|
|
|
|
|
Ukraine puts forces on combat alert, warns of war
|
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|
Knife attacks leave 27 dead, 109 injured at railway station in China
White House crafted strategy to ‘humanise’ Hillary on media
US court allows Sikh group to summon Manmohan
No change in policy on Gujarat riots: US
Lankan family finds mass grave in garden
Rebekah Brooks paid for story on Saddam Hussein
|
|
Ukraine puts forces on combat alert, warns of war
Standing beside Turchinov, Prime Minister Arseny Yatseniuk said he had urged Russia to return its troops to base in the Crimea region during a phone call with Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev and called for talks. "Military intervention would be the beginning of war and the end of any relations between Ukraine and Russia," Yatseniuk told reporters. Russian President Vladimir Putin's open assertion of the right to deploy troops in a country of 46 million people on the ramparts of central Europe creates the biggest confrontation between Russia and the West since the Cold War. It also rebuffs Western leaders who had repeatedly urged Russia not to intervene, including US President Barack Obama, who just a day before had held a televised address to warn Moscow of "costs" if it acted. Troops with no uniform insignia but clearly Russian, some in vehicles with Russian number plates, have already seized Crimea, an isolated peninsula in the Black Sea where Moscow has a large military presence in the headquarters of its Black Sea Fleet. Kiev's new authorities have been powerless to intervene. Western capitals scrambled for a response, but so far this has been limited to angry words from Washington and its European allies. A US official said Defence Secretary Chuck Hagel had spoken to his Russian counterpart Sergei Shoigu. The official said there had been no change in US military posture.
— Reuters US, EU leaders may skip G8 Summit Washington: President Barack Obama and key European leaders could skip June’s G8 summit in Sochi if Moscow's forces are involved in Ukraine, a senior US official has said. European leaders are considering whether they will show up at the summit, which marks a moment of great prestige for Russian President Vladimir Putin, in in the same Black Sea resort that recently hosted the Winter Olympics. UNSC to hold fresh talks The UN Security Council will hold a second round of talks on the rapidly escalating tensions in Ukraine. President of the UNSC, currently Luxembourg, invited members to "informal consultations", a statement said. Moscow’s stakes in Crimea
|
|
Pakistani Taliban announces ceasefire
Islamabad, March 1 “We announce a month-long ceasefire from today and appeal to all our comrades to respect the decision and refrain from any activity during this period," said Shahidullah Shahid, spokesman of the outlawed Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP). He said directives had been issued to all Taliban factions to respect the truce and honour it by avoiding all "jihadi activities". "We believe that the government would seriously consider our decision and will keep the negotiation process free from all kind of politicking and would make progress in a positive manner," Shahid said in a statement issued to the media. The ceasefire was welcomed by the government. Asked if the government and the Taliban were engaged in any back channel parleys, , Irfan Siddiqui, the head of the state negotiators, told PTI: "You cannot call it back-channel talks. The government committee and the Taliban-nominated committee were in touch with each other away from the media glare.”
— PTI 12 soldiers, child killed as polio team attacked
Peshawar: Twelve paramilitary troops and a child were killed and 10 more were injured in two blasts targeting a polio vaccination team in Pakistan's northwest on Saturday. The blasts in Khyber tribal region, 30 km of Peshawar, occurred when health workers were administering polio drops and the troops were guarding a convoy of vaccinators. Eliminate Taliban, clerics asks army
Islamabad: Muslim scholars from different schools of thought have asked the Pakistani military to eliminate the Taliban, saying the civil-military leadership should take bold decisions on the issue. Shia and Sunni groups observed Friday as "Anti-Taliban Day" across the country
|
|
Knife attacks leave 27 dead, 109 injured at railway station in China Beijing, March 1 State-run Xinhua news agency ran a news flash saying 27 people were killed and 109 injured in the incident in the provincial capital city of Kunming when knife-wielding men attacked the city's railway station. Pictures on Sina Weibo, the Chinese equivalent of Twitter, showed local police patrolling the station. Bodies in blood were spotted on the ground in the pictures. Doctors were seen transporting injured people to a local hospital. A Weibo user who was dining in a restaurant near the railway station, said that she was "scared to death," adding that she saw a group of men in black with two long knives chasing people, Xinhua said. The suspected terrorist attack came ahead of the meeting of the Chinese parliament next week. The origin of the attackers is not yet known or whether they hailed from northwestern Xinjiang province where China says the East Turkestan Islamic Movement (ETIM), an al-Qaeda-linked group is stirring up a separatist movement among the ethnic Muslim Uyghurs. Several such attacks have taken place in Xinjiang in recent months as the remote province has been witnessing ethnic unrest between the native Muslim Uyghurs and Han Chinese from the mainland for the past few years. Three people were killed in an attack by the ETIM at the iconic Tiananmen Square in Beijing last year, when a car crashed into a crowd of tourists. — PTI
|
|
|
White House crafted strategy to ‘humanise’ Hillary on media
Washington, March 1 The documents also detailed the first lady's struggles in the early 1990s with her healthcare task force, including worries about resistance on Capitol Hill and an aide's warning the plan could not meet a pledge to allow patients to pick their doctors, a promise that also came back to haunt President Barack Obama. The release of nearly 4,000 pages of previously sealed documents by the Clinton Presidential Library served to revisit Hillary Clinton's record and early struggles with her image as she gears up for a potential 2016 run for the presidency. The documents had previously been withheld from the public under a legal authority that expired last year. The documents shed light on efforts to overcome the perception that the first lady was aloof and calculating, detailing her attempts to win positive press coverage around the time she gave a speech at a U.N. conference in China in 1995 and ahead of her successful run for the US Senate in 2000. An Aug 31, 1995, memo by Clinton's press secretary Lisa Caputo suggested she do interviews with "regional media." "Hillary is comfortable with the local reporters and enjoys speaking with them," the memo states. "This will help us get around her aversion to the national Washington media and serve to counter the tone of the national media." The memo recommended a "Hillaryland Staff Outreach to Media" and urged Clinton aides to "socialize more" with reporters. "I believe it would create enormous good will for Hillary since we can all tell wonderful Hillary anecdotes that humanize her and show the press the good person that she is," it said.
— Reuters
|
|
US court allows Sikh group to summon Manmohan
New York, March 1 The 1965 Hague Service Convention allows the process of judicial documents from one signatory state to another without the use of consular and diplomatic channels. A Washington federal court had issued summons against Manmohan Singh during his September 2013 visit to Washington on a plea by Sikhs For Justice (SFJ) accusing him of “funding crimes against humanity perpetrated upon the Sikh community in India”. In response to SFJ's plea for extension of time to serve summons on Manmohan Singh in India, Judge James E Boasberg on Friday ordered that “plaintiffs shall by April 14, 2014, either file proof of service or file a status report updating the court on their progress in effecting service”. The SFJ had filed a motion with the court requesting extension of time. In support of its motion, the SFJ submitted a copy of the engagement letter retaining Process Forwarding Internationala (PFI), a Washington-based firm to serve summons on Manmohan Singh in India under the Hague Service Convention. Gurpatwant Singh Pannun, legal adviser to the SFJ cited the US State Department's recent Human Rights Report in support of SFJ allegations of “widespread torture, extrajudicial killings and security force abuses” during Manmohan Singh’s tenure. Under Alien Tort Claims Act (ATCA) and Torture Victim Protection Act (TVPA), US federal courts have jurisdiction over cases of human rights violations even if they have occurred on foreign soils as in this case, Pannun said. — IANS
|
|
No change in policy on Gujarat riots: US
Washington, March 1 State Department Spokesperson Jen Psaki told reporters at the daily briefing that there was no change in the US policy on the Gujarat riots, while responding to questions on the latest annual Country Reports on Human Rights Practices released by Secretary of State John Kerry. "There is no change in policy. There's no editing error," Psaki told reporters yesterday when asked about the omission of the Gujarat Chief Minister's name from the State Department's congressionally mandated report on India and whether it reflected a policy shift. "The 2013 Human Rights Report focuses on events that took place between January and December of 2013. — PTI
|
|
Lankan family finds mass grave in garden
Colombo, March 1 Senior Superintendent of Police Ajith Rohana said the remains had been found in the garden of the house at Puthukudyiruppu in Mullaithivu district which served as the LTTE's military capital. "Skulls of at least nine people were found on Thursday in evening during the clearing work of the garden. The parts have been taken away by the Judicial Medical Officer of the Jaffna hospital for further investigations," Rohana said. The military said the remains could be secret burials by the
LTTE. "It is a well known fact that the LTTE did all they could to hide deaths in order to prevent people uprising and maintain their cadre's morale high. The skeletal remains found recently near a former LTTE held area could very well be such dead buried secretly," a military spokesman said.
— PTI
|
|
Rebekah Brooks paid for story on Saddam Hussein
London, March 1 The 45-year-old former editor of the Sun and now-defunct News of the World tabloids told the jury at her trial on phone-hacking charges in London that the payment was sanctioned for reports that the former Iraqi dictator threatened to swamp Britain with anthrax and that she had refused requests by MI5 and MI6 not to run the story. The source of the story was eventually identified after an internal inquiry as a chief petty officer and he was subsequently prosecuted.
— PTI
|
Kathmandu Islamabad Beijing Cairo Turkey Bahrain 
|
| HOME PAGE | |
Punjab | Haryana | Jammu & Kashmir |
Himachal Pradesh | Regional Briefs |
Nation | Opinions | | Business | Sports | World | Letters | Chandigarh | Ludhiana | Delhi | | Calendar | Weather | Archive | Subscribe | E-mail | |
Kiev, March 1
Kiev, March 1
