Pakistani village asks: Where are bodies of militants India says it bombed?

Agencies
March 1, 2019

Jaba/Pakistan, Mar 1: The only confirmed victim of India's air strike against Pakistan is still unsure why he was shaken awake in the early hours of Tuesday by an explosion that rocked his mud brick house and left him with a cut above his right eye.

“They say they wanted to hit some terrorists. What terrorists can you see here?” said 62-year-old Nooran Shah, a resident of Jaba village, near the northeastern town of Balakot in Pakistan's Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province.

“We are here. Are we terrorists?”

India says Tuesday's raid destroyed a major training camp of Jaish-e Mohammad, a militant group that claimed responsibility for a February 14 attack in Kashmir that killed 40 members of a paramilitary police unit.

Foreign Secretary Vijay Gokhale said the strike killed “a very large number of Jaish-e-Mohammad terrorists, trainers, senior commanders, and groups of jihadis who were being trained for Fidayeen action were eliminated.” Fidayeen is a term used to describe Islamist militants on suicide missions.

Another senior government official told reporters that about 300 militants had been killed.

On Thursday, though, a senior defence official appeared to backtrack on the claims. Asked about how much damage the warplanes had caused, Air Vice Marshal R.G.K. Kapoor said it was “premature” to provide details about casualties. But he said the armed forces had “fairly credible evidence” of the damage inflicted on the camp by the air strikes.

India's previous death toll estimates have been rubbished by Pakistan, which says the operation was a failure that saw Indian jets bomb a largely empty hillside without hurting anyone.

On the wooded slopes above Jaba, villagers pointed to four bomb craters and some splintered pine trees, but could see little other impact from the series of explosions that blasted them awake at around 3.00 a.m.

“It shook everything,” said Abdur Rasheed, who drives a pickup van around the area. He said there weren't any human casualties: “No one died. Only some pine trees died, they were cut down. A crow also died.”

Religious school appears intact

Jaba is set in a thickly wooded area of hills and streams that opens the way to the scenic Kaghan valley, a popular holiday destination for Pakistani tourists. It is a little over 60 km from Abbottabad, the garrison town where Osama Bin Laden was killed by American Special Forces in 2011.

Locals say 400 to 500 people live locally, scattered across hills in mudbrick homes. Reuters spoke to about 15 people, none of whom knew of any casualties apart from Nooran Shah.

“I haven't seen any dead bodies, only a local who was hurt by something or hit by some window, he was hurt,” said Abdur Rasheed, echoing numerous others.

In Basic Health Unit, Jaba, the nearest hospital, Mohammad Saddique, an official who was on duty on the night of the attack, also dismissed claims of major casualties.

“It is just a lie. It is rubbish,” he said. “We didn't receive even a single injured person. Only one person got slightly hurt and he was treated there. Even he wasn't brought here.”

In Balakot, a town largely rebuilt after an earthquake in 2005, Zia Ul Haq, senior medical officer in Tehsil Headquarters Hospital said no casualties had been brought in on Tuesday.

People in the area said Jaish-e Mohammad did have a presence, running not an active training camp but a madrassa, or religious school, about one km from where the bombs fell.

“It is Taleem ul Quran madrassa. The kids from the village study there. There is no training,” said Nooran Shah.

A sign which had been up earlier in the week identifying the madrassa's affiliation to Jaish-e Mohammad had been removed by Thursday and soldiers prevented reporters from gaining access.

But it was possible to see the structure from the back. It appeared intact, like the trees surrounding it, with no sign of any damage of the kind seen near the bomb craters.

Western diplomats in Islamabad also said they did not believe the Indian air force hit a militant camp.

“There was no militant training camp there. It hasn't been there for a few years they moved it. It's common knowledge amongst our intelligence,” said one of them.

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News Network
January 22,2020

Jan 22: Microsoft Corp’s chief executive officer said he worries that mistrust between the US and China will increase technology costs and hurt economic growth at a critical time.

Using the $470 billion semiconductor industry as an example of a sector that is already globally interconnected, Satya Nadella said the two countries will have to find ways to work together, rather than creating different supply chains for each country.

“All you are doing is increasing transaction costs for everybody if you completely separate,” Nadella said in an interview with Bloomberg News Editor-in-Chief John Micklethwait at Bloomberg’s The Year Ahead conference in Davos. That’s a concern as the executive said the world is on the cusp of a revolution around technology and artificial intelligence.

“If we take steps back in trust or increase transaction costs around technology, all we are doing is sacrificing global economic growth,” he said.

The agreement signed last week between the US and China was “not sufficient,” said Nadella, but represented “progress” on the issue of intellectual property protections for US technology companies working with China.

Nadella said he worries about the development of two separate internets, noting that to some degree they already exist “and they will get amplified in the future” with massive technology companies already in place in China.

The viewpoint clashes with Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates, who has been sceptical about the idea that ongoing US-China trade tensions could ever lead to a bifurcated system of two internets.

China and the US are the two leading AI superpowers, however the cooling political relations between them have slowed the international collaboration.

Nadella also warned that countries that fail to attract immigrants will lose out as the global tech industry continues to grow. The CEO has previously voiced concern about India’s Citizenship Amendment Act, calling it “sad.”

“However, Nadella said he remained hopeful.

“The fact that there is a 70-year history of nation-building, I think it’s a very strong foundation. I grew up in that country. I’m proud of that heritage. I’m influenced by that experience.”

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Agencies
May 31,2020

Minneapolis, May 31: The full Minnesota National Guard was activated for the first time since World War Two after four nights of civil unrest that has spread to other U.S. cities following the death of George Floyd, a black man shown on video gasping for breath as a white Minneapolis policeman knelt on his neck.

Minnesota Governor Tim Walz said the deployment was necessary because outside agitators were using protests over Monday’s death of George Floyd to sow chaos and that he expected Saturday night’s demonstrations to be the fiercest so far.

From Minneapolis to several other major cities including New York, Atlanta and Washington, protesters clashed with police late on Friday in a rising tide of anger over the treatment of minorities by law enforcement.

“We are under assault,” Walz, a first-term governor elected from Minnesota’s Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party, told a briefing on Saturday. “Order needs to be restored. ... We will use our full strength of goodness and righteousness to make sure this ends.”

He said he believed a “tightly controlled” group of outsiders, including white supremacists and drug cartel members, were instigating some of the violence in Minnesota’s largest city, but he did not give specific evidence of this when asked by reporters.

As many as 80% of those arrested were from outside the state, Walz said. But detention records show just eight non-Minnesota residents have been booked into the Hennepin County Jail since Tuesday, and it was unclear whether all of them were arrested in connection with the Minneapolis unrest.

The Republican Trump administration suggested civil disturbances were being orchestrated from the political left.

“In many places, it appears the violence is planned, organized and driven by anarchic and left extremist groups - far-left extremist groups ... many of whom travel from outside the state to promote violence,” U.S. Attorney William Barr said in a statement.

In an extraordinary move, the Pentagon said it put military units on a four-hour alert to be ready if requested by Walz to help keep the peace.

Activists staged another round of protests on Saturday in at least a dozen major U.S. cities coast to coast, including Seattle, Los Angeles, Chicago, Cleveland, Dallas, Atlanta, New York and Atlanta.

In the nation’s capital, hundreds of demonstrators assembled near the Justice Department headquarters, then marched toward the U.S. Capitol, chanting, “Black lives matter,” and “I can’t breathe,” a rallying cry echoing Floyd’s dying words.

Many later ended up near the White House, where they faced off with shield-carrying police, some mounted on horseback.

The streets of Minneapolis were largely quiet during daylight on Saturday, though several National Guard armoured personnel carriers were seen rolling through town.

On Friday, in defiance of a newly imposed curfew, Minneapolis protesters took to the streets for a fourth night - albeit in smaller numbers than before - despite the announcement hours earlier of murder charges filed against Derek Chauvin, the policeman seen in video footage kneeling on Floyd’s neck.

Three other officers fired from the police department with Chauvin on Tuesday are also under criminal investigation in the case, prosecutors said.

The video of Floyd’s arrest - captured by an onlooker’s cellphone as he repeatedly groaned, “please, I can’t breathe” before becoming motionless - triggered an outpouring of rage that civil rights activists said has long simmered in Minneapolis and cities across the country over persistent racial bias in the U.S. criminal justice system.

‘PAINS ME SO MUCH’

The mood was sombre on Saturday in the Minneapolis neighbourhood of Lyndale, where dozens of people surveyed the damage while sweeping up broken glass and debris.

“It pains me so much,” said Luke Kallstrom, 27, a financial analyst, standing in the threshold of a fire-gutted post office. “This does not honour the man who was wrongfully taken away from us.”

Some of Friday’s most chaotic scenes were in the New York City borough of Brooklyn, where police armed with batons and pepper spray made more than 200 arrests in sometimes violent clashes. Several officers were injured, police said.

In Washington, President Donald Trump said on Saturday that if protesters who gathered the night before in Lafayette Square, across from the White House, had breached the fence, “they would have been greeted with the most vicious dogs, and most ominous weapons, I have ever seen.”

CHAOS IN ATLANTA

In Atlanta, Bernice King, the youngest daughter of slain civil rights icon Martin Luther King Jr., urged people to go home on Friday night after more than 1,000 protesters marched to the state capitol and blocked traffic on an interstate highway.

The demonstration turned violent at points. Fires burned near the CNN Center, the network’s headquarters, and windows were smashed at its lobby. Several vehicles were torched, including at least one police car.

Rapper Killer Mike, in an impassioned speech flanked by the city’s mayor and police chief, also implored angry residents to stay indoors and to mobilize to win at the ballot box.

“But it is not time to burn down your own home.”

Floyd, a Houston native who had worked security for nightclubs, was arrested on suspicion of trying to pass counterfeit money at a store to buy cigarettes on Monday evening. Police said he was unarmed. An employee who called for help had told a police dispatcher that the suspect appeared to be intoxicated.

In a striking coincidence, Floyd and Chauvin had both worked security at the same Latin nightclub in Minneapolis, though it was unlikely they ever interacted, former owner Maya Santamaria, who sold the El Nuevo Rodeo club in January, told Reuters.

Santamaria said Floyd worked inside the club on certain nights, supporting other staff with security. She said Chauvin, who worked outside the club as an off-duty cop for 16 years, had a reputation for roughing up customers, but she considered him responsible and a friend.

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Agencies
January 4,2020

Kota, Jan 4: Following the death of an infant in the morning, the death toll in JK Lon Hospital here has risen to 107, officials said on Saturday.

A three-member state government committee of doctors, who was sent to investigate the matter on December 23 and 24, found that Kota's JK Lone Hospital is short of beds and it requires improvement.

However, the committee gave a clean chit to the doctors for any lapses over the recent death of infants admitted there.

A Central government team reached the hospital on Saturday to take stock of the situation.

As per the government report, at least 91 infants lost their lives at the government hospital in December last year.

Meanwhile, the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) has issued a notice to Chief Secretary of Rajasthan to submit a detailed report within 4 weeks about the steps being taken to address the issue.

The Commission also asked the Chief Secretary to ensure that such deaths of the children do not recur in future due to lack of infrastructure and health facilities at the hospitals.

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