Author: hamid

SRINAGAR – The Anti Corruption Bureau (ACB) on Monday filed chargesheet against 17 Jammu & Kashmir Bank (JKB) officials, including two chairmen in the infamous Bank recruitment scam.

According to an official handout issued here today, the ACB produced first chargesheet against ex-Chairmen Sheikh Mushtaq and Parvez Nengroo and fifteen others, including three retired employees over 3,000 backdoor appointments that were made clandestinely. The chargesheet was filed today in the Anti Corruption Court of R.N. Wattal.

The case has been listed for next hearing on January 27, 2020.

The scam surfaced in 2018 after ACB recieved inputs that J&K Bank made 3000 illegal appointments contrary to the rules and norms of the bank. Among the appointees were kith and kin of mainstream politicians, bank officials and bureaucrats.

The ACB filed a case FIR No. 10/2019 in P/S ACB Srinagar and started a probe. During the course of investigation, a raid was carried out by the ACB sleuths at the JKB Corporate Headquarters and important documents were seized from human resources section, recruitment section and office of Chairman.

“The voluminous record was seized and scrutinized wherein it surfaced that from the year 2011 onwards Chairmen of the time have made around 2500 backdoor appointments illegally and fraudulently, consequently a thorough probe was ordered to unearth this illegal appointment scam so that corrective measures are taken by the bank to put an end to such illegal practice,” the ACB handout read.

It further adds that on conclusion of investigation of the case, allegation were established against the bank officials which included 2 Ex Chairman and other employees.

One in five common Kashmiris have PTSD symptoms, reveals 2015 Study, experts say number has gone up of late

Srinagar, Dec 23: The ongoing internet suspension and the three month long clampdown since August 5 has added to the already traumatized people of Kashmir as the number of people with various psychiatric ailments has shown a steep rise in the past five months.

According to wire service—Kashmir News Observer (KNO), nearly one in five people in Kashmir shows symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTST), according to a 2015 study by Médecins Sans Frontières and the Srinagar-based Institute of Mental Health and Neurosciences, or IMHANS.

Dr. Arshad Hussain, a psychiatrist who co-authored the Action-Aid study, calls Kashmir one of the “saddest places in the world”.

“The chaos that Kashmir has witnessed over the years has definitely deepened this problem,” he said. The situation has escalated as the clampdown coupled with the internet shutdown has added more to the figures of mentally sick patients.

The Kashmir valley has been on lockdown since 5 August, when Centre rolled back Article 370 and imposed curfews, cutting off communications on all platforms.

“If the instability and violence don’t subside mental health disorders are going to increase,” said Hussain.

The IMHANS and Action-Aid study estimated only 6.4 percent of people with a mental illness had seen a psychiatrist, and only 12.6 percent sought any kind of healthcare help at all. Hussain, the study’s co-author, says this is partly to blame on stigma and a poor understanding of mental illness.

An October paper by a group of academics and activists researching the crackdown in Kashmir reported that the programme was functional in only two districts amid “an acute shortage of psychiatrists” across Kashmir.

“It will be highly surprising if a few months from now we do not find extraordinarily high rates of PTSD,” wrote Dr. Anirudh Kala, a psychiatrist and one of the paper’s researchers.

For Fatima, a resident of Ompora, Budgam, her son has been declared mentally unwell with chronic symptoms of PTSD. “My son started behaving abnormally post August 5 and now he is being counselled and is on a drug,” she said. “I am not able to find out what happened to him. He gets irritated over small issues and starts breaking everything that comes into his way. His is just 10.”

An official at the directorate of Health Services Kashmir, while talking to KNO admitted that mental health programmes are limited and said that it’s still a goal to make district-level treatment more widely available. “We are working on it,” he said, wishing not to be named. (KNO)

“These findings just add another reason to have a healthy diet with fruits and vegetables. Vitamin A from plant sources is safe,” said Eunyoung Cho, an associate professor at Brown University in the US.

Intake of vitamin A may be associated with a lower risk of a common type of skin cancer, a study claims.

The study of about 125,000 Americans found that people with the highest intake of vitamin A lowered their risk of squamous cell skin cancer by around 15 per cent.

Most of the vitamin A they consumed came from foods, according to the study published in the journal JAMA Dermatology.

“These findings just add another reason to have a healthy diet with fruits and vegetables. Vitamin A from plant sources is safe,” said Eunyoung Cho, an associate professor at Brown University in the US.

Healthy food sources of vitamin A include sweet potato, cantaloupe, carrots, black-eyed peas, sweet red peppers, broccoli, spinach, dairy foods, fish and meat, especially liver, according to the US National Institutes of Health (NIH).

Vitamin A is a fat soluble vitamin. That means it can collect in the fat cells.

However, when taken in large amounts — like those in supplements — people can potentially reach an unsafe level of vitamin A, according to the NIH.

Adults shouldn’t consume more than 10,000 international units (IU) of preformed vitamin A daily, the NIH said.

Cho said too much preformed vitamin A — typically from supplements and some animal foods — increases the risk of osteoporosis and hip fractures.

Squamous cell carcinoma is a common type of skin cancer. Over a lifetime, as many as 11 per cent of Americans will have squamous cell skin cancer, the researchers said.

It tends to occur in areas exposed to a lot of sunlight, such as the face and head.

The study included data from more than 75,000 women who took part in the Nurses’ Health Study and almost 50,000 men in the Health Professionals Follow-up Study.

Participants’ average age was in the early 50s.

Study volunteers provided information on their average diet and supplement use.

Nearly 4,000 people ended up with squamous cell skin cancer during more than 25 years of follow-up, the findings showed.

Average daily vitamin A intake was around 7,000 IU daily for the lowest group in both studies.

The highest group in both studies had more than 21,000 IU daily. Most of this came from dietary sources, the researchers said.

They noted that increasing use of vitamin A supplements didn’t appear to lower the risk of squamous cell skin cancer.

Vitamin A seemed to be even more protective for people with numerous moles and those who had a blistering sunburn in childhood or adolescence.

The study wasn’t designed to prove a cause-and-effect link, but Cho said that vitamin A works to keep skin cells healthy, and that may be why it’s linked to a lower risk of squamous cell cancers.

However, she added, even if people have a healthy diet full of vitamin A, they still need sunscreen when they are outside.

In addition, vitamin A didn’t prevent squamous cell skin cancers entirely, she noted.

The study also didn’t look at vitamin A’s effect on other forms of skin cancer, such as basal cell carcinoma and melanoma.

Jammu: Drass, India’s coldest inhabited place in Kargil district of Ladakh Union Territory (UT), has recorded this winter’s lowest temperature so far.

The minimum temperature plummeted to -27.7°C while maximum temperature was recorded at -13°C. Drass, the second coldest place after Siberia (Russia) on earth is witnessing daily drop in temperature as December is progressing.

Leh shivers at -18°C

The minimum temperature plummeted to -27.7°C while maximum temperature was recorded at -13°C. Drass, the second coldest place after Siberia (Russia) on earth is witnessing daily drop in temperature as December is progressing.
As per the Indian Meteorological Department (IMD), Ladakh UT is facing cold wave conditions and temperature is likely to dip further. In Leh, the minimum temperature was recorded at -18°C while the maximum temperature was recorded at 0°C.
As per the Indian Meteorological Department (IMD), Ladakh is facing cold wave conditions and temperature is likely to dip further. In Leh, minimum temperature was recorded at -18°C while maximum temperature was recorded at 0°C.

The inhospitable place of India is very strategic town along the Line of Control (LoC) with Pakistan and its nearly 15,000 residents have been living in the area for centuries. Adapted to the harsh climate but the residents are mostly deprived of modern amenities, especially during winter months. Successive government’s in erstwhile J&K had also failed to resolve even basic issues of the people. Power supply is also erratic during the winters.

When contacted, Director IMD, Srinagar, Dr Sonum Lotus said, “It is likely to plummet further till mid January next year but -27.7 degrees was lowest so far recorded by our station. Overall cold conditions will intensify further”.

Lowest recorded temperature in the area was witnessed at -60°C on January 9, 1995.

“A majority of the people face lot of hardships as there is very poor health infrastructure. -30 to -35°C is common during the winters. The area needs focused development”, said Shazeya from Drass who is studying in Jammu.

For about seven months many hamlets in sparsely inhabited region remain cut off from rest of the world with the administration making stocking of fuel, food grains during the brief summer months.

NEW DELHI: India has to be prepared for escalation in the situation along the Line of Control with Pakistan, said Army chief General Bipin Rawat on Wednesday, even as the Pakistan army continues to attempt BAT (border action team) operations as well as indulge in heavy cross-border firing after J&K’s special status was abrogated in August.

“The situation along the LoC can escalate any time. We have to be prepared for the spiraling of the escalatory matrix,” said General Rawat. The Army is maintaining a high level of operational readiness, with detailed plans chalked out to cater for different contingencies.

The statement comes barely a couple of days after the Army thwarted yet another BAT operation by the Pakistan Army in the Sunderbani sector along the LoC but lost a soldier while another one was injured in the heavy exchange of firing on Monday. “Pakistan is attempting BAT actions almost every third day. We keep on foiling them and taking retaliatory action,” said a source.
This has been a particularly violent year along the 778-km LoC, with as many as 2,900 ceasefire violations (CFVs) also being recorded till now to break all annual records since 2003. The number of CFVs was 971 in 2017 and 1,629 in 2018.

The intensity of the cross-border firings, with both sides often deploying heavy mortars, anti-tank guided missiles and artillery guns, first registered a major spike after IAF fighters conducted the pre-dawn air strikes on the major Jaish-e-Mohammed facility at Balakot in the Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa province of Pakistan on February 26.

Pakistan had retaliated on February 27 by sending a “strike package” of 24 fighters, including F-16s, JF-17s and Mirage-5 attack jets, to target Indian military installations in the Nowshera sector across the LoC, which included a brigade headquarters and an ammunition dump.

Though the IAF had foiled the attempt, it lost the MiG-21 being flown by Wing Commander Abhinandan Varthaman. “If the Pakistani fighters had managed to hit an important target like an ammunition dump, we would have definitely taken strong retaliatory action. We were prepared for escalation,” said the source.