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London, June 16 The rise in crime among Asians in the UK has led Scotland Yard to set up a specialist team to tackle the problem. Metropolitan Police Assistant Commissioner Tarique Ghaffur said here yesterday that the need to form such a unit arose, as there was an increase in violence within Indian, Pakistani, Bangladeshi and Sri Lankan communities. Nine die in Iraq
blast 3 sentenced for helping LeT
Pak seeks speedy progress on Kashmir
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Attack on Pak commander: ninth accused
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16 held in student visa racket
Blair, Straw to visit India
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Joyceans rejoice “Bloomsday” centenary
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Special team to tackle crime among Asians
London, June 16 Pakistan is the source of 27 per cent of the heroin found in London. The number of Asian addicts and associated crime is increasing rapidly. Tower Hamlets, one of the Asian crime hotspots, with a large Bangladeshi and Pakistani population, is now called the UK’s heroin capital. Figures show that the number of south Asian murder victims has almost quadrupled in the past decade from 10 in 1993 to 38 last year. Kidnapping rates have also more than doubled from 90 to 228 from 1998 to 2003, making up for 20 per cent of the Met’s total kidnap figure last year. This year, there have already been 114 kidnappings so far. Some of the kidnap victims are being seized in India or Pakistan and ransoms demanded from relatives in the UK. Drug dealing, guns and gangs are other major causes of concerns. South Asian gang members have been found to be resorting to violence, stabbings and shootings. There has been a 41 per cent increase in drug abuse among Asians in the past five years. —
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Nine die in Iraq blast Baghdad, June 16 "We have the bodies of five Iraqis and four foreigners," said Mohammed Jalal, a doctor in the neighbouring town of Fallujah, 50 km west of Baghdad. "In addition, 10 injured Iraqis were admitted to our hospital." Citing the local rescue services, he added that the four had been travelling in an all-terrain vehicle, typically favoured by the US-led coalition in Iraq, which was badly damaged in the explosion. The US military said a blast took place in eastern Ramadi at around 8.45 a.m. (10.15 a.m IST) but added that, according to initial reports, only five Iraqis were injured and there were no coalition casualties. —
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3 sentenced for helping LeT Washington, June 16 Federal Judge Leonie M Brinkema yesterday imposed life imprisonment on Masood Khan (32), an 85-year term on Seifullah Chapman (31) and a 97-month sentence for Abdur Raheem (36). All three were the members of “Virginia jehad network”. —
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Pak seeks speedy progress on Kashmir
Istanbul, June 16 “I hope there will not be much momentum wasted,” Foreign Minister Mian Khursheed Mehmood Kasuri said in an interview. He was referring to the change of leadership in New Delhi following the Vajpayee government’s ouster in elections last month. “We had developed a good degree of trust with the outgoing government, but I see no insurmountable difficulties in developing a similar level of trust with the new government,” he added. He said it was encouraging that the new administration had not pointed finger at Pakistan over a spate of violence in Kashmir last weekend. Mr Kasuri is in Istanbul for a three-day meeting of the 57-nation Organisation of the Islamic Conference (OIC). He said he would meet his new Indian counterpart, Mr Natwar Singh, at talks in China next week. He said both governments had now to take into account strong pro-peace constituencies at home as well as pressure from the international community to resolve their dispute, which, he added, was acting as a brake on South Asia’s development. “But we must not let extremism rise. Extremism recognises no international frontiers, it develops its own agenda,” he added. He stressed the need for swift diplomatic progress. The lack of stability in South Asia helped explain why India attracted only $3 billion in direct foreign investment and Pakistan less than $1 billion in 2003 compared with China’s $57 billion, he said. “But what is clear is that the status quo in Kashmir is not acceptable, it is the cause of the perpetual tension,” he said. Any durable settlement must also respect the wishes of the Kashmiri people, he added. —
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Attack on Pak commander: ninth accused held
Karachi, June 16 Shahzad Talha, who is suspected of taking part in last week’s attempted assassination of Karachi’s army commander, was picked up yesterday in a raid on an apartment block in Karachi’s eastern suburbs. The group, named Jund Allah (“God’s Brigade”), was trained at an Al-Qaida camp in the tribal district of South Waziristan near the Afghan border, officials said. Eight members of Jund Allah were arrested in Karachi at the weekend. They were also accused of organising the double car bomb attack near the US Consul General’s residence on May 26, in which a policeman was killed and more than 10 persons wounded. —
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16 held in student visa racket
London, June 16 More than 120 officers swooped on 12 addresses across London and in adjoining Essex, including two suspected bogus colleges in Tooting, south London. The raids were aimed at a huge immigration racket estimated to have brought more than 1,000 persons to London and earned the perpetrators millions of pounds. The 16 arrested suspects, six of them women, were detained on suspicion of offences relating to facilitating illegal entry and leave to remain in Britain, as well as money-laundering, a police spokesman said. —
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Blair, Straw to visit India soon
London, June 16 “The relationship has the highest level of commitment and attention.... I was last there (in India) at the beginning of February and intend to visit again as quickly as I can, and so will the Prime Minister,” Mr Straw said during a debate in Parliament. —
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Joyceans rejoice “Bloomsday” centenary
Dublin, June 16 Joyce set his entire novel on June 16, 1904 — the day of his first date with the woman who later became his wife. “Bloomsday 100” was launched on February 2 — Joyce’s birthday — and brings together around 80 different events, from art exhibitions to concerts and stand-up comedy. The party is not confined to Ireland. Organisers say some 40 countries, from South Korea to Norway, are marking Bloomsday. In Germany, Taz, a leftwing daily newspaper known for its witty and unconventional headlines, banished conventional news from its pages entirely on Wednesday, turning the whole paper into a reworked version of the novel. In Hungary, the town of Szombathely is erecting a statue of Joyce in honour of Bloom’s fictional parentage. In the book, Bloom’s father comes from the town. Tributes are also expected in Italy, Switzerland and France, the three countries where Joyce spent most of his adult life from 1904, when he turned his back on Ireland, until his death in 1941 at the age of 58. The irony of all this literary activity is that Ulysses is a book in which nothing much happens. Bloom treads the streets trying to forget his adulterous wife Molly and her lover Blazes Boylan, while Stephen Dedalus, the novel’s other main character, thinks a lot and gets drunk. But it is Joyce’s audaciously experimental prose and his vast, sympathetic portrayal of humankind going about its daily business, which make Ulysses one of the world’s great books. Published in Paris in 1922, the novel was denounced by the Irish as un-Christian filth, banned in Britain and burned by U S censors. Joyce’s British contemporary Virginia Woolf complained that it “reeled with indecency”. —
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