Tag: urgent

Kashmir’s Canine Chaos Sparks Urgent Call for Action

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SRINAGAR: As incidents of dog bites increase in Kashmir, there is a growing need for sterilization and proper waste disposal. According to doctors, sterilizing and vaccinating dogs can help control their population, prevent rabies, and reduce attacks. They emphasized that sterilization is the sole scientifically-proven method of controlling the stray dog population.
“Every day, a large number of people are falling prey to dog bites. The canines are storming streets, chasing cars, pulling down bicycle riders, and often attacking pedestrians and school children,” they said.
A few days ago, a minor boy was mauled by dogs in Beighpora Awantipora in Pulwama. Doctors treating him said that the wounds were so deep that even his lungs were injured, and the incident is enough to show the gravity of dog bite menace in Kashmir. They said that the minor boy was brought to SMHS Hospital in critical condition with multiple injuries, including injuries to the scalp, chest, shoulder, thigh, and other parts. There were deep wounds on his body, and his vitals were deranged when he was brought to the hospital, they said.
“The patient is stable now, and his multiple injuries have been stitched and repaired with the help of plastic and ENT surgeons, and we are hopeful that he will recover soon,” they said.
Parents of the minor said that he was attacked by the dogs in farmland when no one was there, but the main reason behind it is the improper disposal of waste that is luring dogs. They said that both the public and the government are responsible for the improper disposal of waste, but action needs to be taken immediately as today it has happened with us and tomorrow the same can happen with others.
Despite going through such a difficult phase, nobody from the administration has even called us, they said, adding that the government must take steps immediately to eradicate the growing dog bite menace.
An official from the anti-rabies clinic SMHS said that from 1st April 2022 till 31st March 2023, as many as 6,875 bite cases were reported to ARC SMHS, and most of them were from Srinagar. Giving details, he said that among animal bites in the last year, 4,912 animal bite cases were reported from Srinagar at ARC SMHS, 317 from Budgam, 201 from Baramulla, 134 from Kupwara, 168 from Bandipora, 301 from Ganderbal, 221 from Pulwama, 138 from Shopian, 147 from Kulgam, 85 from Anantnag, and 231 from other areas.
Rabies is an invariably fatal viral disease resulting in approximately 59,000 human deaths per year globally, with 95% of cases occurring in Africa and Asia. The only way to prevent a rabies death is vaccination of an animal bite victim. In Kashmir, the burden and characteristics of dog bites are not routinely captured by the health system in place. (KNO)

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#Kashmirs #Canine #Chaos #Sparks #Urgent #Call #Action
( With inputs from : kashmirlife.net )

April 21, 2023
Court rejects Trump’s urgent bid to keep lawyer’s records from special counsel

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After setting middle-of-the-night deadlines for filings in the dispute, a three-judge panel of the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals on Wednesday afternoon declined Trump’s request for a stay of Howell’s ruling, ordering attorney Evan Corcoran to provide records to a Washington-based grand jury assigned to the special counsel’s probe.
The appeals court’s full order was not released, so it was not immediately clear whether Corcoran would be required to testify in addition to providing documents. But a summary of the D.C. Circuit’s order indicated that prosecutors had prevailed and that stay requests from the Trump camp were denied.
It’s also unclear whether the panel provided any time for Trump to challenge the decision before the full bench of the appeals court or to seek relief from the Supreme Court.
Howell ruled on Friday that Trump’s attorney-client privilege had to yield to the grand jury’s need for Corcoran’s testimony and records, given evidence that the attorney had been used to advance a crime. Smith’s probe is exploring potential obstruction of justice of the classified-documents investigation, as well as illegal retention of classified information and theft of government records, according to court filings.
The appeals court’s order on Wednesday — from Judges Cornelia Pillard, J. Michelle Childs and Florence Pan — didn’t identify Corcoran or the case at issue but made clear that the government was on the winning side of the case in Howell’s court and in the appeals court’s new ruling.
Pillard is an appointee of President Barack Obama as is Howell, the District Court judge who ruled in the dispute. Childs and Pan are appointees of President Joe Biden.
Spokespeople for Trump, his campaign and Smith did not immediately respond to requests for comment on Wednesday on the appeals court’s decision.
“Prosecutors only attack lawyers when they have no case whatsoever,” Trump’s 2024 presidential campaign said in a statement on Tuesday night that also assailed what it called “illegal” leaks about the closed-door court fight. “These leaks are happening because there is no factual or legal basis or substance to any case against President Trump.”

In an order on Tuesday night, the three-judge appeals panel granted a short-term “administrative” stay and also asked Trump’s attorneys to specify the precise set of documents at issue by midnight and for Smith’s team to respond by 6 a.m. Wednesday to the Trump team’s demand for a longer stay of Howell’s ruling.
Howell’s secret order on Friday required Corcoran to testify about matters he and Trump had claimed were subject to attorney-client privilege. Her order relied on the “crime-fraud exception,” which permits investigators to pursue evidence that would ordinarily be privileged but contains evidence of likely criminal conduct.
As chief judge, Howell supervised all disputes arising from grand jury proceedings happening in Washington. That responsibility passed on Friday to U.S. District Court Judge James Boasberg, who succeeded Howell as chief, but only after Howell issued the potentially momentous privilege ruling in the Trump-related legal fight.
Proceedings related to the classified-documents grand jury, including efforts by prosecutors to compel Corcoran’s testimony, are occurring under seal — typical for nearly all grand jury proceedings.
However, the appeals court’s docket provides bare-bones details about the case, identifying when the lower-court battle began — Feb. 7 — and confirming that it stems from a grand-jury-related ruling Howell issued on Friday.
The grand jury probe of Trump, helmed by Smith, is an outgrowth of a monthslong battle between the National Archives and Trump to obtain hundreds of government records stashed at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida after leaving office. Trump’s aides returned 15 boxes of records in January 2022, including some that bore classification markings. As a result, the Archives brought in the Justice Department to pursue whether Trump had retained additional classified material.
In May 2022, the Justice Department subpoenaed Trump’s office, demanding the production of any other classified materials he might possess at Mar-a-Lago. Justice Department officials traveled in early June to Mar-a-Lago, where they briefly interacted with Trump and picked up a folder of records deemed classified. Trump’s team then certified that they had thoroughly searched the premises and turned over remaining classified documents.
But the department developed evidence suggesting that this wasn’t the case, leading to an Aug. 8, 2022, FBI search of the property, where dozens of additional documents with classification markings were discovered.
Corcoran, who was Trump’s primary point of contact with the Archives and the Justice Department, has faced scrutiny for his involvement in efforts to certify that Trump had returned all potentially classified materials.
The legal maneuvering in Washington comes as Trump’s lawyers are also awaiting a potential indictment of their client in an unrelated case in New York, an investigation by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg into details of a hush money payment made in 2016 to the porn actress Stormy Daniels

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#Court #rejects #Trumps #urgent #bid #lawyers #records #special #counsel
( With inputs from : www.politico.com )

March 23, 2023
Urgent action needed to strengthen international financial architecture: IMF MD to G20

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Bengaluru: IMF Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva on Saturday said there is an urgent need to strengthen the international financial architecture, especially in the area of debt resolution and Global Financial Safety Net at a time when global growth is set to slow in 2023.
Terming India a relative bright spot, she said, it is an important engine of growth for the world economy, representing about 15 per cent of global growth in 2023.
India’s remarkable progress on Digital Public Infrastructure provides a strong basis to secure robust and inclusive growth over the medium term, she said at the first G20 Finance Ministers and Central Bank Governors (FMCBG) meeting under India Presidency here.
“With global growth set to slow in 2023 and remain below its historical average, too many people in too many countries are struggling to make ends meet a point that I highlighted in my recent blog on policy priorities for G20. The international community, therefore, has a responsibility to come together to find solutions for the most vulnerable members of our global family,” she said.
This calls for urgent action to strengthen the international financial architecture, especially in the area of debt resolution and strengthening Global Financial Safety Net, she added.
Global Financial Safety Net is a set of institutions and mechanisms that provide insurance against crises and financing to mitigate their impact.
In light of rising debt vulnerabilities in many countries, she said, there is a need to strengthen the debt architecture and improve the speed and effectiveness of debt resolution.
Sovereign debt vulnerabilities, already elevated before the pandemic, have been exacerbated by the shocks stemming from Covid-19 and Russia’s war against Ukraine, she said, adding, this is particularly the case for developing and low-income countries with very limited policy space and huge development needs.

It is therefore imperative for G20 to strengthen the debt architecture and G20 did so in 2020 with Debt Service Suspension Initiative (DSSI) and by establishing Common Framework (CF) for debt resolution, she said.
“Since then, the CF delivered a debt operation for Chad. It is now critical to complete Zambia’s debt restructuring, establish a Creditor Committee for Ghana, and advance work with Ethiopia. Nonetheless, more predictable, timely, and orderly processes are needed both for countries under the CF and for those not covered by it, including Sri Lanka and Suriname,” she said.
“This means that we must enhance dialogue and collaboration on debt issues. This is the goal of the new Global Sovereign Debt Roundtable (GSDR): to bring together creditors official, old and new, and private and debtor countries to discuss key issues that can facilitate the debt resolution process.
“We launched the GSDR under the auspices of India’s G20 Presidency last week at the deputies’ level, followed by an engaged and constructive principals meeting earlier today. We will further build on this discussion during the World Bank-IMF Spring Meetings in April,” she said.
Being the centre of Global Financial Safety Net, she said IMF has been scaling up lending as members confront the significant economic challenges that the past few years have brought.
In a world of great uncertainty and repeated turbulence, it is critical to further bolster IMF’s capacity to support its members, she said.
“This applies most urgently to our concessional financing for low-income countries through our Poverty Reduction and Growth Facility (PRGT). Demand for PRGT support has reached unprecedented levels and can only be met if matched by an increase in PRGT loan and subsidy resources,” she said.
In addition, she said, a successful quota review which IMF’s membership has committed to complete by December 2023 is critical for a strong Global Financial Safety Net.
“The latter has always been important for global stability and is even more important in today’s challenging global environment, especially for the most vulnerable countries and people. Our common interest is to secure a well-functioning and integrated global economy, for the sake of a more secure and prosperous world,” she said.
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#Urgent #action #needed #strengthen #international #financial #architecture #IMF #G20
( With inputs from www.siasat.com )

February 25, 2023
Journalist held without trial in China said to need urgent medical attention

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Advocates for a Chinese journalist and activist who has been held in detention without trial for almost 18 months have said she needs urgent medical attention.
Huang Xueqin and Wang Jianbing, a labour rights activist, were detained in September 2021 and formally arrested a month later. They have been accused of inciting subversion of state power, and held in Guangzhou without access to family or lawyers.
Advocates and human rights groups have said the pair should never have been arrested. This week they said information had been brought to them that raised concerns about Huang’s health in particular. They said they were told she has lost a lot of weight, stopped menstruating, and is suffering from untreated long-term conditions and deficiencies.
“It is of great concern that these conditions, if not treated promptly and appropriately, have the potential to gradually cause permanent damage to the body,” they said.
The advocates also accused authorities of “trying to exert mental pressure and physical torture” of Huang, through repeatedly waking her at night for interrogation and depriving her of sleep.
“These circumstances are only the tip of the iceberg of what we can learn about Huang Xueqin’s detention situation,” the advocates said. “Due to the inability to learn more about Xueqin’s current appointment of official lawyers, it is difficult for us to obtain information on her physical and mental health and the progress of the case.”
The Guardian contacted the Guangzhou No 2 detention centre, but an employee said he was not aware of the case and declined to comment.
Huang is an independent journalist and was a prominent voice of the #MeToo movement in China. She and Wang were detained at Wang’s house shortly before Huang was scheduled to leave China for the UK to begin a master’s at the University of Sussex. Dozens of their friends and contacts were questioned by public security officials in subsequent weeks, in a manner the US-based Chinese Human Rights Defenders organisation described as harassment and interrogation.

“Those interrogated shared afterward that authorities downloaded the contents of their smartphones for investigation and pressured them to sign fabricated testimonies asserting that Huang and Wang had organised gatherings at Wang’s apartment to discuss politically sensitive topics,” the organisation said.
William Nee, a researcher at the organisation, said the latest news of Huang’s health was “alarming”. “She should never have been detained in the first place, but this now adds extra urgency for the Chinese government to release her,” Nee said.
He said Huang was a “victim of incommunicado detention, which is a gross human rights violation”.
Under an increasingly authoritarian environment in Xi Jinping-ruled China, human rights groups, activists, lawyers and protesters are increasingly targeted by authorities, with growing concerns about the number of detentions, arrests, interrogations and convictions.
Li Maizi, a veteran feminist activist in Beijing, said feminists were particularly targeted. “Once you are a feminist, you are a feminist activist. You are going to be stigmatised as a traitor, a Hong Kong movement supporter, [as] are trying to divide our country,” she said.
Li said Guangzhou used to be a “free space” for activism but had become “very hostile” in the last decade, prompting many to leave.
“I think Huang Xueqin’s case is under this background,” Li said.
Additional reporting by Amy Hawkins
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#Journalist #held #trial #China #urgent #medical #attention
( With inputs from : www.theguardian.com )

February 16, 2023