e_Paper, Wednesday, May 3, 2017

More documents

Recommendations

Info

DT 8 World WEDNESDAY, MAY 3, 2017 SOUTH ASIA Illegal kidney trade racket uncovered in Pakistan Pakistani investigators have uncovered an illegal kidney donation racket and arrested six people, including two doctors, after raiding a house where unauthorised surgeries were reportedly underway, a senior official said Monday. Authorities say the gang was involved in selling kidneys to international clients, particularly from wealthy Gulf nations. AFP INDIA Opposition plans to tap Shiv Sena, Akali for presidential election The Congress and other opposition parties have almost given up on the faction-ridden AIADMK but will try to rope in the BJP’s disgruntled allies Shiv Sena and Shiromani Akali Dal. “The support from Sena and Akalis will depend on the who our candidate is,” CPI(M) general secretary Sitaram Yechury said. HT CHINA China demands US halt missile shield in S Korea China called Tuesday for the immediate suspension of a controversial missile defence system hours after Washington confirmed the shield was now operational in South Korea. “We oppose the deployment of the THAAD system in South Korea and urge relevant sides to immediately stop the deployment,” foreign ministry spokesman Geng Shuang said. AFP ASIA PACIFIC Thai king takes control of five palace agencies Thailand’s new king was granted control over five state agencies that oversee royal affairs and security on Tuesday, the latest move by an increasingly assertive monarch to consolidate power. The law detailing the transfers was not made public until it was published late Monday in the Royal Gazette, meaning junta-appointed lawmakers had voted on the bill in private. AFP MIDDLE EAST IS attack kills 32 at Syria refugee camp IS militants staged a surprise attack early Tuesday in northeastern Syria, killing at least 32 people, many of them civilians who had fled fighting in areas of Syria and Iraq held by the extremist group. The attack took place after militants sneaked into the village of Rajm Sleibi, a front line that separates the Kurdish-controlled Hassakeh province and IS-held areas further south. AP Tensions high in Kashmir over alleged mutilation of Indian soldiers • Tribune Desk The Indian Army on Tuesday described the killing and mutilation of two of its soldiers as “dastardly and inhuman” and told the Pakistan Army that the incident merited an “unequivocal” response. The Indian side’s view was conveyed by director general of military operations Lt Gen AK Bhatt during a hotline conversation with his Pakistan counterpart. Bhatt’s message came a day after a Pakistani border action team sneaked 200 metres into Indian territory along the Line of Control and attacked a 10-member patrol party of Border Security Force troopers and army soldiers. Such a “dastardly and inhuman act is beyond any norms of civility and merits unequivocal condemnation and response”, Bhatt was quoted as saying in an Indian Army Suu Kyi rejects UN Rohingya probe • AFP, Brussels Merkel meets with Putin on rare Russia visit • AFP, Sochi German Chancellor Angela Merkel held talks Tuesday with President Vladimir Putin on Ukraine and Syria in a signal of renewed dialogue despite profound rifts on her first visit to Russia since 2015. Aung San Suu Kyi on Tuesday rejected a decision by the UN’s rights council to investigate allegations of crimes by Myanmar’s security forces against minority Rohingya Muslims. The UN body agreed in March to dispatch a fact-finding mission to the Southeast Asian country over claims of murder, rape and torture in Rakhine state. “We do not agree with it,” Suu Kyi, Myanmar’s de facto leader, told a press conference with EU diplomatic chief Federica Mogherini during a visit to Brussels, when asked about the probe. “We have disassociated ourselves from the resolution because we do not think that the resolution is in keeping with what is actually happening on the ground.” Suu Kyi said that the country would be “happy to accept” recommendations that were “in keeping with the real needs of the region. “But those recommendations which will divide further the two communities in Rakhine we will not accept, because it will not help to resolve the problems that are arising all the time.” Suu Kyi has seen her international star as a rights defender wane over failing to speak out about the treatment of the Rohingya or to condemn the crackdown. Russian President Vladimir Putin, right, and German Chancellor Angela Merkel shake hands prior to their talks in Sochi, Russia on May 2 REUTERS Indian Army pays their respects during a ceremony for two soldiers killed on the Line of Control in Krishna Ghati in Poonch on May 2 AFP “We cannot but use this visit to discuss bilateral relations and the most problematic points, by which I mean Ukraine and Syria and maybe some other regions,” Putin told Merkel at the start of the meeting in the Black Sea resort city of Sochi. Aung San Suu Kyi REUTERS Rights groups say hundreds of Rohingyas were killed in a months-long army crackdown following deadly attacks on Myanmar border police posts. • The Russian and German leaders have scaled back links as Moscow’s ties with the EU plunged to a post-Cold War low over the crisis in Ukraine. Berlin has said Tuesday’s meeting would “above all” focus on the upcoming G20 summit in Hamburg in July and no breakthroughs were expected on major disagreements, although Putin earlier called for ties “to fully normalise.” Merkel has strongly backed EU sanctions on Russia for seizing Crimea from Ukraine in 2014 and supporting the pro-Kremlin separatist insurgency in the east of the country. Moscow has responded with an embargo on agricultural products from the West. A European-brokered peace plan to end the conflict has hit a dead end. • statement. The Pakistani BAT beheaded head constable Prem Sagar of the BSF’s 200th Battalion and naib subedar Paramjeet Singh of 22 Sikh Regiment, causing widespread anger. The Pakistani DGMO denied the mutilation of the bodies of Indian soldiers, and said there were no ceasefire violations and that troops had not crossed the LoC. The Indian Army’s statement echoed the views of the BSF. The cross-LoC attack was well planned and carried out by the BAT that had army regulars and terrorists, said Kamal Nayan Choubey, additional director general BSF’s Western Command. The attack came a day after Pakistan Army chief Gen Qamar Javed Bajwa visited areas along the LoC opposite Krishna Ghati sector. • France’s Le Pen accused of plagiarising rival’s speech • Tribune Desk Marine Le Pen’s campaign team is attempting to shake off ridicule over her alleged plagiarism of a speech by Francois Fillon. The Front National politician referred to “waiting lists for the Alliance Francaise (language school) in Shanghai, Tokyo, or Mexico, for the French secondary school in Rabat or Rome”. The passage, one of three highlighted by French media, was identical to one in a speech made by Fillon in Puy-en-Velay on 15 April. Le Pen mentioned France’s “three maritime borders” with the English Channel, North Sea and the Atlantic, as did Fillon. She continuing: “Then there is the Rhine frontier, the most open, also the most promising, a Germanic world we will yet co-operate with in so many ways, as long as we regain the relationship of allies and not of subjects.” Fillon had said: “Then there is the Rhine frontier, the most open, the most dangerous, also the most promising, a Germanic world we have been so often in conflict with and with which we will yet co-operate in so many ways.” The deputy leader of the party said, “completely owned up” to the similarities with Fillon’s speech amid widespread mockery on social media. Her campaign manager also played down plagiarism accusations, painting her speech as a form of tribute to Fillon that “was appreciated, including by all of Fillon’s supporters”. •
World Hamas softens stance on Israel, drops Muslim Brotherhood link The Palestinian Islamist group Hamas on Monday dropped its longstanding call for Israel’s destruction, but said it still rejected the country’s right to exist and backs “armed struggle” against it. In a policy document presented in Doha by its leader Khaled Meshaal, Hamas also said it would end its association with the Muslim Brotherhood, a move apparently aimed at improving ties with Gulf Arab states and Egypt, which view the Brotherhood as a terrorist group. But it says its struggle is not against Jews because of their religion but against Israel as an occupier. The six-page Document of General Principles and Policies unveiled Monday by Hamas, accepts a Palestinian state within the 1967 borders while refusing to recognise Israel. Here are some key points of the UN: 1.4m children acutely malnourished in Somalia • AFP, Geneva Somalia, hit by drought and on the verge of famine, will count 1.4 million acutely malnourished children by the end of the year, up 50% from late 2016, the UN said Tuesday. The United Nations children’s agency warned that 275,000 of those children were expected to be so severely malnourished that they could easily die. Severe acute malnutrition is the most extreme and visible form of undernutrition, with victims often appearing skeletal and frail, and in urgent need of treatment to survive. Such children “are nine times more likely to die of cholera, or diarrhoea or measles,” Unicef spokeswoman Marixie Mercado told reporters in Geneva. “The combination of malnutrition and disease, plus displacement is deadly for children,” she ‘Turkey’s EU dream is over’ • Reuters, Ankara Turkey under President Tayyip Erdogan has turned its back on joining the EU, at least for now, the bloc’s top official dealing with Ankara said, offering economic cooperation instead if both sides can restore friendly ties. After years of stalemate on Turkey’s bid to join the world’s biggest trading bloc, EU governments say the process is dead, citing Erdogan’s crackdown on dissidents, his ‘Nazi’ jibes at Germany and a referendum giving him sweeping new powers that a rights group says lack checks and balances. “Everybody’s clear that, currently at least, Turkey is moving away from a European perspective,” EU Commissioner Johannes Hahn, who oversees EU membership bids, said. • Supporters of Hamas protests against Palestinian Authority president Mahmud Abbas in the southern Gaza Strip town of Rafah on May 2 AFP said, pointing out that a severely malnourished and dehydrated child can die in a matter of hours from diarrhoea or cholera. The World Health Organisation warned last month that the drought was fuelling an outbreak of cholera and acute diarrhoea in Somalia that has already killed hundreds of people. The warning comes as Somalia faces the threat of its third famine in 25 years of civil war and anarchy. At least 260,000 people died in the 2011 famine in Somalia – half of them children under the age of five, according to the WFP. Mercado pointed out that during that famine, “the major killer of children were diarrhoea and measles.” The dire drought and food situation has forced more than 615,000 people to flee their homes since last November, in a country where 1.1m people are already internally displaced. • document: Ü “There shall be no recognition of the legitimacy of the Zionist entity.” Ü “Without compromising its rejection of the Zionist entity, Hamas considers the establishment of a fully sovereign and independent Palestinian state.” Ü “Hamas rejects the persecution of any human being on nationalist, religious or sectarian grounds”. Ü “Hamas does not wage a struggle against the Jews because they are Jewish but wages a struggle against the Zionists who occupy Palestine. Ü “The right of the Palestinian refugees and the displaced to return to their homes from which they were banished or were banned from returning to whether in the lands occupied in 1948 or in 1967.” • Mummies rot as Yemen war vexes even the dead • Reuters, Sanna Famine and disease haunt the living, but not even the dead are spared the calamities of Yemen’s two-year-old civil war. Ancient mummies are withering away in a major museum for lack of electricity and preservative chemicals from abroad, a sign that the conflict is harming not only the country’s present and future but also its rich past. The dozen spindly corpses, curled into the fetal position or swaddled in baskets, belong to a lost pagan civilization around 2 1/2 millennia ago, long before the advent of Islam. Lying beneath glass panes within the archaeology department in the capital Sanaa’s main university, the mummies might have spent their eternal slumber blissfully unaware of the otherworldly warplanes pounding their homeland. A Saudi-led military coalition has carried out thousands of air strikes in a bid to dislodge Yemen’s armed Houthi movement from the capital. The conflict has killed at least 10,000 people and unleashed a humanitarian crisis. But a timeless enemy, abetted by the disorder of war, threatens the mummies’ repose. “The mummies have started to decay and are infected with bacteria. This is because we don’t have electricity and the machines that are supposed to maintain them,” said Abdelrahman al-Gar, head of the university’s anitiquities department. “We need some chemicals to sanitise the mummies every six months, and they aren’t available due to the political situation.” Antiquities experts are appealing to the university and the culture ministry for funding and equipment to better fend off the microbes eating into the mummies’ flesh. • 9 WEDNESDAY, MAY 3, 2017 USA US issues travel alert for Europe The US State Department issued a travel alert for Europe on Monday, saying US citizens should be aware of a continued threat of terrorist attacks throughout the continent. In the alert, the State Department cited recent incidents in France, Russia, Sweden and the UK and said Islamic State and al-Qaeda “have the ability to plan and execute terrorist attacks in Europe.” REUTERS THE AMERICAS Eight dead in Colombia military plane crash Eight people died Monday when a military aircraft crashed into a hill in central Colombia, President Juan Manuel Santos said. The crash occurred to the west of Bogota, between the towns of Facatativa and Zipacon, the governor for the region, Jorge Emilio Rey, said on his Twitter account. AFP UK May: EU united in getting deal that works for them UK Prime Minister Theresa May warned British voters on Tuesday that the 27 other EU countries were determined to win a divorce deal that “works for them”, using criticism that she had “illusions” over the talks to bolster her election campaign. May said the only way to secure a good deal for Britain was for the country to unite behind her in the snap election she has called for next month. REUTERS EUROPE Denmark bans six hate preachers DT Denmark on Tuesday published a blacklist of six foreign preachers accused of spreading hatred, including five Muslims and an American Evangelical pastor, banning them for at least two years. The blacklist “sends a clear signal that travelling fanatical religious preachers who try to undermine our democracy and fundamental values of freedom and human rights are not welcome in Denmark,” the immigration and integration ministry said in a statement. AFP AFRICA Armed attacks on ships in West African waters rise Armed attacks on ships in West African waters nearly doubled in 2016, with pirates increasingly focused on kidnapping their crew for ransom off Nigeria’s coast, a report said on Tuesday. A recent spate of attacks off Somalia, meanwhile, may also indicate a resurgence of piracy in East Africa as a result of less vigilance, the Oceans Beyond Piracy project said. REUTERS
Page 1 and 2: SECOND EDITION WEDNESDAY, MAY 3, 20
Page 3 and 4: News 3 WEDNESDAY, MAY 3, 2017 Compl
Page 5 and 6: CTTC: ABT collecting info on target
Page 7: Journalists in Sirajganj form a hum
Page 11 and 12: Radisson to bring Dhaka’s traditi
Page 13 and 14: A work in progress Opinion 13 We se
Page 15 and 16: Mood swing diplomacy Trump’s fore
Page 17 and 18: What’s on 17 WEDNESDAY, MAY 3, 20
Page 19 and 20: 92 RUNS IN FOUR BALLS INCIDENT Spor
Page 21 and 22: Sevilla upset by Malaga in Andalusi
Page 23 and 24: Showtime 23 WEDNESDAY, MAY 3, 2017

e_Paper, Wednesday, May 3, 2017

Create successful ePaper yourself

Delete template?

Save as template?