November 24, 2024 16:56 (IST)
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Supreme Court denies bail to Prajwal Revanna in rape and sexual assault cases | Kashmir: Security forces ramp up search operation against militants in Kishtwar after para commando dies in encounter | Justice Sanjiv Khanna takes oath as 51st Chief Justice of India | Congress wants to return to power dividing castes: PM Modi in Maharashtra | Pakistan: 24 killed, over 30 injured in blast at Quetta railway station in Balochistan | Three coaches of Secunderabad-Shalimar Express train derail at Nalpur in West Bengal's Howrah | Tech entrepreneur Elon Musk briefly joins telephonic conversation between Donald Trump and Volodymyr Zelenskyy | K'taka yoga teacher escapes death, outsmarts kidnappers using breathing control skill after being molested, stripped | EC warns of stern action over derogatory comments against women after Shaina NC remark sparked row | Aligarh Muslim University is entitled to minority status, rules Supreme Court overruling 1967 judgement

'Nationhood is reality, not your religion', says prominent Indian Muslim lawyer mocking Taliban cheerleaders

Sep 15, 2024, at 01:11 pm

As the Taliban insurgents overran Afghanistan, some from the Muslim community in India celebrated the prospect of a hardline Islamic nation's rebirth after two decades. But thinking minds of the same community in India are red-flagging such outpourings as meaningless, irrelevant and muddled.  

Afghanistan: Ignominious Retreat

Sep 15, 2024, at 01:11 pm

United States (US) Army Major General Chris Donahue, Commander of the 82nd Airborne Division, became the last US service member to leave Afghanistan, when he boarded a C-17 transport plane at Hamid Karzai International Airport in Kabul on August 30, 2021. The last US troops thus left Afghan soil exactly 12-days before the September 11, 2021, deadline originally set by the US President Joe Biden, and a day before Biden’s revised date for the mission’s end and evacuation, August 31.

Meghalaya: HNLC: Seeking Attention

Sep 15, 2024, at 01:11 pm

On August 13, 2021, a combined Police team of East Khasi Hills and East Jaintia Hills had gone to Mawlai-Kynton Massar locality in Shillong (East Khasi Hills District) to arrest former Hynniewtrep National Liberation Council (HNLC) ‘general secretary’ from his home.  However, the former militant resisted and held a knife forcing the police to shot in self-defense leading to his death.

India and the international community must support Bangladesh in finding homes for Rohingya refugees

Sep 15, 2024, at 01:11 pm

Psychologists have identified a condition which affects people who are repeatedly exposed to the suffering of others. They call it compassion fatigue.

Madhya Pradesh: Creeping Consolidation

Sep 15, 2024, at 01:12 pm

On June 29, 2021, Communist Party of India-Maoist (CPI-Maoist) cadres abducted and killed a villager, identified as Bhagchand Adme (45), a resident of Bamhani village under the Bithali Police outpost, situated near the Kanha National Park, in Balaghat District. A hand-written pamphlet was found near his body, claiming that Bhagchand was an ‘informer’ and was therefore ‘sentenced to death.’ Balaghat, Superintendent of Police (SP), Abhishek Tiwari, disclosed that cadres of the Malanjkhand ‘area committee’ were suspected to be behind Adme’s killing.

Amidst moves towards political rapprochement in J&K, drone attacks by terrorists have serious implications

Sep 15, 2024, at 01:12 pm

The past few days have seen a spurt of activities relating to Jammu & Kashmir (J&K), some of which carry the potential to have a significant bearing on how the coming months and years pan out in the troubled region.

Political Volatility

Sep 15, 2024, at 01:13 pm

In a big blow to Prime Minister K. P. Sharma Oli on June 22, 2021, the Supreme Court (SC) quashed the appointments of 20 Ministers, including 17 Cabinet Ministers and three Ministers of State, citing Article 77 (3) of the Constitution. The SC order declared,

Pakistan prime minister’s expedient silence over the plight of Uyghur Muslims in China’s Xinjiang

Sep 15, 2024, at 01:13 pm

Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan’s recent interview where he displays excruciating coyness not to say anything even remotely critical of let alone offensive to China about its torturous treatment of the Uyghur Muslims in Xinjiang Province has received considerable media attention.

Health Hazard

Sep 15, 2024, at 01:13 pm

On June 15, 2021: Five health workers were killed and another four wounded in five separate shooting incidents during a polio vaccination drive in Nangarhar Province. Ataullah Khogyani, spokesperson for the provincial Governor disclosed that the incidents occurred when unknown gunmen fired on the polio vaccination teams in the provincial capital, Jalalabad city, and suburban districts of Khogiani and Surkh Rod.

Controlled Voices

Sep 15, 2024, at 01:13 pm

On May 25, 2021, Islamabad-based journalist and blogger Asad Ali Toor was attacked in the federal capital city of Islamabad. Initial reports indicated that unidentified assailants broke into his house and physically assaulted the journalist. In 2020, Toor was booked on charges of spreading “negative propaganda” against the state and its institutions, including the Pakistan Army, through his social media posts.

Myanmar: The international community must do more to show it is not powerless

Sep 15, 2024, at 01:14 pm

The tendency towards authoritarianism, the flagrant disregard for painstakingly agreed rules and conventions of international order, the denigration of human rights across wide and dispersed geographies, and the seeming inability of those tasked with preventing these to do so has meant that events such as the hijacking of international aircraft by the State and the killing of dissidents on foreign shores, to name just a few, have today begun to appear commonplace.

Violent attacks in Afghanistan and the Maldives threaten nascent advancements on human rights and democracy

Sep 15, 2024, at 01:14 pm

Only the harshest and most forceful terms would be fitting to describe terrorist attacks that specifically target children, no matter in which part of the world.

The Indian Prime Minister’s upcoming visit to Dhaka promises to be a potent mix of deliverables and symbolisms

Sep 15, 2024, at 01:17 pm

Indian Prime Minister (PM) Narendra Modi is slated to travel to Bangladesh on 26 March for what will be his second visit as PM to the neighbouring country. Modi’s first visit to Dhaka in June 2015 had, by all accounts, been a very successful one. The two countries had signed as many as 22 agreements, and followed that up with the exchange in August 2015 of 162 land enclaves. This addressed a long overdue process of land and population exchanges that had been hanging fire since the 1950s. The 2015 visit had paved the way for closer strategic ties between the two countries. As productive as that visit was, the forthcoming one promises to better it owing to a variety of factors.

Assam: Sticky Negotiations

Sep 15, 2024, at 01:17 pm

On February 23, 2021, a total of 1,040 militants surrendered before Assam Chief Minister (CM) Sarbananda Sonowal. Prominent among these were the ‘chairman’ of the People's Democratic Council of Karbi Longri (PDCK), Ingti Kathar Songbijit; ‘chairman’ of the Karbi Longri NC Hills Liberation Front (KLNLF), P. Dilli; and ‘commander-in-chief’ of the Donri Kramsa-led faction of Karbi People's Liberation Tiger (KPLT), S. J. Ejang.

China, India, US and the significance of the Tibetan Policy and Support Act

Sep 15, 2024, at 01:23 pm

It is too often the case in the modern world that the voices of the suppressed, especially those from numerically smaller groups, get lost in the vast hollows of apathy and self-interest that seem to have consumed the conscience of powerful nations. 

Jharkhand: Dying Embers

Sep 15, 2024, at 01:23 pm

On January 10, 2021, two cadres of the People’s Liberation Front of India (PLFI), a splinter group of Communist Party of India-Maoist (CPI-Maoist), were arrested by Security Forces (SFs) in the Lowahatu Forest area under Taibo Police Station limits in the West Singhbhum District. SFs recovered a country-made gun, a cycle, a battery charger, a wireless set, 10 mobiles and Naxal [Left Wing Extremism, LWE] literature, among other items, from their possession.

Balochistan: Cruelty, Exploitation, Deprivation

Sep 15, 2024, at 01:23 pm

On January 3, 2021, Islamic State (IS) militants killed 11 coal miners and injured four in the Mach area of Kachi District of Balochistan. The victims belonged to the Shia Hazara minority community.

Chhattisgarh: Red Erosion

Sep 15, 2024, at 01:23 pm

On December 29, 2020, Communist Party of India-Maoist (CPI-Maoist) cadres killed a civilian near Tumdikasa village under Manpur Police Station limits in Rajnandgaon District. The Maoists left a pamphlet near his body, which accused the victim of being a ‘Police informer’.

J&K: Undercutting an Opportunity

Sep 15, 2024, at 01:23 pm

Results for 278 of the 280 District Development Council (DDC) seats, which went to poll between November 28, 2020, and December 19, 2020, in the Union Territory of Jammu and Kashmir (J&K) were declared on December 22, 2020. The People's Alliance for Gupkar Declaration (PAGD), an amalgam of five Kashmiri political parties, won 110 seats, followed by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), 75 seats; Independent, 50 seats; Indian National Congress, 26 seats; Jammu and Kashmir Apni Party (JKAP), 12 seats; Jammu and Kashmir National Panthers Party and Peoples Democratic Front, two seats each and Bahujan Samajwadi Party, one seat.

Assam: BTC/BTR Transition

Sep 15, 2024, at 01:23 pm

On December 15, 2020, former All Bodo Student’s Union President, Promod Bodo, of the United Peoples’ Party Liberal (UPPL), took oath as the new the Chief Executive Member (CEM) of Bodoland Territorial Council/Bodoland Territorial Region (BTC/BTR). Former National Democratic Front of Bodoland (NDFB) militant leader, Gobinda Chandra Basumatary, also of the UPPL, was sworn in as deputy CEM.

The international community’s failure to nail Pakistan twelve long years after the Mumbai terrorist attacks is unacceptable

Sep 15, 2024, at 01:24 pm

Yesterday marked twelve years of the 26 November 2008 (26/11) Mumbai terrorist attacks that had shocked and shaken the world. The 26/11 attacks were among the most brazen, audacious and gruesome acts of terror ever witnessed. Ten terrorists belonging to the Pakistan-based-and-backed Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT), egged on by a cocktail of handlers comprising their LeT bosses and serving officers of the Pakistani Army operating out of a control room in Karachi, unleashed burst after burst of gunfire and explosions at several different locations in downtown Mumbai. The terrorists finally besieged a high-end hotel and held hundreds of hostages there for three days. Over those three days the terrorists went from room to room, indiscriminately killing whoever they could find. At the end of the nightmare, 166 innocent people had died, as had 9 of the attackers, and more than 300 people were wounded. Among those killed and injured were nationals of countries such as the United States (US) and Israel.

Narco-Terror

Sep 15, 2024, at 01:24 pm

Pakistan’s biggest single drug haul of 2020 was made on November 12 in the Pasni coast area of Gwadar District of Balochistan, when the Pakistan Coast Guards (PCG) confiscated 751 kilograms of methamphetamine and heroin, worth an estimated PKR 20 billion in the international market.

Kashmir must shed the 'touch me not' attitude

Sep 15, 2024, at 01:25 pm

Do we live or do we die? Should we laugh or should we cry? The dilemma in the mind of a common Kashmiri exists for thirty years.

A new ray of hope in North Kashmir's border area of Kupwara

Sep 15, 2024, at 01:25 pm

Nature has bestowed Kashmir with extraordinary climatic conditions and forest cover, apt for different mushroom varieties including gucchi (Morchella), an exotic species of the mushroom family.

The curious Pakistani treason charge against the ‘Prime Minister’ of so-called Azad (free) Jammu & Kashmir

Sep 15, 2024, at 01:25 pm

The Pakistani daily Dawn on 5 October carried an article titled ‘Most Pakistanis fear country headed in wrong direction: survey’. It quoted the findings of lpsos, a France-based organization that specializes in global market research and public opinion, while concluding that the “Majority of Pakistanis continue to fear that the country is heading in the wrong direction since last year”. It further underlined that “three in four Pakistanis expressed dissatisfaction with the way things are going in Pakistan today, while the same proportion of Pakistanis described as bad the current economic situation in the country”.

AF-PAK Border: Persistent Tension

Sep 15, 2024, at 01:30 pm

A Pakistani soldier was killed when militants from across the Afghan border attacked Security Forces’ (SFs’) post in the Bajaur District of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) on September 22, 2020.

'The Resistance Front': Old Wine in a New Bottle

Sep 15, 2024, at 01:30 pm

It is a well-known fact that terrorist and insurgent groups best flourish in an environment fraught with instability, chaos and social upheaval, which provides them with favourable conditions to exploit local grievances and run recruitment and propaganda campaigns among the vulnerable population.

Prolongation of the India-China standoff at the LAC may lead to sharper Indian focus on the Tibet issue

Sep 15, 2024, at 01:30 pm

Developments around the Pangong lake over the past week have spawned the distinct impression that the trust deficit between India and China has only increased despite the ongoing talks between the two countries aimed at finding an acceptable solution to the several flashpoints that have been ignited by China along the Line of Actual Control (LAC) that separates the two countries.

How to cope with China’s ‘Wolf Warrior’ Diplomats?

Sep 15, 2024, at 01:30 pm

A new expression has recently appeared in the media and international diplomatic circles: ‘wolf warrior’, a term for the new and very assertive Chinese diplomats, who use Twitter and other social media platforms to prey on any person, legal or physical, which criticizes China or the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).