes with a health warning from RecordSetter: “Speed eating can be extremely dangerous. Please do not attempt this record unless you are above the age of 18 and trained as a professional eater.”
Most definitely, do not try this at home. You are likely to be “eggstremely” ill.
MOSCOW: Hundreds of supporters including Yevgeny Prigozhin, the chief of mercenary outfit Wagner, turned out Saturday for the funeral of a high-profile Russian military blogger killed in a bomb attack.
Last week an explosion ripped through a cafe in Russia’s second city Saint Petersburg, killing 40-year-old Vladlen Tatarsky and wounding dozens. Investigators have accused Ukraine and members of Russia’s embattled opposition of being behind the blast.
Mourners, some carrying flowers, gathered at the prestigious Troyekurovskoye cemetery in western Moscow for the closed-casket funeral amid beefed-up police presence.
Some supporters sported on their clothes the letters Z and V — symbols of Moscow’s assault on Ukraine. Prigozhin turned up with a sledgehammer, Wagner’s calling card, which he placed near the coffin of the blogger known for his staunch anti-Ukraine stance.
Carrying lighted candles, priests in white robes led a funeral service at the cemetery. Tatarsky’s awards were placed on velvet cushions near his casket. Among them was the Order of Courage, one of the country’s top decorations, which President Vladimir Putin posthumously bestowed on Tatarsky for his “bravery.”
Since the start of Moscow’s assault on Ukraine, military bloggers have become an influential force and often criticize the regular forces on the battlefield.
Tatarsky, who hailed from the eastern Ukrainian region of Donetsk, initially fought alongside pro-Kremlin separatists and later became a popular blogger with half a million followers on social media.
One of the mourners, Alexei Sobolev, said that like Tatarsky, he joined pro-Kremlin separatists in eastern Ukraine in 2014, the year Russia annexed Crimea.
The 45-year-old described Russia’s offensive in Ukraine as a “war for survival.”
“They’ve decided to destroy us all, it is simply a matter of time,” he added.
Anna Ivannikova, a 33-old manager, said Russia was losing its “best” people.
The attack on the blogger came after Darya Dugina, the daughter of a prominent ultranationalist intellectual, was killed in a car bombing outside Moscow in August which Russia also blames on Ukraine.
Ivannikova called Tatarsky’s murder an “attempt to kill the very meaning of truth.”
“These deaths should not have happened,” she added.
Prigozhin, whose ragtag forces are leading the assault for towns in eastern Ukraine, praised the blogger for helping “destroy the enemy.”
“He is a soldier who stays with us, whose voice will always live and speak only the truth,” Prigozhin said in a statement released by his spokespeople.
Clutching a bunch of red roses, Leonid Slutsky, head of the ultra-nationalist Liberal Democratic Party of Russia, praised the “true son of great Russia,” expressing hope that thousands would follow in his footsteps.
At a Kremlin ceremony marking the annexation of four Ukrainian regions last September, Tatarsky recorded himself saying: “We will defeat everyone. We will kill everyone. We will rob everyone as necessary. Just as we like it.”
Russian authorities claim without any evidence that supporters of jailed Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny helped Ukrainian authorities carry out the bombing attack. A 26-year-old Russian woman, Darya Trepova, was detained and charged with terrorism.
Investigators say Trepova has brought a statuette rigged with explosives to a cafe in Saint Petersburg and handed it over to the blogger, whose real name was Maxim Fomin.
Putin this week accused Western security services of having helped Kyiv stage “terror attacks” in Russia.
NEW DELHI: India is observing a rise in coronavirus disease cases, with the number of new infections crossing 6,155 on Saturday, prompting authorities to step up surveillance measures to prevent the situation from getting out of control.
The World Health Organization has identified XBB.1.16, an omicron sub-variant, as fueling the infection surge in India. Known as Arcturus, XBB.1.16 has high infectivity and pathogenicity and has been listed as a WHO variant under monitoring since late March.
On Friday, the number of reported daily cases in India crossed 6,000 for first time in over 200 days, prompting Health Minister Mansukh Mandaviya to advise sates to be on alert, ramp up testing and vaccinations, and start reviewing their preparedness from Saturday.
“States need to continue working in (a) collaborative spirit as was done during the previous surges for COVID-19 prevention and management,” he said, as quoted in a statement issued by the Ministry of Health after a meeting with regional health chiefs.
The minister also “urged the state health ministers to conduct mock drills of all hospital infrastructure on April 10 and 11, 2023, and review the health preparedness with district administrations and health officials on April 8 and 9, 2023.”
The COVID-19 pandemic has devastated India, especially during the second viral wave between March and May 2021, when its hospitals run out of staff, beds and oxygen to treat the sick. People with empty oxygen cylinders were seen lining up outside refilling facilities, hoping to save relatives in critical care in hospital.
Many people were forced to turn to makeshift facilities for mass burials and cremations as funeral services could not deal with the unprecedented number of bodies.
It remains unclear how many people died during that period. Indian authorities put the death toll for January 2020 to December 2021 at about 480,000, but WHO estimates show that 4.7 million people have died in India as a result of the pandemic.
In the wake of the new infection surge, medical experts agreed that increased vigilance and precautionary measures should be put back in place.
“I suppose whenever it goes beyond 5 percent positivity rate then this advisory kicks it … the government is right,” Dr. Dorairaj Prabhakaran, an epidemiologist at the Public Health Foundation of India, told Arab News.
Some say that besides increasing testing and vaccination, it is high time that an action plan was put in place.
“What is the intervention? We know from the WHO that wearing (masks) and maintaining social distance is not having that kind of impact. It is all right to say test more (but) is that enough? What kind of preparedness does the government plan to undertake,” asked Prof. Rama V. Baru from the Center of Social Medicine and Community Health at the Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi.
“We know we are under-testing and there is a rise in the reported cases — which means is it another variant? It should be.”
DNIPROPETROVSK OBLAST, Ukraine: Deep underground in southeastern Ukraine, miners work around the clock extracting coal to power the country’s war effort and to provide civilians with light and heat.
Coal is central to meeting Ukraine’s energy needs following the Russia’s military’s 6-month campaign to destroy power stations and other infrastructure, the chief engineer of a mining company in Dnipropetrovsk province said.
Elevators carry the company’s workers underground to the depths of the mine. From there, they operate heavy machinery that digs out the coal and moves the precious resource above ground. It is hard work, the miners said, but essential to keep the country going.
“Today, the country’s energy independence is more than a priority,” said Oleksandr, the chief engineer, who, like all the coal miners interviewed, spoke on the condition of giving only his first name for security reasons.
Russia’s attacks on Ukraine’s nuclear, thermal and other power stations continue to disrupt electricity service as the war grinds on for a second year.
Negotiations to demilitarize the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant, which the Kremlin’s forces captured last year at the start of the full-scale invasion, are at an impasse. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky opposes any proposal that would legitimize Russian control of the plant, which is Europe’s largest nuclear energy facility.
At full capacity, the plant can produce 6,000 megawatts of electricity. The Ukrainian operators of the plant shut down the last reactor in September, saying it was too risky to run while Russia bombarded nearby areas.
Shelling has damaged the plant numerous times, raising fears of a possible nuclear meltdown. Russian missiles have also threatened the power lines needed to operate vital cooling equipment at Zaporizhzhia and Ukraine’s other nuclear plants.
Before the war, the Ukrainian government planned to reduce the country’s reliance on coal-fired power stations, which contribute to global warming, and to increase nuclear energy and natural gas production. But when Russian attacks damaged thermal plants in the middle of winter, it was coal that helped keep Ukrainian homes warm, Oleksandr said.
The work of the coal miners cannot fully compensate for the loss of energy from nuclear power plants, but every megawatt they have a role in generating reduces gaps.
“We come and work with optimism, trying not to think about what is going on outside the mine,” a miner named Serhii said. “We work with a smile and forget about it. And when we leave, then another life begins (for us), of survival and everything else.”
While many miners from the area joined the armed forces when Russian troops invaded and are now fighting at the front in eastern Ukraine, nearly 150 displaced workers from other coal-producing regions in the east joined the team in Dnipropetrovsk.
Yurii left the embattled Donetsk province town of Vuhledar, where he worked as a coal miner for 20 years. “The war, of course, radically changed my life,” he said. “It is now impossible to live there, and the mine where I used to work.”
“Life begins from scratch,” he said.