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Israel airstrikes Gaza tunnels
It’s official, Kashmir not Holbrooke’s job
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Yasin Malik to wed Pakistan painter
Sikhs in Pak seek separate institutions
Kosi reverted to its original course
Job loss drives man to kill family, self
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Israel airstrikes Gaza tunnels
Jerusalem, January 28 The border flare-up, 10 days into an informal cease-fire, came just hours before US West Asian envoy was due to meet Israeli leaders. The soldier was killed yesterday on Israel's frontier with the Gaza Strip by a roadside bomb planted on the Gaza side and set off by remote control, the military said. Three other members of the Israeli squad patrolling the border were injured. Israel responded swiftly, sending tanks and bulldozers into northern Gaza to plow up the attack site and launching an airstrike that wounded a Hamas militant "who was prominent in the organisation accountable for the attack" according to a military statement. Hamas said the Israeli strike injured one of its men as he rode a motorcycle in the southern Gaza town of Khan Younis. The border violence was the worst since the sides separately declared cease-fire on January 18 to end a three-week Israeli offensive. Since the withdrawal of its troops, Israel has threatened to retaliate hard for any violations of the informal truce. One its main targets is the network of tunnels used to smuggle arms, money and people into Gaza from Egypt, but despite hundreds of strikes during the war, the smugglers resumed their work after the cease-fire.
— AP
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It’s official, Kashmir not Holbrooke’s job
At a meeting in Washington in early December, a high-level Indian delegation warned members of Barack Obama's transition team that New Delhi may pre-emptively make Richard Holbrooke persona non grata if his duties as special envoy for South Asia were to include India or Kashmir, according to a US magazine. State Department spokesman Robert Wood, meanwhile, reiterated Holbrooke's mandate did not include India or Kashmir.
Wood said Holbrooke's job was to "go out and try to help bring stability to Afghanistan, working closely with Pakistan to try to deal with the situation in the FATA region." “With regard to Kashmir, I think our policy is well known. I think India has some very clear views as to what it wants to do vis-à-vis dealing with the Kashmir issue, as well as the Pakistanis. But with regard to Ambassador Holbrooke’s mission, as I said, it’s to deal strictly with the Pakistan-Afghanistan situation," Wood said on Tuesday. A report in the publication Foreign Policy said the conversation between former Indian officials and members of Obama's transition team took place at an off-the-record Aspen Strategy Group meeting at the posh Mandarin Oriental Hotel in Washington. Among the Obama officials who attended the meeting were former Navy Secretary Richard Danzig; Kurt Campbell, the director of the Aspen Strategy Group who is expected to be named assistant secretary of state for East Asian and Pacific affairs; and former Pentagon official Ashton Carter, a professor at Harvard Kennedy School. The interaction was part of the Aspen Institute's US-India Strategic Dialogue. The publication did not name the Indian officials present at the meeting and quoted an unnamed source as saying, "There was a whole delegation of Indians who came through in early December through the Aspen dialogue." "Almost all" of these were former officials. "They were interacting... with people in various capacities, in addition to formal meetings inside the government. They were all over this - what Holbrooke's portfolio would be. The Indians were pre-emptively irate and were reacting in perhaps a disproportionate way" due to concerns that Holbrooke's mandate might officially include India or Kashmir, the article quoted the source as saying. Obama officials denied that any meetings with representatives of foreign governments had taken place during the transition. New Delhi had been wary of US involvement in Kashmir and it is no secret that India was opposed to a US envoy whose duties would include overseeing the situation there. Indian officials had been in close touch with the foreign policy teams of Obama, his Democratic opponent in the primaries Hillary Rodham Clinton and his Republican rival John McCain during the course of the presidential campaign. However, sources said at no point was the Obama team considering a special envoy for India.
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Yasin Malik to wed Pakistan painter
A top separatist Kashmiri leader, Yasin Malik, arrived here from New Delhi for his marriage to a Pakistani painter in Rawalpindi later this week.
Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Front (JKLF) chairman Yasin Malik is getting married to Mushaal Hussein Mullick. The ceremony was originally scheduled for October last year but could not go ahead as Malik, 42, was arrested for leading a poll boycott campaign in Jammu and Kashmir. Malik, who has been unwell lately and was also diagnosed with a cyst in one of his kidneys, is on a 10-day trip to Pakistan, family sources said. His family plans to cross the border in a bus on the Srinagar-Muzaffarabad road to attend the marriage. However, the bride is expected to move to Jammu and Kashmir only when her family visits Srinagar in the summer. Mushaal Mullick is a student at London School of Economics, according to the website mushaalmullick.com. She was born to internationally renowned Pakistani economist Prof MA Hussain Malik and Rehana Mullick, a former secretary general of the Pakistan Muslim League’s women wing. Mushaal's love for art developed at an early age and her paintings, including semi-nudes in watercolour and oil, have been sold at auctions abroad. She began painting with watercolour at the age of six and then moved to other media, including pastel, charcoal and glass painting. "Besides art she is interested in political economy and is pursuing a bachelor's at the London School of Economics. Her inspiration stems from the raw beauty of the feminine mystique, and the horrors of abject poverty," reads an introductory note on the artist's website.
(With inputs from PTI)
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Sikhs in Pak seek separate institutions
Islamabad, January 28 Sardar Bishon Singh, former president of Pakistan Sikh Gurdwara Parbhandak Committee (PSGPC), said he would take a delegation to the Evacuee Trust Property Board (ETPB) chairman in this regard. “Once the ETPB establishes a separate institution, Sikhs will hire Sikh educationists to teach Gurmukhi,” he said. “If our children are not taught Gurmukhi, they will not be able to read our sacred scriptures. Muslim students are taught Arabic in schools to help them read the Holy Quran. Our children should also be taught Gurmukhi, so they can read the Guru Granth Sahib,” Sikh residents said. They underlined that it was for the government to set up separate institutions for Sikhs as private schools cannot afford a separate teacher for Gurmukhi. “Private schools cannot afford a teacher for Gurmukhi. The government should establish a separate institution for Sikh children in the city,” a resident was quoted as saying by the Daily Times newspaper. Sikh families told the Pakistani daily last week that around 25 Sikh children studying in various schools of Lahore are not being taught Gurmukhi.
— PTI
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Kosi reverted to its original course
The Sapta Kosi, which had displaced thousands of households of Sunsari district of eastern Nepal and Bihar breaching the embankment at west Kushaha on August last, has been reverted back to its original course from Monday evening. Technicians involved in the maintenance of the breached embankment along the Kosi built cofferdams using sand sacks, concrete and galvanised wire and successfully diverted the river to its original course on Monday.
“Finally, the Kosi is flowing through its original course. This is a great success for us,” reported Shankar Kharel, local correspondent of The Kathmandu Post, a leading English daily in Nepal, quoting Mohan Bhattarai, chief engineer of the Water-induced Disaster Control Division. Bhattarai also said they were yet to repair the embankment permanently. Immediately after diverting the river out of 11,447 cusecs of water in the Kosi, 10,700 cusecs have started flowing through the barrage. Technicians are expected to divert the remaining volume of water, which is flowing through pilot channels along the embankment towards the barrage, by Tuesday evening. Three months ago, the Indian government had given the job of taming the river to an Indian construction company Vashistha and Vashistha.
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Job loss drives man to kill family, self
Los Angeles, January 28 The station called the police after receiving the fax from a man who stated, "I just returned home and my whole family's been shot". Officers rushed to the home in Wilmington, a small community between the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach, within minutes. Ana Lupoe's body was found in an upstairs bedroom with the bodies of the couple's twin 2-year-old boys. The bodies of an 8-year-old girl and twin 5-year-old girls were found alongside Ervin Lupoe's in another bedroom.
— AP
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