Category: World

ANI

Indian diplomats and ITBP personnel were evacuated from the Indian consulate in Afghanistan’s Kandahar following an intense clash between Afghan forces and Taliban fighters. The Taliban have occupied several important areas in Afghanistan over the last several days following the USA’s announcement of withdrawing its troops. India, in a statement, said that it is closely monitoring the evolving security situation in Kandahar. India’s evacuation comes amid the Taliban’s claim that they control over 85% of Afghanistan. 

India had earlier hinted that it will bring back its nationals and officials from Afghanistan if the security situation worsens as the Taliban is making advances and capturing more provinces.

Due to the deteriorating security situation in Afghanistan’s Kandahar, some staff of the Indian embassy has been evacuated, said diplomatic sources on Sunday.

Meanwhile, the emergency services of the consulate remain operational.

However, diplomatic sources stated that reports of shutting of Indian Consulate in Kandahar, Afghanistan are incorrect. And the mission remains functional, they added.

India had earlier hinted that it will bring back its nationals and officials from Afghanistan if the security situation worsens as the Taliban is making advances and capturing more provinces.

“With the Afghan security situation deteriorating, plans have been discussed for bringing back our citizens and officials present in different parts of that country and multiple agencies are in discussion for this purpose,” sources had earlier told to ANI.

India has its embassy in Kabul along with the consulates in Kandahar and Mazar where it has over 500 staff deployed.

Two consulates in Herat and Jalalabad had ceased operations earlier there.

The country, which has had a big presence in Afghanistan since the fall of the Taliban in 2001 following the US invasion, has been helping the successive governments there including the members of the northern alliance who have been friends with India for a long time.

Describing the security situation in Afghanistan as fluid and deteriorating, the Afghan envoy to India Farid Mamundzay has said the Taliban need to cease violence and there should be an end to the bloodshed.

“More than 200,000 Afghan civilians are displaced already. There is an active fight going on between Afghan forces and Taliban fighters in 200 districts out of a total of 375. There is also trouble in 18 border districts that share a border with several countries Tajikistan, Uzbekistan and Iran,” the envoy said.

Considering that the complete withdrawal of US troops from Afghanistan will end in August, the Taliban have been capturing newer districts and areas at a lightning speed and the Afghan government forces are also fleeing from a number of places there.

India has worked immensely for the redevelopment of Afghanistan and helped it to construct Parliament building along with several roads connecting important cities of the war-torn country. (ANI)

With inputs from Agencies

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by Kashmir Today staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

Embassy has been inaugurated in downtown Tel Aviv

Jerusalem: The United Arab Emirates formally opened its embassy in Israel on Wednesday, inaugurating its diplomatic offices in Tel Aviv less than a year after the two countries announced they would establish open relations.

Speaking at the ceremony, Israeli President Isaac Herzog said the embassy opening was an important milestone in our shared journey toward a future of peace, prosperity and security for the Middle East.

The Emirati embassy’s inauguration came two weeks after Israel cut the ribbon on its embassy in Abu Dhabi during Foreign Minister Yair Lapid’s visit to the UAE in June.

Israel and the UAE formally established diplomatic relations last year after decades of clandestine ties. The two countries signed the U.S.-brokered normalization agreement on the White House lawn in September, and a flurry of bilateral economic and cooperation deals in the months since.

The UAE Embassy is situated in the same tower as Israel’s stock exchange in the heart of Tel Aviv’s business district. Most countries maintain embassies in Tel Aviv because of Jerusalem’s disputed status one of the thorniest issues in the Mideast conflict. The U.S. moved its embassy to Jerusalem in 2018, and a handful of countries have followed suit.

Israel captured east Jerusalem in the 1967 Mideast war and later annexed it in a move unrecognized by most of the international community. The city is the seat of the Israeli parliament, Supreme Court and many government offices. The Palestinians seek east Jerusalem as capital of a future independent state.

The UAE’s ambassador to Israel, Mohamed Al Khaja, told reporters that the embassy will be a base for our task to continue to build on our new partnership, to seek dialog, not dispute, to build a new paradigm of peace and to provide a model for a new collaborative approach to conflict resolution in the Middle East. (AP)

Jerusalem: The United Arab Emirates formally opened its embassy in Israel on Wednesday, inaugurating its diplomatic offices in Tel Aviv less than a year after the two countries announced they would establish open relations.

Speaking at the ceremony, Israeli President Isaac Herzog said the embassy opening was an important milestone in our shared journey toward a future of peace, prosperity and security for the Middle East.

The Emirati embassy’s inauguration came two weeks after Israel cut the ribbon on its embassy in Abu Dhabi during Foreign Minister Yair Lapid’s visit to the UAE in June.

Israel and the UAE formally established diplomatic relations last year after decades of clandestine ties. The two countries signed the U.S.-brokered normalization agreement on the White House lawn in September, and a flurry of bilateral economic and cooperation deals in the months since.

The UAE Embassy is situated in the same tower as Israel’s stock exchange in the heart of Tel Aviv’s business district. Most countries maintain embassies in Tel Aviv because of Jerusalem’s disputed status one of the thorniest issues in the Mideast conflict. The U.S. moved its embassy to Jerusalem in 2018, and a handful of countries have followed suit.

Israel captured east Jerusalem in the 1967 Mideast war and later annexed it in a move unrecognized by most of the international community. The city is the seat of the Israeli parliament, Supreme Court and many government offices. The Palestinians seek east Jerusalem as capital of a future independent state.

The UAE’s ambassador to Israel, Mohamed Al Khaja, told reporters that the embassy will be a base for our task to continue to build on our new partnership, to seek dialog, not dispute, to build a new paradigm of peace and to provide a model for a new collaborative approach to conflict resolution in the Middle East. (AP)

The storm can also lead to a blackout of high-frequency radio communication for nearly an hour in a vast areas.

A high-speed solar storm that is approaching the Earth at a speed of 1.6 million kilometres per hour, according to National Aeronautics and Space Administration (Nasa), is expected to hit our planet’s magnetic field later today, affecting electricity supply and communication infrastructure around the world.

The solar flare, flowing from an equatorial hole in the sun’s atmosphere that was first detected on July 3, can travel at a maximum speed of 500 km/second, according to spaceweather.com. Although full-fledged geomagnetic (magnetic field associated with Earth) storms are unlikely, lesser geomagnetic unrest could spark high-latitude auroras.

The satellites in the Earth’s upper atmosphere are also expected to get impacted by the incoming flares. This will directly impact GPS navigation, mobile phone signal and satellite TV. Power grids can also be hit by solar flares.

According to the latest prediction of the Space Weather Prediction Centre of the United States, the storm can also lead to a blackout of high-frequency radio communication for nearly an hour in a vast area. The Centre has marked the solar flares at X1 level, ‘X’ denoting the classification and the numerical suffix denoting the strength of the flare.

Solar flares are massive explosions on the surface of the sun that release energy, light and high-speed particles into space. According to Nasa, the biggest flares are known as “X-class flares” based on a classification system that categorises solar flares as per their strength. The smallest ones fall under A-class, followed by B, C, M and X. The solar flare that is likely to hit Earth’s magnetic field today is an X-class flare.

 (Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by Kashmir Today staff and is published from a syndicated feed.) 

Every Year the Kiswah of the Kabah is raised and a white cloth symbolizing the Ihram is put on the Kabah.

Why the Kiswah is raised each year?

The Kiswah is raised up to 3 meters each year to prevent damage to the cloth due to large crowds which assemble during the Hajj season and it becomes difficult to regulate the crowd during peak hours. It is also raised due to some superstitious beliefs of certain pilgrims who bring scissors and cut parts of the Kiswah expecting some spiritual benefit and because some people write their names or supplications on the Kiswah.

Why is a white cloth put around the Kabah?

A white cloth is put around the Kabah to symbolize the beginning of the Hajj season. In the past the Kiswah was raised in such a way that the white underlying of the cloth was revealed. However in the recent years a separate white cloth is put up.

Why the Kiswah wasn’t raised this year on 15th Dhul Qadah?

The Kiswah raising ceremony takes place every year on or a day before or after 15th Dhul Qadah because after 15th a massive influx of Hujjaj takes place which crowds the Mataaf all day around. This would have made the job of raising the Kiswah difficult if undertaken at a later date.

However this year due to restrictions on the number of Hujjaj and a mere 60,000 expected to take part in the rituals, there would be less crowd in the Mataaf making it easy for the job to be done.
The Kiswah is now expected to be raised on 17st Dhul Qadah.

People who are fully vaccinated against COVID-19 generally do not get seriously ill even if they get infected with SARS-CoV-2. However, they can still transmit the virus to others.

Associate Professor Raymond Lin, director of the National Centre for Infectious Diseases National Public Health Laboratory in Singapore, told The Straits Times that this was the centre’s observation from studying the serology test results of those diagnosed with COVID-19.

In some cases, serology tests help scientists and clinicians determine whether the antibodies were produced by natural infection or through vaccination. Knowing this can help public health officials identify “vaccine breakthrough” cases—or those who get COVID-19 even after being fully vaccinated against it.

Said Prof Lin: “Defining vaccine breakthroughs will help us study how often (such cases) occur, whether they can transmit infection, whether they develop severe disease and whether new variants infect vaccinated subjects more easily.”

He added: “So far, we observe that some infected but vaccinated subjects may transmit the virus to others.”

“There is no way we are going to allow any bases,” Pak PM Imran Khan said.

Taliban has welcomed the Pakistani government’s decision not to give its military bases to American forces after their withdrawal from Afghanistan.

Islamabad: Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan has made it clear that the country would “absolutely not” permit any of its bases or use of its territory to the United States for any kind of action inside Afghanistan.
“Absolutely not. There is no way we are going to allow any bases, any sort of action from Pakistani territory into Afghanistan. Absolutely not,” the Prime Minister said in an interview given to Jonathan Swan of HBO Axios, Dawn reported.

The interview will be aired on Sunday, on the Axios website.

The Prime Minister”s statement came after being asked whether Pakistan would allow the American government to have CIA here in the country to conduct cross-border counterterrorism missions against Al-Qaeda, ISIS or the Taliban.

Earlier, Pakistan Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi has ruled out the possibility of providing military bases to the United States for counterterrorism operations in Afghanistan.

Taliban has welcomed the Pakistani government’s decision not to give its military bases to American forces after their withdrawal from Afghanistan.

“We welcome the decision taken by Pakistani authorities not to give its bases to US forces”, Taliban spokesperson Sohail Shaheen, told The Nation on phone from Doha. “The demand by US forces for having bases in Pakistan is unjustified, and Pakistan responded rightly,” Shaheen said.

This comes amid reports that the negotiations for the military bases in the region have reached an impasse, for now, The New York Times reported.

“Some American officials (told the newspaper) that negotiations with Pakistan had reached an impasse for now. Others have said the option remains on the table and a deal is possible,” the NYT report said earlier this week.

Dawn further reported that the Foreign Minister had rejected as unfounded the reports to this effect and made it clear that the government would never provide military bases to the US, nor would allow drone attacks inside Pakistan.

In a cabinet briefing, Information Minister Chaudhry Fawad Hussain also ruled out the possibility of any airbase of the US in the country saying all such facilities were under Pakistan”s own use.

The US is in talks with Pakistan and other regional countries for cooperation in future operations in the war-torn country to keep a check on militancy, as per The News International. (NDTV)

WHO expert Dr. David Nabarro says SARS-CoV-2 has a game plan for survival, we need to get ready to fight

COVID-19 will threaten humanity for years to come, according to Dr. David Nabarro, the WHO’s special envoy on COVID-19

COVID-19 vaccines alone will not be enough, because SARS-CoV-2 will mutate to overpower the protections offered by the current vaccines, becoming an “ever present threat,” according to Dr. David Nabarro.

“This isn’t going to be a disease that can be eradicated any time soon. Indeed, it may not be possible to eradicate it at all, because, by constantly mutating, the virus is indicating its game plan for survival,” he told the Evening Standard.

“Rather than talking about defeating the pandemic, why don’t we talk about being ready for COVID. And being ready for COVID means being able to defend against the virus when it starts to appear in a community with a spike of disease.”

Nabarro says those defenses should be a mix of vaccinations, hygiene practices, mask-wearing, physical distancing and test, trace and isolate programs.

“These things have to be brought together into a system, but it’s not going to be vaccination alone that’s going to solve the problem. It’s not going to be hygiene alone that’s going to solve the problem, it’s not going to be face masks alone … its actually pulling them all together and be super clever about how you utilize the balance between these various interventions.”

In a shocking revelation, Chinese researchers claim to have found a batch of new coronaviruses in bats. They even say that the newly found viruses in the bats include one that may be the second-closest yet (genetically) to the COVID-19 virus, reports CNN.

According to the researchers, their discoveries in a single, small region of Yunnan province, southwestern China show just how many coronaviruses there are in bats and how many have the potential to spread to people.

In a report published in the journal Cell, the Chinese researchers from Shandong University said, “In total, we assembled 24 novel coronavirus genomes from different bat species, including four SARS-CoV-2 like coronaviruses.”

One was very similar, genetically to the SARS-CoV-2 virus that’s the cause of the current COVID-19 pandemic, they said.

It would be the closest strain to SARS-CoV-2 except for genetic differences on the spike protein, the knob-like structure that the virus uses when attaching to cells, they said.

Researchers are trying to find where SARS-CoV-2 came from. Although a bat is a likely source, it’s possible the virus infected an intermediary animal. The SARS virus that caused an outbreak in 2002-2004 was tracked to an animal called a civet cat.

Three of the samples described in Thursday’s report were also close to SARS genetically.

This discovery of new coronaviruses in bats comes at a time when scientists and countries across the world are calling for further investigations to figure out whether the virus originated naturally or leaked from the Wuhan Institute of Virology.

Dubai, Jun 12: Saudi Arabia says this year”s hajj pilgrimage will be limited to no more than 60,000 people, all of them from within the kingdom, due to the ongoing coronavirus pandemic.

The kingdom made the announcement Saturday on its state-run Saudi Press Agency.

It cited the Ministry of Hajj and Umrah for making the decision.

In last year”s hajj, as few as 1,000 people already residing in Saudi Arabia were selected to take part in the hajj.

Two-thirds were foreign residents from among the 160 different nationalities that would have normally been represented at the hajj. One-third were Saudi security personnel and medical staff.

The hajj begins mid-July.—(AP)

The woman was arrested after admitting to the assault, alleging that her boss was attempting to rape her

Police in Spain arrested a Bangladeshi woman in her thirties for allegedly cutting off her boss’s genitals with a knife, which she said she had done as he was attempting to rape her, reported Daily Mail.

She told officers she was trying to defend herself against sexual assault at a bar in Sant Andreu de la Barca around midnight on Tuesday.

The sliced man was rushed to the hospital for an emergency operation to reattach his penis.
The woman is currently being held at a police station following her arrest.

Officers have initiated an investigation into her statements that she was acting in self-defense but have not eliminated the prospect of arresting the bar owner once he is conscious enough to be questioned.

According to police sources, the woman had told them she had been being harassed for months and was forced to have sex with her boss several times before she assaulted him with the knife during his latest alleged rape attempt.

A representative for the regional Mossos d’Esquadra police force confirmed on Tuesday that the woman was arrested for the crime of wounding in the early hours of the morning after she contacted police to explain what happened.

The man’s nationality has not been revealed yet, but he is believed to be from Bangladesh or Pakistan.

– Agencies