British Sikh girls at risk of ‘sexual grooming’
London, September 3
Minor British Sikh girls, sexually abused by gangs of Asian men who befriend them over a period of time, usually do not report the crime to authorities, according to a new investigation by the BBC.

Washington, September 3
While US intelligence agencies spend billions monitoring enemies like Al-Qaeda and Iran, they pay just as much attention to ally Pakistan, The Washington Post reported on Tuesday.

The United States has intensified surveillance of Pakistan's nuclear weapons, is concerned about biological and chemical arms sites there and tries to evaluate the loyalty of Pakistani counter-terrorism agents recruited by the CIA, the Post said. It quoted a 178-page summary of what it called the US intelligence community's "black budget" and said the documents were provided by fugitive intelligence leaker Edward Snowden.

The paper said the documents reveal broad new levels of mistrust in an already fragile security partnership.

Pakistan's foreign ministry reacted by saying it is fully committed to "objectives of disarmament and non-proliferation" and follows International Atomic Energy Agency standards.

"As a nuclear weapons state, Pakistan's policy is characterized by restraint and responsibility," it said in a statement.

"Pakistan has established extensive physical protection measures, robust command and control institutions... comprehensive and effective export controls regulatory regimes to ensure safety and security of nuclear installations and materials," it added.

The Washington Post said US efforts to gather intelligence on Pakistan are more extensive than previously disclosed by US officials.

America has delivered nearly $26 billion in aid to Pakistan over the past 12 years, with the money aimed at stabilizing the country and ensuring its cooperation in counterterrorism efforts, according to the paper.

"If the Americans are expanding their surveillance capabilities, it can only mean one thing," said Husain Haqqani, who served as Pakistan's ambassador to the US from 2008-11. "The mistrust now exceeds the trust."

On other issues, the Post said other classified documents provided to it by Snowden reveal new allegations of human rights abuses in Pakistan. US spy agencies reported that senior Pakistani military and intelligence officials knew of and possibly ordered a broad campaign of extrajudicial killings of militants and other adversaries, the Post said.

These reports were based on communications intercepts from 2010 to 2012 and other intelligence. Public disclosure of the reports could have forced the administration of President Barack Obama to sever aid to the Pakistani armed forces. This is because of a US law that prohibits military assistance to human rights abusers. But the Post said the documents indicate that administration officials decided not to press the issue so as to preserve an already frayed relationship with Pakistan. — AFP

London, September 3
Malala Yousafzai, the Pakistani schoolgirl shot in the head in a failed assassination attempt by the Taliban, on Tuesday inaugurated Europe’s biggest public library in Birmingham.

“This city is the beating heart of England. Birmingham is very special for me, because it was here I found myself alive seven days after I was shot,” Malala said at the launch of the new 189-million pound Library of Birmingham. “This event proves this city loves me and I love it too,” she said.

Malala also unveiled a commemorative plaque during the ceremony and received her membership card for the archive.

“A fusion of the digital and the traditional is absolutely essential to the vision of the library we have,” library director Brian Gambles said in reference to the seven-year project he has led. Malala was attacked by Taliban fighters on a school bus near her former home in the Swat Valley of northwest Pakistan last October. She was targeted for campaigning for girls' rights to go to school without fear.. — PTI

London, September 3
Minor British Sikh girls, sexually abused by gangs of Asian men who befriend them over a period of time, usually do not report the crime to authorities, according to a new investigation by the BBC.

The probe found that in many cases, the men deceive the girls into believing they are Sikh to gain their trust.

"Desperate to hide their secret for fear of bringing shame to their families, girls are often forced to leave home," the BBC’s 'Inside Out' programme reported.

Reporter Chris Rogers travelled to a remote part of the US to meet a 16-year-old British Sikh girl who was 'groomed' and sexually abused over a period of time by a Muslim gang. She is one of at least a dozen British Sikh girls living abroad to hide their secret.

The Sikh Awareness Society UK (SAS), a charity that focuses on family welfare, claimed it has investigated over 200 reports of child sexual grooming in Britain over the past five years. However, there are no official statistics to support this claim, because incidents of sexual abuse involving Sikh minors are rarely reported to the authorities.

'Grooming' refers to actions undertaken with the aim of befriending and establishing an emotional connection with a minor in order to exploit the person for sex or labour.

Last week, six men — including two of Indian origin — were jailed at Leicester Crown Court for offences including facilitating child prostitution of a Sikh girl. The convictions are being heralded as a legal landmark because it is the first high-profile case involving a Sikh victim of sexual abuse that has led to convictions in the UK, BBC reported.

According to Detective Superintendent David Sandall of Leicestershire Police, sexual abuse remains severely under-reported among 'faith-based communities'. He said: "We want more victims to come forward because we are here to help." — PTI

Jerusalem/Moscow, Sept 3
Israel tested a US-backed missile system in the Mediterranean on Tuesday but did not announce the launch in advance, prompting a disclosure by Russia that kept the world on edge as the United States weighed an attack on Syria. The morning launch was first reported by Moscow media that quoted Russian defence officials as saying two ballistic "objects" had been fired eastward from the centre of the sea, roughly in the direction of Syria.

The news ruffled financial markets until Israel's Defence Ministry said it, along with a Pentagon team, had carried out a test-launch of a Sparrow missile. The Sparrow, which simulates the long-range missiles of Syria and Iran, is used for target practice by Israel's US-backed ballistic shield Arrow.

An F/A-18F Super Hornet assigned to the Black Knights of Strike Fighter Squadron (VFA) 154 prepares to launch from the flight deck of the aircraft carrier USS Nimitz in the Red Sea on Tuesday. — AP/PTI

"Israel routinely fires missiles or drones off its shores to test its own ballistic defence capabilities," a US official said in Washington. Western naval forces have been gathering in the Mediterranean and the Red Sea since President Bashar al-Assad was accused of carrying out an August 21 gas attack in his more than two-year-old conflict with rebels trying to topple him. Damascus denies responsibility for the incident.

On Tuesday, the rightist premier spoke of anti-missile systems as a national "wall of iron". "These things give us the power to protect ourselves, and anyone who considers harming us would do best not to," he said in a speech.

Israeli Defence Minister Moshe Yaalon shrugged off a question from reporters on whether the launch might have been ill-timed. He said Israel had to work to maintain its military edge and "this necessitates field trials and, accordingly, a successful trial was conducted to test our systems. And we will continue to develop and to research and to equip the IDF (Israel Defence Forces) with the best systems in the world."

Arrow designer Uzi Rabin said tests of the anti-missile system are planned "long, long in advance" and generally go unnoticed. "What apparently made the difference today is the high state of tension over Syria and Russia's unusual vigilance," he told Reuters.

A Russian Defence Ministry spokesman quoted by the Interfax news agency said the launch was picked up by an early warning radar station at Armavir, near the Black Sea, which is designed to detect missiles from Europe and Iran. RIA, another Russian news agency, later quoted a source in Syria's "state structures" as saying the objects had fallen harmlessly into the sea. The Russian Defence Ministry declined comment. — Reuters

Washington, Sept 3
President Barack Obama said on Tuesday he was confident that Congress would vote in favor of US military action in Syria and said the United States had a broader plan to help rebels defeat President Bashar al-Assad's forces.

During a meeting with Congressional leaders at the White House, Obama called for a prompt vote and reiterated that the US plan would be limited in scope and not repeat the long U.S. wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. "What we are envisioning is something limited. It is something proportional. It will degrade Assad's capabilities," Obama said.

"At the same time we have a broader strategy that will allow us to upgrade the capabilities of the opposition," he said. Obama said he was willing to address concerns among lawmakers about the authorization for force that the White House sent to Congress.

"I look forward to listening to the various concerns of the members who are here today. I am confident that those concerns can be addressed," he said. "I would not be going to Congress if I wasn't serious about consultations and believing that by shaping the authorization to make sure we accomplish the mission, we will be more effective." — Reuters

Geneva/Beirut, Sept 3
The number of Syrian refugees has passed the two million mark, a United Nations agency said on Tuesday, warning that the world faces its greatest threat to peace since the Vietnam War.

The UN refugee agency UNHCR said in a statement on Tuesday that a near ten-fold increase over the past 12 months in the rate of refugees crossing Syria's borders into Turkey, Iraq, Jordan and Lebanon, to a daily average of nearly 5,000 men, women and children, had pushed the total living abroad above two million. That represents some 10 per cent of Syria's population, the UNHCR said.

With a further 4.25 million estimated to have been displaced but still resident inside the country, that leaves close to a third of all Syrians living away from home. Comparing the figures to the peak of Afghanistan's refugee crisis two decades ago, UN High Commissioner for Refugees Antonio Guterres, said: "Syria has become the great tragedy of this century, a disgraceful humanitarian calamity with suffering and displacement unparalleled in recent history."

Speaking of the acceleration in the crisis, he said: "What is appalling is that the first million fled Syria in two years. The second million fled Syria in six months." At a news conference in Geneva, Guterres noted that a total of six million were displaced by the war: "At this particular moment, it's the highest number of displaced people anywhere in the world. And if one looks at the peak of the Afghan crisis we have probably very similar numbers of people displaced.

"The risks for global peace and security that the present Syria crisis represents, I'm sure, are not smaller than what we have witnessed in any other crisis that we have had since the Vietnam war," said Guterres, a former Portuguese prime minister. — Reuters