United Nations: Ahead of an international meeting convened by UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres on dealing with the Taliban, the Security Council in a rare show of unanimity has voted unanimously to condemn the regime’s ban on women working for the world organisation in Afghanistan.
The Council resolution adopted on Thursday also expressed “deep concern at the increasing erosion of respect for the human rights and fundamental freedoms of women and girls” and demanded that the Taliban “swiftly reverse” the restrictions placed on them.
Special representatives for Afghanistan from several countries are scheduled to convene on May 1-2 in Doha for the meeting to be chaired by Guterres to work out a united approach to deal with the Taliban.
India was one of about 20 countries from Europe, Asia, the Middle East and North America invited to the meeting.
The unanimous adoption of the Council resolution proposed by the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Japan and co-sponsored by about 90 countries underlines the Taliban regime’s isolation and signals international unity before the Doha meeting.
The UAE’s Permanent Representative Lana Zaki Nusseibeh said: “This cross-regional support makes our fundamental message today even more significant: the world will not sit by silently as women in Afghanistan are erased from society.
“The resolution also makes it clear that stability, economic recovery, and political reconciliation is not possible in Afghanistan without the inclusion of Afghan women and girls.”
The US Alternate Representative for Special Political Affairs Robert Wood called the Taliban’s edicts on women “indefensible” and said, “Muslim-majority countries have spoken out against the Taliban’s rationale for these decisions”.
The Taliban invokes the Islamic Sharia law to justify its actions.
“In January, the Organization of Islamic Cooperation emphasized that Islamic law calls for women’s education, work, and participation in public life,” Wood said.
The Taliban extended its ban to about 600 Afghan women working for the UN earlier this month.
In protest, the UN asked all its employees — about 2,700 Afghan men and 600 international workers, including 200 women who were exempt from the ban — to stay home, disrupting the humanitarian work in the country.
Speaking to reporters after the meeting, Russia’s Permanent Representative Vassily Nebenzia, who presided over the Council meeting said: “We are happy that we were unanimous, but we were not completely happy because there is the resolution did not reflect all the issues relating to Afghanistan.”
Russia’s reservation, also shared by China, was that the resolution did not demand that the US release the $7 billion Afghan Central Bank money frozen by it after the August 2021 Taliban takeover of the war-torn nation.
Washington has set up a $3.5 billion trust fund for Afghanistan out of the frozen accounts in Switzerland to allow some of it to be used for that country.
A Chinese combat drone that state media says can carry a heavy weapons payload has flown around Taiwan, according to the island’s defence ministry.
The ministry said a TB-001 drone was one of 19 military aircraft that had entered the island’s air defence identification zone in 24 hours.
It flew around Taiwan, first crossing the Bashi Channel that separates Taiwan from the Philippines, then up the east of Taiwan before crossing back towards the Chinese coast.
China’s People’s Liberation Army (PLA) regularly sends aircraft into Taiwan’s air defence identification zone, or ADIZ, but full circuits around the island are extremely rare.
Chinese state media has referred to the TB-001 as the “twin-tailed scorpion” and has shown pictures of it with missiles under its wings, saying it is capable of high-altitude, long-range missions.
China’s air force has flown what it calls “island encirclement” missions with the nuclear-capable H-6 bomber.
No shots were fired and Chinese aircraft have not flown in Taiwan’s airspace. The ADIZ, is a broader area Taiwan monitors and patrols to give its forces more time to respond to threats.
China has increased military pressure on democratically governed Taiwan over the past three years as it tries to force Taipei to accept Beijing’s sovereignty claims. Taiwan’s government rejects being part of China and says only the island’s people can decide their future.
This month China staged war games around Taiwan after the Taiwanese president, Tsai Ing-wen, met with Kevin McCarthy, speaker of the US House of Representatives, in Los Angeles.
The drills included deployment of an aircraft carrier strike group led by the Shandong, one of China’s two aircraft carriers. Japan’s defence ministry, which also monitors activity in the region, this week said the Shandong ran a record 620 fighter jet launches across 18 days in April.
Chinese military aircraft have since 2022 regularly crossed the median line of the Taiwan Strait, which serves as an unofficial barrier between the two sides, though China says it does not recognise this.
Thursday’s sorties included fighter jets and reconnaissance aircraft, many of which crossed the media line. Taiwan’s defence ministry also detected six PLA ships, but did not give locations. It said defence aircraft, navy vessels, and land-based missile systems had been “tasked in response”, a usual reaction to the PLA’s ADIZ incursions.
With Reuters
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( With inputs from : www.theguardian.com )
Srinagar, Apr 21 (GNS): Indira Gandhi Memorial Tulip garden, located on the foothills of Zabarwan mountain range, turned out to be a major tourist attraction in Kashmir this year with over 3.7 lac visitors from far and wide thronging the garden to enjoy the diverse hues of nature at display.
The Tulip garden spanning over an area of 30 hectares (74 acres) has on a year-to-year basis pulled record number of visitors from all across be it the local, the national or the foreigners.
The figures, available with GNS, suggest that a total of 377201 tourists of which 315266 included domestic, 3259 foreigners and 58676 locals visited the garden over a period of 33 days – after thrown open to visitors on March 19,2023 upto April 20, 2023.
As per an official, the footfall this season was the highest ever. “We had 3.6 lakh tourists visiting the garden last year and this year it saw an increase making it the highest ever footfall in the history of this garden”, the official told GNS adding the period of tulip bloom this season lasted for 33 days, as compared to last year’s 27 day period, largely due to mild weather conditions.
“There were 68 varieties of tulips on display in the garden this season, out of these varieties, four new ones were introduced this year: Hamilton, Sweetheart, Cafe Noir and Christmas Dream”, the official said.
Expressing his satisfaction over the record number of visitors, the official further said the enormous flow of Tourists from within and outside the country motivates us and imbues in us courage to do more to make the visit to the garden a memorable experience. (GNS)
Srinagar, Apr 21: Indira Gandhi Memorial Tulip garden, located on the foothills of Zabarwan mountain range, turned out to be a major tourist attraction in Kashmir this year with over 3.7 lac visitors from far and wide thronging the garden to enjoy the diverse hues of nature at display.
The Tulip garden spanning over an area of 30 hectares (74 acres) has on a year-to-year basis pulled record number of visitors from all across be it the local, the national or the foreigners.
The figures, available with GNS, suggest that a total of 377201 tourists of which 315266 included domestic, 3259 foreigners and 58676 locals visited the garden over a period of 33 days – after thrown open to visitors on March 19,2023 upto April 20, 2023.
As per an official, the footfall this season was the highest ever. “We had 3.6 lakh tourists visiting the garden last year and this year it saw an increase making it the highest ever footfall in the history of this garden”, the official told GNS adding the period of tulip bloom this season lasted for 33 days, as compared to last year’s 27 day period, largely due to mild weather conditions.
“There were 68 varieties of tulips on display in the garden this season, out of these varieties, four new ones were introduced this year: Hamilton, Sweetheart, Cafe Noir and Christmas Dream”, the official said.
Expressing his satisfaction over the record number of visitors, the official further said the enormous flow of Tourists from within and outside the country motivates us and imbues in us courage to do more to make the visit to the garden a memorable experience. (GNS)
“We entrust our members with a lot of responsibility at a very early age. Think about a young combat platoon sergeant, the responsibility and trust we put into those individuals to lead troops in combat,” Pentagon spokesperson Brig. Gen. Patrick Ryder told reporters Thursday while declining to comment on the DOJ investigation. “You receive training and you will receive an understanding of the rules and requirements that come along with those responsibilities.”
The FBI on Thursday arrested Jack Teixeira, a 21-year-old member of the Massachusetts Air National Guard, in connection with the major leak of dozens of pages of classified Pentagon documents, many of which were photos of slides developed by the Joint Staff to brief senior leaders about the situation in Ukraine.
No specific charges were immediately announced, but Teixeira is expected to appear in federal court in Boston on Friday.
Live video from local television stations showed law enforcement leading the young male suspect from his home in North Dighton, Massachusetts, where both Teixeira and his mother live.
The Pentagon released Teixeira’s service record after the FBI arrest, saying he was with the 102nd Intelligence Support Squadron at Otis Air National Guard Base, Massachusetts. He enlisted in 2019, and works on cyber transport systems as a network manager, according to National Guard Bureau spokesperson Nahaku McFadden.
Since news of the leak emerged last week, Pentagon leaders have been tightening the distribution of classified information. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin has been convening daily meetings about the breach’s effect on national security and on how to manage military secrets, Ryder said.
DoD officials are reviewing “a variety of factors” related to safeguarding classified material, and are taking steps such as updating distribution lists and assessing how and where intelligence is shared, Ryder added.
“It’s important to understand that we do have stringent guidelines in place,” Ryder said. “This was a deliberate criminal act, a violation of those guidelines.”
In a statement, Austin said he would “not hesitate to take any additional measures necessary to safeguard our nation’s secrets. He added that he has directed the department’s intelligence leaders to review “intelligence access, accountability and control procedures within the Department to inform our efforts to prevent this kind of incident from happening again.”
Across the world, potentially hundreds or even thousands of people could have had access to the classified information in question, DoD officials said. The leak is prompting questions about whether too many people have exposure to the military’s most sensitive secrets.
“Especially post-Manning and post-Snowden, one of the lessons learned across the military is the greater the number of people that have access to information at any given time, the greater the likelihood of this thing spilling,” said the first official, referring to former Army soldier Chelsea Manning — convicted in 2013 of leaking classified documents to WikiLeaks, and to Edward Snowden, a former contractor who leaked classified information on the National Security Agency.
In most cases, a variety of information is available to an individual with a security clearance over and above what they need to do their jobs. Like Snowden, the person who leaked the documents had access to a number of sensitive documents, but the person was required to “self-police” what they actually accessed, Zaid said.
“It is entirely possible he was tasked with creating briefing books or intel briefings for his command,” he said.
After the arrest, lawmakers were quick to condemn the leak and call for a revision of the rules. Sen. Jack Reed (D-R.I.), chair of the Senate Armed Services Committee, called on the national security community to address “systematic issues,” including “protocols for how intelligence is handled, the security clearance process, and how officials can prevent intelligence leaks like this from ever happening again.”
“This was a major security breach that cannot be allowed to happen again. Leaking this trove of classified information endangered our military and intelligence professionals and undermined the security of our allies and partners,” Reed said.
“Anyone with a security clearance who betrays their country by purposefully mishandling classified documents or disclosing classified materials must be held accountable,” he added.
In an interview, Rep. Seth Moulton (D-Mass.) said the issue of how military members handle classified information is “obviously something we’re gonna look at.”
“But what I am more interested in is a sort of digital watermarking technology that could just make it very clear to anybody viewing intelligence that we know if you’re looking at this,” added Moulton, a former Marine. “If every one of the documents [the leaker] saw was essentially marked with his name in a decipherable way, then that would just be a huge deterrent to sharing intelligence in the future.”
Moulton also noted the age of the suspect and broader issues of giving younger people access to such sensitive information.
“Not to take anything away from the severity of this incident and the criminality of this individual, but this is in some ways related to a broader issue that the U.S. military is facing with recruiting young Americans who — through social media or whatever else — feel incredibly entitled.
“I’ve seen this problem in other aspects of the military,” he continued. “This really is an issue that sort of seems to be a Gen Z issue where you get some of our youngest members of the military who feel particularly self important and entitled and therefore the rules don’t apply to them.”
Lisa Kashinsky contributed to this report.
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( With inputs from : www.politico.com )
Riyadh: Al Baha region in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA) known for its majestic mountains and picturesque landscape, on Monday was hit by unusual hail and snowfall, local media reported.
Cumulus thunderstorms brought unusually high rainfall, closing many roads and disrupting traffic in the area.
Video clips shared on social media platforms showed an accumulation of hail causing vehicles to get stuck on the closed roads.
Emergency crews from the municipality had to remove stones and hail from the roads while the city’s parks turned white.
Despite the disruption, the unusual weather brought excitement to the area, with many motorists stopping by to enjoy the cool, mild weather.
Children and young adults were seen having fun on the mountainsides and snow-covered roadsides.
Anantapur: Hyderabad-based National Geophysical Research Institute has found large deposits of 15 rare earth elements (REE) in Andhra Pradesh’s Anantapur district.
REE of the lanthanide series are critical components in many electronic devices like cellphones, televisions, computers, and automobiles used daily and in various industrial applications.
NGRI scientists were conducting a survey for non-traditional rocks like syenites when they made the significant discovery of the minerals in the lanthanide series. The elements identified included allanite, ceriate, thorite, columbite, tantalite, apatite, zircon, monazite, pyrochlore euxenite and fluorite.
NGRI scientist PV Sunder Raju said, “Zircon of varying shapes was observed in Reddypalle and Peddavadaguru villages.”
“The monazite grains showed high-order multiple colours with radial cracks within grains, suggestive of the presence of radioactive elements, he added.
Raju said that more feasibility studies will be conducted by deep drilling to learn more about these REEs.
“These elements are also used in clean energy, aerospace, defence and in manufacturing permanent magnets — a key component of modern electronics — wind turbines, jet aircraft and several other products. REEs are widely used in high technology because of their luminescent and catalytic properties. The assessment of REEs with implications for metallogeny is now under way at alkaline syenite complexes in AP, NGRI scientists said, as reported by the Times of India article.
Lithium falls in the critical resource category, which was not earlier available in India and we were dependent for its 100 per cent import.
Earlier in February, the Union Government said that 5.9 million tonnes of lithium reserves have been found for the first time in the country in Jammu and Kashmir.
Lithium is a non-ferrous metal and is one of the key components in EV batteries.
Union minister Nitin Gadkari recently said if India can use the recently discovered reserve of lithium in Jammu and Kashmir, it can become the world’s number-one automobile manufacturer in the electric vehicle segment.
Lithium is a light metal. Its density is lower than that of water, so it can actually float. It was not formed naturally on earth but is a cosmic metal.
It points out that some scientists believe that when high-energy cosmic rays slam into heavier elements like carbon and oxygen in interstellar space, breaking them up into lighter atoms, lithium could have been created. In 2020, astronomers discovered that a certain type of red giant stars also become lithium factories at the end of their lives, based on a survey of hundreds of thousands of stars.
Lithium is a highly reactive metal which means that it can hold a lot of energy.
As per reports, using lead-acid technology, it takes 6 kg to store the same amount of energy that a 1 kg lithium-ion battery can handle.
Also, lithium can hold its charge for longer. A Lithium-ion battery loses only 5 per cent charge per month compared with 20 per cent loss in a Nickel Metal Hydride (NiMh) battery. And Lithium can withstand thousands of recharge cycles.
Bijnor: Three persons have been arrested for allegedly trying to smuggle two red sand boa snakes for sale from Pune to Moradabad.
The red sand boa is a snake listed as ‘near threatened’ by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) and is protected under the Wildlife Protection Act.
The accused have been booked under sections of the Wildlife Protection Act and sent to jail.
Following a tip-off, officials of the forest division posed as customers to the accused and nabbed them during the exchange.
The three accused have been identified as Ali Mohammed, Chand Babu, and Noor Hasan.
Gyan Singh, sub-divisional forest officer, said, “Our staff posed as customers and made a deal with them. They were caught red-handed on the Noorpur- Seohara road under the Chandpur forest range after they showed us the snakes for sale.”
A medical examination of the reptiles was also conducted and they were found to be fit. Procedures have been made to release the snakes in their natural habitats on Tuesday, officials said.
Hyderabad: The Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery team, under the direction of Lieutenant Colonel Vinay Singh Parihar, successfully completed a tailored procedure to replace the maxillary jaw at the Military Hospital in Secunderabad,
According to a press release, a 50-year-old female inhabitant of the Hanamkonda region had to have her left upper jaw surgically removed since it had been harmed by a black fungal infection as a side effect of Covid-19. After scanning the intra-oral structures and the facial skeleton, a computer-designed upper jaw model was produced. Then, a titanium jaw was built utilising cutting-edge 3-D printing technology.
The extraordinary feat was made possible by combining surgical skill and technological innovation. According to the press release, the team has become one of the few in the nation to complete rehabilitation treatments utilising cutting-edge fast prototyping methods, paving the way for future patient-specific implant surgeries.
“The president has made clear for over a year now that a top priority is bringing down costs for folks,” said Bharat Ramamurti, deputy director of the National Economic Council and one of the officials spearheading the junk fee initiative. “The fact he’s willing to sharply call out certain behavior and highlight it is encouraging these corporations — at least some of them — to come along with us.”
The changes made by companies over the last several days are modest, and as much a result of corporate calculations as political pressure. Drugmaker Eli Lilly plans to slash its insulin prices and cap out-of-pocket costs at $35 a month for privately insured patients, bringing it in line with a limit Democrats imposed on Medicare as part of last year’s Inflation Reduction Act. But the discounts will only apply to its older products, and the changes are unlikely to affect the company’s bottom line.
In a similar vein, three major airlines — United, American and Frontier — are eliminating extra fees often faced by parents wanting to ensure they can sit with their children on flights, a practice Biden slammed last month as akin to treating kids “like a piece of luggage.” Still, they’re keeping the web of other seat and baggage charges that have become the industry norm.
The announcements nevertheless sparked celebrations in the West Wing, where aides believe pressure will now ramp up on competitors to follow suit — and provide Biden with tangible new achievements to tout.
Democrats have long targeted high pharmaceutical prices, driven in large part by surveys showing drug affordability is a top worry for voters on both sides of the aisle. White House economic aides charged with assembling Biden’s “junk fee” agenda, meanwhile, zeroed in on surprise fees that not only affect broader economic competition but are simply the most likely to drive Americans crazy.
“I do a lot of polling, and it’s rare to see policies that have this much universal consensus,” said Danielle Deiseroth, the interim executive director at Data for Progress. The progressive think tank published a post-State of the Union survey pegging voter support for banning such fees — like those tied to concert ticket purchases, hotel stays and seating families together on airplanes — at nearly 80 percent. “Saving people money transcends party lines,” she said.
Biden is pushing for comprehensive legislation that would lock in those price restrictions across the board. The White House has vowed to renew its pursuit of a universal insulin price cap, after Republican opposition forced it out of the IRA. And since Biden pitched his vision for a “Junk Fee Prevention Act” during the State of the Union, aides have sought out Democratic lawmakers willing to turn the idea into actual legislation.
But there’s little expectation that those proposals will gain traction with a Republican House staunchly opposed to the administration’s economic agenda. That’s prompted Biden officials to focus on wringing concessions out of individual corporations, using what aides characterized as a combination of public pressure and lighter-touch coaxing behind the scenes.
The White House honed the approach during its initial Covid-19 response. It rolled out plans for sweeping new regulations like requiring employers to give workers paid time off to get vaccinated, while simultaneously encouraging companies in private to get out ahead by instituting their own similar policies — and showering praise on them when they did.
“If we could find a company that was willing to take the first step, then that was always an opening to bring other companies along,” said Zach Butterworth, who until recently served as the White House’s liaison to the business community. He added that the goal was to create a pervasive sense within the private sector that “if you weren’t taking these steps, you were outside the mainstream.”
It’s a strategy that’s found varying success; for every industry-wide pact the White House secured on initiatives, such as discounted broadband internet access, it’s faced resistance on others like lowering gas prices, where oil companies effectively shrugged off Biden’s threats to rein in what he criticized as “war profiteering.”
The airlines’ decisions to be more family friendly came after the Department of Transportation told companies it planned to publish a table showing which carriers charged parents extra to sit with their young kids. Eli Lilly is cutting insulin prices amid sustained scrutiny over the drug’s cost, going as far in its announcement as urging “policymakers, employers and others to join us in making insulin more affordable,” despite resisting such calls from consumer advocates for years until it made financial sense for the company.
Despite the companies’ murky motives, Biden has made a show of applauding them without reservation, hoping it will convince competitors to do the same if only to get the public relations boost.
“The thing we can always withhold is that praise,” a senior White House official said. “Part of the benefit for the company is they get a pat on the head from the government.”
Within corporate boardrooms, the reaction has been more measured. Though others may follow suit, analysts said, it’s far from signaling a sea change in industry behavior.
“The industry was moving in this direction anyway without the president making it part of his State of the Union,” said Jay Sorensen, president of airline consulting firm IdeaWorksCompany, adding that family seat fees had already become a nuisance for another group: the flight attendants having to mediate travelers’ constant requests to switch seats.
Umer Raffat, an analyst who covers the drug industry for investment bank Evercore ISI, provided a blunt assessment of Eli Lilly’s price cuts: “Not a needle mover for them.”
The White House’s crowing has also failed to dent the business lobby’s opposition to Biden’s broader junk fee plan, with corporate leaders grumbling that the administration was vastly overstating the impact and popularity of the moves, as well as its own role in driving them.
“What this is really about is trying to impose price caps — and that didn’t work very well in the early 1970s, it’s not going to work very well today,” said Neil Bradley, chief policy officer at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. “This isn’t a junk fee agenda; this is a government price control agenda that’s trying to be rebranded.”
The extra attention has also yet to prompt other airlines or insulin makers to take actions of their own. And there’s little visible progress so far on other elements of the junk fee agenda. The White House has yet to directly discuss their efforts to ban resort fees with major hotel brands or talk to Ticketmaster executives about its ticketing service charges.
But Democrats argue that even if the financial effects are limited, the moves create an outsized political opportunity for Biden — and show his administration is making small yet visible improvements to Americans’ financial situation.
“There are very few pieces of legislation that will move through Congress over the next two years,” Deiseroth said. “So for the Biden administration to be able to point to these victories and say, we called for this and it’s happening, it’s almost an achievement by proxy.”
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( With inputs from : www.politico.com )
