World

DONETSK, Ukraine — Ukrainian aircraft and paratroopers killed more than 50 pro-Russian rebels in an assault that raged into a second day on Tuesday after a newly elected president vowed to crush the revolt in the east once and for all.

The unprecedented offensive throws a challenge to Russian President Vladimir Putin, who has said he reserves the right to defend Russian speakers under threat, but whose past assertions that Kiev is led by an illegitimate “junta” were undermined by the landslide election victory of billionaire Petro Poroshenko.

Reuters journalists counted 20 bodies in combat fatigues in one room of a city morgue in Donetsk. Some of the bodies were missing limbs, a sign that the government had brought to bear heavy firepower against the rebels for the first time.

“From our side, there are more than 50 [dead],” the prime minister of the rebels’ self-styled Donetsk People’s Republic, Alexander Borodai, told Reuters at the hospital.

The government said it suffered no losses in the assault, which began with air strikes hours after Ukrainians overwhelmingly voted to elect 48-year-old confectionery magnate Poroshenko as their new president.

Putin demanded an immediate halt to the offensive. Moscow said a visit by Poroshenko was not under consideration, though it has said it is prepared to work with him.

Until now, Ukrainian forces have largely avoided direct assaults on the separatists, partly because they fear tens of thousands of Russian troops massed on the border could invade.

But Poroshenko and his government appear to have interpreted his victory as a clear mandate for decisive action. He won more than 54 per cent of the vote in a field of 21 candidates, against 13 per cent for his closest challenger.

Poroshenko and other leaders in Kiev may have calculated that the election, by bestowing legitimacy on the authorities, makes it harder for Putin to justify intervention.

Putin said in recent weeks he would withdraw troops from the border. A NATO military officer said most of them were still there, although some showed signs of packing to leave.

Helicopter, paratroopers

The new Ukrainian government assault began even as Poroshenko was holding his victory news conference in Kiev. After rebels seized the Donetsk Airport on Monday, Ukrainian warplanes and helicopters strafed them from the air, and paratroopers were flown in to root them out.

Shooting carried on through the night, and on Tuesday the road to the airport bore signs of fighting. Heavy machinegun fire could be heard in the distance in mid-morning.

On the airport highway, a truck — the kind that rebels have used to ferry dozens of fighters across the region — had been torn apart by machinegun fire. Blood was sprayed across the road and splattered on a billboard seven metres above.

“The airport is completely under control,” Interior Minister Arsen Avakov told journalists in the capital Kiev. “The adversary suffered heavy losses. We have no losses,” he added.

“We’ll continue the anti-terrorist operation until not a single terrorist remains on the territory of Ukraine,” First Deputy Prime Minister Vitaly Yarema said on the margins of a government meeting.

Borodai, the self-proclaimed rebel prime minister, also said the airport was now under government control.

Inside the city of a million people, where normal life had previously carried on despite the crisis, there was a new climate of fear. Firefighters battled to put out a blaze at a hockey stadium torched during the night.

The Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe said a team of four of its monitors — a Dane, an Estonian, a Turk and a Swiss — had gone missing after approaching a road checkpoint near Donetsk on Monday. In early May, pro-Moscow rebels held a team of seven OSCE monitors for eight days.

Scale of victory

The battle marks the first time the government has unleashed the full lethal force of its aircraft and ground troops directly at the Donetsk rebels, a group of local volunteers and shadowy outsiders led by a Muscovite that Kiev and Western countries say works for Russian military intelligence.

Moscow says the rebellion is purely local and it has no control over the fighters.

In his victory news conference, Poroshenko promised to invigorate the government’s stalled “anti-terrorist” campaign, saying it ought to be able to put down the revolt within hours, rather than months. He also said there could be no negotiations with rebels he compared to terrorists, bandits and pirates.

Ukraine’s future has seemed in the balance since Putin responded to the overthrow of a pro-Russian president in Kiev in February by declaring that Russia had the right to defend Russian speakers and swiftly annexing Ukraine’s Crimea peninsula.

Moscow’s consistent message has been that the government in Kiev, which took power after President Viktor Yanukovych fled an uprising by pro-European demonstrators, was an illegitimate “fascist junta” and Russian speakers were in danger.

But that argument was undermined by the victory of Poroshenko, who served in cabinets under both Yanukovych and his anti-Russian predecessors, and campaigned on his reputation as a pragmatist capable of bridging the deep east-west divide that has been Ukraine’s greatest weakness since independence.

Poroshenko became the first candidate to win a presidential election with more than half of the vote in a single round since 1991, when Ukrainians first voted to secede from Moscow’s rule.

Although separatists managed to prevent a tenth of voters from reaching polls by blocking the election in two eastern provinces, his margin of victory left little room to question his legitimacy. He was helped by calls from potential rivals for voters to unite behind the frontrunner.

The Kremlin said on Tuesday Putin had called for an end to the Ukrainian military campaign and for dialogue between Kiev and the separatists. Putin was speaking in a telephone call with Italy’s prime minister, his first reported comments on Ukraine since Sunday’s election.

‘New Russia’

The separatists have repeatedly pleaded for Putin to send his forces to aid them. Since the annexation of Crimea, Putin has turned the protection of Russians in other former Soviet republics into a central theme of his rule. Last month he began referring to eastern Ukraine as “New Russia”.

But in the run-up to the election his words had become more accommodating. On the eve of the vote, he promised to accept the will of the Ukrainian people. On Monday, before the scale of the latest military assault became clear, Moscow said it was prepared to work with Poroshenko, although it also called for him to call off the military campaign.

Western countries say they do not trust Putin’s promises not to interfere, saying he announced repeatedly he would withdraw his troops from the border without doing so.

The United States and European Union have imposed limited sanctions on a few dozen Russian individuals and small firms but have said they would take much stronger action, including measures against whole swathes of Russian industry, if Moscow interfered in Sunday’s Ukrainian election.

In another sign of confidence since Poroshenko’s election, Kiev pressed a claim on Tuesday for more than $1 billion from Russia’s natural gas export monopoly Gazprom, for gas it said Moscow had “stolen” when it annexed Crimea.

Russia has threatened to switch off Ukraine’s gas from June 3 unless it pays Gazprom upfront for supplies. Moscow wants to charge Kiev far more for gas than it charges European countries. A gas cut-off could hit onward shipments to Western Europe, some of which transit Ukraine.

NEW DELHI — Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi delivered a blunt warning to old adversary Pakistan on his first day in the job on Tuesday, telling his counterpart in a rare meeting that Islamabad must prevent militants on its territory from attacking India.

Despite the directness of his message, both sides said Modi’s meeting with Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif in New Delhi was cordial and they agreed to try to restart peace talks between the nuclear-armed rivals.

They also agreed to pursue normalising trade ties, which have been held hostage to distrust between their countries after fighting three wars since independence from Britain in 1947.

Modi, 63, invited Sharif and several other South Asian leaders for his swearing-in ceremony on Monday. Unprecedented in India’s history, the invitations were seen as a reflection of Modi’s eagerness to play a prominent role on the global stage following a stunning election victory for his Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).

After Tuesday’s 50-minute meeting between Modi and Sharif, India said the new prime minister had underlined “concerns relating to terrorism”.

“It was conveyed that Pakistan must abide by its commitment to prevent its territory and territory under its control from being used for terrorism against India,” Foreign Secretary Sujatha Singh told a news conference.

Modi also pressed for speedy progress of trials in Pakistan of people accused of masterminding a 2008 commando-style attack on the city of Mumbai in which 166 people were killed.

‘A new page in relations’

The BJP has long advocated a tough stance on Pakistan, and Modi has been seen as a hardliner on issues of national security. In that respect, Modi’s invitation to Sharif was a surprise and raised hopes for a thaw in relations, which have been particularly frosty since the Mumbai attacks.

Responding later, Sharif sounded a conciliatory note, describing the meeting as a historic opportunity to turn “a new page in our relations”. However, he rebuffed assertions that Pakistan was a launch pad for militants to attack India.

“We have to strive to change confrontation to cooperation: engaging in accusations and counter-accusations would be counter-productive,” he said.

Modi also held talks with Hamid Karzai, outgoing president of Afghanistan, a country over which India and Pakistan are vying for influence as Western troops prepare to withdraw.

Karzai told Indian TV that, according to information given to him by a Western intelligence agency, the Pakistan-based militant group Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) was responsible for an attack last week on India’s consulate in the western Afghanistan city of Herat.

The LeT, which has also been blamed for the Mumbai attack, has long targeted Indian interests and New Delhi has accused Islamabad of shielding, or working with, the group.

“They wanted to cause embarrassment to both Afghanistan and India around that inauguration of the new prime minister,” Karzai told Times Now.

Karzai, who has presented India with a wish-list of weapons to tackle Islamist Taliban militants after the departure of foreign forces, said some on the list had already been offered and he was confident that Modi would consider the rest favourably.

Pakistan took three days to decide whether to accept Modi’s invitation, a signal that there were sharp differences on the matter in a country where the military has traditionally called the shots on security and foreign policy.

Still, the two leaders were seen shaking hands and laughing together on Monday, and in the briefings later there was no mention of the disputed Himalayan territory of Kashmir, over which their countries have gone to war twice.

New finance minister aims for growth

The low-caste son of a tea stall-owner, Modi won India’s first parliamentary majority this month after 25 years of coalition governments, giving him ample room to advance economic reforms that started more than two decades ago but stalled in recent years.

In its first meeting on Tuesday, Modi’s Cabinet set up a high-powered team packed with members of the intelligence services to uncover the vast proceeds of corruption that are squirrelled away abroad and out of the taxman’s reach.

Modi handed the job of reviving economic growth to Arun Jaitley, an urbane corporate lawyer and close party colleague.

“We have to restore back the pace of growth, contain inflation and obviously concentrate on fiscal consolidation itself,” the new finance minister told reporters.

Public finances are in dire straits as government spending has outpaced revenues. The new administration will immediately need to take a decision on cutting subsidy spending which is threatening a budget blow-out and a sovereign ratings downgrade.

Jaitley, a student leader who was jailed during a period of emergency rule in 1975, will also be handling the important defence portfolio for the transition.

Modi, who built his reputation as an economic moderniser by putting his home state of Gujarat on a high-growth path, has moved to streamline the Cabinet towards a more centralised system of governing.

Several government ministries have been clubbed under one minister, aimed at breaking decision-making bottlenecks widely blamed for dragging down economic growth. The new administration has 45 ministers compared with 71 in the outgoing government.

“I am sure the political change itself sends a strong signal to the global community and also domestic investors,” Jaitley said. “I think over the next few months by expediting decision-making processes, I am sure we will be able to build that.”

BJP chief Rajnath Singh will be interior minister, charged with the task of ensuring internal stability and calming the anxieties of India’s religious minorities who see his party and its hardline Hindu affiliates as pursuing a partisan agenda.

Modi himself has been dogged by allegations that he did not do enough to protect Muslims during an upsurge of violence in 2002. He has denied the charge and a Supreme Court-ordered investigation acquitted him of any responsibility.

NEW DELHI — Narendra Modi was sworn in as India’s prime minister in an elaborate ceremony at New Delhi’s resplendent presidential palace on Monday, after a sweeping election victory that ended two terms of rule by the Nehru-Gandhi dynasty.

Millions of Indians watched the inauguration live on television as the 63-year-old Hindu nationalist leader, once thought of as too divisive to lead the world’s largest democracy, took his oath along with his Cabinet members in the palace’s forecourt.

The low-caste son of a tea stall-owner, Modi has given India its first parliamentary majority after 25 years of coalition governments, which means he has ample room to advance reforms that started over two decades ago but have stalled in recent years.

Many supporters see him as India’s answer to the neo-liberal former US President Ronald Reagan or British leader Margaret Thatcher. One foreign editor has ventured Modi could be so transformative he turns out to be “India’s Deng Xiaoping”, the leader who set China on its path of spectacular economic growth.

‘A glorious future’

Modi invited leaders from across South Asia to his swearing-in ceremony, including Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif from arch-rival Pakistan, an unprecedented gesture that was as much a show of his determination to be a key player on the global stage as a celebration of his stunning election victory.

Even before his inauguration, Modi made waves on the global stage, where once he was treated by many with suspicion — and by some as a pariah — for Hindu-Muslim violence that erupted 12 years ago in Gujarat, the western state he ruled.

He has spoken with the presidents of the United States and Russia, and he has become one of only three people that Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe follows on Twitter. The US administration denied Modi a visa in 2005, but President Barack Obama has now invited him to the White House.

In a message released to fellow Indians and citizens of the world, Modi said the election had delivered a mandate for “development, good governance and stability”.

“Together we will script a glorious future for India. Let us together dream of a strong, developed and inclusive India that actively engages with the global community to strengthen the cause of world peace and development,” he said.

The pomp and ceremony unfolded as the summer evening closed in at Rashtrapati Bhavan, a colonial-era sandstone mansion with 340 rooms in the heart of New Delhi. Looking on were some 4,000 guests, ranging from members of the defeated Nehru-Gandhi family to top industrialists, Bollywood actors, Hindu holy men and the leaders of several neighbouring countries.

Modi supporters exploded fireworks in celebration a few blocks away at the headquarters of his Bharathiya Janata Party (BJP) after the new prime minister was sworn in.

The BJP and its allies swept elections this month, ousting the Nehru-Gandhi’s Congress Party in a seismic political shift that has given his party a mandate for sweeping economic reform.

Modi kicked things off on Sunday with an announcement that he would streamline the Cabinet, a move to a more centralised system of governing aimed at breaking decision-making bottlenecks widely blamed for dragging down economic growth.

Modi said he would appoint super ministers in charge of several departments to make ministries coordinate better.

Arun Jaitley, 61, is the front runner to be named finance minister, party sources said. One of the top corporate lawyers in the country and a close Modi aide, Jaitley served in a previous BJP administration as commerce minister.

Diplomatic gesture

Pakistan’s Sharif said after arriving in Delhi that South Asia’s bitterest rivals now have an opportunity to turn a page in their history of troubled relations.

He said the nuclear-armed neighbours, which were traumatically separated at the end of British rule in 1947 and have fought three wars since, should together rid their region of the instability that has plagued them for decades.

“We should remove fears, mistrust and misgivings about each other,” he told the Indian news network NDTV.

The BJP has long advocated a tough stance on Pakistan, with which India has a major territorial dispute in Kashmir and Modi has been seen as a hardliner on issues of national security.

In that respect, Modi’s decision to invite Sharif for his inauguration and bilateral talks on Tuesday came as a surprise, and raised hopes for a thaw in relations between the rivals, which have been particularly frosty since 2008 attacks on the city of Mumbai by Pakistan-based militants.

Vikram Sood, former head of India’s external intelligence agency, the Research and Analysis Wing, told Reuters that inviting all the leaders of the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) was “an astute” diplomatic gesture.

“This augurs well for the region, and an improvement of relations all over the region is possible if these moves are followed by other steps, bilaterally and multilaterally,” he said.

As a gesture of goodwill following their invitations, Pakistan and Sri Lanka released hundreds of Indian fishermen jailed for straying into their neighbours’ territorial waters.

India is the biggest South Asian nation, but friendships with neighbours have soured in recent years, allowing China to fill the gap.

China has built a port in Sri Lanka and is involved in upgrading another in Bangladesh, besides military and civil assistance to long-time ally Pakistan, heightening Delhi’s anxieties of being boxed in.

“Modi has appreciated the much-neglected fact that foreign policy begins at the nation’s borders,” wrote foreign policy analyst C. Raja Mohan in the Indian Express. “As a realist, however, Modi should be aware that major breakthroughs are unlikely amid the current flux within Pakistan.”

KIEV/DONETSK, Ukraine — Ukraine launched air strikes and a paratrooper assault against pro-Russian rebels who seized an airport on Monday, as its newly elected leader rejected any talks with “terrorists” and said a robust military campaign in the east should be able to put down a separatist revolt in “a matter of hours”.

Ukrainians rallied overwhelmingly in an election on Sunday behind Petro Poroshenko, a political veteran and billionaire owner of chocolate factories, hoping the burly 48-year-old can rescue the nation from the brink of bankruptcy, civil war and dismemberment by its former Soviet masters in the Kremlin.

Monday’s rapid military response to separatists who seized the airport in Donetsk was a defiant answer to Moscow, which said it was ready for dialogue with Poroshenko but demanded he first scale back the armed forces’ campaign in the east.

Even as the fighting was getting under way, Poroshenko held a news conference in Kiev where he said the government’s military offensive needed to be “quicker and more effective”.

“The anti-terrorist operation should not last two or three months. It should last for a matter of hours,” he said.

As for the rebel fighters: “They want to preserve a bandit state which is held in place by force of arms,” he said. “These are simply bandits. Nobody in any civilised state will hold negotiations with terrorists.”

Gunfire and explosions could be heard as a warplane flew over Donetsk’s Sergei Prokofiev International Airport, hours after truckloads of armed rebel fighters arrived and seized a terminal. Thick black smoke rose from within the perimeter.

The government said its jets had strafed the area with warning shots and then struck a location where rebels were concentrated, scattering the fighters before paratroops were flown in to face them.

After three hours of fighting, a Reuters photographer saw three Ukrainian Mi-24 helicopter gunships fire rockets and cannon at the terminal concrete and glass terminal. More plumes of black smoke shot up into the air as the helicopters fired at targets on the runway. The gunships threw out decoy flares as fighters shot at them from the ground.

The airport serves a city of 1 million people that the rebels have proclaimed capital of an independent “people’s republic”, and where they succeeded in blocking all voting in Sunday’s election.

Their attempt to seize the airport may have been intended to prevent Poroshenko from travelling there: he has said his first trip in office would be to visit the restive east.

Preliminary results, with 80 per cent of the vote counted, gave Poroshenko 54.1 per cent of the vote — towering over a field of 21 candidates with enough support to avert a run-off. His closest challenger, former premier Yulia Tymoshenko, had just 13.1 per cent and made clear she would concede.

Poroshenko’s most urgent task is finding a modus vivendi with the giant neighbour that has seemed poised to carve Ukraine up since a popular revolt toppled a pro-Russian president in February.

He said Moscow’s “argument about legitimacy has disappeared” as he had also topped the polls among those who were able to cast ballots in Donetsk and Luhansk regions.

“I hope Russia will support efforts to tackle the situation in the east,” Poroshenko said. He said he planned to meet Russian officials in the first half of June.

But he also showed no sign of heeding Moscow’s demand that he call off the operation against rebels in the east.

“Protecting people is one of the functions of the state,” he said, promising to invest more in the army. “The Ukrainian soldier should no longer be naked, barefoot and hungry.”

So far, Ukraine’s military forces have had little success against rebels who have declared independent “people’s republics” in two provinces of the eastern industrial heartland where about 20 people have been killed in recent days.

Ukrainian officials say they have held back from using full force in part to avoid provoking an invasion from tens of thousands of Russian troops massed on the frontier. Questions have also been raised about Ukrainian forces’ training, equipment and loyalties.

Monday’s fighting began after a Reuters photographer saw three truckloads bring dozens of armed men to the airport.

“The rebels are in the terminal. The rest of the airport is controlled by the Ukrainian national guard,” airport spokesman Dmitry Kosinov told Reuters before gunfire broke out.

The Ukrainian joint forces security operation in the region said a deadline for the rebels to surrender expired and two Sukhoi Su-25 jets carried out strafing runs, firing warning shots. A MiG-29 jet later carried out another air strike.

The militants then spread out across the territory of the airport, whose state-of-the-art main terminal was built for the 2012 European soccer championships held in Ukraine.

“Right now at the airport, paratroopers have landed and are cleaning up the area,” said a Ukrainian security spokesman.

‘New Russia’

Russian President Vladimir Putin, who last month described eastern Ukraine as “New Russia”, has made more accommodating noises in recent days. He promised at the weekend that Moscow would respect the will of Ukrainians, and Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov repeated that promise on Monday in saying Russia was ready for dialogue with Poroshenko.

Western countries put little faith in Putin’s promises, saying he has repeatedly announced he would pull troops from the frontier without doing so. They dismiss Russia’s denials it has aided the rebels, whose Donetsk force is led by a moustachioed Muscovite the EU says is a Russian military intelligence agent.

Even though separatists ensured that millions of Ukrainians were unable to vote in the eastern regions, Poroshenko’s sweeping margin of victory gives him a firm mandate that makes it harder for Moscow to dismiss him as illegitimate, as it did in the case of the interim leaders he will replace.

Many Ukrainians clearly rallied behind the frontrunner as a way to demonstrate national unity, three months after a pro-Russian president was ousted in a popular revolt and Moscow responded by seizing the Crimea peninsula, massing troops on the frontier and expressing sympathy with armed separatists.

A veteran survivor of Ukraine’s feuding political class, Poroshenko has served in Cabinets led by figures from both sides of Ukraine’s pro- and anti-Russian divide, giving him a reputation as a pragmatist who can bridge differences. That could shield him from the accusations of strident nationalism Moscow aimed at the interim leaders.

He threw his weight and money behind the revolt that brought down his Moscow-backed predecessor in February, and campaigned on a platform of strengthening ties with Europe.

Yet it remains unclear how the tycoon can turn firmly westward as long as Russia, Ukraine’s major market and vital energy supplier, seems determined to maintain a hold over the second most populous ex-Soviet republic.

“He has taken a heavy burden on his shoulders,” said Larisa, a schoolteacher who was among crowds watching the results on Independence Square, where pro-Western “EuroMaidan” protests ended in bloodshed in February that prompted President Viktor Yanukovich to flee to Russia. “I just want all of this to be over. I think that’s what everybody wants.”

In the eastern Donbass coalfield, where militants shut polling stations cutting off some 10 per cent of the national electorate from the vote, rebels scoffed at the “fascist junta” and announced a plan to drive out “enemy troops”.

More than 20 people were killed in the region last week.

Although Putin told an international audience at the weekend he was ready to work with a new Ukrainian administration, Russia could still use the gaps in the election in the east to challenge its legitimacy.

TEXEL/THE NETHERLANDS — To dive deeper into the realm of Dutch cheese one must abandon tasting imported cheese and Dutch lamp meat, and instead go to Texel or elsewhere in the Netherlands to gain a better understanding of the Dutch  livestock industry and dairy production. 

There in the flat green island of Texel, surrounded by the endless vista of the steel grey North Sea, the countryside or in the man-made meadows, sheep farming is more than an industry. It is a cultural heritage preserved in complete harmony with nature. 

These impressions emerged during a media tour organised May 11-17 by Holland Branding, a Netherlands Enterprise Agency.  The tour included several goat and sheep farms across the country, and to factories, slaughterhouses, laboratories and research centres. Journalists also met with farmers, traders, industrialists and cheese-making housewives.

Owners of the farms, with some dating back to the 19th century, are themselves the shepherds, traders and the professional cheese makers. 

In most cases, the farm is a family-run business.

Inside most of the farms visited, there is a modern or traditional factory for producing the Dutch cheese, or what the locals have named “Gouda”, storage for keeping the varied semi-hard cheese and also a small shop where the product is sold.

In Texel, known in the Netherlands and in Europe as the traditional sheep farming island, the stock is nearly as large as the 14,000 humans residing in the area. There are more than 11,000 lambs in the Texel meadows in the springtime, according to Holland Branding.  

The island has also named a famous white- faced sheep breed, that has historically been documented as among the most common in the world. 

The Texel sheep breed is characterised by broad shoulders, thick neck and short legs with no wool on the head or legs.  Texel sheep breeders are spread across the United Kingdom, Denmark, the United States, Brazil, Ireland and Italy, farmers said.

Passing De Waal on the way to Oosterend village on Texel, there is Family Tjepkema, a round 30-year-old family-run farm covering around 89 acres specialising in Texel sheep breeding. 

Koos Tjepkeman, owner of the farm with old buildings dating back to the 19th century, said that he has a total of 1,200 sheep, 60 per cent of which are used for meat and the rest for breeding. 

“Around 70-80 new-born lambs are sold to other farmers from Great Britain, Belgium and other European countries interested in raising Texel sheep.

“No sheep milk is produced at our farm. The milk is made out of the 320 cows we have,” said Tjepkeman.

He also said that a typical Texel sheep normally gives birth to two lambs that are kept with their mothers for some weeks before being separated. 

“Each lamb for breeding purposes is sold at 300 euros and for meat from 100-120 euros.”

“In recent years, we have frequently participated in shows and we have won champion’s titles on many occasions, both with rams we own and with breeding material from our farm,” said Tjepkeman.

In addition to being a cultural heritage passed on by ancestors, Tjepkeman said that sheep farming is a business he performs with pleasure and gratitude despite its arduous nature. 

In the Family Bakker farm, there are 300 Texel sheep and 20 Friesland sheep, all used for producing milk and cheese. The farm is located in the Hoge Berg area, a landscape reserve on the Texel Island. 

The Texel experience was concluded with a visit to the farm of the Stark family located very close to the island, there sheep and cows graze the man-made wet lands. 

The island’s traditional production of Texel cheese, better known as “Texelse Schapenkaas”, has been known throughout Europe for centuries.  It is a place that has been recognised as having the finest cheese, and has been called incomparable by many.

In Texel, sheep farming is not a career, instead it is a way of life that defines the people. 

BANGKOK — Thailand’s ruling junta warned protesters it would not tolerate any further rallies against its coup after tense standoffs Sunday between soldiers and angry crowds, and said demonstrators would be held for one or two days, but could be jailed for up to two years if they kept taking to the streets.

“We will give them a last chance today, but if they continue to rally we will use measures to deal with them,” Lieutenant General Apirat Kongsompong told a press conference.

 ‘I am not afraid of them’ 

Protests began outside a Bangkok shopping mall in the Chidlom area, where boisterous demonstrators brandished signs reading “Junta Out” and “F*** Coup” and pushed armed troops.

Minor scuffles broke out and at least two protesters were taken away by the troops, one bleeding, according to AFP journalists.

Demonstrators then made their way across the city to the Victory Monument cheered by onlookers, defying a junta call to avoid protests and a martial law ban on gatherings of more than five people.

“I am not afraid of them because the more we are afraid of them, the more they will stamp on us,” protester Kongjit Paennoy, 50, told AFP. “We want an election — to choose our own boss.”

The junta on Saturday announced it had disbanded the Senate and placed all law-making authority in the hands of army chief General Prayut Chan-O-Cha.

Civil liberties have been curbed, media restrictions imposed and most of the constitution abrogated.

Bangkok has seen several smaller outbreaks of protest against the junta since Prayut launched his takeover on Thursday.

Witnesses also reported demonstrations overnight in parts of the Shinawatra family’s northern power base, with rallies in the city of Khon Kaen and a heavy military presence in Thailand’s second largest city Chiang Mai.

The military intervention is the 19th actual or attempted coup in the kingdom since 1932.

It follows seven months of anti-government protests that derailed elections in February and sought to eradicate the influence of Yingluck’s divisive brother Thaksin Shinawatra, who was ousted from power by royalist generals in a coup in 2006.

He has been in exile since 2008 but critics said he still controlled supportive governments, including his sister’s, from overseas.

Political figures detained 

Those being held by the junta include politicians and leaders from both sides of the country’s warring protest movements.

Analysts see the latest developments as an ominous signal that the army is digging its heels in and may be unwilling to hand over power to a civilian government in the near term.

Thailand has been rocked by persistent and sometimes violent political turmoil for nearly a decade, with the protests preceding the latest coup leaving 28 people dead and hundreds wounded.

Yingluck was ousted by a court ruling earlier this month, but her embattled government remained in place till last week.

Thaksin or his allies have won every election this century, thanks to their strong support among the working class and communities in the north and northeast.

But he is reviled by parts of the elite, the Bangkok middle class and southerners — an alliance with wide influence in the establishment and army but little electoral success.

The tycoon-turned-politician posted his first public messages on Twitter since the coup on Sunday, saying he was “saddened” by the coup and urging the military rulers to “abide by international law and respect human rights”.

The military said Saturday that Prayut had sent a letter about his takeover to the revered but ailing king, Bhumibol Adulyadej. It said the king had “acknowledged” Prayut’s letter but stopped short of describing the response as an endorsement

The monarch, 86, commands great respect and his blessing is traditionally sought to legitimise Thailand’s recurring military takeovers.

The army on Sunday said it would begin paying off outstanding debts of 92 billion baht ($2.8bn) to farmers racked up in a controversial rice subsidy scheme under Yingluck’s government.

The scheme has weighed on the public purse as the economy stutters — shrinking 0.6 per cent year-on-year in January-March — amid falling consumer confidence and a tourist slump as the political crisis takes its toll.

Washington, long a key ally, has led international condemnation of the coup.

It has suspended $3.5 million in military assistance, cancelled official visits and army exercises and said its remaining Thai aid budget was under question.

KIEV/DONETSK, Ukraine — Confectionary magnate Petro Poroshenko won Ukraine’s presidential election on Sunday with an absolute majority, exit polls showed, averting the need for a run-off vote next month that he had said could destabilise the country.

Two polls gave Poroshenko, a billionaire businessman with long experience in government, 55.9 to 57.3 per cent, well ahead of former prime minister Yulia Tymoshenko in second place with just over 12 per cent. If confirmed by results on Monday, there will be no need for a run-off vote on June 15.

Ukrainians, weary of six months of political turmoil, hope their new president will be able to pull their country of 45 million people back from the brink of bankruptcy, dismemberment and civil war.

But, highlighting the scale of the challenge facing Poroshenko, armed pro-Russian separatists barred people from voting in much of Ukraine’s Donbass industrial heartland on Sunday, turning the main city of Donetsk into a ghost town.

Poroshenko, 48, has promised closer economic and political ties with the West in defiance of Russian President Vladimir Putin, but he will also have to try to mend shattered relations with Ukraine’s giant northern neighbour, which provides most of its natural gas and is the major market for its exports.

Upheaval

Sunday’s election marked the culmination of a revolution that erupted last November, forced a pro-Russian president to flee in February and spiralled into an existential crisis when Moscow responded by declaring its right to invade Ukraine.

The pro-Moscow separatists have proclaimed independent “people’s republics” in the provinces of Donetsk and Luhansk, and blocked voting there as that would imply they were still part of Ukraine. Nor was any vote held in Crimea, which Russia annexed in March after the overthrow of President Viktor Yanukovych.

Ukrainian officials hailed a high voter turnout in much of the sprawling country but said only about 20 per cent of polling stations in the two restive eastern regions had functioned.

Putin, who branded eastern Ukraine “New Russia” last month, has made more accommodating noises of late, saying on Saturday he would respect the voters’ will. He has announced the pullback of tens of thousands of Russian troops massed on the border.

But the absence of more than 15 per cent of the potential electorate from the election could give Moscow an excuse to raise doubts about the victor’s legitimacy and continue applying pressure on the new president in Kiev.

Poroshenko is hardly a new face in Ukrainian politics, having served in a Cabinet under Yanukovyich, and also under a previous government led by Yanukovyich’s foes. This breadth of experience has given him a reputation as a pragmatist capable of bridging Ukraine’s divide between supporters and foes of Moscow.

He nevertheless was a strong backer of the street protests that toppled Yanukovych and is thus acceptable to many in the “Maidan” movement of pro-European protesters who have kept their tented camp in the capital to keep pressure on the new leaders.

Since Yanukovych fled in February after more than 100 people were killed, Moscow has refused to recognise the interim leaders in Kiev, describing them as a fascist junta who threaten the safety of millions of Russian speakers.

Ukrainians hope the vote can help because Moscow could not so quickly dismiss an elected leader with a solid mandate.

The United States and European Union also view the election as a decisive step towards ending their worst confrontation with Moscow since the Cold War.

Their response to Russian interference in Ukraine so far has been limited to freezing the assets of a few dozen Russian individuals and small firms. But they have threatened to take far more serious measures, even targeting whole sectors of Russian industry, if Moscow interferes with the vote.

‘Violation of my rights’

Some Ukrainians in the east who tried to vote complained about being denied their democratic right.

“What kind of polls are these? Things are bad,” said pensioner Grigory Nikitayich, 72, in Donetsk.

Even Ukrainian soldiers sent to assert the government’s authority in the east said they had no place to vote.

“Our superiors promised we would be able to vote here but it turns out that is not so. This is a violation of my rights, it’s ridiculous — I am here to safeguard an election in which I cannot vote,” said Ivan Satsuk, a soldier from the Kiev region sent to man a roadblock near the eastern port of Mariupol.

Ukraine’s interim Prime Minister Arseny Yatseniuk hailed Sunday’s election as a victory for democracy and the rule of law despite the disruption in the east.

“Efforts by the Russian Federation and the terrorists it finances to derail the elections are doomed to failure. We will have a legitimate head of state,” he said before polls closed.

Moscow denies financing or training the separatists, denials that Western countries dismiss as absurd.

Putin pledged on Saturday to “respect” the people’s choice and work with Ukraine’s new administration — a conciliatory move during an economic forum at which he had acknowledged that US and EU sanctions over Ukraine were hurting the Russian economy.

He played down talk of a return to Cold War with the West and dismissed the idea he was bent on restoring the former USSR, whose collapse he has in the past lamented.

BANGKOK — Thailand’s coup leaders said Saturday that they would keep former prime minister Yingluck Shinawatra, Cabinet members and anti-government protest leaders detained for up to a week to give them “time to think” and to keep the country calm. 

Outspoken academics were also summoned to report to the junta.

The ruling military council also dissolved the country’s senate on Saturday, stripping away the last democratic institution in the country.

The moves appear aimed at consolidating power and preventing any high-profile figures from rallying opposition to the military, which seized power Thursday after months of sometimes violent street protests and deadlock between the elected government and protesters supported by Thailand’s elite establishment.

For a second day, hundreds of anti-coup protesters defied the military’s ban on large gatherings, shouting slogans and waving signs Saturday outside a Bangkok cinema before moving on to Victory Monument, a major city landmark several kilometres away.

The demonstrators briefly confronted rows of soldiers and police who were lined up with riot shields on a road leading to the monument, with a few scuffles breaking out before most of the protesters broke away. 

They were later seen streaming onto the city’s Skytrain elevated transit system, apparently riding over police lines to the monument.

By late afternoon, about 500 demonstrators had gathered at Victory Monument. Army and police presence was low key.

Most of Bangkok, however, remained calm on Saturday, and there was little military presence on the streets.

Deputy army spokesperson, Col. Weerachon Sukondhapatipak, said that all those detained by the junta were being well-treated and that the aim of the military was to achieve a political compromise. 

He said later that “at least 100” people were in military custody, but he could not provide exact numbers or names.

“This is in a bid for everybody who is involved in the conflict to calm down and have time to think,” Weerachon said. “We don’t intend to limit their freedom, but it is to relieve the pressure.”

The military leaders also summoned 35 other people, including more politicians, political activists and, for the first time, outspoken academics, to “maintain peace and order”. It was not immediately clear whether they would be detained.

One of those on the list, Kyoto University professor of Southeast Asian studies Pavin Chachavalpongpun, said by phone from Japan that he would not turn himself in. He said the summons meant the junta felt insecure.

“The military claiming to be a mediator in the Thai conflict, that is all just nonsense,” he said. “This is not about paving the way for reform and democratisation. We are really going back to the crudest form of authoritarianism.”

The junta announced in a televised statement Saturday evening that it would assume all lawmaking power and that the senate would be dissolved.

It had left the senate in place when it suspended the constitution and dissolved the lower house of parliament on Thursday, presumably in hopes that the upper house might later approve some of its measures and provide a vestige of democracy. 

The reason for Saturday’s about-face was not known.

Several nations have condemned the coup. The United States, a key ally of Thailand, suspended $3.5 million in military aid on Friday, and recommended that Americans reconsider any non-essential travel to the Southeast Asian country.

The army says it launched the coup to prevent more turmoil after two days of peace talks in which neither political faction would agree to back down from its stance in the ongoing crisis. 

It was the 12th time in eight decades that Thailand’s powerful military has seized power.

For months, anti-government protesters linked to Thailand’s royalist establishment had blocked streets in Bangkok, demanding that the government step down over allegations of corruption and ties to Yingluck’s brother, exiled former prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra, who was himself deposed in a 2006 military coup.

Populist parties affiliated with the Shinawatras have won every election since 2001 in Thailand.  Thaksin still wields enormous influence over the country’s political affairs and remains at the heart of the ongoing crisis.

The protesters have been demanding that the government resign in favour of an unelected council, while the government said it was elected by a clear majority in 2010 and could not step down. 

An election was held in February, but it was invalidated by a court after violence disrupted voting.

It was unclear Saturday exactly how many political leaders were being detained by the army.

Known to be among them were two former prime ministers: Yingluck, who was removed from office by a court earlier this month on nepotism charges, and her temporary replacement, Niwattumrong Boonsongpaisan.

Several Cabinet members as well as leaders of the anti-government protests have been held since Thursday’s coup.

UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay urged Thailand to “ensure respect for human rights and a prompt restoration of the rule of law in the country”. 

Human rights groups, including Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International, criticised the detentions of political leaders.

KIEV — Ukraine was counting down Saturday to a presidential election seen as crucial to its very survival after months of turmoil that has driven the country to the brink of civil war.

Sunday’s vote comes with tensions running high after a bloody upsurge in fighting in the east, where pro-Russian separatists are fighting against central government rule.

In what could be a significant move in Ukraine’s bitter confrontation with its former masters in Moscow, Russian President Vladimir Putin declared on Friday that he would respect the outcome of the vote.

Putin has in the past given only grudging backing to what Kiev and the West hope will restore stability after months of crisis sparked by the toppling of Ukraine’s pro-Kremlin president in February, which later saw Russia annex Crimea and pro-Moscow separatists launch an insurgency in the east.

“We understand that the people of Ukraine want their country to emerge from this crisis,” Putin said at an economic forum in Saint Petersburg.

“We will treat their choice with respect.”

But he said Ukraine had descended into “chaos and full-scale civil war”, accusing the United States of causing the crisis by backing the overthrow of Viktor Yanukovych, who fled in February after months of sometimes bloody pro-EU street protests.

The days before the election have been blighted by a resurgence in deadly fighting between the Ukraine military and the rebels who have declared independence in the eastern provinces of Donetsk and Lugansk.

Seven people were killed outside Donetsk city on Friday, a day after the deaths of 19 soldiers in the heaviest loss for the Ukraine military since the conflict erupted in early April.

About 150 people have been killed in the east since then, according to an AFP tally based on UN and Ukrainian government figures.

Interim president Oleksandr Turchynov called on voters to turn out in force to prevent Ukraine “being turned into a part of a post-Soviet empire”.

The authorities are mobilising over 75,000 thousand police and volunteers to try to ensure security on polling day, with pro-Russian separatists threatening to disrupt the vote in areas under their control.

Sunday’s vote is seen as the most crucial since Ukraine’s independence in 1991 with the collapse of the Soviet Union, with, the country facing the threat of partition and possible bankruptcy.

Billionaire chocolate baron Petro Poroshenko is the favourite, enjoying a near 30-point lead over former prime minister Yulia Tymoshenko, but opinion polls say the vote is likely to go to a run-off on June 15.

In another move that could ease tensions, Putin last week ordered the withdrawal of some 40,000 troops whose presence along Ukraine’s border was causing jitters particularly among former Soviet satellites.

The head of Russia’s army said Friday the pullback could take at least 20 days.

The United States responded with caution to Putin’s comments, with White House spokesperson Jay Carney saying: “We would welcome an indication from Russia that they would accept the results of a free and fair, and democratic election in Ukraine.”

Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andriy Deshchytsya said Putin’s words needed to be followed by “specific actions”.

Kiev’s interim leaders admit they will have a tough time making sure polling goes smoothly in the east, where officials have reported numerous cases of intimidation by the rebels and the seizure of election commissions.

At a school in central Donetsk that should be a polling station, caretaker Olga Viktorovna showed AFP around an empty hall where there are no preparations for the election.

“We have always held presidential and local elections here but this time there won’t be anything it seems,” she said.

The Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe, which is sponsoring a peace roadmap for Ukraine, will have around 1,000 observers on the ground.

“The election will take place under any circumstances and we will get a legitimately elected president,” said deputy Central Election Commission chief Andriy Magera.

BANGKOK — Thailand’s army chief General Prayuth Chan-ocha seized control of the government in a coup on Thursday, two days after he declared martial law, saying the military had to restore order and push through reforms after six months of turmoil.

The military declared a 10pm until 5am curfew, suspended the constitution and told outgoing Cabinet ministers to report to an army base in the north of the capital by the end of the day. Rival protest camps were ordered to disperse.

Thailand is locked in a protracted power struggle between supporters of ousted former premier Thaksin Shinawatra and opponents backed by the royalist establishment that has polarised the country and battered its economy.

“In order for the situation to return to normal quickly and for society to love and be at peace again... and to reform the political, economic and social structure, the military needs to take control of power,” Prayuth said in the televised address.

The general made his broadcast after a meeting to which he had summoned the rival factions in Thailand’s drawn-out political conflict, with the aim of finding a compromise to end six months of anti-government protests.

But no progress was made and Prayuth wound up the gathering by announcing he was seizing power, according to a participant.

The Thai armed forces have a long history of intervening in politics — there have been 18 previous successful or attempted coups since the country became a constitutional monarchy in 1932, most recently when Thaksin was deposed in 2006.

Hundreds of soldiers surrounded the meeting at Bangkok’s Army Club shortly before the coup announcement and troops took away Suthep Thaugsuban, leader of the protests against the pro-Thaksin government.

Some of the other meeting participants were being held back in the venue afterwards, said a Reuters reporter waiting outside.

Shots fired into air

The army ordered rival protest camps to break up and soldiers fired into the air to disperse thousands of pro-government “red shirt” activists gathered in Bangkok’s western outskirts, a spokesman for the group said.

The military detained at least one leader of the activists, said the spokesman, Thanawut Wichaidit.

A Reuters witness later said the protesters were leaving peacefully. Earlier their leader, Jatuporn Prompan, said they would continue their rally despite the coup.

The army had declared martial law on Tuesday, saying the move was necessary to prevent violence.

Twenty-eight people have been killed and 700 injured since the anti-government protests erupted late last year.

“Martial law may have been to test the waters, the army gave the opposing camps a chance to negotiate a way out but I think the endgame was always the military taking over,” said Kan Yuanyong of the Siam Intelligence Unit think tank.

“The possibility of conflict is now much higher,” he said. “Thaksin will fight back.”

Former telecommunications tycoon Thaksin has lived in self-exile since 2008 to avoid a jail term for graft, but still commands the loyalty of legions of rural and urban poor, and exerts a huge influence over politics, most recently through a government run by his sister, Yingluck Shinawatra.

He was not available for comment but a pro-Thaksin activist in his hometown of Chiang Mai said there was no immediate plan to protest.

“As of now we will not head to Bangkok, no plans. We will follow today’s situation closely first,” said Mahawon Kawang, a red shirt leader in Chiang Mai.

In a first round of talks on Wednesday, Prayuth had called on the two sides to agree on a compromise that would have hinged around the appointment of an interim prime minister, political reforms and the timing of an election.

But neither side backed down from their entrenched positions on Wednesday and again on Thursday, participants said.

“As we cannot find a way to bring the country to peace and everyone won’t back down I would like to announce that I will take power. Everyone must sit still,” Prayuth told the meeting, according to one participant who declined to be identified.

The army has also clamped down on the media, including partisan television channels, and warned people not to spread inflammatory material on social media.

Leaders of the ruling Puea Thai Party and the opposition Democrat Party, the Senate leader and the five-member Election Commission had joined the second round of talks on Thursday.

Acting Prime Minister Niwatthamrong Boonsongphaisan, who did not attend, told reporters before the talks that his government could not resign as its enemies were demanding as that would contravene the constitution.

“The government wants the problem solved in a democratic way which includes a government that comes from elections,” he said.

Yingluck was forced to step down as premier by a court two weeks ago, but her caretaker government, buffeted by six months of protests against it, had remained nominally in power.

Government officials were not available for comment after the coup announcement.

Thailand’s gross domestic product contracted 2.1 per cent in January-March from the previous three months, largely because of the unrest, adding to fears it is stumbling into recession.

But weary investors have generally taken Thailand’s frequent political upheavals in their stride, and analysts said the impact on markets in Southeast Asia’s second largest economy might not be too severe.

“It’s back to the old days,” said Christopher Wong, senior investment manager at Aberdeen Asset Management Asia in Singapore. “Probably with the military coming in there’s a bit more stability. There may be a knee-jerk reaction... but as the dust settles it is probably back to normal.”

Thailand’s SET index closed before the coup announcement, ending 0.2 per cent higher. The index is up 8 per cent this year. The baht weakened to 32.54 to the dollar after the coup announcement, from 32.38 earlier.

The anti-government protesters want to rid the country of the influence of Thaksin, who they say is a corrupt crony capitalist who commandeered a fragile democracy and used taxpayers’ money to buy votes with populist giveaways.

They wanted a “neutral” interim prime minister to oversee electoral reforms before any new vote.