Weather Update for Today: Light to moderate rain/snow showers are possible at many places in Kashmir, and at a few places in Jammu region today. Overall nothing major is expected.
Towards the night/early morning hours tomorrow, a light to moderate spell of snowfall can occur at a few places in Kashmir.
In Leh mostly dry weather will be there. In Kargil one or two light snow showers are possible in the afternoon/evening.
Regards: Kashmir Weather
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Jammu, Jan 21: Police on Saturday launched investigations amid reports of damage to a streetlight and splinters marks on wall of a house of a former MLA at Lassana in Surankote area of Poonch district.
Official sources told GNS that house belongs to ex-MLA Surankote Choudhary Mohammad Akram and falls close to a jungle area.
They said preliminary investigations suggest that splinter marks on wall were caused by pellets from a 12-bore rifle. “Further investigations are underway,” the said. While no one was injured in the incident, it has led to panic among locals.
A police officer told GNS that investigators are inquiring all possible angles. ” Since the house is in close vicinity of a jungle, it could be case of hunter shots hitting the house or there could be other possibilities. We are investigating all angles.” (GNS)
In the first scene of the punchy Sundance thriller Fair Play, a New York couple, Luke (Alden Ehrenreich) and Emily (the Bridgerton breakout Phoebe Dynevor), are covered in blood. They’re at his brother’s wedding and are so desperately in heat for one another that they soon find themselves in the bathroom, him performing oral sex before group photos are taken. But Emily is on her period and between cleaning themselves off and laughing at the unfortunate timing, a ring falls out of Luke’s pocket and suddenly they’re engaged. A marriage forged in blood.
It’s no real spoiler to say that it’s a nasty omen of what’s to come, the writer-director Chloe Domont’s ruthless, and ruthlessly entertaining, feature debut taking a happy young couple and throwing them into chaos. There’s something darkly gratifying about that formula, one we haven’t seen as much of recently but that dominated the 80s and 90s. While there’s a definite throwback vibe to Fair Play, Domont isn’t interested in merely repeating what’s come before.
Luke and Emily don’t just live together – they also work together as analysts in the high-stakes and high-pressure world of finance, forced to abide by company policy and keep their relationship secret. When a job opens up above them, Emily is thrilled to hear whispers that it might be going to Luke. But when it ultimately ends up hers, the couple is forced into a difficult situation. With the tables turned, Luke finds it harder to support her success and the pair start to unravel.
With a delicacy that more genre films aiming to tackle weightier topics could afford to emulate, Domont cooly constructs a contemporary story about how a gendered disparity in finance and power can wreck a seemingly successful relationship. Emily’s new position is a threat to Luke, to his self-worth and to his masculinity, and it tears at them both, following them back from the office to the bedroom. Back in 1994, the corporate thriller Disclosure posited that the only thing scarier than a woman scorned was a woman scorned who was also your boss, painting a laughably dated portrait of the evils of having women climb the corporate ladder. Fair Play, while recalling many a Michael Douglas thriller from Fatal Attraction to A Perfect Murder, is a smart rebuke to such misogyny. The biggest threat here ends up being a man’s ego.
But Domont also avoids blunting or over-stacking her story, allowing both characters to make wrong moves along the way, with some of Emily’s decisions far from unimpeachable. Bristling tension arises from the small stuff that starts to become unavoidably big, rather than an over-reliance on farfetched plot developments, a sleekly modulated balance of domestic and corporate thrills that mostly feel believably grounded. It’s a film of many, many high-volume arguments but Dynevor and Ehrenreich remarkably avoid even the slightest sign of histrionic excess, expertly carrying over their sexual chemistry to the couple’s more horrible moments – a pair you buy in moments of love as much as you do in moments of hate. Both performances are exceptionally effective, with Ehrenreich returning from his post-Solo slump to remind us why he was seen as the Next Best Thing way back when and Dynevor, a relative newcomer to film, at least, possessing the kind of confident command that should elevate her to the A-list in no time.
Workplace narratives adjacent to this have been relegated to television (there are obvious comparisons to the work-life tension in the equally horny and treacherous world of Industry) but it’s refreshing to see a story such as this self-contained within two hours. There are the odd bits of dead weight (Luke’s obsession with a self-help business guru proving a little clunky) and there’s likely to be some impassioned discussion over one particularly troubling scene in the last act, but Domont ends with a fantastic drop-the-mic moment that had the audience here at Sundance enthusiastically applauding.
Sundance is a competitive market festival and with the film still seeking a buyer, one can expect a fierce bidding war. This one is a winner.
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( With inputs from : www.theguardian.com )
Watch Video: Iftikhar Ahmed smashes three sixes in a row against Haris Rauf during record-breaking, 45-ball T20 ton
Iftikhar Ahmed turned on beast mode in Fortune Barishal’s clash against Rangpur Riders as he brought up his maiden T20 century. En route his T20 ton, Iftikhar took on his Pakistan teammate Haris Rauf and smashed him for three consecutive sixes in the penultimate over on January 19.
Batting at No.6 and walking out after his team had been reduced to 46-4 within the powerplay, Iftikhar combined with skipper Shakib Al Hasan to steady the innings. The Pakistan batter started off cautiously and was batting at 22 off 20 at one point before he got going with four maximums in the 14th over, bowled by Shamim Hossain.
Iftikhar was also given a life in the very same over when he was batting on 47 off 25 after being dropped at short third, and did not look back, reaching his fifty in 30 deliveries before shifting into attacking mode.
His next 50 runs came in only 15 deliveries, a period of play that saw him hit four boundaries and as many sixes, three of which came against his Pakistan national teammate Rauf.
Rauf was unable to nail the yorker in the third ball of the 19th over, which Iftikhar made full use of as he smashed it over long-on. He got a top-edge on the next delivery and it sailed over deep backward square and then completed a hat-trick of maximums by pulling a shorter ball in the exact area again.
Rauf conceded 24 runs in the penultimate over which spoiled his bowling figures. In the first three overs he bowled, Rauf gave just 18 runs and picked up the wicket of opener Anamul Haque and Ibrahim Zadran.
In the post-match presentation, Iftikhar expressed his emotions as he said, “It was my dream to get a hundred in T20s. The situation was ideal and I went for it.” The ‘Player of the match’ also talked about the rivalry with teammate Rauf. “There is no animosity. It was a true batting pitch and I took the attack to him,” the middle-order batter said.
WATCH VIDEO BELOW:
🔥 Iftikhar’s first T20 hundred 🔥 A record 192-run stand between Iftikhar and Shakib
The search for British actor Julian Sands continues nearly a week after he was reported missing while hiking in a treacherous area of California’s San Gabriel Mountains, where at least two other hikers have already perished this winter.
The search for the 65-year-old actor is currently being conducted “via helicopter only”, the San Bernardino county sheriff’s department said Friday afternoon, because the risk of avalanches around Mt Baldy has continued to make on-the-ground rescue efforts too dangerous.
There is currently no timeline for ending the search for Sands, department spokesperson Gloria Huerta said on Friday.
The Mt Baldy bowl area where Sands was hiking has been a deadly one this winter, with at least two hikers killed in the area after falling and injuring themselves in the past month, according to the sheriff’s department.
One of the two hikers who died, identified by local media as Crystal Paula Gonzalez, was an experienced hiker, known to family and friends as “the hiking queen,” CBS News Los Angeles reported. Authorities said that Gonzalez, who had previously summited Mt Whitney, one of the highest peaks in the United States, slipped and fell more than 500ft while hiking on 8 January, and died of her injuries on the mountain.
Search and rescue teams have responded to more than two dozen different incidents of lost or injured hikers in the Mt Baldy area over the past month, with authorities this week warning even experienced hikers to stay away from the mountain during “extremely dangerous” conditions.
Sands, an avid hiker and longtime resident of the Los Angeles area, was reported missing around 7.30pm last Friday. Pings from his cell phone logged in subsequent days only showed his movements on 13 January, the sheriff’s department said late Friday.
Initial ground and helicopter searches of one of his possible locations that day did not locate any evidence of Sands, the department said. Further analysis of Sands’ cell phone location data is ongoing, but, “Thus far, no workable leads have been developed”, the department said.
At this point, there is no data that indicates Sands’ whereabouts after Friday, the day he was reported missing, Huerta said. His vehicle was located in the Mt Baldy area, and has been towed by his family, she said.
“Additional air searches will be conducted,” the department said.
A view of Mt San Antonio, also known as Mt Baldy, in the San Gabriel mountains near Los Angeles. Photograph: Mark A Johnson/Alamy
As California has been buffeted by winter storms, weather conditions in the mountain have inhibited attempts to assist missing and injured hikers, including Sands. Rescue crews looking for Sands on the ground had to be pulled off the mountain on Saturday night because of the dangerous weather. Weather conditions also inhibited the efforts to evacuate Gonzalez, the injured hiker, off the mountain to a hospital, a medic told CBS News Los Angeles. She left behind five children, the news outlet reported.
More than 21 people have died across California in the storms of the past few weeks, and others, including a five-year-old boy swept away in flood waters, remain missing.
Sands, who is known for his roles in The Killing Fields, A Room with a View, and Naked Lunch, has lived in the Los Angeles area for years with his wife, the writer Eugenia Citkowitz, with whom he has a son. He also has two daughters with former Evening Standard and BBC Radio 4 Today program editor Sarah Sands, to whom he was married from 1984 to 1987.
Other Hollywood actors, writers and producers, have posted their prayers for Sands and his family on social media, praising him as an inspiration and a friend.
“Keep candles burning for his safe return from the mountain he loves,” actor Matthew Modine wrote on Twitter.
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#Julian #Sands #helicopter #search #missing #actor
( With inputs from : www.theguardian.com )
Jammu & Kashmir Govt Sacked Employees For Fraud Recruitment- Know Name Of These Employees Here
Srinagar, Jan 21: Government has dismissed six employees for secured jobs on fake degrees in the union territory of Jammu and Kashmir, officials said on Saturday.
They told Srinagar based news agency Kashmir Dot Com that six Junior Statistical assistants of the Planning and Monitoring department who had obtained jobs on the basis of ‘fake degrees’ were dismissed from the service by the Lt governor administration.
“It came to the notice of the department that six employees had used fake degrees to obtain the jobs. The verification conducted by the department proved that the degrees obtained by the six employees were fake ,” they said, adding that accordingly appointments were cancelled .
ALSO READ: JKSSB Releases Provisional Selection List For Various posts- Check District Wise List
The dismissed employees were identified as
Suhail Ahmad Sheikh, a resident of Kachdoora Vehil Shopian,
Feroz Hamid son of Peerzada Abdul Hamid , resident of Sopore near Bus Stand,
Gulzar Ahmad Wani son of Ghulam Mohiuddin Wani, a resident of Bustand Kulgam,
Mehraj ud din Dar son of Mohammad Ramzan Dar, a resident of Sadar Bazar Kulgam,
Mudasir Ahmad Bhat son of Ghulam Mohi ud Din Bha, a resident of Wani Mohalla Kulgam, and
Showkat Ahmad Parray son of Mohammad Ramzan Parray, a resident of H N Pora Kulgam.
All the six Junior Statistical Assistants from Kashmir division were selected through Service Selection Board (SSB) of Jammu and Kashmir in the year 2012.
A top official while confirming the development to KDC said “In view of adverse verification report of qualifications in respect of all six Junior Statistical assistants, the appointments were subsequently cancelled ab-initio.” (KDC)
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A handful of congressional Democrats have encouraged federal probes into Abbott’s handling of the contamination of formula products, which ultimately triggered a major recall and shut down a key plant located in Sturgis, Mich. last February. A whistleblower alleged Abbott employees falsified documents and covered up food safety violations from FDA inspectors before the recall.
The DOJ and FDA declined to comment on the investigation.
The Sturgis plant had produced about one-fifth of the nation’s infant formula supply, and the closure triggered massive shortages that rippled through the country and months later sparked a political crisis for President Joe Biden.
The DOJ investigation comes just a few weeks after Abbott and Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine announced the company’s plans to build a new $536 million manufacturing facility in the state to produce specialty and metabolic formulas for medically-vulnerable children and adults who were hardest hit by the shortages. Abbott has struggled to ramp up production of the special formulas at its Sturgis plant, and has recently pushed back the availability of a slate of metabolic formulas to April.
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#Abbott #criminal #investigation #baby #formula #crisis
( With inputs from : www.politico.com )
Anantnag; A 38-year-old man suffered a cardiac arrest and passed away on Saturday early morning in south Kashmir’s Anantnag district.
The 38 year old man fell unconscious at home.He was immediately rushed to District Hospital Anantnag for treatment where doctors decalred him dead on arrival.
According to an Hospital official the person was brought dead to the hospital after having suffered cardiopulmonary arrest.
“He has been identified as Nazir Ahmad Mir alias Nazir Ashiq (38), a resident of Palpora Dailgam,” he said.
Pertinently to mention that due to Cardiac arrest 11 People dies in past 9 days so far.
A new prime minister for New Zealand has been chosen by the Labour party after the shock resignation of Jacinda Ardern on Thursday.
Chris Hipkins – the minister for education and policing, and one of the primary architects of the Covid response – was nominated uncontested by the party caucus on Saturday morning, after efforts by senior MPs to achieve consensus and secure a smooth transition in Ardern’s wake. The caucus is due to formally endorse his selection on Sunday.
Taking on the prime ministership would be “the biggest responsibility and the biggest privilege of my life”, Hipkins said on Saturday, speaking to reporters on parliament’s steps in his first appearance since the nomination. “The weight of that responsibility is still sinking in.”
An experienced MP with a ruthless streak in the debating chamber and an intimate knowledge of the machinery of government, Hipkins will face perhaps the biggest challenge of his political career: persuading New Zealanders to grant Labour another term in government, without Ardern’s star power at the helm.
Hipkins paid tribute to his predecessor, saying she had been “an incredible prime minister” who had “provided calm, stable, reassuring leadership, which I hope to continue to do”.
He also spoke on some of the challenges Ardern had faced including threats and abuse, particularly in relation to the Covid pandemic. “There has been an escalation in vitriol, and I want to acknowledge that some politicians have been the subject of that more than others,” he said. “Our current prime minister Jacinda Ardern has absolutely been on the receiving end of some absolutely intolerable and unacceptable behaviour.”
How the world fell in love with Jacinda Ardern – video
Around New Zealand, Hipkins, 44, will be best known as the face and primary implementer of the Covid elimination strategy, a role that saw him taking the podium next to Ardern for weekly updates as the pandemic evolved.
That background may help and hinder him: it gave him a significant profile and made him a household name, but also gives him immediate associations with a chapter many New Zealanders are now hoping to put behind them, and which has galvanised a small, radical and often vitriolic core of anti-vaccine opponents.
While his profile is lower than Ardern’s, the MP has had a few moments of international virality.
In one Covid-era gaffe, he became a meme after encouraging New Zealanders to “go outside and spread their legs” in a national announcement.
Last year, he bemused internet observers with a birthday cake constructed entirely of sausage rolls.
The question of Hipkins’ deputy has not yet been decided – a vote will take place on Sunday. Hipkins would not comment on whether he would choose a woman to serve alongside him, except to say: “For the first time in New Zealand’s history, we have a gender balanced parliament. Women are going to occupy senior roles in our parliament. That is good, that is fantastic, and we should be proud of that as a country.”
A career politician who has held office since 2008, Hipkins was the safest choice for Labour. Of the candidates considered for the role, he is most capable of stepping immediately into the work of governance and carrying the government’s legislative agenda through to the October election.
Over the last term, as well as meaty portfolios in education, Covid response and policing, he has been leader of the house and public service minister, two wonky roles that are deeply immersed in the nuts and bolts of governance and provide an intimate knowledge of the political process.
Speaking to the Guardian in 2021, he said one of his political strengths was “Understanding how the machinery of government operates, which is something that I’ve developed over about 20 years.
“I’ve watched people come into politics from outside, very talented people, very knowledgable, with a lot of subject matter expertise – but they’ve struggled to get the machinery of government to do what they wanted to do. And I like to think that I’ve managed to – I’m not perfect – but that I’ve managed to kind of figure that out.”
While that makes him well-equipped to carry Labour’s last sets of reforms through this term, his larger battle will be on the campaign trail. Curia polling released on Friday – drawn from before Ardern’s resignation – placed her party at 32%, compared with National’s 37%. Right- and leftwing coalition partners Act and the Greens were sitting at 11% apiece.
With an election approaching on 14 October, Hipkins faces a steep road ahead – to transform Labour’s fortunes and gather the support to form a new government.
Asked by reporters “Can you win the election?” Hipkins responded simply: “Yes.”
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#Chris #Hipkins #set #prime #minister #Zealand
( With inputs from : www.theguardian.com )
Joe Biden has been accused of hypocrisy for demanding the release of journalists detained around the world while the US president continues seeking the extradition of the WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange from Britain to face American espionage charges.
The campaign to pressure the Biden administration to drop the charges moved to Washington DC on Friday with a hearing of the Belmarsh Tribunal, an ad hoc gathering of legal experts and supporters named after the London prison where Assange is being detained.
The hearing was held in the same room where Assange in 2010 exposed the “collateral murder” video showing US aircrew gunning down Iraqi civilians, the first of hundreds of thousands of leaked secret military documents and diplomatic cables published in major newspapers around the world. The revelations about America’s wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, including alleged war crimes, and the frank assessments of US diplomats about their host governments, caused severe embarrassment in Washington.
The tribunal heard that the charges against Assange were an “ongoing attack on press freedom” because the WikiLeaks founder was not a spy but a journalist and publisher protected by free speech laws.
The tribunal co-chairperson Srecko Horvat – a founder of the Democracy in Europe Movement 2025 whose father was a political prisoner in the former Yugoslavia – quoted Biden from the 2020 presidential campaign calling for the release of imprisoned journalists across the world by quoting late president Thomas Jefferson’s dictum that “our liberty depends on the freedom of the press, and that cannot be limited without being lost”.
“President Biden is normally advocating freedom of press, but at the same time continuing the persecution of Julian Assange,” Horvat said.
Horvat warned that continuing the prosecution could serve as a bad example to other governments.
“This is an attack on press freedom globally – that’s because the United States is advancing what I think is really the extraordinary claim that it can impose its criminal secrecy laws on a foreign publisher who was publishing outside the United States,” he said.
“Every country has secrecy laws. Some countries have very draconian secrecy laws. If those countries tried to extradite New York Times reporters and publishers to those countries for publishing their secrets we would cry foul and rightly so. Does this administration want to be the first to establish the global precedent that countries can demand the extradition of foreign reporters and publishers for violating their own laws?”
Assange faces 18 charges over WikiLeaks’ publication of classified documents, largely the result of a leak by the former US army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning. Manning was sentenced to 35 years in prison but released after President Barack Obama commuted her sentence in 2017. Manning has testified that she acted on her own initiative in sending the documents to WikiLeaks and not at the urging of Assange.
The tribunal heard that the accuracy of the information published by WikiLeaks, including evidence of war crimes and human rights abuses, was not in question.
Assange is a polarising figure who has fallen out with many of the news organisations with whom he has worked, including the Guardian and New York Times. He lost some support when he broke his bail conditions in 2012 and sought refuge in the Ecuadorian embassy in London to avoid extradition to Sweden to face questioning over sexual assault allegations.
The US justice department brought charges against Assange in 2019 when he was expelled by the Ecuadorians from their embassy.
Assange fought a lengthy legal battle in the British courts against extradition to the US after his arrest, but lost. Last year, the then-home secretary, Priti Patel, approved the extradition request. Assange has appealed, claiming that he is “being prosecuted and punished for his political opinions”.
Assange’s father, John Shipton, condemned his son’s “ceaseless malicious abuse”, including the conditions in which he is held in Britain. He said the UK’s handling of the case was “an embarrassment” that damaged the country’s claim to stand for free speech and the rule of law.
Lawyer Jeffrey Sterling, a former CIA employee who was imprisoned under the Espionage Act for revealing defence secrets to the journalist James Risen, told the Belmarsh Tribunal that Assange has little chance of a fair trial in the US.
He said: “It is virtually impossible to defend against the Espionage Act. Truth is no defence. In fact, any defence related to truth will be prohibited. In addition, he won’t have access to any of the so-called evidence used against him.
“The Espionage Act has not been used to fight espionage. It’s being used against whistleblowers and Julian Assange to keep the public ignorant of [the government’s] wrongdoings and illegalities in order to maintain its hold on authority, all in the name of national security.”
The tribunal also heard from Britain’s former Labour party leader Jeremy Corbyn, who said the continued prosecution of Assange would make all journalists afraid to reveal secrets.
“If Julian Assange ends up in a maximum security prison in the United States for the rest of his life, every other journalist around the world will think, ‘Should I really report this information I’ve been given? Should I really speak out about this denial of human rights or miscarriage of justice in any country?’” he said.
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#Biden #accused #hypocrisy #seeks #extradition #Julian #Assange
( With inputs from : www.theguardian.com )
