Uri, Feb 19: As the guns have fallen silent along the Line of Control (LoC) in north Kashmir’s Baramulla district, the residents now demand better road connectivity, play fields and better infrastructure of government schools.
Earlier, the border residents were demanding community bunkers but with the improvement in situation, they are now demanding better roads, repair of government buildings and residential houses besides upgradation of sports infrastructure.
Locals of Uri area of northern district of Baramulla, while talking to the news agency—Kashmir News Observer (KNO) complained that the roads, government buildings, and residential houses are in shambles while there is a dire need of upgrading the sports infrastructure.
“The road stretches at Dardkote in Uri are dotted with potholes which speaks volumes about the tall claims of the government of improving road connectivity,” the residents said. “The road is dotted with huge potholes and has not been repaired for the last several years and the authorities concerned are least bothered about the sufferings of people”, said Faisal Khan, a Sarpanch. “The road acts as an important link which connects several areas and thousands of commuters, transporters pass through potholes every day. “The road is in a bad condition. Big pot holes filled with water dots, making the movement of people very difficult.”
The residents expressed concern over the condition of government schools. “Four classes are functioning in a single room at Dardkote,” they said, adding that similar conditions are in maximum government based schools”.
The administration makes tall claims about changing the sports infrastructure at the best, but the areas like Uroosa, Dardkote, Chakra, Isham, Nawa Runda and Govalta in Uri are without a single playground.
The villagers, particularly youth, told KNO that no space is available in their villages for playing sports. “We have appealed and requested the concerned officials several times to demarcate a piece of land for the playground but to no avail. “We are leading a confined life which is taking a heavy toll on our mental and physical health,” they added.
The residents, however, urged the LG administration and the concerned authorities to look into the genuine demands of people, so that they could have a sigh of relief—(KNO)
Ankara: A border gate between Turkey and Armenia has been opened for the first time in 30 years for the passage of humanitarian assistance for victims of the devastating earthquakes hitting southern Turkey, the state-run Anadolu News Agency reported.
An Armenian delegation with five trucks of aid has entered Turkey through the Alican Border Gate in the eastern province of Igdir, the report said on Saturday.
The Armenian aid delegation carrying 100 tonnes of food, medicine, and drinking water passed through the gate in the morning toward the southeastern province of Adiyaman, according to a tweet on Saturday by Serdar Kilic, Turkey’s special representative for normalisation talks with Armenia.
On Tuesday, Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan offered condolences and support to the Turkish people in a phone conversation with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Xinhua news agency reported.
Armenia has sent 27 rescuers to quake-hit Turkey to assist in the search-and-rescue operations, the country’s Internal Affairs Ministry said on Wednesday.
The Alican Border Gate was last used in the 1988 earthquake in Armenia when the Turkish Red Crescent crossed the border gate to dispatch aid to disaster areas.
Turkey severed diplomatic relations and closed the border with Armenia in 1993 in support of Azerbaijan which was fighting a war with Armenia over the disputed region of Nagorno-Karabakh, before the two neighbours launched talks for the re-normalisation of relations in 2022.
On Monday, two devastating earthquakes measuring 7.7- and 7.6-magnitude hit 10 provinces in southern Turkey, killing at least 21,848 so far and injuring more than 80,000, according to the latest figures.
Ankara: Turkey is working to open two more border gates with Syria to enable the delivery of humanitarian aid to its neighbour which also suffers from massive earthquakes, Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said.
“Cilvegozu border gate is open. We are working to open two more gates … We also provide the necessary support for the aid to reach Syria,” Cavusoglu told reporters on Wednesday at a joint news conference attended by Turkish Vice-President Fuat Oktay.
Meanwhile, the UN Secretary-General Spokesman Stephane Dujarric said the road leading to the Bab al-Hawa Border Crossing from Turkey to northern Syria was damaged, and the aid delivery to the rebel-held northwest was temporarily disrupted.
The UN is preparing a convoy to cross into Syria, but that would likely require a new agreement with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s government, Dujarric added.
Bab al-Hawa, across Turkey’s Cilvegozu gate, is the only crossing through which UN aid is allowed into the area, Xinhua news agency reported.
A magnitude-7.7 earthquake struck Turkey’s southern province of Kahramanmaras at 4:17 a.m. local time, followed by a magnitude-7.6 quake at 1:24 p.m. local time in the same province.
The death toll from Monday’s devastating earthquakes in southern Turkey and northern Syria has surpassed 12,000.
Many countries and global aid agencies are offering rescue teams and relief supplies to quake-hit regions in Turkey and Syria.
“I’m hopeful that we’re going to have a permanent lasting solution to the situation, not just at Roxham Road, but to modernize the ability for people to make asylum claims within the confines of Canadian and international law in the near future,” he told reporters Tuesday.
The Safe Third Country Agreement, which the United States and Canada signed in 2004, requires migrants to seek asylum in the first nation they enter. The accord, however, is only enforced at official crossings, which is why people coming from the U.S. have been able to apply for asylum after crossing via Roxham Road.
The Canadian government has been saying for several years that it is working with American counterparts to update the agreement, but no major changes have been announced. Fraser did not give a timeline for reaching an accord, but said negotiations are on track.
The Roxham Road crossing — two dead-ends that nearly meet at the border — has been a thorn in the side of Canada’s Liberal minority government for years after thousands of asylum seekers began using it to enter Quebec from New York in 2017.
The juncture has gained new prominence in the wake of a recent New York Post report detailing the flow of asylum seekers from New York City.
The National Guard, the Adams administration and several nonprofits have assisted migrants in obtaining bus tickets to Plattsburgh. From there, vans and taxis shuttle migrants to the unauthorized crossing point, which is then traversed by foot, according to the Post report.
Quebec Immigration Minister Christine Fréchette called the Post’s account “astonishing,” and argued it was proof of the urgent need to update the Safe Third Country Agreement, which she said should apply to the entire Canada-U.S. border.
That same day, Adams appeared to acknowledge in a television interview some migrants who arrived in New York wanted to leave the U.S. altogether.
“We are assisting in interviewing those who seek to go somewhere else,” he told local news station FOX 5. “Some want to go to Canada, some want to go to warmer states, and we are there for them as they continue to move on with their pursuit of this dream.”
But on Tuesday, the mayor was adamant his administration was staying out of the international travel business.
“We are not coordinating with anyone to go to Canada,” Adams said during an unrelated press briefing. “We are not doing that. There’s no role that the city is playing to tell migrants to go to Canada.”
A City Hall spokesperson declined to discuss whether New York City officials had contacted any of their Canadian counterparts, but the offices of Canada’s immigration, public safety and foreign affairs ministers said in a Wednesday statement the federal government is “continuing to engage with both U.S. federal and New York City officials” on the treatment of asylum seekers.
“Our current information shows that people are not being encouraged to go to Plattsburgh or being bussed directly to the border,” the statement said.
A spokesperson for President Joe Biden did not return requests for comment.
Some Quebec lawmakers have urged U.S. officials to accept responsibility for the situation and stop busing migrants to the threshold of the country.
“They are not merchandise, they’re humans,” Quebec interim opposition leader Marc Tanguay told Global News in what has become a common refrain between leaders of North American municipalities who have struggled to pay for migrant services.
At the beginning of the year, for example, busloads of asylum seekers began arriving in New York City from Denver, which prompted Adams to lace into Colorado Gov. Jared Polis, a fellow Democrat, and to compare him to GOP leaders who had made a show of sending migrants to blue cities around the country in 2022.
“At one time we had to deal with Republican governors sending migrants to New York,” Adams said at a January press briefing. “Now we’re dealing with Democratic governors sending migrants to New York. This is just unfair.”
At the time, Polis said that his office and the City of Denver had chartered buses to the five boroughs to clear a backlog of travelers who had become stranded in the Mile High City after a colossal winter storm. No one forced anyone to make the trip, they noted, and teams there had simply been respecting the wishes of asylum seekers who did not want to be in Denver — an explanation Adams echoed Tuesday when asked about migrants traveling to Plattsburgh and then Canada.
“People who arrived here and already had other destinations in mind were basically compelled to come to New York,” he said. “And when they’re part of our intake process and we speak with people and they say their desire is to go somewhere else, there’s a host of partnerships from the Catholic Charities to others that have been coordinating with people to get to their final destination.”
Adams administration spokesperson Fabien Levy disputed any parallels to the Polis episode, insisting that New York City was not chartering entire buses and was not sending anyone directly into Canada.
Yet asylum seekers bound for Plattsburgh do not appear keen on staying there.
Plattsburgh Mayor Christopher Rosenquest told POLITICO Wednesday his office has been made aware of the issue, but that migrants seem to be bypassing his town to head directly north.
“At this point, this has had no impact on the City of Plattsburgh, as migrants arriving via bus seem to be passing through to the Canadian border,” Rosenquest wrote in a statement.
Quebec has strained under the costs of service provision. While the flow of would-be refugees largely halted during the pandemic, when the federal government shut down the entire border to all but essential traffic, Roxham Road reopened in November 2021. And asylum seekers are now crossing again in record numbers: More than 39,000 people entered Canada at Roxham Road in 2022, up from 16,000 in 2019.
The Quebec government has long been calling on the federal government to shut down the unofficial crossing, arguing the province doesn’t have the capacity to deal with the new arrivals. Recent reporting in the Globe and Mail newspaper found Ottawa has spent C$94 million since the 2021 election booking entire hotels for months to house the asylum seekers.
New York City has spent far more. Nearly 45,000 asylum seekers have arrived there since the spring, and the mayor announced Tuesday a sixth Humanitarian Emergency Response and Relief Center — special facilities with services tailored to migrants — would open at a Manhattan Holiday Inn to help deal with the influx. The city has also opened more than 80 emergency homeless shelters as its system is stretched to the breaking point.
Mona Zhang contributed reporting.
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( With inputs from : www.politico.com )
Gorakhpur: The Uttar Pradesh government has started an exercise to track sources of the money reaching around 1,500 unrecognized madrasas running along the Indo-Nepal border and collect information regarding the number of students studying there.
In a letter to district minority welfare officers of various districts, the registrar, of Uttar Pradesh Madrasa Education Board, Jagmohan Singh has sought details about the strength of students along with income and expenses records of madrasas functioning at the borders.
Madrasas have to be categorized into three categories.
In the first category, the madrasas with a strength of 100 to 200 students, while in the second category madrasas have an enrolment of over 200 to 500 students and in the last category, madrasa with over 500 students will be listed.
Gorakhpur minority welfare officer Ashutosh Pandey said a letter to this effect had been received and the objective of the exercise was to update the record of the Madrasa Board website.
These madrasas are located in Balrampur, Shravasti, Maharajganj, Siddharth Nagar, Bahraich, and Lakhimpur Kheri districts.
During the state government’s 46-day madrasa survey conducted in September-October last year seeking information on 12 aspects, including their source of funding, most of these madrasas had claimed that they got ‘zakat’ from cities like Kolkata, Chennai, Mumbai, Delhi, and Hyderabad but there was no record of the money that reached them.
“Countries need to invest in vaccines, education campaigns and effective treatments for people who show up sick,” said David Harvey, the executive director of the National Coalition of STD Directors. “Neighboring countries to the U.S. not investing in a broad-based approach to the problem will ultimately affect the U.S.,” he said.
For now, the situation here looks good. On the verge of spiraling out of control last summer, when cases exceeded 450 a day, mpox is now all but gone, with the CDC reporting an average of two new cases a day, as of Feb. 1.
But across the globe, cases started to rise again at the end of last month, according to the World Health Organization, which will decide on Thursday if the outbreak still constitutes an international emergency. The number of cases reported worldwide was slightly over 400, with most of the new ones in the Americas and Africa.
Of the 13 countries that saw an increase, Mexico reported the highest weekly hike, reaching 72 cases.
The United States’ southern neighbor is now among the 10 countries in the world with the highest overall number of cases during the current outbreak. But unlike the other nine — which include the United States, Spain, and France — Mexico has not acquired any vaccines against mpox, nor seems to be planning to.
Top Mexican health officials have claimed the shot has not yet been proven safe and effective.
Jorge Alcocer Varela, Mexico’s health secretary, told the country’s Senate in November that the vaccine also didn’t prevent people from developing symptoms. He wasn’t encouraging its use, he said, because the number of people dying from the disease was low, according to Mexican media reports.
Choosing not to vaccinate
The strain of mpox that swept the world last year isn’t particularly deadly. The WHO knows of at least 90 deaths in the current outbreak. But the ailment can cause a painful rash. It’s endemic in parts of Africa, but had never before spread so widely in the U.S. as it did last year.
Preliminary data the CDC published in September on the efficacy of Jynneos, the vaccine the U.S. and many other countries used to fight the outbreak, contradicts Mexico’s health secretary. People who had a dose of the vaccine were 14 times less likely to get infected than those who were unvaccinated, the CDC said.
Updated data since showed two doses of the vaccine given 4 weeks apart is nearly 70 percent effective in preventing people from developing mpox that needs to be treated by a doctor.
U.S. health officials attribute the decline in cases here to the efforts of public health officials last summer to get the vaccine to the people who were most likely to catch the disease: gay and bisexual men who regularly had sex with multiple partners.
The U.S. teamed with state officials and community groups, and made the shot available at large events for the LGBTQ community. Fewer than 700,000 people have received the full, two-dose regimen, but public health officials believe that the highest-risk people mostly did, and that, combined with education about the need to change sexual behavior, has helped eradicate the disease.
The Mexican health secretary didn’t respond to an emailed request for an interview.
Representatives of the Mexican LGBTQ community took to the streets last summer to demand vaccines. Those who could afford to travel and get a visa went abroad to get vaccinated.
“In Mexico the government was never actually interested in buying the vaccines,” said Ricardo Baruch, a public health activist working on LGBTQ issues. It also didn’t want to buy antivirals, another way to show “they didn’t really care about the outbreak,” he said.
Civil society organizations stepped in to communicate the risk of infection to gay men, Baruch said. He believes that led members of the community to take additional precautions.
That’s unsustainable in the long run, however.
And the pride festival season, which contributed to the spread of the virus globally last year, is about to start, with WorldPride kicking off in Sydney, Australia, next week.
Yet Mexico is hardly the only country in the Americas relying only on behavior modification.
Most countries in the region have tried to stem the outbreak without vaccines, said Rubén Mayorga Sagastume, the mpox incident manager at the Pan-American Health Organization.
Only a dozen countries bought shots through a PAHO joint purchase mechanism: Bahamas, Belize, Brazil, Chile, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guyana, Honduras, Jamaica, Panama, Peru and Trinidad and Tobago. Colombia in December made a deal with Japan to get 25,000 doses of a Japanese-made vaccine initially developed for smallpox to immunize people as part of a clinical trial.
Several countries that didn’t get vaccines said they couldn’t agree to waive liability for the vaccine manufacturer, the Danish firm Bavarian Nordic, as pharma companies typically demand during outbreaks, Mayorga Sagastume said. “Others, I imagine that was because of financial constraints, because vaccines were expensive,” he said.
Bavarian Nordic spokesman Rolf Sass Sørensen said the company doesn’t comment on price, but that it does offer differentiated prices to countries. “The vaccine has been sold and distributed to all countries expressing an interest in receiving it,” he said.
Barely any shots for Africa
The success of the vaccination campaign in the U.S. also isn’t helping Africa, where mpox has long been endemic, where the current outbreak originated, and where the next one could emerge.
The African Union, which represents all the 55 countries on the continent, has not requested shots, Sørensen said.
That’s despite the virus being deadlier there.
One in three people confirmed to have mpox in Africa since the beginning of the year has died, according to the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention.
That’s likely due to the deadlier virus clade circulating in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, which is different from the milder clade that infected people globally. Jynneos is effective against both clades, Bavarian Nordic said. And the number of mpox cases in Africa is most likely an undercount, as many countries still lack the capacity to test for the virus.
Testing is a bigger challenge in the DRC right now than access to vaccines, said Anne Rimoin, a UCLA epidemiologist who studies mpox.
The outbreak in African countries has been different in terms of people affected and needs compared to the rest of the world, she said. There, the virus mostly infects heterosexual people, usually in remote areas. But countries like the DRC don’t have the capacity or equipment to test people and keep a close eye on the real number of cases.
That also makes it harder to rapidly assess who needs to get vaccinated.
A World Health Organization-backed working group is now studying how human-to-human transmission works in endemic countries and how the virus spills over from animals, said Rosamund Lewis, the WHO’s technical lead for mpox.
Scientists need to define the target population, the type of vaccine to use, the frequency of immunization and the age of people to be vaccinated before any vaccination program starts, Lewis said.
The WHO has also been facilitating talks among countries with vaccine stockpiles and African countries that want them, said Patrick Otim, who handles health emergencies at WHO Africa. Late last year, South Korea committed to donate at least 50,000 doses to be used for health workers and people living in most affected areas.
But for Rimoin, who has seen attention and funding come and go with other international disease outbreaks, “the big question is what kind of sustained investment is going to be made to be able to be in front of these epidemics, as opposed to constantly chasing behind them.”
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( With inputs from : www.politico.com )
Gorakhpur: The Uttar Pradesh government has started an exercise to track sources of the money reaching around 1,500 unrecognised madrasas running along the Indo-Nepal border and collect information regarding the number of students studying there.
In a letter to district minority welfare officers of various districts, the registrar, Uttar Pradesh Madrasa Education Board, Jagmohan Singh has sought details about the strength of students along with income and expenses records of madrasas functioning at the borders.
Madrasas have to be categorised in three categories.
In the first category, the madrasas with strength of 100 to 200 students, while in the second category madrasas having enrolment of over 200 to 500 students and in the last category, madrasa with over 500 students will be listed.
Gorakhpur minority welfare officer Ashutosh Pandey said a letter to this effect had been received and the objective of the exercise was to update the record of Madrasa Board website.
These madrasas are located in Balrampur, Shravasti, Maharajganj, Siddharth Nagar, Bahraich and Lakhimpur Kheri districts.
During the state government’s 46-day madrasa survey conducted in September-October last year seeking information on 12 aspects, including their source of funding, most of these madrasas had claimed that they got ‘zakat’ from cities like Kolkata, Chennai, Mumbai, Delhi and Hyderabad but there was no record of the money that reached them.
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SRINAGAR: Managers of a Territorial Army unit deployed near the International Border have detained 11 labourers for clicking photographs of the camp, reports appearing in media said. While nine of them are being questioned by the camp officials, two of them have been handed over to the police.
The incident was reported from Arnia sector in Jammu which is manning a crucial stretch of the international border with Pakistan. The sector has witnessed fierce exchanges with rivals on the other side of the divide. Off late, however, it is infiltration that is the dominant concern.
Chandigarh-based newspaper, The Tribune reported that after they were seen clicking pictures of an Army installation, they were detained. Initially two f them of them were seen and later nine others were also questioned. Their cell phones have been seized.
“The labourers belong to Gool in Reasi and Loran, Mandi of Poonch district,” the newspaper reported. “They were working on a pipe-laying project.”
Photograph used in this report is merely representational and not linked to the details of the news item.
Jammu, Jan 26: The BSF and Pakistan Rangers exchanged sweets and greetings at various outposts along the International Border in Jammu on the occasion of India’s 74th Republic Day on Thursday, officials said.
The Border Security Force offered sweets to Pakistan Rangers and they reciprocated, the officials said.
The exchange of sweets took place at border outposts in Akhnoor, Samba, Kathua, Arnia and R S Pura in a cordial manner, a Border Security Force official said.
Indian Army troops also exchanged sweets and greetings with their Pakistani counterparts at forward posts along the Line of Control (LoC) in Rajouri and Poonch districts, according to the officials.
Republic Day was celebrated at the frontier headquarters here.
BSF Inspector General D K Boora unfurled the tricolour on the occasion and conveyed his warm wishes to all ‘Seema Praharis’ serving at the International Border and the LoC and their families. He also recalled the supreme sacrifices of BSF troops.
The IG said the BSF has always faced all challenges firmly to ensure the safety of Indians and will always be committed to the security of the nation.–(PTI)
