Veteran Kashmiri journalist Shujaat Bukhari shot dead in Srinagar
June 14, 2018: Unidentified gunmen shot dead veteran journalist Shujaat Bukhari in Srinagar. The Hindu newspaper, quoting police, said the attackers fired “from a close range” with the bullets hitting him in the chest after which he succumbed to his injuries in a hospital. The 50-year-old journalist was a popular commentator on Indian TV channels. Political parties and journalists condemned the killing.
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India’s international isolation is complete, says Pakistan
ISLAMABAD: “The isolation of India in the international community is complete,” said Foreign Office spokesperson Dr Muhammad Faisal at a weekly news briefing. “The skeletons in Indian closet are growing in numbers and size. Right-wing governments end up paying a high price,” he added.
In first of its kind report, the office of the UN High Commissioner on Human Rights accused India of committing atrocities in occupied Kashmir. The UN Human Rights chief said he would recommend establishment of a commission of inquiry to look into the rights abuses in the disputed Jammu and Kashmir state.
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20 pro-gov’t military personnel dead in Taliban attacks in N. Afghanistan
10-06-2018 | The Taliban militants launched the multi-pronged offensives on security checkpoints in Qala-e-Zal district of the northern Kunduz province. However, the official asserted that over a dozen militants were also killed in the clashes which lasted for a while and the Taliban fled away after suffering casualties.
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19 Afghan police officals killed in Taliban attack on base in Kunduz
June 09, 2018: The Taliban claimed responsibility for the attack, which came a day after the insurgents stormed a military base in the western province of Herat, killing 17 Afghan soldiers. Kunduz provincial governor spokesman Nehmatullah Taimuri said five members of the local police force were also wounded in attack on a police base in Qal-i-Zal district.
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At least 26 dead in Afghanistan suicide attack during Eid ceasefire
AFP | Reuters| June 16, 2018
The blast in the town of Ghazi Aminullah Khan wounded at least 54 others ─ including Taliban, security forces and civilians ─ who were marking the suspension of fighting in Nangarhar’s Rodat district, according to Attaullah Khogyani, spokesman for the provincial governor, Tolo News reported.
Dozens of unarmed Taliban militants had earlier entered the Afghan capital and other cities to celebrate Eid. Afghan security forces and civilians hugged and took selfies with each other across the country, in an outpouring of emotion over the ceasefire. “A suicide bomber detonated among people, security forces and Taliban who were celebrating the ceasefire,” provincial governor spokesman Attaullah Khogyani told AFP.
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Afghan Taliban using captured US weaponry to launch attacks: report
By News Desk
The Afghan Taliban frequently attacked outposts of the government during the last few years to capture expensive equipment which was then used to launch attacks against US forces in Afghanistan, reported USA Today.
According to the American publication, the problem has consistently dogged government gains in the war-torn territory, exemplified by the fact that the US military deployed warplanes to destroy at least 40 Humvee vehicles captured by the Taliban since January 2015.
USA Today noted that the insurgents routinely launched attacks to capture US-supplied equipment from Afghan security forces and disappeared into the countryside soon afterwards.
Ever since the US gave more responsibility to troops of the Afghan government in combat operations outside Kabul, these attacks have regularly highlighted the failure of the Afghan forces to work independently.
Reports also indicated that the captured equipment is used to disguise fighters as American or Afghan military personnel in an effort to slip past guards to launch attacks on sensitive installations.
“In the event this type of military equipment is stolen, US Forces-Afghanistan and the Afghan national defence and security forces work quickly to reacquire the equipment or eliminate it from the battlefield altogether so as not to allow the enemy an advantage,” Lt Col Martin O’Donnell, a military spokesperson told US media.
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120 countries at UN condemn Israel over Gaza violence
13 June, 2018 | United Nations, United States: The UN General Assembly on Wednesday 13 June, 2018, adopted by a strong majority of 120 countries an Arab-backed resolution condemning Israel for Palestinian deaths in Gaza and rejected a US bid to put the blame on Hamas. At least 129 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli fire during protests near the border with Gaza that began at the end of March. No Israelis have died.
The resolution put forward by Algeria and Turkey on behalf of Arab and Muslim countries won 120 votes in the 193-member assembly, with 8 votes against and 45 abstentions. The resolution deplored Israel´s use of “excessive, disproportionate and indiscriminate force” against Palestinian civilians and called for protection measures for Palestinians in Gaza and the occupied West Bank.
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US pulls out of UN Human Rights Council, cites ‘bias against Israel’
Tuesday 19 June, 2018: The US Ambassador to the UN Nikki Haley threatened the pull out a year ago, arguing the UNHRC displays anti-Israel bias and ignores violations from other countries like Venezuela, Cuba, China, Burundi, and Saudi Arabia, which she described as “the worst human rights abusers.”
Haley added that Israel is “singled out in a way that no other country is singled out,” and said reforms were needed to make the council “a serious advocate for human rights.”
“I want make it crystal clear that this is not a retreat from human rights commitments, on the contrary, we take this step because our commitment does not allow us to remain a part of a hypocritical and self serving organization that makes a mockery of human rights,” she added.
Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu praised the U.S. decision for their “courageous decision against the hypocrisy and the lies of the so-called UN Human Rights Council.”
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Saudi-led forces launch attack on Yemen’s port city of Hodeidah
Troops backed by a Saudi-led coalition on Wednesday 13 June, launched an assault on Yemen’s main port city of Hodeidah, in the biggest battle of a three-year war between an alliance of Arab states and the Iran-aligned Houthis. The assault began after the expiry of a deadline set by the United Arab Emirates for the Houthis, who hold the capital Sanaa, to hand over the sole port under their control. Yemen’s biggest port, Hodeidah is the lifeline for the majority of Yemen’s population, which lives in Houthi territory.
“The liberation of Hodeidah port is a turning point in our struggle to recapture Yemen from the militias that hijacked it to serve foreign agendas,” the exiled government said in a separate statement carried by state-run Yemeni media. “The liberation of the port is the start of the fall of the Houthi militia and will secure marine shipping in Bab al-Mandab strait and cut off the hands of Iran, which has long drowned Yemen in weapons that shed precious Yemeni blood.”
The alliance intervened in Yemen to restore the government of President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadiand thwart what Riyadh and Abu Dhabi see as the expansionist aims of their Shi’ite foe, Iran. The Houthis deny they are Iranian pawns and say their revolt aims to target corruption and defend Yemen from invaders. Riyadh says the Houthis use the port to smuggle Iranian-made weapons, including missiles that have targeted Saudi cities – accusations denied by the group and Tehran. (REUTERS)
Civilians flee as Saudi-led coalition pounds Yemen port of Hodeidah
At the same time, the United Nations says 22 million Yemenis need humanitarian aid and the number at risk of starvation could more than double to more than 18 million by year end unless access improves. The world body said it was still bringing aid: “We are there and delivering, we are not leaving Hodeidah,” UN humanitarian coordinator for Yemen Lise Grande said.
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Netanyahu Held Secret Talks With Saudi Prince Salman in Amman Israeli Media
Last year, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu admitted that Tel Aviv develop “secret contacts” with Saudi Arabia despite the fact that the two countries have no diplomatic relations.
Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had held secret talks in the Jordanian capital Amman, according to the Israeli newspaper Maariv.
The negotiations were reportedly held on the sidelines of a visit to Amman by White House special adviser Jared Kushner and US Middle East envoy Jason Greenblatt.
One of Maariv’s political analysts, Jacky Hugi, was quoted by the Iran Front Page news website as saying that “a close friend” had told him about the Netanyahu-Salman meeting, “claiming that there were direct contacts between the two parties, both Saudi and Israeli, under the auspices of King Abdullah II of Jordan.”
Earlier, Haaretz reported that Netanyahu secretly met Jordan’s King Abdullah II in Amman, where they discussed regional developments and the strengthening of bilateral economic ties.
In November 2017, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu admitted that despite having no diplomatic relations with Riyadh, Tel Aviv had had “contacts” with Saudi Arabia, which he said “have been kept in general secret.”
The same month, Israel Defense Forces Chief of Staff Gadi Eisenkot revealed that his country was ready to share intelligence with Riyadh in order to “face Iran.”
With Riyadh rejecting allegations about bolstering its relations with Tel Aviv, Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman recognized Israel’s right to exist earlier this year.
The reported thaw comes amid escalated tensions between Iran, considered a threat by Israel and Saudi Arabia, which cut off diplomatic ties with Tehran in January 2016 following protests in front of its diplomatic premises in Tehran and Mashhad. ‘Courtesy sputnik news’
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Turkey Elections 24 June, 2018 Erdogan wins re-election in historic Turkish polls
Istanbul, Turkey – Erdogan becomes Turkey’s first executive president after winning more than half the votes, election officials say, in a result that will allow him to keep his seat with increased powers and become Turkey’s first executive president.
With 99.2 percent of ballots counted, Erdogan received more than half the votes required to secure an outright victory, Sadi Guven, the head of the Supreme Election Committee (YSK), told reporters in the capital, Ankara. Earlier, state-run Anadolu news agency had reported that Erdogan’s share of the vote stood at 52.5 percent.
“Our democracy has won, the people’s will has won, Turkey has won” Erdogan told a crowd of enthusiastic supporters in the capital, Ankara, thanking the Turkish citizens who cast their ballots in an election that saw a record turnout of 87 percent. The 64-year-old also declared victory for the People’s Alliance, a bloc between his ruling Justice and Development Party (AK Party) and the Nationalist Movement Party (MHP), saying they had won a parliamentary majority in the legislative elections, also held on Sunday 25th June.
Before heading to Ankara, Erdogan, who has governed Turkey for more than 15 years as prime minister and president, had also addressed a crowd of cheering, flag-waving supporters from the top of a bus in the country’s largest city of Istanbul.
OPENED BALLOT BOXES IN PARLIAMENTARY ELECTIONS
TOTAL BALLOT BOXES 188.080 – (99,9%) 187.910 –
VOTES CAST 51.178.630 VALID VOTES 50.125.400 TURNOUT (86.2%)
CANDIDATE / VOTE/ VOTE SHARE
Recep Tayyip Erdogan – 26.324.482 52.6% | Muharem Ince -15.336.594 30.6%
Selahatting Demirtas – 4.205.219 8.4% | Meral Aksener – 3.649.233 7.3%
Temel Karamollaoglu – 4443.766 0.9% | Dogu Perincek – 98.926 0.2%
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2 Long-Range Anti-Ship Missiles Test Fired From B-1B Successfully Hit Moving Ship
U.S. defense firm Lockheed Martin successfully hit a moving ship with two long-range anti-ship missiles during a recent test. According to the company, it was the second time that it demonstrated hitting a moving ship with two LRASMs at once. “The missiles navigated through all planned waypoints, transitioned to mid-course guidance and flew toward the moving maritime target using inputs from the onboard sensors,” according to Lockheed Martin. “The missiles then positively identified the intended target and impacted successfully.”
The previous test launch of a LRASM, officially designated AGM-158C, took place in March 2018. Prior to that, the last test occurred in December 2017, which involved the firing of two LRASMs from a B-1B successfully hitting a moving naval target.
The LRASM is a next-generation anti-ship missile with standoff capabilities, designed to detect and destroy specific targets within groups of surface warships in electronic warfare environments. It is a derivative of the Joint Air-to-Surface Standoff Missile Extended Range (JASSM-ER), a long-range cruise missile with an estimated range of up 1,000 kilometers (620 miles).
According to Lockheed Martin, the subsonic LRASM has an estimated range of over 320 kilometers and is fitted with a 450-kilogram penetrator and blast fragmentation warhead. The LRASM is expected to complement two other anti-ship missiles, the RGM-84D Harpoon Block 1C and the fifth-generation over-the-horizon Kongsberg Naval Strike Missile (NSM). “As LRASM moves toward early operational fielding for the U.S. Air Force and U.S. Navy, the weapon system continues to demonstrate critical capabilities that our warfighters need,” said David Helsel, LRASM program director at Lockheed Martin Missiles and Fire Control. The LRASM is to be integrated on board the B-1B in 2018 and on the F/A-18E/F Super Hornet in 2019. The LRASM is part of the U.S. Navy’s “Distributed Lethality” concept of operations. In order to implement this new warfighting concept, the service requires a stealthy long-range, anti-ship cruise missile.
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Assistant Commandant among 4 BSF troopers killed in Pak firing on J&K border
Amit Khajuria|Tribune News Service|Jammu, June 13
The Pakistan Rangers started unprovoked firing on Border Out Post (BOP) Chamliyal in Samba district on Tuesday night at around 10.30, which lasted till 2 am. According to BSF officials, the Pakistan Rangers initiated cross-border firing along the IB in Ramgarh sector on Tuesday night. The deceased have been identified as Assistant Commandant Jatinder Singh, Sub Inspector Rajesh Kumar, ASI Ram Niwas and Constable Hans Raj. All the soldiers were of 62 Battalion of the BSF. Sub Inspector Zantal Sil, Constable Sujan Dass and Constable Vikas Kumar were injured in the firing and are under treatment at Military Hospital in Jammu.
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France aims to become India’s top strategic partner in Europe: French Foreign Minister
French Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian said France is keen to become India’s top strategic partner in Europe. India and France are celebrating the 20th anniversary of their Strategic Partnership. France is keen to become India’s top strategic partner in Europe and wants to strengthen the country’s economic presence in India, French Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian has said.
An important phase was crossed last March when President Emmanuel Macron and Prime Minister Narendra Modi laid the foundations of an industrial agreement aimed at setting up six European Pressurised Water nuclear reactors (EPR)s by French energy giant EDF (Electricite de France) in Jaitapur, Maharashtra, he said. “We must now give ourselves the means to conclude the negotiations in the coming months, and, if possible, by the end of this year,” Drian said.
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Russia to supply technical security equipment to India
Rosatom, who are the technical consultants and equipment suppliers for the Nuclear Power Corp of India-operated Kudankulam Nuclear Power Project in Tamil Nadu, said in a statement here that under the contract, Mumbai-headquartered Core will “buy technical security equipment from Nikiret and promote it in India as an integrated security solution”.
“Integrated security systems are a group of technical protective means intended for organization of alarm security subsystems, monitoring of access control subsystems, monitoring of CCTV subsystems and performance of warning functions,” Nikiret Director Vadim Pervuninskikh said in a statement.
“This partnership is a major milestone towards sourcing of technology and equipment from Russia and developing security systems and solutions for the defense sector and other strategic installations like nuclear, oil and gas in India,” said Core Chairman Nagesh Basarkar.
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Iran says Europe’s proposals not enough to save nuclear deal: IRNA
LONDON (Reuters) – Iran’s nuclear chief said that Europe’s proposals to salvage the 2015 nuclear deal after the U.S. withdrawal from the pact were not satisfying for Tehran, warning that all sides would lose if Iran is sidelined by the West, the IRNA state news agency said.
IRNA reported that the head of Iran’s Atomic Energy Organization, Ali Akbar Salehi had shown Iran’s dissatisfaction with European proposals to save the nuclear deal in a meeting with United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres. Referring to Iran’s important regional role, Salehi was quoted as saying: “if it continues like this, all sides will lose.”
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Iran’s Revolutionary Guards Chief Rejects Plea For Direct Talks With U.S. June 20, 2018 0| RFE/RL
In a statement published by Iranian media, the activists, who were mostly foreign-based, urged Tehran to start direct negotiations with Washington “with no preconditions” to resolve decades of enmity between the two countries dating to Iran’s 1979 Islamic Revolution.
Jafari dismissed the idea, saying that activists who favor fresh talks with Trump, who withdrew the United States from Iran’s nuclear deal with world powers in May, are “traitors and antirevolutionaries.”
“While we are not saying that it amounts to treason, we must say that it opens the way to making concessions to the enemy,” he said.
Jafari also said on June 19 that Iran has no plan to increase the range of its ballistic missiles, which currently are designed to travel as far as 2,000 kilometers. “We have the scientific ability to increase our missile ranges, but it is not our current policy,” Jafari was quoted as saying by Iran’s semiofficial Tasnim news agency. Jafari said most of Iran’s enemies are already situated within a 2,000-kilometer radius. The range encompasses much of the Middle East, including Saudi Arabia, Israel, and American bases in the Persian Gulf region. Iran says its ballistic-missile program is only for defensive purposes against regional adversaries.
In 2017, Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei ordered limits on the country’s ballistic-missile program to 2,000 kilometers. ( by AP, Reuters, dpa, and AFP)
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One in every 110 people in the world forcibly displaced
By: PAULA BRONSTEIN/GETTY
Arecord 68.5 million people have been forced flee their homes due to war, violence and persecution, notably in places like Myanmar and Syria, the UN said. By the end of 2017, the number was nearly three million higher than the previous year and showed a 50-percent increase from the 42.7 million uprooted from their homes a decade ago, according to a report by the UN refugee agency.
“We are at a watershed, where success in managing forced displacement globally requires a new and far more comprehensive approach so that countries and communities aren’t left dealing with this alone,” said UN High Commissioner for Refugees Filippo Grandi.
Every two seconds : The report showed that 16.2 million people were freshly displaced last year, and included those forced to flee for the first time as well as those who had been previously displaced. This equates to some 44,500 people being pushed out of their homes every day – or one person every two seconds, UNHCR said.
920,000 displaced in Syria in 2018: More than 920,000 people were displaced inside Syria during the first four months of 2018, the highest level in the seven-year conflict, ” Panos Moumtzis, the UN regional humanitarian coordinator for Syria, told reporters in Geneva. It brings the number of people internally displaced in the war-ravaged country to 6.2 million, while there are still some 5.6 million Syrian refugees in neighboring countries, according to UN figures.
South Sudan/Afghanistan numbers soar : The second largest refugee-producing country in 2017 was Afghanistan, whose refugee population grew by five percent during the year to 2.6 million people. South Sudan meanwhile saw the largest increase last year, with the number of refugees fleeing the world’s youngest nation soaring from 1.4 million at the beginning of the year to 2.4 million at the end.
Grandi said South Sudan was experiencing “a very bad emergency” which had apparently escaped the notice of both the government and the opposition who did not appear to be “taking seriously the desperate situation of their own people.”
Most refugees in poor countries: Refugees from Myanmar more than doubled last year to 1.2 million, as a brutal army crackdown forced hundreds of thousands of Rohingya Muslims to pour across the border into Bangladesh. Report also highlighted large-scale displacements in Iraq, Somalia, Sudan, and DR Congo among others. And as Israel marks 70 years of independence, there are some 5.4 million Palestinians still living as refugees, it said.
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SIPRI hosts workshop on the impact of emerging technologies on nuclear risk
(6 June 2018) : On 22-23 May, SIPRI held the first in a series of workshops on ‘Mapping the impact of machine learning and autonomy on strategic stability and nuclear risk’ in Stockholm. With a focus on European and trans-Atlantic dynamics, the workshop facilitated a discussion exploring the extent to which machine learning and autonomy may become the focus of an arms race among nuclear-armed states and how this might impact their calculations of strategic stability and nuclear risk at the regional and trans-regional level.
The event was attended by over 35 academics, government representatives, military and technical experts from China, France, Germany, India, Ireland, Israel, New Zealand, Norway, Pakistan, Russia, Sweden, Switzerland, the United Kingdom and the United States.
Dr Vincent Boulanin, Dr Petr Topychkanov, Dr Lora Saalman and Ms Fei Su led the workshop. This project report with final findings will be available in the Autumn of 2019. A series of related essays will be published this year and next year.
About the project
The two-year project on ‘Mapping the impact of machine learning and autonomy on strategic stability and nuclear risk’ is funded by the Carnegie Corporation of New York. It aims to gain a better understanding of the potential impact of the emerging technologies on strategic stability among all nuclear-armed states and their neighbors.
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‘World Oceans Day’ Mediterranean could become a ‘sea of plastic’
A major conservation organization has warned that the Mediterranean could become a “sea of plastic”, calling for measures to clean up one of the world’s worst affected bodies of water. In a report published, coinciding with World Oceans Day, the Wold Wildlife Fund (WWF) said the Mediterranean had record levels of micro-plastics – tiny pieces of plastic less than five millimeters in size which can be found increasingly in the food chain and pose a threat to human health.
“The concentration of micro-plastics is nearly four times higher” in the Mediterranean compared with open seas elsewhere in the world, said the study, titled Out of the Plastic Trap: Saving the Mediterranean from Plastic Pollution.
Plastic represents 95 percent of the waste floating in the Mediterranean and on its beaches, with most coming from Turkey and Spain, followed by Italy, Egypt and France, the report said.
All countries around the Mediterranean should boost recycling, ban single-use plastics and phase out the use of micro-plastics in detergents or cosmetics . (WWF)
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Greece reaches ‘historic’ deal with Macedonia to resolve name row
ATHENS: Macedonia Prime Minister Zoran Zaev hailed a “historic solution” on Tuesday after Skopje and Athens resolved a longstanding row by agreeing to rename his country the Republic of Northern Macedonia.
The 27-year dispute has led to frequent disagreement and protests, but the two countries agreed on the new title of the former Yugoslav republic after months of intensive diplomacy.
“There is an agreement. We have a historic solution after two and a half decades. Our agreement includes Republic of Northern Macedonia for overall use,” Zaev told reporters in the capital Skopje.
Greece has long objected to its northern neighbour being called Macedonia because it has its own northern province of the same name.
Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras also declared a deal had been struck. “We have reached an accord, a good accord that covers all the conditions set by Greece,” Tsipras said in televised comments after briefing Greece’s president Prokopis Pavlopoulos on the accord.
Macedonia hopes that resolving the name dispute will help clear the way for it to join the European Union and Nato. The deal still needs to be approved by the Macedonian and Greek parliaments.
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Sikh community bars Indian high commissioner, wife from entering Gurduwara
By Asif Mehmood| June 23, 2018
LAHORE: The Sikh community barred Indian High Commissioner and his wife from entering the Gurdwara Panja Sahib in Hasabdal following an Indian supreme court verdict over Khalistan movement and a controversial movie on Guru Nanak Devji. Confirming the incident, Pakistan’s Sikh Gurdwara Parbandhak Committee and Evacuee Trust Property Board (ETPB) authorities said Indian High Commissioner Ajay Basariya and his wife wanted to prostrate at the Gurdwara and meet the visiting Sikh pilgrims.
However, upon his arrival, the Sikh pilgrims visiting Pakistan planned a protest. Sikhs from all over the world are enraged over the Indian SC’s verdict to allow screening of Nanak Shah Fakir across the country on Baisakhi. The ETPB authorities feared verbal altercation from aggrieved Sikhs and requested the commissioner not to attend the ceremony.
Earlier, Sikh pilgrims stopped Indian ambassadors from entering various Gurdwaras. The Sikhs imposed a ban on all the Gurdwaras including that of Britain and other countries in this regard. In April, the Sikh community participating in the Besakhi Mela and Khalsa’s birthday refused to meet the Indian ambassadors in Pakistan. Staff of the Indian High Commission have also been prevented from entering Nankana Saheb. The measure has been taken to protest against a Bollywood film misrepresenting the biographical accounts of Guru Nanak.
In an exclusive interview with Express News, a leader of the recently arrived Sikh delegation, Sardar Gurmit Singh, said the controversial film had hurt the sentiments of the entire community for which the protest was organised. “The Bandhak community has also joined the protest at Shromni Gurdwara,” he said, revealing that the producer of the controversial film has been declared an infidel. Singh also slammed India for running a defamation campaign against Pakistan.
Pakistan denies inciting Sikhs on ‘Khalistan’ issue
He said the negative propaganda from across the border had spread fear among Sikhs visiting the country. “I personally contacted my Sikh brothers to clarify the situation,” Singh remarked.
He maintained that the Indian media has been trying hard to malign the image of Pakistan by misrepresenting our protest. “The file footage shown by Indian media portrays us as unsafe in Pakistan which is contrary to the facts,” he said.
