UK foreign secretary was speaking at memorial ceremony for victims of 2008 attacks in Mumbai
Countries must work together to deprive terrorists of funding in order to prevent deadly attacks, the UK foreign secretary, James Cleverly, has said.
Cleverly is in India for a two-day meeting of the UN security council’s counter-terrorism committee, which is being held in Mumbai and Delhi.
Continue reading...Notice issued to Rajasthan state government demanding police inquiry into ‘abominable’ practice
Young girls in the northern Indian state of Rajasthan are being sold as “repayment” for loans their parents cannot afford, the national body that protects human rights has said.
The National Human Rights Commission has issued a notice to the state government demanding a police inquiry and answers within a month to what it called an “abominable” practice.
Continue reading...Shahriar Alam criticises international community for doing ‘absolutely nothing’ to press Myanmar’s junta to guarantee a safe return
The world has done “absolutely nothing” to ensure safety in Myanmar for its persecuted Rohingya minority, said Bangladesh’s foreign minister, complaining that his country is sheltering more than 1 million refugees without support.
Foreign minister Shahriar Alam told the Guardian financial support for the Rohingya has decreased each year and there has been no real progress towards repatriation in the five years since more than 700,000 fled massacres by Myanmar’s military. That wave, in August 2017, joined approximately 300,000 people that had already fled Myanmar because of previous security crackdowns.
Continue reading...Nearly 10,000 homes were destroyed or damaged by storm that flooded cities and forced a million to evacuate
At least 24 people have died and millions were without power after Cyclone Sitrang struck Bangladesh, forcing the evacuation of about a million people.
Most of the deaths were from falling trees, police and government officials said, with two dying in the north on the Jamuna river when their boat sank. A Myanmar national working on a ship also died by falling off the deck, an official said.
Continue reading...Archaic laws include fining those who fail to beat a drum to beat back locusts or report money found in street
An Indian minister has called for his country to abolish 1,500 archaic laws dating back to the British Raj.
On the statute book are laws that range from equating kites with aircraft so that anyone wanting to fly a kite needs a licence, to a requirement for car inspectors to have “well-brushed” teeth.
Continue reading...Reported attack by military comes days before Asean meeting to discuss widening violence in country
Myanmar’s military has killed 60 people, including musicians, in a devastating airstrike that targeted a concert held by a rebel faction of the country’s minority Kachin ethnic group, according to organisers and a rescue worker.
The reported attack came three days before south-east Asian foreign ministers were due to attend a special meeting in Indonesia to discuss the widening violence in the country.
Continue reading...Indians react to news UK will have its first Hindu PM and consider how it will affect bilateral ties
As Rishi Sunak prepares to become the UK’s next prime minister at the start of the festival of Diwali – when Hindus pray to the goddess Lakshmi for prosperity and success – in India some Hindus celebrated the fact that someone sharing their religion had reached such high office in the UK.
“To have a Hindu inside 10 Downing Street is something astonishing and of great joy, and that too on Diwali,” said Satish Verma, a supermarket owner in Delhi. “Although he is British, it will make us Hindus proud that one of us made it so big.”
Continue reading...Police say Arshad Sharif was shot after his car failed to stop at a roadblock near Nairobi
Kenya’s national police service has said it regretted the killing of a Pakistani journalist who had been living in hiding in the country and was shot dead in Nairobi in an incident it described as a case of mistaken identity.
Officers opened fire on Arshad Sharif, 50, and a friend on Sunday after they allegedly drove through a security roadblock outside the Kenyan capital.
Continue reading...Election commission rules he misled officials about gifts received from foreign leaders while in office
The former prime minister of Pakistan Imran Khan has been disqualified from running for political office for five years, after the country’s election commission ruled that he misled officials about gifts he received from foreign leaders while in power.
The decision announced on Friday is another twist in political wrangling that began even before Khan’s ejection in April, and is one of several legal battles being fought by the former international cricket star and his Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) party.
Continue reading...Sanna Irshad Mattoo says she was barred from taking a flight to New York where she was scheduled to receive the 2022 Pulitzer Prize
Indian authorities have been criticised after a Kashmiri photojournalist said she was barred from taking a flight to New York where she was scheduled to receive the 2022 Pulitzer prize.
Sanna Irshad Mattoo, 27, was in a team of Reuters photographers who had won a Pulitzer for feature photography for their coverage of the coronavirus crisis in India.
Continue reading...Three prison staff and five visitors died after the bombs hit a crowd queuing to drop off parcels for inmates at prison housing political detainees
At least eight people have been killed in explosions at Myanmar’s main prison for political detainees after two bombs exploded on Wednesday morning.
Three prison staff and five visitors, including a 10-year-old girl, died after the bombs hit a crowd queueing to drop off parcels for inmates at Insein Prison, junta authorities said in a statement.
Continue reading...Mallikarjun Kharge, a Gandhi loyalist, aims to lead fightback against Narendra Modi’s BJP
India’s Congress party has appointed its first president in 24 years not from the Gandhi dynasty, in an effort to reverse its apparent decline and take on the seemingly invincible Narendra Modi.
Mallikarjun Kharge, 80, a loyalist in the court of the Nehru-Gandhi dynasty which rules the party, defeated the rival candidate Shashi Tharoor by almost 7,000 votes in a poll of 9,000 party delegates.
Continue reading...UK government lawyers tell asylum seekers they can return to Sri Lanka or be removed to undisclosed country
Tamil refugees seeking asylum from the British-claimed Chagos Islands face being forcibly removed to a third country under Rwanda-style plans drawn up by the UK government.
Government lawyers have told the asylum seekers that if they cannot be returned to Sri Lanka they will instead be removed to another undisclosed country.
Continue reading...UNFPA head urges countries to focus on helping women, children and marginalised people most vulnerable to demographic change
The world must not engage in “population alarmism” as the number of people living on Earth nears 8 billion, a senior UN official has said.
The global population is projected to reach that milestone on 15 November, with some commentators expressing worries about the impact of the growing number on a world already struggling with huge inequality, the climate crisis, and conflict-fuelled displacement and migration.
Continue reading...Judges described the Sri Lankan author’s second novel as a ‘rollercoaster journey through life and death’ and praised its audacity and ambition
The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida by Sri Lankan author Shehan Karunatilaka has won the Booker prize for fiction. The judges praised the “ambition of its scope, and the hilarious audacity of its narrative techniques”.
Karunatilaka’s second novel, The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida comes more than a decade after his debut, Chinaman, which was published in 2011. The Booker-winning novel tells the story of the photographer of its title, who in 1990 wakes up dead in what seems like a celestial visa office. With no idea who killed him, Maali has seven moons to contact the people he loves most and lead them to a hidden cache of photos of civil war atrocities that will rock Sri Lanka.
Continue reading...US president questioned country’s nuclear weapons safety protocols sparking outrage in Islamabad
Pakistan on Saturday summoned the US ambassador for an explanation after President Joe Biden described the south Asian country as “one of the most dangerous nations in the world” and questioned its nuclear weapons safety protocols.
Biden made the apparently off-the-cuff remark late on Thursday while talking about US foreign policy during a private Democratic party fundraiser in California, but the White House later published a transcript of his comments, which provoked outrage in Pakistan.
Continue reading...Court controlled by junta adds a further three years in jail to raft of other sentences handed to the former leader
A military-controlled court in Myanmar has sentenced ousted leader Aung San Suu Kyi to a further three years in jail for corruption, according to reports, meaning she now faces a total of 26 years in prison.
Aung San Suu Kyi has faced a raft of legal cases after the military’s seizure of power in February 2021, from incitement and multiple corruption charges, to illegal possession of walkie-talkies and breaking Covid restrictions.
Continue reading...Mayooran Thangaratnam fled Sri Lanka for the UK in 2003 after brutal murder of his father but was repeatedly refused asylum
A refugee who was wrongly recorded as being a child murderer by the Home Office says delays in his case have led to him wasting almost two decades of his life.
Mayooran Thangaratnam, a 41-year-old Tamil from Sri Lanka, fled to the UK in 2003 at the age of 23 and claimed asylum. He provided evidence to the Home Office from media reports that his father, a journalist who passed information to the UN about the Sri Lankan government’s persecution of Tamils, was murdered by Sri Lankan forces and that his life was also in danger.
Continue reading...A heatwave that began in March led to the country receiving almost triple its average rainfall from June to August
Traditionally, the Asian monsoon is a time to celebrate. But after devastating floods in Pakistan, people in the country may feel differently. At their greatest extent in September, floods covered one-third of Pakistan’s surface. About 15% of the population have been displaced or otherwise affected, and an estimated 1,700 have died.
This year’s monsoon was the wettest on record. The numbers are mind-boggling. Between June and August, Pakistan received almost triple its average rainfall. The province of Sindh received more than eight times the usual amount. However, the situation is far more complicated than just extreme downpours.
Continue reading...Shehbaz Sharif says he wants ‘climate justice’ from rich polluting countries after monsoons put a third of his country under water
Shehbaz Sharif, the prime minister, has said Pakistan should not be forced to go out with a “begging bowl” to rich polluting nations after the floods that have devastated the country and said he would be seeking “climate justice” from the international community.
Speaking from his home in Lahore, Sharif warned that Pakistan is facing an unprecedented crisis of health, food security and internal displacement after the “apocalyptic” monsoons which put a third of Pakistan’s regions under water. Some areas were hit by 1.7m of rainfall, the highest on record.
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