|
|
|
|
|
Russian forces tighten grip on Crimea despite US warning
Suicide bomber kills 45 in Iraq
|
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|
US group preserves fading memories of India-Pak Partition
Inspired by AAP, party with same name launched in Pak
‘No guarantee’ of Iran nuclear accord: Ashton
Afghan V-P Fahim dead
|
|||||||||||
|
Russian forces tighten grip on Crimea despite US warning
Simferopol, March 9 Russian forces' seizure of the Black Sea peninsula has been bloodless but tensions are mounting following the decision by pro-Russian groups that have taken over the regional Parliament to make Crimea part of Russia. The operation to seize Crimea began within days of Ukraine's pro-Russian President Viktor Yanukovich's flight from the country last month. Yanukovich was toppled after three months of demonstrations against a decision to spurn a free trade deal with the European Union for closer ties with Russia. In the latest armed action, Russians took over a Ukrainian border post on the western edge of Crimea, trapping about 30 personnel inside, a border guard spokesman said. The spokesman, Oleh Slobodyan, said Russian forces now controlled 11 border guard posts across Crimea, a former Russian territory that is home to Russia's Black Sea fleet and has an ethnic Russian majority. Vladimir Kirichenko, 58, an engineer, opposed Crimea joining Russia. "I don't call this a referendum. It asks two practically identical questions: Are you for the secession of Ukraine or are you for the secession of Ukraine? So why would I go and vote?" Around 2,000 Russian supporters gathered in Lenin Square, where there is a statue of the Soviet state founder, clapping along to nostalgic Soviet era songs being sung from the stage. Alexander Liganov, 25 and jobless, said: "We have always been Russian, not Ukrainian. We support Putin." Putin declared a week ago that Russia had the right to invade Ukraine to protect Russian citizens, and his parliament has voted to change the law to make it easier to annex territory inhabited by Russian speakers. At a rally in the eastern city of Donetsk, home to many Russian speakers, presidential candidate Vitaly Klitschko, a former boxing champion, said Ukraine should not allowed to split apart amid bloodshed. The worst face-off with Moscow since the Cold War has left the West scrambling for a response, especially since the region's pro-Russia leadership declared Crimea part of Russia last week and announced a March 16 referendum to confirm it. President Barack Obama spoke by phone on Saturday to the leaders of France, Britain and Italy and three ex-Soviet Baltic states that have joined NATO. He assured Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia, which have their own ethnic Russian populations, that the Western military alliance would protect them if necessary.
— Reuters Obama to meet Ukrainian PM on March 12 Washington: US President Barack Obama would host crisis talks with Ukraine's interim Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk at the White House next week to find a peaceful solution to Russia's ongoing military intervention in Crimea. “The visit will highlight the strong support of the US for the people of Ukraine, who have demonstrated inspiring courage and resilience through recent times of crisis,” White House Press Secretary Jay Carney said.
|
|
Suicide bomber kills 45 in Iraq
Hilla, March 9 The attacker approached a main checkpoint at a northern entrance to the largely Shi'ite Muslim city and detonated the minibus, a police officer said on condition of anonymity. At least 50 cars were set ablaze with passengers trapped inside and part of the checkpoint complex was destroyed, the officer said. Sunni Islamist insurgents linked to Al-Qaida have been regaining ground in Iraq over the past year, particularly in the western province of Anbar bordering Syria. No one claimed responsibility for Sunday's attack, but the deputy chairman of Hilla provincial council, Aqeel al-Rubaie, accused Al-Qaida of being behind the bombing. Rubaie said the local government had received tips that Qaida-affiliates hiding in farmland north of Hilla were plotting a strike. He said the violence was a spillover from fighting in neighbouring Anbar, where the Shi'ite-led government has been battling the Qaida faction the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) around the cities of Ramadi and Fallujah. "We have evidence that Qaida terrorists are standing behind the suicide attack today and since the breakout of fighting in Anbar, Qaida has stepped up attacks in Hilla," Rubaie told Reuters. "We can't separate today's attack from Anbar's fight." The scene of the attack was strewn with debris from the checkpoint, and the shells of burnt out cars littered the road. "I was sitting inside my kiosk when suddenly a horrible blast threw me outside and hurled my groceries up in the air. I saw cars set ablaze with people burning inside," said Abu Nawar, owner of a makeshift kiosk made of palm tree leaves near the checkpoint. The police were using cutting equipment to break into the blackened vehicles and lift out the bodies, the police officer said. "A policeman thought the minibus was suspicious and he asked the driver to pull over for a check, but the vehicle exploded," the officer said.
— Reuters 40 killed in Yemen
SANAA: At least 40 persons have been killed in three days of fighting between Shi'ite Muslim rebels and Sunni tribesmen, sources on both sides said on Sunday, as sectarian fighting that flared up in October in the north drew closer to the capital Sanaa. Fighters loyal to the Shi'ite Houthi tribe are trying to tighten their grip on the north as Yemen moves towards a federal system that gives more power to regional authorities.
|
|
US group preserves fading memories of India-Pak Partition
Washington, March 9 Helping to preserve the history of that tragic event is a small team of volunteers based at the University of California in Berkeley and their newly founded organisation, The 1947 Partition Archive. The group uses web-based "crowdsourcing" to record and preserve witness oral histories. Over the last year, nearly 500 individuals from over 20 countries trained as citizen historians through free online workshops and submitted nearly 1,000 video interviews ranging in length from 1 to 9 hours for preservation. "Because we are huge believers in grassroots and crowdsourcing, we wanted to take that route. This way, anybody from anywhere can contribute," says the founder, Guneeta Singh Bhalla, who left a research position at Berkeley in December 2012 to volunteer full time for the project. Through their grassroots effort, The 1947 Partition Archive hopes to train up to 1,000 citizen historians and preserve 3,000 witness accounts in 2014. With the witnesses of the traumatic events of partition largely in their 80s and 90s, the 1947 Partition Archive collected $35,000 through a crowd funding campaign through international crowdfunding site IndieGoGo, to better equip itself for the task. The ongoing project, which can be seen online at 1947PartitionArchive.org, features an online Story Map showing where each person's story originated. — IANS
|
|
Anxious wait for kin of Indians on missing Malaysian plane
Beijing, March 9 Samved Kolekar, whose father, mother and brother were travelling by the Flight MH370 from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing is waiting patiently along with his wife at a hotel here along with relatives of 154 Chinese passengers. It is a testing time for the young researcher in Astrophysics as he is waiting to know about his parents and brother who were coming here to visit him. "They are coming to visit me here," Samved, who hails from Mumbai, told PTI. Considering the tough time he is going through, he was reluctant to interact with the media and provide more details. His father, Vinod Kolekar (59), mother Chetana (55) and their younger brother Swanand (23) were in the plane along with two other Indians Chandrika Sharma (51) and Kranti Pralhad Shirshath, whose husband is based in Pyongyang in North Korea. Both Samved and Pralhad are put up in a hotel here by the Malaysian airline as search continued to locate the plane carrying 239 passengers and crew amid reports that it may have been crashed off Vietnamese coast yesterday. Indian Ambassador to China Ashok K Kantha spoke to both Samved and Pralhad over phone and offered all assistance, while Counsellor Shrila Dutta Kumar met them. MH Pastakia, Head of the Indian Community in Beijing, also called on Samved and offered all support and assistance. As the search operation made little progress, the Malaysia Airlines meanwhile offered to fly both the families to Kuala Lumpur along with the relatives of 154 Chinese passengers in order to provide them better assistance at the headquarters. They have not yet decided and preferred to wait for the news about the fate of the plane. Family members of Chennai-based Chandrika Sharma, an Executive Secretary in the International Collective in Support of Fishworkers (ICSF) who was also travelling in the same plane on way to Mongolia on official work, were expected to reach here or Kuala Lumpur after an official announcement about the fate of the plane. — PTI Testing time
|
|
|
Indian-origin boy wins spelling bee after epic 95 rounds
New York, March 9 Kush Sharma, a seventh-grader at Frontier School of Innovation, spelled out "definition" to clinch the Jackson County Spelling Bee title in Missouri, and a berth in the Scripps National Spelling Bee in Washington in May. Yesterday's 29-round competition was lengthy in comparison to other spelling bees which typically run for about 20 rounds. Sharma won the title in two installments after the judges ran out of words in a previous round held on February 22. Sharma beat fifth-grader Sophia Hoffman, 11, of Highland Park Elementary to win Missouri county's annual bee contest yesterday, before a packed Kansas City Public Library. Hoffman missed out after she misspelt the word 'stifling'. Between the two, they spelt over 260 words, including 'barukhzy', 'muumuu', 'hemerocallis', 'jacamar' and 'schadenfreude' in 28 rounds with Sharma clinching the title after correctly spelling the word 'definition' in the 29th round, NBC News reported. As per his practiced routine, Sharma asked for the origin of the word, the part of speech and the definition of the word. "The speller on stage asked for the word definition," the moderator replied to Sharma as an example of the word's usage. "Kush smiled, and the judges were trying not to smile," head judge Kaite Stover told NBC News after the competition. "Kush rips that one off like it's nothing, like we knew that he would." Hoffman's parents had appealed to the judges, believing that the pronunciation of "stifling" might have confused her. The judges reviewed a recording of the proceedings and found nothing was wrong. As Sharma spelt the word correctly, Hoffman was first to clap for her friend. He patiently gave the moderator a handshake before hurriedly going to Hoffman and hugging her. "It was a great experience and I'm happy for Kush," Hoffman said, adding that she would be back next year. The duo returned to compete for the coveted title after the previous round ended in a tie with both of them getting every word right until the judges were left exhausted with words. Last month, Sharma and Hoffman competed for 66 rounds before the judges were forced to turn to the dictionary after they ran out of approved words. Once the judges saw that the kids might last all day, they decided to postpone the marathon bee so that they would not risk picking an unfair word. — PTI Wonder kid
|
|
|
Rival rallies witness clashes in Ukraine
Kiev, March 9 Interim Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk vowed Ukraine would not cede "an inch" of its territory to Moscow after Russian forces and pro-Kremlin gunmen took over the Black Sea peninsula. "This is our land," Yatsenyuk told a crowd of several thousand in the capital that was also attended by Russian former oligarch Mikhail Khodorkovsky, who spent a decade in prison in Russia and is a top critic of President Vladimir Putin. The standoff in Crimea has set Europe and the United States against Russia over Ukraine's future in the worst East-West confrontation since the Cold War. Illustrating the divisions in Ukraine, interim president Oleksandr Turchynov led a minute of silence at the Kiev rally for demonstrators killed in three months of protests that led to the ouster of pro-Kremlin president Viktor Yanukovych. In contrast, in the eastern city of Donetsk pro-Moscow activists paid tribute to a feared riot police unit accused of shooting at protesters in clashes in Kiev that left around 100 dead late last month. — AFP
|
|
Inspired by AAP, party with same name launched in Pak
Lahore, March 9 The AAP chairman said his party will strive to make Pakistan a country as dreamt by its founder Mohammed Ali Jinnah. Interestingly, Mulk has announced to sit on a hunger strike, a form of protest widely undertaken by the leaders of Arvind Kejriwal-led AAP, outside Punjab Assembly next week. The leaders of AAP will sit on strike in front of the Assembly demanding acceptance of Police Reforms and Anti Torture Bill 2014. The assembly is currently in session. "Is today's Pakistan Quaid-e-Azam Mohammed Ali Jinnah had envisioned? Is this a state where all are equal and enjoying the fruits of freedom? The present leadership, both political and bureaucracy, has lost the essence of why Pakistan was created". The AAP will strive for that cherished dream of the founder of Pakistan," Mulk said. He said: "Twenty AAP workers and I were detained and tortured at central Jail Gujranwala last month. Physical assaults, illegal forced physical labour and detention in solitary cells kept for hardened criminals commonly known as "Chaki's" were meted out to us."
— PTI Neighbour’s envy
|
|
|
‘No guarantee’ of Iran nuclear accord: Ashton
Tehran, March 9 "This interim agreement is really important but not as important as a comprehensive agreement (which is)... difficult, challenging, and there is no guarantee that we will succeed," Ashton told a joint news conference in Tehran with Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif. Iran clinched the interim deal in November with the so-called P5+1 — Britain, China, France, Russia, the United States and Germany — under which it agreed to curb its nuclear activities in exchange for sanctions relief. Western nations and Israel have long suspected Iran is covertly pursuing a nuclear weapons capability alongside its civilian programme, charges denied by Tehran.
— AFP
|
|
Afghan V-P Fahim dead
President Hamid Karzai's office said Fahim died from an illness. Karzai called Fahim a true patriot and said his death was "a huge loss for Afghanistan." Fahim served as a Vice-President and defence minister in Karzai's first administration and most recently was the first of two vice-presidents.
— AP
|
Author Pankaj Mishra wins Yale literary prize Indian-origin woman to lead NY’s limousine agency Thousands protest ahead of Fukushima anniversary Gunman opens fire in US nightclub; 3 killed 
|
| 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 | |
Kabul, March 9
