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  • Govt papering ground to revoke Art 370, 35A says Sadhguru Jaggi Vasudev

    SRINAGAR, JUNE 22 (PTK): Spiritual leader Sadhguru Jaggi Vasudev has said that Government with such mandate can find a solution for Kashmir.

    Sadhguru Jaggi Vasudev said in an interview with Times Now “Political advantage plays big role. Cannot afford any more partition, It’s not Kashmir’s problem, it’s India’s problem. We must believe that solution is possible.

    He further added “Kashmir problem will be solved in next 3 years and it’s not the problem of Kashmir it’s the problem of India and we must settle it”.

    He added “whatever was not happening till now but now that will happen and ground has been papered for that, we must think that the life of a soldier not goes waste”.

    He said “I don’t want to dissect history now. Very clearly, they said it’s temporary & transient, and temporary things can’t go on. We must know our borders & boundaries,’ he said on Article 370.

    He added 370 can’t be continued, why this was written people should not discuss this now, this will end and in coming 3 years we will see result”.

    He said too much blood and resources wasted. Time to ordinance repeal of Article 370 and integrate the Nation. He added that we don’t want any more petitions we already have seen petition in 1947 now BJP govt should revoke these entire article from Kashmir.

    The Article 370 of the Indian constitution provides special autonomous status to the state of Jammu and Kashmir. It means that while whole of India follows the provisions laid down in the constitution, the same isn’t applicable in J&K. Further, the laws drafted by the Centre – except foreign, defence, finance and communications – won’t be followed in J&K unless the state government approves them.

    A section people within the country have been demanding over the years that Article 370 be struck down. BJP leader Ashwini Upadhyay had in fact filed a plea in front of the Supreme Court in Septemeber 2018 seeking urgent hearing. (PTK)

  • In Picture: Fresh Anchar From Kashmir

  • Four militants killed in Shopian gunfight, operation over

    Shopian, June 23 : At least four militants in an encounter that raged between forces and militants in orchards in between Panzer and Daramdoora area of Shopian on Sunday.

    Officials told KNO that four militants killed in the gunfight belong to Ansar Gazwat ul Hind.

    Earlier, after receiving specific inputs about the presence of militants, a joint team forces including Army’s 44 RR and SOG launched search operation in the area, a police official said.

    On intensifying search towards the suspected spot, the hiding militants fired upon forces which was retaliated triggered encounter, he said.

    During the ensuing of exchange of fire, three militants were killed, he said adding that dead bodies have been recovered and identification is being ascertained.

    They said that one among the slain militants had recently typed with Ansar after he was active with hizb for three years and other two are newly recruited militants of Ansar from Shopian.

    In wake of gunfight, the mobile internet services have been snapped in the Shopian district.(KNO)

  • Shopian encounter: One more militant killed, toll reaches three

    Shopian, June 23 (KNO) : One more militant has been killed with government forces in orchards in between Panzer and Daramdoora area of Shopian on Sunday, taking the toll of killed militants to three officials told KNO.

    Earlier after receiving specific inputs about the presence of militants joint team forces including army’s 44 RR and SOG launched search operation in the area, a police official said.

    On intensifying search towards the suspected spot, hiding militants fired upon forces which was Retaliated triggered encounter, he said

    During exchange of fire first two militants were killed later one more militant was killed, he said adding that dead bodies have been recovered and identification is being ascertained,

    Sources told KNO that slain militants belong to Ansar Gazwat ul Hind, an off shoot of Al Qaeda

    They said that one among the three slain militants had recently typed with Ansar after he was active with hizb for 3 years and other two are newly recruited militants of Ansar from Shopian.

    In wake of gunfight internet services have been snapped in the Shopian district.(KNO)

  • Leopard found dead in south Kashmir’s Dooru

    Dooru: A leopard was found dead in Kreeei village of Dooru area in sorth Kashmir’s Anantnag district, officials told KNO on sunday.

    Sources told KNO some villagers noticed the dead body of full grown leopard lying in the bushes of Kreeri forest area of Dooru and informed concerned officials.

    However, the locals informed the wildlife department, who reached on the spot and took away the animal from the village.

    Forest officials when contacted told KNO that the leapard had met a natural death.

    An FIR has already been lodged and the experts of forensic laboratory have taken the samples from the carcass. (KNO)

  • 800,000,000 lives at risk as Himalayas are melting faster than before

    Srinagar, June 22: The melting of Himalayan glaciers has “accelerated” drastically over the past 40 years as a result of global warming. As the ice melts and retreats, the long-lost bodies and bones of dead mountaineers start to surface.

    Satellite observation over China, India, Nepal and Bhutan reveal the glaciers have been loosing more than 18 inches or 1.5ft of ice per year since 2000. Climate change experts at Columbia University’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory in the US, fear glaciers are now loosing twice as much ice as between 1975 and 2000.

    averaged 1C degrees hotter than between 1975 and 2000.

    Scientists presented these findings in a paper in the June 19 issue of the journal Science Advances.

    The study was published under the title of Acceleration of ice loss across the Himalayas over the past 40 years.

    Lead author Joshua Maurer, a PhD candidate at Columbia, said: “This is the clearest picture yet of how fast Himalayan glaciers are melting over this time interval, and why.”

    There are many dangers associated with the rapid loss of ice in the Himalayas – primarily the potential loss of life from flooding.

    The Himalayas, which are home to the world’s tallest mountain Mount Everest, hold an approximate 600 billion tonnes of ice and are often dubbed the Third Pole.

    But in the last 40 years alone, Mr Maurer said the Himalayan glaciers may have lost a quarter of their mass.

    And a report published by the International Center for Integrated Mountain Development this year warned the glaciers could be gone by the year 2100.

    With this comes the increased risk of disrupting water supplies and floods for those living in the shadow of the icy mountain range.

    Some 800 million people depend on seasonal runoffs of freshwater from the Himalayas to drink, nourish their farms and provide hydroelectric power.

    But as the glacial ice continues to melt and disappear, the danger is two-fold – access to drinking water will become scarce and melting ice will naturally pool into volatile reservoirs of water.

    These reservoirs will form when melting ice water gets trapped behind rocks and obstacles, growing in size until they spill over and run down mountains in the form of “glacial lake outburst floods” (GLOFs).

    A 2017 study in the Oxford Research Encyclopedia warns: “GLOFs clearly may also have catastrophic societal impacts, if they affect settled areas.

    “Fatal GLOFs have been documented in the Andes and in the Hindu Kush-Himalaya region.

    “With ongoing climate change, the risk of GLOFs has been predicted to increase, due to the formation and evolution of different subtypes of new, potentially hazardous, glacial lakes, often hand in hand with both the increasing vulnerability of the elements at risk and low adaptive capacity.”

    Joseph Shea, a glacial geographer from the University of Northern British Columbia who was not part of the original study, argued the glaciers are directly responding to the burning of fossil fuels.

    The climate expert told Columbia’s Earth Institute: “In the long term, this will lead to changes in the timing and magnitude of streamflow in a heavily populated region.

  • Encounter Rages in North Kashmir’s Boniyar, one militant killed

    Srinagar: A gunfight broke out between militants and government in Bujthalan area of Boniyar of North Kashmir’s Baramulla district on Saturday morning.

    Reports reaching GNS said that a joint team of 6Jakli of army and SOG Baramulla launched a cordon and search operation in the area.

    As senior police officer confirmed to GNS about the gunfight between militants and forces in the area.

    As per the sources one unidentified militant has been killed in ongoing operation. More details will follow.(GNS)

  • Trump approves military operation against Iran but pulls back abruptly: Report

    US President Donald Trump approved military operation against Iran after the downing of a US Global Hawk spy drone, but pulled back from launching it on Thursday night, The New York Times reported.

    According to the report, military and diplomatic officials were expecting a strike order as late as 7 p.m. (23:00 GMT) Thursday. Prior to that there were heated debates at the White House involving Trump’s top national security officials and leaders from Congress.

    The outlet added, citing a senior Trump administration official, that aircraft and ships had been on position to fire missiles when the order came to cancel the operation.

    Donald Trump initially approved attacks against a series of Iranian targets, including radar and missile batteries, The New York Times reported citing multiple senior administration officials.

    The operation, although underway, was abandoned in its early stages.

    According to the report, it is not clear whether the attacks might still go forward.

    The military operation was slated to take place before dawn Friday in Iran in order to “minimize risk to the Iranian military or to civilians,” The New York Times reported.

    CENTCOM described the downing of an American RQ-4 surveillance drone as an Iranian attempt to disrupt the ability of the US to monitor the area following recent threats to international shipping and the free flow of commerce, adding that the incident occurred in international waters.

    US President Donald Trump initially said Iran made “a very big mistake”, later walking back his comments by suggesting to reporters that he doubted the drone downing was intentional.

    The US President also noted that the incident would have been far more serious in case the aircraft had been a manned vehicle, saying that it would have made “a big, big difference.”

    The incident followed recent attacks on at least six oil tankers in the Persian Gulf region that the United States blamed on Iran. Tehran in its turn has denied all the allegations.

    Major General Hossein Salami, the commander-in-chief of Iran’s elite Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, stated on Thursday that the country had downed a US drone to send a “clear message” to Washington.

    “Iran is not seeking war with any country, but we are fully prepared to defend Iran,” he said.

    Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif has expressed Tehran’s intentions to prove that the United States is lying in its claim that its drone was downed by the Iranian army in international airspace. To that end he tweeted a map showing the location of the downing of a US Global Hawk spy drone, noting Iran had retrieved “sections” of the military drone – which originated in the UAE – in Iranian territorial waters.

    Tensions between Washington and Tehran have escalated since May 2018, when the US President scrapped the 2015 nuclear deal, which curbed Iran’s nuclear programme, claiming that it failed to stop Iran’s ballistic missile programme. The US administration has since adopted a “maximum pressure” policy aimed at pressuring the Islamic republic into negotiating a ‘better’ deal, but appears to have achieved quite the opposite so far.

  • Vote Against Palestinian NGO Not Against Palestine Cause: Foreign Ministry

    In a rare move, India on June 6 voted in favour of Israel in the United Nations Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) to deny the Palestinian non-governmental organisation “Shahed” the observer status

    Foreign ministry spokesperson Raveesh Kumar said that India has made such votes before

    New Delhi: India’s vote in the UN’s ECOSOC against a Palestinian NGO should not in any way be construed as a vote against the Palestinian cause, the External Affairs Ministry said on Thursday.
    In a rare move, India on June 6 voted in favour of Israel in the United Nations Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) to deny the Palestinian non-governmental organisation “Shahed” the observer status, after Israel said the organisation did not disclose its ties with Hamas.

    MEA spokesperson Raveesh Kumar said the vote should not be in any way be construed as a vote against the Palestinian cause.

    “We voted in favour of a proposal which was submitted by Israel at the Economic and Social Council of the UN for further scrutiny by the committee on NGOs. The proposal was submitted by Israel based on information that the NGO allegedly has close contacts with terrorist organisations,” he said.

    Mr Kumar said the vote was is in line with India’s position on greater scrutiny by the NGO committee of the consultive status application for possible terrorist linkages and to screen the NGO application with the sanctions list of the UN Security Council before ECOSOC NGO status is granted to them.

    “Again, it should not be seen as something linked to the Palestinian cause. It is something we have done in the past. It was done so that proper vetting is done before it is admitted as an ECOSOC observer,” the MEA spokesperson said.

    The ECOSOC vote, which took place at the UN, saw countries such as the US, France, Germany, India, Japan, the UK, South Korea and Canada polling in favour of Israel, while China, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and others voted against it

    The proposal made by the Palestinian NGO “Shahed” to obtain observer status in the UN was rejected by a 28-14 vote.

  • Geelani to attend Urdu book fair at Kashmir University: Hurriyat (G)

    Srinagar, June 20 (GNS): Urdu book fair, which is currently held at Kashmir University, and the students of KU have invited Syed Ali Geelani on Friday, Hurriyat Conference (G) said.

    Hurriyat (G) in a statement issued to GNS said Geelani while thanking students has accepted their invitation to the book fair.

    Geelani is scheduled to leave from his residence tomorrow at 10 am, the amalgam said in the statement. (GNS)