Big bluff in high skies | ||||
| KARAN CHOWDHURY | Monday , July 21 , 2014 | | ||||
New Delhi, July 20: Flight tracking data have called into question the claims of Air India and Jet Airways on when they began skirting flight paths over Ukraine. Last week, the two Indian airlines had said they had started skirting either the war zone in Ukraine or the country altogether almost three months ago when the conflict first broke out in the region — ensuring that the safety of their passengers was never at risk. But data from flight-tracking website Flightradar24 do not support the claims made by the civil aviation ministry and the two airlines. Data history of the flight paths taken by planes operated by the two airlines showed that they were flying close to Donetsk — the nerve centre of the strife-torn region — up until July 17. The two airlines had issued statements to soothe passengers’ fears after Malaysia Airlines’ MH-17 was downed by a missile and all 298 people on board were killed on July 17. Soon after MH-17 went down, an Air India spokesperson had said: “Air India flights were not flying the airway paths which fell in the conflict zone. Though we were using Ukrainian airspace till the crash took place, we were flying in an airway path which was nowhere near the conflict zone. We stopped flying over Ukraine completely after the crash.” Jet Airways made an even bolder assertion. It claimed on its website: “Jet Airways would like to assure its guests that none of the Jet Airways flights to and from Europe fly through the Ukrainian airspace ever since the conflict began, and we continue to avoid the Ukrainian airspace in the prime interest of the safety of our guests.” Data from Flightradar24 showed that the two cash-strapped airlines routinely went down a popular highway in the sky that aviators call L980. The sky highway is a key link between key airports in Europe like London’s Heathrow, Amsterdam’s Schiphol and Germany’s Frankfurt and Asian megapolises like Delhi, Singapore and Hong Kong. The data showed that Air India’s Boeing 777-337ERs on flight AIC-111 from Delhi to Heathrow flew via Horlivka, close to Donetsk, on July 10, 12, 13 and 16. It is the region where MH-17 was brought down. (See map showing conflict zone)
On July 15, an Air India B-787 Dreamliner flight from Delhi to Birmingham flew through insurgency centres such as Donetsk, Luhansk and Poltava at an altitude of 40,000 feet in daylight at 1307 hours. Donetsk and Poltava are areas where the Ukrainian army and pro-Russian rebels are engaged in a bloody battle and have been using advanced weaponry, including missiles. On other dates, the planes flew about 150km southwest of Donetsk. Jet Airways’ Airbus 330s on flight 9W-230 between Delhi and Brussels flew close to Donetsk on July 8, 10, 12 and 15. On other days, the two airlines flew through Zaporizhia, southwest of Donetsk. The data show that the planes of both Air India and Jet typically flew at a height of 36,000 feet — marginally above MH-17’s 33,000 feet. Some estimates say the Buk missile can hit targets up to 72,000 feet. The Sunday Times, the weekend edition of The Times of India, had reported that an Air India Dreamliner from Delhi to Birmingham was less than 25km away when the Malaysian plane went down. Aviation veterans said Air India should have avoided the conflict zone. “When the airline had decided not to fly through the conflict zone, they should have stuck to the decision. Until MH-17 was shot down, no one considered the route risky. Even so, the route should have been avoided. Passenger lives could have been at stake,” said Robin Pathak, former Air India director. On Sunday, Air India officials said they stood by their earlier statement, insisting that they were nowhere near the conflict zone. Asked to comment on the flight paths shown by the flight tracking website, the officials said they would be able to answer technical questions only on Monday as the senior operations in-charge was not in town. A questionnaire that was emailed to the airline also went unanswered. A Jet Airways spokesperson confined himself to saying the airline was not flying through Ukrainian airspace. Flight tracking websites typically use information that a plane sends out through its transponders to satellites to determine the flight path. They also source information from the FAA, the US aviation authority. Flightradar24 data show that Air India and Jet Airways weren’t alone in flying through the region: British Airways, Air France, Lufthansa and KLM had also used the same route in the recent past. However, Australia’s Qantas and Korean Air started avoiding the route soon after the conflict broke out in the region. Since the MH-17 crash, Jet Airways flights have been travelling deep south of Ukraine Air India chose to go far north of Ukraine on July 18, going through Lahore and Kabul before veering north through Uzbekistan, Belarus, northern Poland and Germany before touching down in Brussels. On the very next day, it swooped south via Quetta in Pakistan, Iran, Turkey, Romania, Hungary, Austria, and Germany before landing in Brussels. The L980 has been the preferred route because it is the shortest distance between Europe and key cities in Asia, helping loss-laden airlines save on fuel costs. One reason why airlines continued to fly through eastern Ukraine was that none of the authorities had red-flagged the route as a conflict zone to be avoided. On April 23, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) of the US had issued a notice to airmen (NOTAM) that barred US carriers from flying over the Crimean region and portions close to the Black Sea. But it didn’t cover the region where MH-17 went down. Since the crash, the FAA has warned US carriers to avoid Ukraine as well. There are several other hotspots the FAA has warned US carriers to avoid: Syria, Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, Egypt, Libya, Mali, Yemen, Ethiopia, Somalia, Kenya, Democratic Republic of Congo and North Korea. The Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) in India hasn’t been as drastic because that would leave domestic airlines with virtually no options to fly to Europe. But it has advised the two airlines to avoid Ukraine, which they now seem to have done. |
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Big bluff in high skies -- Karan Chowdhury
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Women Go Online to Protest 'Everyday Sexism'
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PM Modi to visit BARC in Mumbai on Monday. NaMo, announce thorium-based nuke programme, protect thorium reserves.
PM Modi to visit BARC in Mumbai on Monday
PTI Mumbai, July 20, 2014 | UPDATED 21:05 IST
Prime Minister Narendra Modi
Modi is likely to be briefed on the development of the Indian Pressurised Water Reactor, large scale accelerators, Indian Neutrino Observatory and large size nuclear recycle plants during his visit, a state government official said.
The PM would interact with the scientists of Department of Atomic Energy (DAE) and BARC during his visit.
Modi would land here from Delhi in the afternoon and return to the national capital after BARC visit in the evening. There is no other programme scheduled, sources said, adding that BARC event would not be open to the media.
This will be Modi's first visit to Mumbai after becoming the prime minister.
MSRE: Alvin Weinberg's Molten Salt Reactor Experiment - "Th" Thorium Documentary Published on Jan 28, 2014
Oak Ridge National Laboratory was the home of Alvin Weinberg's Molten Salt Reactor Experiment. The MSRE proved that a fission reaction in molten fluoride salts could be contained in Hastelloy-N, and that a molten salt fueled reactor concept was viable.
Two prototype molten salt reactors were successfully designed, constructed and operated at ORNL. The Aircraft Reactor Experiment in 1954 and Molten-Salt Reactor Experiment 1965-1969. Both used liquid fluoride fuel salts. The MSRE demonstrated fueling with U-233 and U-235. Alvin Weinberg was removed from his post and the MSR program closed down in the early 1970s. Aircraft Reactor Experiment & Molten Salt Reactor Experiment remain the only molten salt reactors ever operated.
Two prototype molten salt reactors were successfully designed, constructed and operated at ORNL. The Aircraft Reactor Experiment in 1954 and Molten-Salt Reactor Experiment 1965-1969. Both used liquid fluoride fuel salts. The MSRE demonstrated fueling with U-233 and U-235. Alvin Weinberg was removed from his post and the MSR program closed down in the early 1970s. Aircraft Reactor Experiment & Molten Salt Reactor Experiment remain the only molten salt reactors ever operated.
World's first thorium reactor designed. NaMo, declare thorium-based nuke doctrine; it will be a tribute to Bharat's atomic scientists.
World’s First Thorium Reactor Designed
India’s forward-thinking attitude has established the country as the leader in thorium reactor development. But can India put its long-term plan into reality? Now, their AHWR design is finished, taking them one big step forward.
The reactor is equipped with![]()
passive shutdown systems, core heat removal through natural circulation, emergency core coolant system (ECCS) and gravity-driven water pool (GDWP), a large tank of borated water on top of the primary containment of vessel. It can operate for 120 days without operator - that’s 4 months without anyone controlling it. And did we mention the design life: this reactor will last some 100 years.
passive shutdown systems, core heat removal through natural circulation, emergency core coolant system (ECCS) and gravity-driven water pool (GDWP), a large tank of borated water on top of the primary containment of vessel. It can operate for 120 days without operator - that’s 4 months without anyone controlling it. And did we mention the design life: this reactor will last some 100 years.The plan is to have a 300MW prototype in operation by 2016 and then expand thereafter. By 2050, thorium should meet 30% of India’s electricity demand.
The completion of the AHWR design is an important step towards reducing the import of fossil fuels and combat climate change.
To learn more about India’s Thorium Energy Program, have a look at their three presentations from ThEC13 in Geneva below, which contain a wealth of information (click on the title to see the slides as you watch the video):
Towards Sustainable Secure and Safe Energy Future Leveraging Opportunities with Thorium by Anil Kakodkar, BARC, India (32:34)
Towards Sustainable Secure and Safe Energy Future Leveraging Opportunities with Thorium by Anil Kakodkar, BARC, India (32:34)
Towards Sustainable Secure and Safe Energy Future Leveraging Opportunities with Thorium
Published on Nov 7, 2013
Anil Kakodkar from BARC in India gives a talk at ThEC13 titled: Towards Sustainable Secure and Safe Energy Future Leveraging Opportunities
Recycling Challenges of Thorium-based Fuels by PK Wattal, BARC, India (26:45)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5pFBkUNCp1I Published on Nov 12, 2013
PK Wattal from BARC in India gives a talk at ThEC13 titled: Recycling Challenges of Thorium based Fuels
Overview of the Thorium Programme in India by Pallippattu Krishnan Vijayan, BARC, India (33:09)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tFHdlvRxGqQ Published on Nov 7, 2013
Design of World's first Thorium based nuclear reactor is ready, by India Today
Areva and Solvay Join Forces to Thorify
Thorium is not new for Areva. Indeed, it has researched Thorium fuels since the 1970’s. Now, Areva has joined forces with the Belgian chemical company Solvay on an R&D programme focused on medium-term Thorium valorization in nuclear power, geared towards first phase of fuel development with irradiation by 2020.
The companies investigate Thorium fuel options as a complement to the U/Pu cycle in an international context, and address a holistic Thorium management providing industrial solutions to those requiring and considering valorization of Thorium both in rare earth as in nuclear energy market.
Mr. Thierry Delloye from Solvay and Mr. Luc Van Den Durpel from Areva at ThEC13 in Geneva.
In his presentation at the Thorium Energy Conference 2013 (ThEC13) in Geneva, Mr. Luc Van Den Durpel, Vice President of Corporate R&D at Areva, presented an ‘Industrial View on Thorium: Possibilities, Challenges and Paths Forward’. Mr. Van Den Durpel maintained a skeptical tone throughout his presentation and stated, that Thorium use in nuclear power will only occur if a government drives a large Thorium fuel and reactor R&D programme with a long-term vision.
Nuclear and Chemistry Giants Join Forces
Also, he believes that a transition, if desired, to go towards 100% Thorium will take decades at least. The co-operation with Solvay starts with a more medium-term goal, however, and aims at using Thorium as a complement to uranium. Areva and Solvay welcome R&D-organisations and other companies for collaboration.
![]()
is a French public multinational industrial conglomerate, headquartered in Paris. The company is mainly known for nuclear power, although it also pursues interests in other energy projects. It is the only company with a presence in each industrial activity linked to nuclear energy: mining, chemistry, enrichment, fuel assembly, reprocessing, engineering, nuclear propulsion and reactors, treatment, recycling, stabilization, and dismantling. Areva had revenue of € 8.872 billion in 2011, and it has 47,541 employees.
![]()
is a Belgian chemical company founded in 1863. At one point it was the largest multinational company in the world. In 2012, it realized 12.8 billion € in revenues with 29,100 employees. In 2011 Solvay acquired Rhodia, which has a Rare Earth division.
Solvay is particularly famous for its Fifth Solvay International Conference on Electrons and Photons. This is where the world's most notable physicists met to discuss the newly formulated quantum theory. The leading figures were Albert Einstein and Niels Bohr. Einstein, disenchanted with Heisenberg's uncertainty principle, remarked "God does not play dice". Bohr replied, "Einstein, stop telling God what to do".
![]()
The famous Fifth Solvay Conference held in 1927 and regarded as a turning point for physics.
is a French public multinational industrial conglomerate, headquartered in Paris. The company is mainly known for nuclear power, although it also pursues interests in other energy projects. It is the only company with a presence in each industrial activity linked to nuclear energy: mining, chemistry, enrichment, fuel assembly, reprocessing, engineering, nuclear propulsion and reactors, treatment, recycling, stabilization, and dismantling. Areva had revenue of € 8.872 billion in 2011, and it has 47,541 employees.
is a Belgian chemical company founded in 1863. At one point it was the largest multinational company in the world. In 2012, it realized 12.8 billion € in revenues with 29,100 employees. In 2011 Solvay acquired Rhodia, which has a Rare Earth division.Solvay is particularly famous for its Fifth Solvay International Conference on Electrons and Photons. This is where the world's most notable physicists met to discuss the newly formulated quantum theory. The leading figures were Albert Einstein and Niels Bohr. Einstein, disenchanted with Heisenberg's uncertainty principle, remarked "God does not play dice". Bohr replied, "Einstein, stop telling God what to do".
The famous Fifth Solvay Conference held in 1927 and regarded as a turning point for physics.
17 of the 29 attendees (see picture) were or became Nobel Prize winners, including Marie Curie, who alone among them won a Nobel Prize in two separate scientific disciplines. One of them was for her research on the radiation phenomena of thorium amongst other elements.
Below you find the video of Mr. Van Den Durpel’s presentation at ThEC13 in Geneva.
Below you find the video of Mr. Van Den Durpel’s presentation at ThEC13 in Geneva.
ndustrial View on Thorium Possibilities Challenges and Paths Forward Luc Van Der Durpel Areva
Published on Nov 8, 2013
Mr. Luc Van Der Durpels presentation An Industrial View on Thorium Possibilities Challenges and Paths Forward can be viewed and downloaded by simply clicking on the title.
Updated 2014-01-10:
Solvay and AREVA join their expertise in the development of new applications for thorium published by Solvay
Solvay and AREVA join their expertise in the development of new applications for thorium published by Solvay
China Announces Thorium Energy Project
The Chinese Academy of Sciences announced that it will finance the development of a programme to develop a Thorium Fuelled Molten Salt Reactor (TFMSR).![]()
This programme will place China at the forefront… continue
The Chinese Academy of Sciences announced that it will finance the development of a programme to develop a Thorium Fuelled Molten Salt Reactor (TFMSR).
This programme will place China at the forefront… continue
Bill Gates Invest in Thorium Capable Reactor Venture
Bill Gates received a standing ovation at this year's TED Conference in Long Beach, California.
![]()
"There are some innovations in nuclear, there is modular, there is liquid…"continue
Bill Gates received a standing ovation at this year's TED Conference in Long Beach, California.
"There are some innovations in nuclear, there is modular, there is liquid…"continueCongressman Calls for Thorium Energy
In his quest for the US to produce more responsible energy at home, Congressman Joe Sestak looked for ways to improve the energy industry.![]()
He then began to take a closer look at thorium energy and has since…continue
In his quest for the US to produce more responsible energy at home, Congressman Joe Sestak looked for ways to improve the energy industry.
He then began to take a closer look at thorium energy and has since…continue
The nuke that might have been
Being plentiful and cheap, thorium is the only fuel that stands a chance of![]()
generating electricity as cheaply as burning coal. As such, it is the only fuel capable of weaning the world off the biggest single polluter of all… continue
Being plentiful and cheap, thorium is the only fuel that stands a chance of
generating electricity as cheaply as burning coal. As such, it is the only fuel capable of weaning the world off the biggest single polluter of all… continueWhy Aren't We Using Thorium in Nuclear Reactors?
Given the![]()
possibility of a meltdown is nearly zero and the waste cannot be used to make bombs... continue
Given the
possibility of a meltdown is nearly zero and the waste cannot be used to make bombs... continueAdvanced Nuclear Energy Transcends Political Climate
And, finally, there’s thorium, a fuel source best suited to run in fourth![]()
generation “liquid fuel” reactor. Thorium has much higher melting point…continue
![]()
And, finally, there’s thorium, a fuel source best suited to run in fourth
generation “liquid fuel” reactor. Thorium has much higher melting point…continueNuclear power looks for new ally—environmentalistsCountries like India and China have made thorium a linchpin of a long-term transition away from uranium,![]()
said Paul Genoa, director of policy development at the Nuclear Energy Institute… continue
said Paul Genoa, director of policy development at the Nuclear Energy Institute… continueAsgard’s Fire
So a technology abandoned because it could not be turned![]()
into weapons may now, in part for that very reason, be about to resurface… continue
So a technology abandoned because it could not be turned
into weapons may now, in part for that very reason, be about to resurface… continueThorium and the Dream of Clean Nuclear Power
![]()
A new generation of scientists and nuclear engineers argue that thorium could be the key to realizing a dream… continue
A new generation of scientists and nuclear engineers argue that thorium could be the key to realizing a dream… continueThorium type nuclear should have been developed years ago
![]()
…Thorium type nuclear, of all sizes, should have been developed years ago, and is still possible… continue
…Thorium type nuclear, of all sizes, should have been developed years ago, and is still possible… continueThe nuke that might have been
Being plentiful and cheap, thorium is the only fuel that stands a chance of![]()
generating electricity as cheaply as burning coal. As such, it is the only fuel capable of weaning the world off the biggest single polluter of all… continue
Being plentiful and cheap, thorium is the only fuel that stands a chance of
generating electricity as cheaply as burning coal. As such, it is the only fuel capable of weaning the world off the biggest single polluter of all… continueWhy Britain's new reactors are old-fashioned
![]()
…If politicians in the 1980s had taken a long-term and sensible view we might now be looking at the dawn of a new thorium age in Somerset… continue
…If politicians in the 1980s had taken a long-term and sensible view we might now be looking at the dawn of a new thorium age in Somerset… continue
Last updated 18 February, 2014
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Cleaning Lady Foils Knife-Wielding Shanghai Bank Robber (1:10)
7:02 pm HKT
Jul 18, 2014
Video Interlude: Cleaning Lady Foils Knife-Wielding Shanghai Bank Robber
China’s media likes to valorize the country’s ordinary heroes, from the honest cab drivers who return lost property to the 81-year-old woman in Changsha who evidently has been cleaning the public toilets near her home for the past decade on a voluntary basis.
Rarely, though, has the country had a force to contend with like the cleaning woman depicted in the video below.
The video, apparently taken this week, shows man brandishing a cleaver at patrons as he attempts to rob a Shanghai branch of the Agricultural Bank of China. At one point, he threatens to cut the throat of one female hostage. When a branch security guard begins chasing the robber, a female cleaner wielding a cleaning instrument also joins the chase. (China Real Time couldn’t determine whether the instrument of destruction was a broom or mop.) Bypassing the guard, the woman pursues the knife-wielding robber across the room with a series of emphatic whacks, as though he was a large fly.
Her gallant actions — and that of several others who helped detain the robber — didn’t go unrecognized. The state-run Shanghai Daily reported that the bank this week awarded each of the five who stepped in with awards of 10,000 yuan each, along with certificates and armfuls of pink lilies.
Watch the video here:
China bank robbery fail: guards, staff fight back knife-wielding attacker
Published on Jul 15, 2014
A bank robbery at a subbranch of the Agricultural Bank of China in Shanghai was foiled in just five minutes Monday by bank staffers and people in and outside the bank. The robbery was motivated by loss of money in gambling during the World Cup.
The surveillance video showed a man walking into the bank in a black shirt and a black hat, putting a knife against the neck of a woman customer manager and asking a clerk for money.
The robber threatened to kill the woman if the clerk failed to turn over the money on time.
Upon hearing the alarm, the security guards evacuated some of the customers and locked the door to prevent the robber from fleeing. The janitor and citizens joined the security guards in cornering and eventually pinning down the robber.
Police officers later arrived and took him away.
The surveillance video showed a man walking into the bank in a black shirt and a black hat, putting a knife against the neck of a woman customer manager and asking a clerk for money.
The robber threatened to kill the woman if the clerk failed to turn over the money on time.
Upon hearing the alarm, the security guards evacuated some of the customers and locked the door to prevent the robber from fleeing. The janitor and citizens joined the security guards in cornering and eventually pinning down the robber.
Police officers later arrived and took him away.
– Te-Ping Chen
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MH17 terror: Putin's cronies warned of severe sanctions by David Cameron
Malaysia Airlines plane crashes on Ukraine-Russia border - live
David Cameron has warned Vladimir Putin that his "cronies" will face severe sanctions within days unless he opens up access to the MH17 crash site. All the latest details here
This page will automatically update every 90 secondsOn Off
• PM tells Putin his "cronies" will face severe sanctions
• Another 27 bodies are found
• Victims' bodies loaded onto trains
• Intercepted calls purport to implicate Russia in cover-up
• Malaysia Airlines crash: everything we know so far
• Watch: Wreckage offers glimpse into victims' lives
• Another 27 bodies are found
• Victims' bodies loaded onto trains
• Intercepted calls purport to implicate Russia in cover-up
• Malaysia Airlines crash: everything we know so far
• Watch: Wreckage offers glimpse into victims' lives
Latest
23.50 The AFP news agency are reporting that Russian PresidentVladimir Putin has promised Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte he will help retrieve bodies and black boxes from the Ukrainian rebel-held crash site of flight MH17.
Putin is said to have made the promise in his third conversation with Rutte since Thursday’s crash, the Dutch government press service RVD said, amid growing international anger over the stranded bodies.
“Besides allowing unrestricted access to the crash site, the conversation focused on practical matters, namely the departure of the train that has many bodies and the handing over of the black boxes,” a spokeswoman for RVD told the AFP news agency, asking not to be named.
“On both points Putin promised his full cooperation,” the spokesman said.
22.25 In his powerful dispatch from the crash scene, the Telegraph'sRoland Oliphant reports on how the bodies of the victims of the Malaysia Airlines plane disaster have now become objects of an international squabbling match:
When Roman showed up for work at the railway station in Torez as normal at 7am on Sunday morning, he was told to couple his diesel locomotive to a five-wagon train in the siding and shunt it to the platform outside the white-painted ticket office.
When Roman showed up for work at the railway station in Torez as normal at 7am on Sunday morning, he was told to couple his diesel locomotive to a five-wagon train in the siding and shunt it to the platform outside the white-painted ticket office.No one told him what was in the windowless grey wagon, or where he would be going next.
But these four windowless refrigerator wagons and one guard's van are now the grisly focus of an international tug of war over the MH17 disaster.
Roman's train is the makeshift morgue housing nearly 200 bodies collected from the crash-site of Malaysian airlines flight MH17.
What could be in the rebels' arsenal?
21.04 Western politicians and intelligence services believe the separatists used a Russian-made Buk surface-to-air missile to knock Flight MH17 out of the sky at 32,000 feet.
Tom Parfitt, the Telegraph's Moscow correspondent, says Pro-Russian separatists in eastern Ukraine have been portrayed as a motley band of militiamen with ageing guns and mismatched uniforms.
So how did a ragtag guerrilla army get hold of such a sophisticated weapon, and what else does it have in its arsenal?
Military experts say the rebels began to build up their stocks in April when numerous armoured personnel carriers – or “battlefield taxis” – came into their possession. They seized some from overrun Ukrainian bases, while others were used to transport volunteer fighters from Russia into the conflict zone.
20.51 Tomorrow's cartoon from Adams, about the threat of sanctions on Putin and Russia, has just come through to Telegraph online
20.25 Investigators from the UN aviation agency cannot reach the site because of safety concerns, a senior agency source has said.
The Montreal-based International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) is taking part in the effort to determine what happened to the airliner.
A senior ICAO official told Reuters that safety concerns meant the two investigators who were in Ukraine could not reach the crash site or examine the plane's flight recorders.
"Nobody has been allowed to have access to the site for that purpose," said the official, who was not authorised to speak to the media.
"Until safe passage for them is assured we don't send people into that kind of situation."
The official said the four-person team would be free from the political influence of the UN agency's 191 member states.
It is unusual for ICAO to take a direct role in an investigation, and the team's assignment comes in response to a request from Ukraine's government.
19.21 Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte has said the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe is negotiating with separatists to bring the train containing bodies from the Malaysia Airlines disaster under Ukrainian government control.
"All efforts are focused on getting this train onto territory controlled by Ukrainian authorities," Rutte told a news conference.
He said a team of victim identification specialists was likely to enter the crash site on tomorrow, four days after the Boeing 777 went down.
A girl leaves a tribute at Schiphol airport in Amsterdam
19.16 Peter King, a Republican Congressmen and foreign affairs hawk, has called for Russia to be stripped of the 2018 World Cup.
Comparing Russian President Vladimir Putin to a "Mafia goon," he told CBS's Face the Nation: "This is what a Mafia guy does, this is what a goon does, not a world leader, not someone in the civilised world.
"There can be no reasonable doubt now that Russia was involved, that Putin was involved.
"The US and our allies have to make clear to Putin that the rules of the game have changed, he's violated civilized norms...This is going back to the days of Stalin."
More details from Cameron and Putin phone call
18.48 Steven Swinford, the Telegraph's Senior Political Correspondent, reports:
David Cameron has warned Vladimir Putin that his "cronies" will face severe sanctions within days unless he opens up access to the MH17 crash site.
During a tense phone call, the Prime Minister told Mr Putin that he must stop supplying pro-Russian separatists with weapons and encourage them to stand down.
He voiced his personal frustration that Mr Putin has "ducked" calls for four days despite the death of 10 British citizens when the plane was shot down over Ukraine.
His comments came after he reached an agreement with Angela Merkel, the German Chancellor, and François Hollande, the French President, for tougher sanctions on Russia.
The sanctions, which will be agreed by ministers at an EU summit on Tuesday, will target people and companies which have supported Russian aggression in Ukraine.
Cameron tells Putin crash victims deserve to have proper funerals
18:25 David Cameron has spoken to Russian President Vladimir Putin and says he made it clear Putin must ensure access to the crash site so the victims can have proper funerals.
18:04 Sky News has apologised for going through luggage from the MH17 on air.
A Sky News spokeswoman said: "Today whilst presenting from the site of the MH17 air crash Colin Brazier reflected on the human tragedy of the event and showed audiences the content of one of the victims' bags. Colin immediately recognised that this was inappropriate and said so on air. Both Colin and Sky News apologise profusely for any offence caused."
17.36 In Roland Oliphant's video report for the Telegraph he says nobody seems to know where the bodies are heading to:
17.19 Emirates chief has called for international airlines conference to tackle security issues following MH17, including a potential rethink of the threats posed by regional conflicts.
Tim Clark, president of Dubai's Emirates - which is the world's largest international airline by number of passengers - said domestic regulators worldwide may decide to be more involved in giving their carriers guidance on where it is safe to fly.
"The international airline community needs to respond as an entity, saying this is absolutely not acceptable and outrageous, and that it won't tolerate being targeted in internecine regional conflicts that have nothing to do with airlines," Clark told Reuters in a telephone interview.
16.34 Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond said this morning that Russia 'risks becoming a pariah state' over the MH17 plane crash
You can keep up to date with all the MH17 coverage from Telegraph World News on Twitter by following us @Telegraphworld
Rebel right-hand man was sacked as former undertaker for stealing
16:08 Alex Marunchak reports:
The right-hand man of rebel leader Igor Strelkov, widely believed to be the man behind the shooting down of the Malaysian passenger jet, is a former undertaker who was sacked from his job for stealing.
Igor Bezler
Igor Bezler, a field commander for the separatists in Gorlovka in eastern Ukraine, goes by the nom de guerre “Bes”, which means “devil” or “demon” in Russian.
It is Mr Bezler’s voice which Ukrainian authorities claim is on the recordings of an intercepted telephone conversation between heand a Russian army colonel about the destruction of Malaysian flight MH17.
'Man-up' Putin
15:48 Dianne Feinstein, chairman of the US Senate Intelligence Committee, has urged Russian President Vladimir Putin to "man up" and admit Russia made a mistake.
She told CNN: "I think this has become a huge human drama, and I think the nexus between Russia and the separatists has been established very clearly, so the issue is where is Putin?
"I would say, 'Putin, you have to man up. You should talk to the world. You should say, if this is a mistake, which I hope it was, say it.
"I think the world has to rise up and say we've had enough of this.
"You cannot let this kind of thing happen, and Russia continues to prepare it for the next strike down of a civilian plane. There will be repercussions from this."
Another 27 bodies found
15:09 Twenty-seven more bodies have been found along with 20 fragments of bodies at the site, Ukrainian Deputy Prime MinisterVolodymyr Groysman has said.
He told a news conference that the bodies of 192 of the 298 people killed when the plane plunged into the steppe in eastern Ukraine on Thursday had been placed in refrigerated train wagons before being sent home for burial.
Flowers and momentos lie on wreckage at the crash site, near the settlement of Grabovo
15:01 Rosa Prince in New York reports on a marathon round of TV interviews, which saw John Kerry, US Secretary of State, appear on all five US Sunday morning political shows:
He said: "This is a moment of truth for Russia."
Accusing Moscow of providing military help to separatists he said were responsible for downing the plane, Mr Kerry claimed the investigation was now being hampered by “drunken separatist soldiers” who had taken bodies and airline parts from the crash site.
He told Fox News Sunday: “On Friday, the monitors and the people trying to get in there to secure the site were given 75 minutes. Yesterday they were given three hours.
“Anything that has been removed compromises the investigation. “We need full access. This is a moment of truth for Russia.”
Later, on NBC, Mr Kerry added: “What's happening is really grotesque.”
Asked if Russia and Mr Putin himself were culpable for the deaths of those on board the felled plane, he told this CNN the fact that the separatists were in control of the area where the debris was scattered "makes its own statement".
Saying that the US knew "with confidence" that the Ukraine did not have a weapon capable of downing a passenger jet in the vicinity, he went on: "It is pretty clear that is a system that was transferred from Russia in the hands of separatists."
In a rebuke to European nations which had failed to follow the US's lead in imposing deeper sanctions on Russia, he said he hoped they would now "step up."
"It would help enormously if some countries in Europe that have been a little reluctant to move would join this wake up call," Mr Kerry added.
'Cover-up'
14.39 Scroll down to our previous 12.55 update to watch our newly embedded video of a telephone intercept, which Ukraine's security service the SBU, says proves Russia is trying to get hold of the black boxes from MH17 in an attempt at a cover-up
14:35 US Secretary of State John Kerry has told CNN the missile system used to shoot down a Malaysian airliner was handed to pro-Russian separatists in Ukraine by Moscow.
He said: "It's pretty clear that this is a system that was transferred from Russia in the hands of separatists." He said the scene at the MH17 crash site where he said rebels were hampering the investigation and the proper removal of bodies was "grotesque"
14.06 A still image from a video shows a rescue worker showing a flight data recorder to a colleague at the crash site of Malaysia Airlines Flight MH17 in Hrabove
13.41 Pro-Russian rebels in eastern Ukraine say they are willing to hand the black boxes over to international investigators.
Jet parts resembling the black boxes were discovered at the crash site," said Alexander Borodai, prime minister of the self-proclaimed Donetsk People's Republic.
He said they would be handed over to "international experts if they arrive".
Borodai also said bodies which have been removed from the crash site will be kept in refrigerated carriages on a train near the scene "until the experts arrive".
The rebel said his teams had taken the corpses away from the crash site "out of respect for the families" and because "it is becoming inhumane in these conditions".
"We couldn't wait any longer because of the heat and also because there are many dogs and wild animals in the zone", he added.
13.31 Rebel leader in Ukraine: Black boxes have been found and will be given to international aviation authority
13.08 Ukraine rebels say they have material 'resembling' MH17 black boxes
12.55 Ukraine’s security service, the SBU, has uploaded a new telephone intercept which proves, it says, that Russia is trying to get hold of the black boxes from MH17 in an attempt at a cover-up.
The recording features Alexander Khodakovsky, leader of the Vostok (East) battalion of pro-Russian separatists in eastern Ukraine, talking to men working at the crash site.
Reports today suggest the black boxes from the plane may already have been taken to rebel-held Donetsk.
Bodies of victims are placed in plastic sacks by the side of the road at the crash site of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 near the village of Hrabove, eastern Ukraine
Bodies of victims are placed in plastic sacks by the side of the road at the crash site of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 near the village of Hrabove, eastern Ukraine12.30 France has warned Russia there would be "consequences" if Moscow did not put pressure on pro-Kremlin separatists in Ukraine to allow rescuers and investigators unfettered access to the crash site of flight MH17.
"If Russia does not immediately take the necessary measures, consequences will be drawn by the European Union at the Foreign Affairs Council which takes place on Tuesday," the French presidency said in a statement after the leaders of France, Germany and Britain held a conference call.
11.49 Roland Oliphant reports:
At least some of the bodies appear to have been loaded on to a refrigerate train in the town of Torez, but it is still unclear where their final destination may be.
Five grey wagons - four refrigerated carriages and one generator and guards van - have been hooked up to a Soviet era diesel locomotive at Torez station.
At the time of writing the driver says he has been waiting for two to three hours for his next instructions.
"I came to work this morning like an ordinary day, and we were told to collect these wagons from the siding and bring them to the station. We've been waiting to be told to move off for three hours already."
He and his mate say they have not yet been told their destination.
Emergency workers load bodies of victims on a truck at the crash site of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 near the village of Hrabove, eastern Ukraine
Emergency workers load bodies of victims on a truck at the crash site of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 near the village of Hrabove, eastern Ukraine11.43 A pro-Russian rebel who calls himself "Novorossiya", or New Russia, has tweeted that the black boxes belonging to the downed Malaysian airliner had been brought to Donetsk in eastern Ukraine.
Sergei Kavtaradze, a senior official of the pro-Russian rebels' self-proclaimed Donetsk People's Republic (DNR), declined to comment on the report, which was also carried on Russia's Interfax news agency.
Rebels have said that the prime minister of the DNR would give a news conference shortly.
11.24 Video of international monitors attempting to gather information from the MH17 crash site in eastern Ukraine while rescuers began moving bodies, wrapped in black bags:
11.15 Reporters in the village of Torez, close to the MH17 crash scene, have found a series of refrigerated train carriages at the local station containing bodies of victims from the plane.
Max Seddon of BuzzFeed says the carriages were left unguarded after OSCE monitors had a brief look at them.
It is unclear where the bodies will be taken.
11.04 Samantha Power, US ambassador to UN tweeted:
10.51 In his second interview of the morning, Philip Hammond has stepped up the rhetoric against Russia.
He has said that it risks becoming a 'pariah state', adding that Moscow must hand back the black boxes from Flight MH17 if it has them.
His comments mark the first admission by a British minister that Russia may have obtained the black boxes from the flight.
An airline envelope lays in a sunflower field near the village of Rassipnoe after of the crash of MH17
An airline envelope lays in a sunflower field near the village of Rassipnoe after of the crash of MH1710.44 Tom Phillips reports from Kuala Lumpur:
There is growing bewilderment and anger in Malaysia today about what is happening with the bodies of victims. Family members of the dead say they cannot understand why it has still not been possible to get the deceased out from the crash site. "Something is stopping us from bringing back our loved ones and we are just trying to understand why," one man who lost his grandmother told me this afternoon.
"We just want to bring them back."
10.35 Ukraine says Russia continues to send "heavy weaponry" across the border to rebels.
"The Russian Federation is continuing to supply the separatists with heavy weaponry and other arms," Andriy Lysenko, spokesman for Ukraine's Security Council, told a news conference.
10.30 David Cameron has tweeted:
10.06 Philip Hammond, the Foreign Secretary, has suggested that Russia could face new sanctions from within days unless it stops supporting the rebels.
He said that the "entire international community" is against Vladimir Putin, adding that Britain has reached the "unavoidable conclusion" that the missle which downed flight MH17 is from Russia.
Mr Hammond said he hopes that the "shock" of the deaths of nearly 300 people will spur other European nations into acting against Russia.
He added that British experts have concluded that there is still "useable forensic evidence" at the crash site but Mr Putin needs to open access to it.
09.22 A spokeswoman for the Ukrainian emergency services says separatist rebels have taken away all the 196 bodies that workers had recovered from the Malaysia Airlines plane crash site.
Journalists reported seeing rebels putting bagged bodies onto trucks and driving them away on Saturday. On Sunday, AP journalists saw no bodies at the crash site.
Ukrainian spokeswoman Nataliya Bystro said on Sunday that emergency workers have been working under duress and were forced to give the bodies to the armed rebels. She said the government has no idea where the bodies were taken to.
Alexander Hug, (2R) Deputy Chief Monitor of the Organization for Cooperation and Security in Europe's (OSCE) Special Monitoring Mission to Ukraine and members of his team wait to visit the site of the crash of Malaysia airliner MH17
Alexander Hug, (2R) Deputy Chief Monitor of the Organization for Cooperation and Security in Europe's (OSCE) Special Monitoring Mission to Ukraine and members of his team wait to visit the site of the crash of Malaysia airliner MH1709.10 The Associated Press news agency reports that Ukraine claims rebels have taken away all bodies from the plane crash site to an unknown location.
07.45 A rebel leader in Ukraine has this morning said that the pro-Russian fighters will guarantee the safety of international monitors at the Malaysian jet's crash site if Kiev agrees to a truce.
We declare that we will guarantee the safety of international experts on the scene as soon as Kiev concludes a ceasefire agreement," the self-proclaimed Donetsk People's Republic's deputy premier Andrei Purgin said in a statement.
07.20 The Reuters news agency is this morning reporting that the UN Security Council is considering a draft resolution to condemn the “shooting down” of the plane, demand armed groups allow access to the crash site, and call on states in the region to cooperate with an international investigation.
Australia – which lost 28 citizens – circulated a draft text, seen by Reuters, to the 15-member Security Council late on Saturday and diplomats, speaking on condition of anonymity, said it could be put to a vote as early as Monday.
The draft resolution “demands that those responsible for this incident be held to account and that all states cooperate fully with efforts to establish accountability.”
It “condemns in the strongest terms the shooting down Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 ... resulting in the tragic loss of 298 lives” and “demands that all states and other actors in the region refrain from acts of violence directed against civilian aircraft.”
Russia’s UN mission declined to comment on the draft Security Council resolution.
07.10 Here is the full list of passengers who were on board the plane:
07.00 Good morning, and welcome to The Telegraph's live coverage of the latest developments in the Malaysia Airlines plane crash, on Sunday July 20.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/ukraine/10974050/Malaysia-Airlines-plane-crashes-on-Ukraine-Russia-border-live.html
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Qureshi asked ex-CBI boss to help tainted firm get airport contracts -- Saikat Datta & Sandeep Pal
A global airport logistics firm, blocked from doing business in India because of its links to Pakistan, was trying to circumvent the government’s security concerns with the help of the politically-connected businessman Moin Qureshi, HT can reveal. Former CBI director AP Singh has admitted to HT that he made calls to government officials on Qureshi’s behalf seeking information about a stalled bid by the controversial meat exporter and Dubai-based Dnata to win contracts at Delhi’s Indira Gandhi International Airport.
Qureshi’s relationship with Singh is under investigation by income tax authorities, who have obtained BlackBerry Messenger (BBM) exchanges between the two men and are probing rental payments from Qureshi for premises in Singh’s family home.
Dnata operates at airports in the US, UK, UAE and Pakistan and other countries. In 2001, the Atal Behari Vajpayee government refused a Dnata-led consortium mandatory security clearance to do similar work in India after it won a bid to supply services in four airports, including Delhi and Mumbai.
An IB report at the time raised concerns about the company’s apparent links to Pakistan, which rendered it ineligible for doing business in sensitive sectors, according to two intelligence sources familiar with the case.
However, in 2013, Dnata made a fresh attempt to start operations in India by picking up a 50% stake in Indian Premier Services Pvt Ltd (IPSPL), a firm incorporated by Qureshi. Company records accessed by HT reveal that IPSPL was started by another Qureshi firm, Forum Hospitality Pvt Ltd, and his associate Aditya Sharma in 2012.
Sharma exited from the venture on March 7, 2013 and his stake was picked up by Dnata. It appointed Martin Vincent Dennehy, a vice-president for its UAE operations, as a board director. The firm immediately made a successful bid for “Meet and Greet” services at Terminal 3 of Indira Gandhi International Airport, Delhi.
Once again, the clearances were held up as the IB continued to flag concerns over Pakistan. “We believe that it has investments as well as employees from Pakistan. In fact, one of the facilities that came under attack at Karachi airport from the Pakistani Taliban was a Dnata facility,” said a senior intelligence official familiar with the case on the condition of anonymity. These details are now part of a voluminous report submitted by the I-T department to the Union ministry of finance, HT has learnt.
Qureshi was aware of the hold-up and contacted his old friend, AP Singh, to intervene in the matter. Text messages exchanged on BBM and recovered from Qureshi’s computers by the I-T department have confirmed Singh’s role in the matter. “I was only helping an old friend and he requested me to find out where the file was stuck,” Singh told HT. “I spoke to Nehchal Sandhu (former director of IB and the current deputy National Security Adviser) and once it was clear that the security clearance would not come, I told Qureshi,” Singh said.
A spokesperson for Delhi International Airport Ltd confirmed that the bid was cancelled in May this year due to the security concerns raised by IB.
Sandhu denied having ever seen any report on Dnata during his tenure. “When I was the director, I never dealt with any report on Dnata. When I was approached about this, I had already retired and I did not entertain any request about this issue,” Sandhu told HT.
Singh, who is now a member of the Union Public Service Commission, admits to a long relationship with Qureshi. They are both from the elite Doon School in Dehradun as well as St Stephen’s College, Delhi.
Dnata’s annual report for 2013-14 records its keenness to enter India 12 years after it was denied business on security grounds. It says that “…in our second year of operations in India, we have continued to build our brand and exceeded our expectations. India will continue to be a focus market for our travel services over the coming years”.
Company records show financial transactions between Qureshi’s holding firm and Dnata and indicate that IPSPL is based out of Qureshi’s bungalow in Defence Colony, Delhi, which also houses his meat exporting firm. Deep Gandhi, an additional director on IPSPL’s board, is an old Qureshi associate and serves on the board of several other firms.
Gandhi has provided an incorrect residential address to the registrar of companies. A spot visit by HT revealed his mother at an adjoining apartment which was raided by the I-T department earlier this year. Gandhi could not be traced for comment.
Dnata spokesperson Iris Dias did not respond to specific queries. In a statement she said “We are not in a position to comment on matters being investigated by authorities. Dnata is a shareholder in IPSPL, which was awarded the licence agreement to provide meet-and-assist and lounge services at the Indira Gandhi International Airport, Delhi. However, this licence has since lapsed. We do not currently operate lounge services at Delhi airport, but India remains a highly-valued market and customer base to Dnata.”
HT visited Qureshi’s office twice but he was unavailable. Queries were directed to his associate, Kuldeep Singh, who declined comment. Qureshi’s phone was also switched off and he remained unavailable for comment despite several messages.
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PM visits Bhabha Atomic Research Centre; assures full support to DAE's expansion programme.
PM visits Bhabha Atomic Research Centre.
• Prime Minister asks Department of Atomic Energy to draw up a programme of year-long diamond jubilee celebrations.
• Focus to be on the human and developmental dimensions of atomic science, with special outreach to the youth: PM
The Prime Minister, Shri Narendra Modi, paid his first visit to Department of Atomic Energy (DAE) in Mumbai today. He was briefed by Dr. R.K. Sinha, Secretary, Department of Atomic Energy and other top officials and scientists at the Bhabha Atomic Research Centre on India's atomic energy programme; DAE's extensive research and development and education programmes; and DAE's contributions in other areas such as healthcare, especially cancer treatment, food security, solid waste management and water purification.
Referring to the Diamond Jubilee of DAE, which falls on August 3, the Prime Minister asked Department of Atomic Energy to draw up a programme of year-long celebrations, with special focus on the various human and developmental dimensions of atomic science, with special outreach to the youth in schools and colleges throughout the country. The Prime Minister exhorted DAE to present the human face of India’s capabilities in nuclear science throughout the world.
Prime Minister was apprised of the safety and security measures adopted by the DAE and India's excellent record in this regard. During the visit, which lasted four hours, Prime Minister was also shown some of DAE's most advanced facilities at BARC, including the Dhruva Research Reactor.
Prime Minister expressed his strong appreciation for the extraordinary achievements of Indian scientific community in one of the most complex and challenging fields of science and technology. He said their success was especially creditable because it took place in the face of decades of international technology denial regime; India's self-reliance in the nuclear fuel cycle and the commercial success of the indigenous reactors demonstrated that with vision, resolve and hard work, India could be a front ranking country in the most challenging fields.
Prime Minister reiterated his belief that energy security, which was increasingly based on clean and reliable sources of energy, was the critical driver of India's rapid and sustained long term development. He saw an essential role for nuclear energy in India's energy strategy, given the scale of demand in India.
Prime Minister assured the DAE of his full support in the implementation of DAE's ambitious expansion programme and expressed hope that DAE would meet the target of increasing the capacity by three times from the present level of 5780 MW by 2023-24 within the projected cost. He underlined the importance of ensuring that nuclear energy remained commercially viable and competitive with other sources of clean energy in the long run. He also asked DAE to continually upgrade technology, both with regard to our long term plans and international trends. DAE, he said, must also plan for ensuring adequate availability of skilled human resources in the country.
Prime Minister told DAE that nuclear safety and security were of the highest priority for him and asked DAE to ensure that India's standards and practices were the most advanced in the world. He also asked DAE to pay special attention to the local communities in planning and implementing nuclear power projects.
He hoped that role of industry in providing equipment and systems for the nuclear programme would continue to grow and recognized that adequate incentive structure should exist to facilitate that. He noted that we would need to tap additional sources of investments for our ambitious expansion programme. He welcomed India's growing international partnership in the nuclear energy and hoped for timely implementation of the ongoing projects in a manner that they met the requirements of techno-economic viability and safety standards. Technology transfer to India, he observed, was a vital element of his vision for international partnership in India.
Prime Minister lauded the contribution of DAE scientists in the critical area of cancer research and treatment through the Tata Memorial Hospital. He hoped that DAE would soon implement the planned projects in Chandigarh and Vishakapatnam and would take one of the most advanced standards of cancer treatment in Asia to other parts of India.
He also directed DAE to make special efforts to expand its research and extension on a national scale applications of atomic science in areas like healthcare, waste management, water treatment, agriculture and food preservation.
Prime Minister congratulated DAE on the important milestone of Diamond Jubilee and wished the DAE community continued success in the future.
The National Security Advisor, Shri Ajit Doval, the Director, BARC and the Secretary AERC, Joint Secretary in the PMO, Shri Javed Ashraf, and Private Secretaries to the PM, Shri Vikram Misri and Shri Sanjiv Singla were also present.
Referring to the Diamond Jubilee of DAE, which falls on August 3, the Prime Minister asked Department of Atomic Energy to draw up a programme of year-long celebrations, with special focus on the various human and developmental dimensions of atomic science, with special outreach to the youth in schools and colleges throughout the country. The Prime Minister exhorted DAE to present the human face of India’s capabilities in nuclear science throughout the world.
Prime Minister was apprised of the safety and security measures adopted by the DAE and India's excellent record in this regard. During the visit, which lasted four hours, Prime Minister was also shown some of DAE's most advanced facilities at BARC, including the Dhruva Research Reactor.
Prime Minister expressed his strong appreciation for the extraordinary achievements of Indian scientific community in one of the most complex and challenging fields of science and technology. He said their success was especially creditable because it took place in the face of decades of international technology denial regime; India's self-reliance in the nuclear fuel cycle and the commercial success of the indigenous reactors demonstrated that with vision, resolve and hard work, India could be a front ranking country in the most challenging fields.
Prime Minister reiterated his belief that energy security, which was increasingly based on clean and reliable sources of energy, was the critical driver of India's rapid and sustained long term development. He saw an essential role for nuclear energy in India's energy strategy, given the scale of demand in India.
Prime Minister assured the DAE of his full support in the implementation of DAE's ambitious expansion programme and expressed hope that DAE would meet the target of increasing the capacity by three times from the present level of 5780 MW by 2023-24 within the projected cost. He underlined the importance of ensuring that nuclear energy remained commercially viable and competitive with other sources of clean energy in the long run. He also asked DAE to continually upgrade technology, both with regard to our long term plans and international trends. DAE, he said, must also plan for ensuring adequate availability of skilled human resources in the country.
Prime Minister told DAE that nuclear safety and security were of the highest priority for him and asked DAE to ensure that India's standards and practices were the most advanced in the world. He also asked DAE to pay special attention to the local communities in planning and implementing nuclear power projects.
He hoped that role of industry in providing equipment and systems for the nuclear programme would continue to grow and recognized that adequate incentive structure should exist to facilitate that. He noted that we would need to tap additional sources of investments for our ambitious expansion programme. He welcomed India's growing international partnership in the nuclear energy and hoped for timely implementation of the ongoing projects in a manner that they met the requirements of techno-economic viability and safety standards. Technology transfer to India, he observed, was a vital element of his vision for international partnership in India.
Prime Minister lauded the contribution of DAE scientists in the critical area of cancer research and treatment through the Tata Memorial Hospital. He hoped that DAE would soon implement the planned projects in Chandigarh and Vishakapatnam and would take one of the most advanced standards of cancer treatment in Asia to other parts of India.
He also directed DAE to make special efforts to expand its research and extension on a national scale applications of atomic science in areas like healthcare, waste management, water treatment, agriculture and food preservation.
Prime Minister congratulated DAE on the important milestone of Diamond Jubilee and wished the DAE community continued success in the future.
The National Security Advisor, Shri Ajit Doval, the Director, BARC and the Secretary AERC, Joint Secretary in the PMO, Shri Javed Ashraf, and Private Secretaries to the PM, Shri Vikram Misri and Shri Sanjiv Singla were also present.
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Genetically Engineering Almost Anything -- Tim De Chant and Eleanor Nelsen
17
JUL
Genetically Engineering Almost Anything
on
When it comes to genetic engineering, we’re amateurs. Sure, we’ve known about DNA’s structure for more than 60 years, we first sequenced every A, T, C, and G in our bodies more than a decade ago, and we’re becoming increasingly adept at modifying the genes of a growing number of organisms.
But compared with what’s coming next, all that will seem like child’s play. A new technology just announced today has the potential to wipe out diseases, turn back evolutionary clocks, and reengineer entire ecosystems, for better or worse. Because of how deeply this could affect us all, the scientists behind it want to start a discussion now, before all the pieces come together over the next few months or years. This is a scientific discovery being played out in real time.
Scientists have figured out how to use a cell's DNA repair mechanisms to spread traits throughout a population.
Today, researchers aren’t just dropping in new genes, they’re deftly adding, subtracting, and rewriting them using a series of tools that have become ever more versatile and easier to use. In the last few years, our ability to edit genomes has improved at a shockingly rapid clip. So rapid, in fact, that one of the easiest and most popular tools, known as CRISPR-Cas9, is just two years old. Researchers once spent months, even years, attempting to rewrite an organism’s DNA. Now they spend days.
Soon, though, scientists will begin combining gene editing with gene drives, so-called selfish genes that appear more frequently in offspring than normal genes, which have about a 50-50 chance of being passed on. With gene drives—so named because they drive a gene through a population—researchers just have to slip a new gene into a drive system and let nature take care of the rest. Subsequent generations of whatever species we choose to modify—frogs, weeds, mosquitoes—will have more and more individuals with that gene until, eventually, it’s everywhere.
Cas9-based gene drives could be one of the most powerful technologies ever discovered by humankind. “This is one of the most exciting confluences of different theoretical approaches in science I’ve ever seen,” says Arthur Caplan, a bioethicist at New York University. “It merges population genetics, genetic engineering, molecular genetics, into an unbelievably powerful tool.”
We’re not there yet, but we’re extraordinarily close. “Essentially, we have done all of the pieces, sometimes in the same relevant species.” says Kevin Esvelt, a postdoc at Harvard University and the wunderkind behind the new technology. “It’s just no one has put it all together.”
It’s only a matter of time, though. The field is progressing rapidly. “We could easily have laboratory tests within the next few months and then field tests not long after that,” says George Church, a professor at Harvard University and Esvelt’s advisor. “That’s if everybody thinks it’s a good idea.”
It’s likely not everyone will think this is a good idea. “There are clearly people who will object,” Caplan says. “I think the technique will be incredibly controversial.” Which is why Esvelt, Church, and their collaborators are publishing papers now, before the different parts of the puzzle have been assembled into a working whole.
“If we’re going to talk about it at all in advance, rather than in the past tense,” Church says, “now is the time.”
“Deleterious Genes”
The first organism Esvelt wants to modify is the malaria-carrying mosquitoAnopheles gambiae. While his approach is novel, the idea of controlling mosquito populations through genetic modification has actually been around since the late 1970s. Then, Edward F. Knipling, an entomologist with the U.S. Department of Agriculture, published a substantial handbook with a chapter titled “Use of Insects for Their Own Destruction.” One technique, he wrote, would be to modify certain individuals to carry “deleterious genes” that could be passed on generation after generation until they pervaded the entire population. It was an idea before its time. Kipling was on the right track, but he and his contemporaries lacked the tools to see it through.
The concept surfaced a few more times before being picked up by Austin Burt, an evolutionary biologist and population geneticist at Imperial College London. It was the late 1990s, and Burt was busy with his yeast cells, studying their so-called homing endonucleases, enzymes that facilitate the copying of genes that code for themselves. Self-perpetuating genes, if you will. “Through those studies, gradually, I became more and more familiar with endonucleases, and I came across the idea that you might be able to change them to recognize new sequences,” Burt recalls.
Other scientists were investigating endonucleases, too, but not in the way Burt was. “The people who were thinking along those lines, molecular biologists, were thinking about using these things for gene therapy,” Burt says. “My background in population biology led me to think about how they could be used to control populations that were particularly harmful.”
In 2003, Burt penned an influential article that set the course for an entire field: We should be using homing endonucleases, a type of gene drive, to modify malaria-carrying mosquitoes, he said, not ourselves. Burt saw two ways of going about it—one, modify a mosquito’s genome to make it less hospitable to malaria, and two, skew the sex ratio of mosquito populations so there are no females for the males to reproduce with. In the following years, Burt and his collaborators tested both in the lab and with computer models before they settled on sex ratio distortion. (Making mosquitoes less hospitable to malaria would likely be a stopgap measure at best; the Plasmodium protozoans could evolve to cope with the genetic changes, just like they have evolved resistance to drugs.)
Burt has spent the last 11 years refining various endonucleases, playing with different scenarios of inheritance, and surveying people in malaria-infested regions. Now, he finally feels like he is closing in on his ultimate goal. “There’s a lot to be done still,” he says. “But on the scale of years, not months or decades.”
Cheating Natural Selection
Cas9-based gene drives could compress that timeline even further. One half of the equation—gene drives—are the literal driving force behind proposed population-scale genetic engineering projects. They essentially let us exploit evolution to force a desired gene into every individual of a species. “To anthropomorphize horribly, the goal of a gene is to spread itself as much as possible,” Esvelt says. “And in order to do that, it wants to cheat inheritance as thoroughly as it can.” Gene drives are that cheat.
Without gene drives, traits in genetically-engineered organisms released into the wild are vulnerable to dilution through natural selection. For organisms that have two parents and two sets of chromosomes (which includes humans, many plants, and most animals), traits typically have only a 50-50 chance of being inherited, give or take a few percent. Genes inserted by humans face those odds when it comes time to being passed on. But when it comes to survival in the wild, a genetically modified organism’s odds are often less than 50-50. Engineered traits may be beneficial to humans, but ultimately they tend to be detrimental to the organism without human assistance. Even some of the most painstakingly engineered transgenes will be gradually but inexorably eroded by natural selection.
Some naturally occurring genes, though, have over millions of years learned how to cheat the system, inflating their odds of being inherited. Burt’s “selfish” endonucleases are one example. They take advantage of the cell’s own repair machinery to ensure that they show up on both chromosomes in a pair, giving them better than 50-50 odds when it comes time to reproduce.
A gene drive (blue) always ends up in all offspring, even if only one parent has it. That means that, given enough generations, it will eventually spread through the entire population.
Here’s how it generally works. The term “gene drive” is fairly generic, describing a number of different systems, but one example involves genes that code for an endonuclease—an enzyme which acts like a pair of molecular scissors—sitting in the middle of a longer sequence of DNA that the endonculease is programmed to recognize. If one chromosome in a pair contains a gene drive but the other doesn’t, the endonuclease cuts the second chromosome’s DNA where the endonuclease code appears in the first.
The broken strands of DNA trigger the cell’s repair mechanisms. In certain species and circumstances, the cell unwittingly uses the first chromosome as a template to repair the second. The repair machinery, seeing the loose ends that bookend the gene drive sequence, thinks the middle part—the code for the endonuclease—is missing and copies it onto the broken chromosome. Now both chromosomes have the complete gene drive. The next time the cell divides, splitting its chromosomes between the two new cells, both new cells will end up with a copy of the gene drive, too. If the entire process works properly, the gene drive’s odds of inheritance aren’t 50%, but 100%.
Here, a mosquito with a gene drive (blue) mates with a mosquito without one (grey). In the offspring, one chromosome will have the drive. The endonuclease then slices into the drive-free DNA. When the strand gets repaired, the cell's machinery uses the drive chromosome as a template, unwittingly copying the drive into the break.
Most natural gene drives are picky about where on a strand of DNA they’ll cut, so they need to be modified if they’re to be useful for genetic engineering. For the last few years, geneticists have tried using genome-editing tools to build custom gene drives, but the process was laborious and expensive. With the discovery of CRISPR-Cas9 as a genome editing tool in 2012, though, that barrier evaporated. CRISPR is an ancient bacterial immune system which identifies the DNA of invading viruses and sends in an endonuclease, like Cas9, to chew it up. Researchers quickly realized that Cas9 could easily be reprogrammed to recognize nearly any sequence of DNA. All that’s needed is the right RNA sequence—easily ordered and shipped overnight—which Cas9 uses to search a strand of DNA for where to cut. This flexibility, Esvelt says, “lets us target, and therefore edit, pretty much anything we want.” And quickly.
Gene drives and Cas9 are each powerful on their own, but together they could significantly change biology. CRISRP-Cas9 allows researchers to edit genomes with unprecedented speed, and gene drives allow engineered genes to cheat the system, even if the altered gene weakens the organism. Simply by being coupled to a gene drive, an engineered gene can race throughout a population before it is weeded out. “Eventually, natural selection will win,” Esvelt says, but “gene drives just let us get ahead of the game.”
Beyond Mosquitoes
If there’s anywhere we could use a jump start, it’s in the fight against malaria. Each year, the disease kills over 200,000 people and sickens over 200 million more, most of whom are in Africa. The best new drugs we have to fight it are losing ground; the Plasmodium parasite is evolving resistance too quickly. And we’re nowhere close to releasing an effective vaccine. The direct costs of treating the disease are estimated at $12 billion, and the economies of affected countries grew 1.3% less per year, a substantial amount.
Which is why Esvelt and Burt are both so intently focused on the disease. “If we target the mosquito, we don’t have to face resistance on the parasite itself. The idea is, we can just take out the vector and stop all transmission. It might even lead to eradication,” Esvelt says.
Esvelt initially mulled over the idea of building Cas9-based gene drives in mosquitoes to do just that. He took the idea to to Flaminia Catteruccia, a professor who studies malaria at the Harvard School of Public Health, and the two grew increasingly certain that such a system would not only work, but work well. As their discussions progressed, though, Esvelt realized they were “missing the forest for the trees.” Controlling malaria-carrying mosquitoes was just the start. Cas9-based gene drives were the real breakthrough. “If it let’s us do this for mosquitos, what is to stop us from potentially doing it for almost anything that is sexually reproducing?” he realized.
In theory, nothing. But in reality, the system works best on fast-reproducing species, Esvelt says. Short generation times allow the trait to spread throughout a population more quickly. Mosquitoes are a perfect test case. If everything were to work perfectly, deleterious traits could sweep through populations of malaria-carrying mosquitoes in as few as five years, wiping them off the map.
Other noxious species could be candidates, too. Certain invasive species, like mosquitoes in Hawaii or Asian carp in the Great Lakes, could be targeted with Cas9-based gene drives to either reduce their numbers or eliminate them completely. Agricultural weeds like horseweed that have evolved resistance to glyphosate, a herbicide that is broken down quickly in the soil, could have their susceptibility to the compound reintroduced, enabling more farmers to adopt no-till practices, which help conserve topsoil. And in the more distant future, Esvelt says, weeds could even be engineered to introduce vulnerabilities to completely benign substances, eliminating the need for toxic pesticides. The possibilities seem endless.
The Decision
Before any of that can happen, though, Esvelt and Church are adamant that the public help decide whether the research should move forward. “What we have here is potentially a general tool for altering wild populations,” Esvelt says. “We really want to make sure that we proceed down this path—if we decide to proceed down this path—as safely and responsibly as possible.”
To kickstart the conversation, they partnered with the MIT political scientist Kenneth Oye and others to convene a series of workshops on the technology. “I thought it might be useful to get into the room people with slightly different material interests,” Oye says, so they invited regulators, nonprofits, companies, and environmental groups. The idea, he says, was to get people to meet several times, to gain trust and before “decisions harden.” Despite the diverse viewpoints, Oye says there was surprising agreement among participants about what the important outstanding questions were.
As the discussion enters the public sphere, tensions are certain to intensify. “I don’t care if it’s a weed or a blight, people still are going to say this is way too massive a genetic engineering project,” Caplan says. “Secondly, it’s altering things that are inherited, and that’s always been a bright line for genetic engineering.” Safety, too, will undoubtedly be a concern. As the power of a tool increases, so does its potential for catastrophe, and Cas9-based gene drives could be extraordinarily powerful.
There’s also little in the way of precedent that we can use as a guide. Our experience with genetically modified foods would seem to be a good place to start, but they are relatively niche organisms that are heavily dependent on water and fertilizer. It’s pretty easy to keep them contained to a field. Not so with wild organisms; their potential to spread isn’t as limited.
Aware of this, Esvelt and his colleagues are proposing a number of safeguards, including reversal drives that can undo earlier engineered genes. “We need to really make sure those work if we’re proposing to build a drive that is intended to modify a wild population,” Esvelt says.
There are still other possible hurdles to surmount—lab-grown mosquitoes may not interbreed with wild ones, for example—but given how close this technology is to prime time, Caplan suggests researchers hew to a few initial ethical guidelines. One, use species that are detrimental to human health and don’t appear to fill a unique niche in the wild. (Malaria-carrying mosquitoes seem fit that description.) Two, do as much work as possible using computer models. And three, researchers should continue to be transparent about their progress, as they have been. “I think the whole thing is hugely exciting,” Caplan says. “But the time to really get cracking on the legal/ethical infrastructure for this technology is right now.”
Church agrees, though he’s also optimistic about the potential for Cas9-based gene drives. “I think we need to be cautious with all new technologies, especially all new technologies that are messing with nature in some way or another. But there’s also a risk of doing nothing,” Church says. “We have a population of 7 billion people. You have to deal with the environmental consequences of that.”
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MH 17 mystery unravels thanks to digital sleuths and photographs of shrapnel damage
How Web archivists and other digital sleuths are unraveling the mystery of MH17
An armed pro-Russian separatist stands on part of the wreckage of the Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 on July 17, after the plane crashed near the settlement of Grabovo, in Ukraine’s Donetsk region. (Maxim Zmeyev/Reuters)
In the agonizing quest to pin down exactly what happened when Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 went down over Ukraine last week, Web archivists and other digital sleuths are playing an unusual — potentially pivotal — role.
Wayback Machine, the nonprofit Web crawler that archives old versions of Web pages, captured evidence last Friday that a pro-Russian group was behind the attacks. Meanwhile, @RuGovEdits — a Twitter bot that monitors Wikipedia edits made from Russian government computers — logged evidence that reflects Russia’s interest in deflecting the MH17 narrative elsewhere.
Both bits of evidence could prove important to understanding the crash and its political aftermath, particularly as investigators question the integrity of the crash site. But they’re also compelling examples of the Web’s ability to promote transparency and hold powerful people accountable for their words — even, or especially, when they delete them.
Perhaps no one knows that better than Igor Girkin, a pro-Russian separatist leader whose hyperactive profile on Vkontakte, Russia’s Facebook clone, is regularly saved by the Wayback Machine. The administrators of Girkin’s page regularly post updates on the Ukrainian conflict from news sources, news conferences and Girkin himself. In fact, if you check the page now, you’ll see no fewer than a dozen updates on the crash, all blaming it squarely on the Ukrainian air force.
But there was an earlier update, now deleted, made shortly before the crash went public:
In the vicinity of Torez, we just downed a plane, an AN-26. It is lying somewhere in the Progress Mine. We have issued warnings not to fly in our airspace. We have video confirming. The bird fell on a waste heap. Residential areas were not hit. Civilians were not injured.
Page administrators later tried to scrub that message, deleting it, posting a disclaimer distancing the page from Girkin and quoting a number of news stories that implicated the Ukrainians. They could not, however, remove the screen grab from the Internet Archive, where it now lives with 45 other versions of Girkin’s page.
“Here’s why we exist,” the Wayback Machine wrote on Facebook, with links to earlier versions of Girkin’s page. “A Ukranian Separatist boasted his pro-Russian Group shot down a Ukranian plane on his website. When it turned out to be #MH17 #MalaysiaAirlines he erased it, but our WayBack Machine captured the page for history.”
Meanwhile, on the other side of the world, the Twitter bot @RuGovEdits was making its own MH17 discoveries. The bot, which is only one week old, records Wikipedia edits made from Russian IP addresses — unique numbers that identify each computer on a network. (You may already be familiar with the bot’s American equivalent, @congressedits.)
On July 18, the day after the plane crash, an IP address associated with Russia’s state-run broadcasting company, VGTRK, edited the page “List of aircraft accidents in civil aviation” to attribute the crash to the “Ukrainian military.” An address associated with Vladimir Putin’s office has also mademultiple edits to the page for the crash itself, though none were so overtly political.
None of these edits necessarily prove anything, of course — and there have been plenty of cries for moderation and deliberation on Internet Archive’sFacebook page, where commenters point out that even the Web’s smoking guns can prove misleading.
But overall, the efforts of Internet Archive and others like it are powerful testaments for a new wave of pro-transparency bots and tools, all of them dedicated to leveraging technology to expose how governments, politicians and other powerful political figures manipulate the digital landscape. As I wrote last week about Hidden from Google — a Web site that collects links hidden under Europe’s “Right to be Forgotten” ruling — the tools aren’t an inadequate means of addressing the profound disparity between ordinary Internet users and the technological and political forces that impact them. But they are certainly a start.
“Important work,” one commenter wrote on the Internet Archive page. “Without it, we’re in Orwell’s 1984.”
Caitlin Dewey runs The Intersect blog, writing about digital and Internet culture. Before joining the Post, she was an associate online editor at Kiplinger’s Personal Finance.
Photographs emerge of shrapnel damage on Malaysia Airlines Flight 17
From the debris of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 in eastern Ukraine, the first potential forensic proof of what shot down the doomed airliner is starting to appear on social media as more observers access the crash site.
The images show pieces of the aircraft riddled with holes roughly the size of a child’s fist. Evidence, some experts say, of a surface-to-air missile’s distinct detonation pattern.
“Although many of the holes may vary in size, the punctures seen in the photograph attached are relatively uniform in size, consistent with patterns exhibited by fragmentary warheads detonated at a proximity from the target,” Jane’s Military Capabilities Manager Reed Foster said in an e-mail. “This would potentially be consistent with a fragmentation type warhead employed upon a number of modern and legacy surface-to-air missile systems.”
Most surface-to-air missiles, such as those fired by the SA-11 or Buk M1 systems that the U.S. believes shot down MH17, detonate more than 50 feet away from their intended target. This premature detonation allows for a maximum spread of fragmentation into the airframe, damaging or destroying critical components to the aircraft including the engines, flaps and wings.
The pictures on Twitter also show a large amount of shrapnel impacts on what appears to be the cockpit portion of the aircraft. This overabundance of damage to the front of the plane potentially rules out an air-to-air missile attack, as a jet firing a missile at another aircraft usually engages from the rear. Additionally, surface-to-air missiles are traditionally more lethal as they contain larger explosive payloads than their air-to-air counterparts.
“There are historic examples of civilian aircraft surviving air-to-air missile engagement, but not of surface-to-air engagements, presumably due to the higher explosive yield/blast-wave as well as significantly more fragmentary materiel,” Foster wrote.
Yet according to James Hackett, a senior fellow for Defense and Military Analysis at The International Institute for Strategic Studies, even though most evidence points to a surface-to-air attack it is still impossible to be completely sure without pieces of the warhead that destroyed MH17.
“Without additional evidence…either in the form of additional fuselage sections or fragments from the weapon itself (such as from the warhead or casing) it is impossible to be more specific in identifying the precise mode of engagement or, definitively, the system employed,” Hackett wrote in an e-mail.
Thomas Gibbons-Neff is a summer intern and a former U.S. infantry Marine.
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Stalling the Natwar expose on Iraqi oil for food-Congi scam. SoniaG and Priyanka Vadra afraid of truth or what?
http://truthdive.com/2014/07/23/sonia-gandhi-bids-to-stall-release-of-tell-all-book.html
Sonia's dash to defuse Natwar bomb: Congress chief and daughter Priyanka visit former minister in bid to block tell-all book
The Natwar bomb is yet to be dropped, but Congress president Sonia Gandhi has already popped in to see the former external affairs minister.
Sonia, accompanied by her daughter Priyanka, was with Singh at his Jor Bagh residence for almost an hour a few days ago.
Sonia and Natwar haven't had a meaningful interaction since 2005, and certainly had a lot to talk about during their 50-minute meeting.
Potential bombshells: Former foreign minister Natwar Singh was an insider, close to the Gandhi family
The two have run into each other at a function or two, and in Central Hall of Parliament, but haven't exchanged any words.
If there was one compelling reason for the Sonia-Priyanka visit, it remains a mystery, because the event has not been made public.
It could have been a patch-up bid, now that the party is disarray and possibly looking to the wisdom of its past luminaries.
Mail Today sources say, however, that the conversation revolved around books, and one in particular. That book is called One Life is Not Enough, and it is written by Natwar Singh himself.
Congress president Sonia Gandhi and her daughter Priyanka Gandhi Vadra are believed to have asked Natwar Singh not to publish his forthcoming book
The book is to be released on August 7 by former Attorney General Soli Sorabjee, and there's precious little time left if Sonia wants to avoid more - and deeper - embarrassment of the Baru kind.
Sources say that's what the unusual calling-on was for - a pre-emptive spiking of the Natwar Singh tale.
Priyanka is also believed to have requested Singh not to let the book be published.
The former external affairs minister - who joined the Congress way back in 1984 and was ignominiously forced out of the government first and the party later - has written a tell-all autobiography covering his years with Indira Gandhi as a senior Indian Foreign Service officer, and later as a Congressman with Rajiv Gandhi, P.V. Narasimha Rao, and Manmohan Singh.
A tell-all book
Singh's book is already being called the N-Bomb, because it is expected to reveal even more about the inner workings of the Congress and its first family than Sanjaya Baru's Accidental Prime Minister: Making and Unmaking of Manmohan Singh, which has left the Grand Old Party outraged and the author "amused".
Singh was considered a confidant of the party's First Family till his downfall, and has seen the workings of the government at pointblank range through his many years in politics.
"No comment" was Singh's terse reply when asked by Mail Today about the meeting.
He was a little more forthcoming about the moment of his resignation from the Congress.
"I was asked to resign. I went (to Sonia Gandhi) with my resignation. She kept it," Singh said.
Natwar Singh, chosen as foreign minister by Manmohan Singh in 2001, was removed from the position in December 2005 in the wake of the controversy over his alleged involvement in the Iraq Oil-for-Food scandal.
The Independent Inquiry Committee under Paul Volcker had in October 2005 reported that Singh and his son Jagat were non-contractual beneficiaries of the Oil for Food programme.
Along with Jagat's childhood friend Andaleeb Sehgal, the three were alleged to be associated with a company that was an intermediary for illegal sales of oil to a Swiss firm.
The Swiss firm, it was alleged, paid kickbacks to the Saddam Hussein regime as well as to Singh and the Congress party.
Singh was alleged to have lobbied against US policy on Iraq in return.
In 2008, Natwar Singh had had enough and resigned from the Congress. The Justice R.S. Pathak Inquiry Authority that was set up to investigate the allegations in 2006 indicted Singh and his son Jagat for "misusing their positions" to influence oil contracts, but also said that neither had derived any financial or personal gain in the entire business.
"There is no material to show that Shri Natwar Singh made any financial or personal gains from the contracts," the report of the Pathak authority said.
"The report of Justice Pathak says that my son and I have derived no financial benefit. That is the crux of the matter," Singh had said then, questioning how the Congress party which also figured in the allegations had been given a clean chit.
The Enforcement Directorate (ED) had also been set on Singh's tail, and the cases they instituted against the former minister and his son haven't been taken back yet.
ED officials haven't even given time to Singh's lawyers for three years now.
READ SURFERS' COMMENTS
Posted by: Sanjay Bhattacharya
July 23, 2014
We must save our nation from the conspiracy of Sonia & Co. to destroy the country and sell it to Italy. Congress leaders should be put in jail for looting the country's wealth and destroying our lives.
Reply
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Posted by: kb
July 23, 2014
This has to happen....MOST thinking people know that NATION IS BEING FOOLED BY CONGRESS CONNECTED PEOPLE...... THEY all will ROD in HELL when time comes..... JAY HIND...... CONGRESS word will be wiped out on 30 to 50 years..... PEOPLE will BURN ALL STATUES of NEHRU, INDIRA,RAJIV and all congress connected people.....and put statues of PRATAP,SHIVAJI, BHAGAT SINGH, AZAD, and all FREEDOM FIGHTERS.....
Posted by: Bishan Raj Upadhyaya
July 23, 2014
Public money scamists die hundred times.Congress esp dynasty has committed heinous crimes against people of this docile nation n lot of time for its transformation,despite being hugely rich in resources in men n material,has criminally wasted. A commission of patriot eminent persons must be set up to evaluate the sordid role played by family n its lackeys.
Posted by: Satish Sharma
July 23, 2014
Natwar Singh had been closely associated with many generations of Nehru-Gandhi family starting with Jawaharlal Nehru and is therefore quite capable of dropping an N-bomb. But a more plausible reason for Sonia visiting him with Priyanka may well be the need for rejuvenating the Congress by welcoming back an old stalwart.
Posted by: Raj
July 23, 2014
Natwar Singh is a typical Fake Gandhi bootlicker. Do you think he will let the book be published? He is increasing his rate to drop the book. Last minute bargaining is going on between this corrupt mafia family and the typical stooge. Nothing will come out of it. History is moving towards a situation where MMS will be forgiven because of Baru Book. Natwar instead is condemned to remain in history, not as a sharp foreign minister but as the biggest stooge of fake gandhis.
Posted by: Tiger
July 23, 2014
Let us hope for the Best : Hope Sonia farmer has not been able to purchase Natwar Ji's silence now... if he values his honor & dignity and his legacy, he should show guts and expose the real crooked lady.
Posted by: Rajendra Tandon
July 23, 2014
WAITING TO SEE THE TRUTH ABOUT THE MODERN MUGHALS IN WRITING. SONIA HAS BEEN INDIA'S ALBATROSS, OUR MISFORTUNE AS A NATION. HER ECONOMIC POLICIES ABETTED BY MANMOHAN, ANAND SHARMA, CHIDAMBRAN,MANI SHANKAR, MOILY, AND EVEN PRANAB BABU, HAVE MADE INDIA BANKRUPT. The Gandhis have licked the cream off the India cake insolently for decades. RAJENDRA TANDON
Posted by: mogambo
July 23, 2014
Queen Sonia and Princess Priyanka going out of their palace to meet a common citizen at his house, when there is no election, is itself news
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/indiahome/indianews/article-2701975/Sonia-Priyanka-Gandhi-visit-Natwar-Singh-ahead-explosive-book-release.html#ixzz38J1XU2l0
Follow us: @MailOnline on Twitter | DailyMail on Facebook
Congress president Sonia Gandhi, Natwar Singh and Priyanka Gandhi
The Natwar bomb is yet to be dropped, but Congress president Sonia Gandhi has already dropped in to see the former external affairs minister. With Sonia was daughter Priyanka; they were with Singh at his Jor Bagh residence for almost an hour a few days ago.
Sonia and Natwar haven't had a meaningful interaction since 2005, and certainly had a lot to talk about during their 50-minute meeting. The two have run into each other at a function or two, and in Central Hall of Parliament, but haven't exchanged any words. If there was one compelling reason for the Sonia-Priyanka visit, it remains a mystery because the event has not been made public. It could have been a patchup bid, now that the party is in disarray and possibly looking to the wisdom of its past luminaries. Mail Today sources say, however, that the conversation revolved around books, and one in particular.
That book is called One Life is Not Enough, and it is written by Natwar Singh himself. The book is to be released on August 7 by former Attorney General Soli Sorabjee at India International Centre, and there's precious little time left if Sonia wants to avoid more-and deeper- embarrassment of the Baru kind. That's what, sources say, the unusual calling-on was for, a pre-emptive spiking of the Natwar Singh tale. Priyanka is also believed to have requested Singh to not let the book be published.
![]()
The former external affairs minister- who joined the Congress way back in 1984 and was ignominiously forced out of the government first and the party later- has written a tell-all autobiography covering his years with Indira Gandhi as a senior Indian Foreign Service officer, and later as a Congressman with Rajiv Gandhi, P.V. Narasimha Rao, and Manmohan Singh.
A tell-all book
Singh's book is already being called the N-Bomb, because it is expected to reveal even more about the inner workings of the Congress and its first family than Sanjaya Baru's 'Accidental Prime Minister: Making and Unmaking of Manmohan Singh' that has left the Grand Old Party outraged and the author "amused". Singh was considered a confidant of the party's First Family till his downfall, and has seen the workings of the government at point-blank range through his many years in politics.
![]()
"No comment" was Singh's terse reply when asked by Mail Today about the meeting. He was a little more forthcoming about the moment of his resignation from the Congress. "I was asked to resign. I went (to Sonia Gandhi) with my resignation. She kept it," Singh said. Singh, chosen as foreign minister by Manmohan Singh in 2001, was removed from the position in December 2005 in the wake of the controversy over his alleged involvement in the Iraq Oil-for-Food scandal. The Independent Inquiry Committee under Paul Volcker had in October 2005 reported that Singh and his son Jagat were non-contractual beneficiaries of the Oil for Food programme.
Along with Jagat's childhood friend Andaleeb Sehgal, the three were alleged to be associated with a company that was an intermediary for illegal sales of oil to a Swiss firm. The Swiss firm, it was alleged, paid kickbacks to the Saddam Hussein regime as well as to Singh and the Congress party. Singh was alleged to have lobbied against US policy on Iraq in return. In 2008, Natwar Singh had had enough and resigned from the Congress.
The Justice R.S. Pathak Inquiry Authority that was set up to investigate the allegations in 2006 indicted Singh and his son Jagat for "misusing their positions" to influence oil contracts but also said that neither had derived any financial or personal gain in the entire business. "There is no material to show that Shri Natwar Singh made any financial or personal gains from the contracts," the report of the Pathak authority said. "The report of Justice Pathak says that my son and I have derived no financial benefit. That is the crux of the matter," Singh had said then, questioning how the Congress party which also figured in the allegations had been given a clean chit.
The Enforcement Directorate (ED) had also been set on Singh's tail; the cases they instituted against the former minister and his son haven't been taken back yet. ED officials haven't even given time to Singh's lawyers for three years now.
Sonia and Natwar haven't had a meaningful interaction since 2005, and certainly had a lot to talk about during their 50-minute meeting. The two have run into each other at a function or two, and in Central Hall of Parliament, but haven't exchanged any words. If there was one compelling reason for the Sonia-Priyanka visit, it remains a mystery because the event has not been made public. It could have been a patchup bid, now that the party is in disarray and possibly looking to the wisdom of its past luminaries. Mail Today sources say, however, that the conversation revolved around books, and one in particular.
That book is called One Life is Not Enough, and it is written by Natwar Singh himself. The book is to be released on August 7 by former Attorney General Soli Sorabjee at India International Centre, and there's precious little time left if Sonia wants to avoid more-and deeper- embarrassment of the Baru kind. That's what, sources say, the unusual calling-on was for, a pre-emptive spiking of the Natwar Singh tale. Priyanka is also believed to have requested Singh to not let the book be published.
Congress president Sonia Gandhi and her daughter Priyanka Gandhi Vadra are believed to have requested Natwar Singh not to publish his forthcoming book
The former external affairs minister- who joined the Congress way back in 1984 and was ignominiously forced out of the government first and the party later- has written a tell-all autobiography covering his years with Indira Gandhi as a senior Indian Foreign Service officer, and later as a Congressman with Rajiv Gandhi, P.V. Narasimha Rao, and Manmohan Singh.
A tell-all book
Singh's book is already being called the N-Bomb, because it is expected to reveal even more about the inner workings of the Congress and its first family than Sanjaya Baru's 'Accidental Prime Minister: Making and Unmaking of Manmohan Singh' that has left the Grand Old Party outraged and the author "amused". Singh was considered a confidant of the party's First Family till his downfall, and has seen the workings of the government at point-blank range through his many years in politics.
Former foreign minister Natwar Singh was an insider, close to the Gandhi family.
"No comment" was Singh's terse reply when asked by Mail Today about the meeting. He was a little more forthcoming about the moment of his resignation from the Congress. "I was asked to resign. I went (to Sonia Gandhi) with my resignation. She kept it," Singh said. Singh, chosen as foreign minister by Manmohan Singh in 2001, was removed from the position in December 2005 in the wake of the controversy over his alleged involvement in the Iraq Oil-for-Food scandal. The Independent Inquiry Committee under Paul Volcker had in October 2005 reported that Singh and his son Jagat were non-contractual beneficiaries of the Oil for Food programme.
Along with Jagat's childhood friend Andaleeb Sehgal, the three were alleged to be associated with a company that was an intermediary for illegal sales of oil to a Swiss firm. The Swiss firm, it was alleged, paid kickbacks to the Saddam Hussein regime as well as to Singh and the Congress party. Singh was alleged to have lobbied against US policy on Iraq in return. In 2008, Natwar Singh had had enough and resigned from the Congress.
The Justice R.S. Pathak Inquiry Authority that was set up to investigate the allegations in 2006 indicted Singh and his son Jagat for "misusing their positions" to influence oil contracts but also said that neither had derived any financial or personal gain in the entire business. "There is no material to show that Shri Natwar Singh made any financial or personal gains from the contracts," the report of the Pathak authority said. "The report of Justice Pathak says that my son and I have derived no financial benefit. That is the crux of the matter," Singh had said then, questioning how the Congress party which also figured in the allegations had been given a clean chit.
The Enforcement Directorate (ED) had also been set on Singh's tail; the cases they instituted against the former minister and his son haven't been taken back yet. ED officials haven't even given time to Singh's lawyers for three years now.
Published: June 15, 2014 18:42 IST | Updated: June 16, 2014 01:45 IST
“One Life is Not Enough”: Natwar Singh’s autobiography to rock the capital
The HinduAs External Affairs Minister in 2004-2005, Mr. Singh was also one of the early negotiators on the Indo-U.S. nuclear deal. File photo: V. Sreenivasa Murthy
After former Media Adviser Sanjaya Baru’s bestseller, The Accidental Prime Minister, another former insider’s revelations are likely to rock the Congress party, probably with greater impact.
The insider is former External Affairs Minister and veteran Congress leader, Natwar Singh, whose autobiography One Life is Not Enough is scheduled to hit the stands in late July or early August.
In it Mr. Singh describes his early years as a diplomat, his proximity to former Prime Ministers Indira Gandhi and Rajiv Gandhi, but more pertinently, say sources, to events post-Rajiv Gandhi’s assassination in 1991. Among the events Mr. Singh was privy to at 10 Janpath (Sonia Gandhi’s residence) were the selection of P.V. Narasimha Rao in 1991, and Manmohan Singh in 2004 as Prime Ministers.
As External Affairs Minister in 2004-05, Natwar Singh was also one of the early negotiators on the Indo-U.S. nuclear deal.
However after the revelations of the Volcker report on the oil-for-food scam, Mr Singh was forced to quit the government and later the Congress.
Natwar book – the ultimate insider’s account
In the latest of the insider autobiographies, former External Affairs Minister Natwar Singh’s book ‘One Life is Not Enough’ is learned to have given an account of what took place within the government during UPA-I as also the Manmohan Singh-Sonia equation in government, that he, as the Gandhi-family confidant, and key Cabinet Minister to PM Manmohan Singh, the ‘ultimate insider’ was privy to.
As External Affairs Minister in 2004-2005, Natwar Singh was also one of the early negotiators on the Indo-U.S. nuclear deal.
U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice mentions his contribution to the negotiations in Washington in her autobiography, saying that it would have been impossible to conclude the deal without Mr. Singh. At one point in her book, No Higher Honor, Ms. Rice describes how Dr. Manmohan Singh had decided against the nuclear agreement, but she and Mr. Singh hadn’t given up. “Natwar was adamant. He wanted the deal, but the Prime Minister wasn’t sure he could sell it in New Delhi. We pushed as far as we could toward agreement,” she describes. It remains to be seen if this book will shed more light on the processes that finally swung the deal.
However, things turned choppy for Mr. Singh soon after the revelations of a report prepared by former U.S. Fed Chairman Paul Volcker on the controversial oil-for-food programme. It had named both Mr. Singh and the Congress party. The report listed the names of those worldwide who had allegedly been paid for helping the former president of Iraq Saddam Hussein evade sanctions through the programmes.
Mr. Singh, who resigned in the fallout of the Volcker oil-for-food report in 2005, was never rehabilitated in the government, and for that matter, within the party after that.
The Justice Pathak commission indicted Mr. Natwar Singh and his son Jagat Singh for ties with the Saddam regime, but failed to conclude he had made any financial benefit, despite a thorough Enforcement Directorate probe.
However the Congress party was never investigated in a similar manner and Mr. Singh turned against the party he had been a member of for nearly 35 years. He finally resigned from the party in 2008. In subsequent years, he has been increasingly critical of the United Progressive Alliance government in columns and interviews.
Mr. Singh has refused to be quoted on this issue.
Arvind Chitale Chief Manager at Bank of India
Welcome new revelation which may explode in the face of Gandhi family. It will be interesting to read inside story coming from Mr. Singh, as everybody believes Gandhi family was sole beneficiary of all the defence and other scamsabout a month ago · (0) · (0) · reply (0)Points160- KKNatwar Singh is going to uncork the bottle which will plague the Congi. It is surprising that likes of Jagdish Tytler accused in 1984 Sikh massacre could be protected by Congi and a loyalist like Natwar was neglected! He being a veteran will definitely hit back with full force and Congi is going to go down further!about a month ago · (0) · (0) · reply (0)
- P O from HyderabadMisdeeds and mistakes could happen in the ruling by any govt/party. But it is unfortunate and condemnable that bureaucrats and ministers utilising such trivial misdeeds or mistakes to create fantasy or sensationalissm. When Mr. Sanjay Baru became an unfavourable to the PM, he left. In Mr. Natwar Singh's case, he was caught in an international scan and he was forced to resign. Had they got any sense of responsibility and commitment to the fellow human being, they would have disclosed the truth of the matter when they were in power rather than creating fantasy after a decade or so! This is nothing but a shameful act and it deserves to be condemned by one and all.about a month ago · (2) · (4) · reply (0)
- R.Ranganathan from BangaloreIt has become a fashion for the retired IAS officers and ministers to write books exposing the mis-deeds of the govts. under which they served. It surprises me why the did not have the guts to point out while in service. Yes, they do not want to lose their posts, salary and perks.about a month ago · (7) · (0) · reply (0)
- AshwinNatwar's Book will ofcourse focus on the technical issues. Something which might not be elaborated in the public but will focus on the realities confronting new Delhi in accepting the Nuclear deal. India's relations with the United states has suffered due to the Nuclear deal aggravated with the Arms supply with Belgium and France.about a month ago · (0) · (0) · reply (0)Points205
- Kumar Modol from TrentonI do not know why most of the commentators are shooting the messenger. Be that as it may, the book is likely to reveal many factual stories hidden from public domain. Public has very right to know about the state of affairs regarding the governance of the country. It is well known that in India every thing related to congress party and its supreme leaders are kept secret. That is why we still do not know what has happened to Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose. We do not know actual story behind India China war. In almost all democratic country there is statue of limitation about time for revealing state documents, but not India. We need more revelations from top bureaucrats as well as administrators to keep the politicians in check. Otherwise State will be identified with the leader. Recall the famous saying by Debkanta Barhua, congress president about Indira Gandhi " Indira is India". We should not allow that to happen any more. we need more transparency from our policy makers.about a month ago · (5) · (1) · reply (0)
- SuvojitThis is a pretty much time honored tradition in western democracy where former cabinet members write their memoirs which sometimes can be embarrassing for the former master. Case in point is US Defense Secretary Robert Gates thoughts about President Obama which can be construed as embarrassing for the president. People are matured enough to take them in the strides but it looks like Congress is too scared of damaging revelations from Natwar Singh's book. Even when Mr. Singh is not exactly a paragon of virtue, Congress need not worry if it honest and guilt-free of the actions of its president. OTH, if Congress president has something to hide from public then admittedly the party should be scared.about a month ago · (0) · (0) · reply (0)Points4765
- G.Jagannathan,DharmapuriAfter Sanjay Baru's The Accidental Prime Minister, the subject, in my opinion, had become stale to attract readers for Natwar Singh's book. It reminds me of a Kannada saying : Huliyannu nodi nari bare haakikondantae which means that the fox, seeing the stripes on the tiger, got itself branded all over. Even if the contents of the Natwar book are different and had already been readied, it is hitting the stands close on the heels of Baru's disinteresting people.about a month ago · (1) · (2) · reply (0)Points540G.Jagannathan,Dharmapuri Up Voted
- RameshAll autobiographies are justification of author `s deed and misdeed.Why people are very eager to write their autobiographies?They want to tell to world their importance, want to become immortal .Show readers how they are wise enough compare to others.After all writing is unconscious autobiography.What may man write he want to impress to reader self justification.so in the end all autobiographies are false,,spuriousabout a month ago · (1) · (0) · reply (0)Points250
- saddaSensationalizing events after they have had their effect - bad or good - is only to feed fodder to the mews manufacturers mill. If Natwar Singh did not do in real time, when things were happening before his own eyes, what was good for the people he deserves contempt and zero publicity.about a month ago · (5) · (0) · reply (0)Points860
- VinnyI am not sure why every one is talking negative about Mr.Singh. Let it come out to tell some truths. The US report is prepped to implicate lot of people to garner support for them and not to do any favor to India. You are all aware of the war in Iraq. Its fabricated lies all along and killed a peaceful nation in the name of demoracy and looted Iraqis wealth and left them to kill themselves...see whats happening now. And the same is going to repeat in Afghanistan too..Dont ever trust US lobby. Everything is for themselves only and not to help any one. One can understand this if one follows the international political make up.about a month ago · (4) · (1) · reply (0)
- Kamath PSad to see the people who lived on the mercy of a party are now against it. Natwar Singh kind of people are good for nothing. It is sad to see that the country has not progressed only due to people like Natwar Singh who were in governance for their entire life, lived like parasite and are now spitting around dirtying the surroundings.about a month ago · (1) · (0) · reply (0)
- RamanMr. Natwar Singh, “Et.tu”? It has become trendy of late (in India) to write the books about your past and the exquisite life you had spent and that they are scraping more in. I am deeply dismayed by the likes of Mr. Natwar Singh writing the books, when they actually could have done something about it when they were in power and be more relevant, right? Why now? We call it double dipping! Nah, I will not waste my money buying his gossips. An esteemed newspaper like Hindu (that I read day in and out!) should not be a vehicle for shenanigans especially an egregious act of Mr. Natwar Singh irrespective of whether we like Congress party are not.about a month ago · (1) · (1) · reply (0)Points135
- Parth GargSanjay Baru has dedicated his book The Accidental Prime Minister to the memory of H.Y.Sharada Prasad whom he called his mentor. The legendary Sharada Prasad who was Indira Gandhi's information adviser for 16 long years refused to write a book about his job and boss on the ground: 'I do not know everything that happened in the PMO. Not only do I not know all sides of the truth, I do not even know how many sides the truth has.' In contrast Baru was there with PMO only for 4 years and has yet the audacity, in the words of Sharada Prasad, to 'project himself and playing the justifier of God's ways to man or man's ways to other men' not only by writing his memoirs but publishing it at the most inopportune time just to reap commercial benefits. Only an opportunist and a hypocrite of Baru's ilk could call some one as his mentor and yet conveniently bypass his sane advice. Another ungrateful sole is luring in the literary world with his book to pass half truths.about a month ago · (1) · (3) · reply (0)Points295
- Dr. ChandrashekaraA corrupt person's narration of corruptipn around him !!? No Sirree..... !! Not me. He was very much part of the well oiled congress machinery of corruption, along with his son. Now the former diplomat wants to make more money through his book.about a month ago · (0) · (0) · reply (0)Points155
- Dr. ChandrashekaraNatwar Singh's consciens wakes up only when the tide turns against them. Till then he and his son were part of the well oiled congress machinery of corruption. What can such a man's book reveal that the nation already doesn't know?!! Now the former diplomat is out to make more quick money through his book. He could have lived a more honourable life after his diplomatic career .......... and then could have written a good memoir of some value. A corrupt persons narration of corruption around him !!? No Sirree...... not me!!about a month ago · (0) · (0) · reply (0)Points155
- BV RaoCredibility of Sanjay Baru, Natwar Singh are no greater than Congress Party. These two individuals have enjoyed as long as they could inside, now they want "explode". What shame, what pity India has this kind of people, who "expose" as soon they are kicked out of favour.about a month ago · (4) · (2) · reply (0)
- SANKARANMr. Shyamaprasad, the US---India nuclear deal is mostly for our benefit only .It brought the end of 33 years of world nations boycott of nuclear technology transfer, uranium supply etc. So far Russia and France have got commercial orders from us,USA is yet to get it. Today Kudankulam nuclear station generates 1000MW power. In the coming years we will have more nuclear power stations, so that we will be able to solve our power shotage problem.about a month ago · (2) · (0) · reply (0)
- swarup mohantyGygantic problems this country is facing; are the gifts of Congress & that Nehru-gandhi family.It will take many many years to bring some wrongs to right path,& in some cases it is not possible.Article-370,a portion occupied by China,a portion by Pakistan,existance of ill feeling among Hindu & Muslims,illegal migration etc,etc.This election is historic in the sense that it may restore some of our country's lost goodwill during last years.about a month ago · (0) · (0) · reply (0)Points115
- Vishnu UllattilWith this , the Congress will be completely crusified and nailed.about a month ago · (0) · (0) · reply (0)
- KumarI doesn't know what exactly is in this autobiography. Perhaps I understood that it has some serious issues related to the governance of UPA. Also, I understood that this autobiography points the inability of the governance of UPA. Okay, let us consider that on a certain ground the UPA governance was in-able and on the very same ground all those people who raise these issue in their autobiography are also very much in-able. Why they didn't raise such concerns in real time. Why raising such issue after every thing is buried. This is just for their own satisfaction to do a autobiography. On the other, weighing the good and bad things of such autobiography(s), I feel that these autobiographies are not doing any good. They are simply waste of resources (print media, time, money, etc.).about a month ago · (0) · (0) · reply (0)
- RajinderI feel that such comments have come from the people who remained very close to Gandhi family and were holding important positions and status.They have closely watched the role of government under the undue influence of Gandhi parivar.They have opted the back route and instead of enjoying the power with responsibility , they preferred to rule without responsibility. Earlier Sonia ji preferred to work as defect PM without responsibilities and even now Rahual did not preferred to be the leader of his party in Lok Sabha though he was very keen to become PM if their party had come to power which is again a million dollor question as to what has in that situation.no on knows.about a month ago · (0) · (0) · reply (0)Points110
Gopalan Chellampillai
So there are many approvers in our country. Also people have no better thing to do than talking about these people. We make many people big.about a month ago · (0) · (0) · reply (0)- Aftab KhanNothing new. Dog always bark when you hit them. I am not a Congress man but do not like the way things are going on. Will Congress loose anything? I don't think. But surely Natwar Singh will prove that he is Natwar Lal.about a month ago · (0) · (0) · reply (0)Points165
- A.A proud, farseeing diplomat and a member of Congress party with very high values unlike some others. If he helped Saddam's Iraq, he was repaying the favor that Indra Ganhi's India once owed to Saddam Hussein. A time when foreign exchange was very scarce in India and oil was life saver commodity, a short letter from Indra Gandhi did the magic. Saddam ordered unlimited supplies of crude on credit with no strings attached. Sowhy do Mr Netwar Singh's critics forget this part of the story. He I a proud and honorable Indian unlike some of his contemporaries in the Congress.about a month ago · (0) · (0) · reply (0)Points165
Srinivasan Iyer CEO at Everst Building Products Limited
On principle, I do not give full credence to such books of persons who have been in Govt or c;lose to it. It will be difficult for such persons to be really objective and it will be difficult to prove whether what they write is the whole truth or just their own projections. All our politicians irrespective of their party can become good targets for anyone to write a book of their own assessments! Wriitngs based on looking through the keyholes can sell but ......about a month ago · (0) · (0) · reply (0)Points650B.Ganga Gangaraju retd. HGA at LIC of India
Will it be last nail in the coffin? Anyway how many can afford such books and buy them to read leisurely? For the upper echleons of society much of what he says may already be known. B. Ganga Raju Hyderabadabout a month ago · (0) · (0) · reply (0)Points195Ramasubramani Hariharaiyer at Bhabha Atomic Research Centre,Trombay,Bombay
One by one,skeletons are coming out of the cupboard.Slowly but surely all inside the cupboard will tumble out exposing the deeds of the sickular party not that it is going to affect the rhinoceros skinned leaders and workers of the party. They have gone beyond redemption.about a month ago · (0) · (0) · reply (0)![]()
Rajendra Asthana NATWAR SINGH is an ex Oxford don, hails from house of Bharatpur,is related to house of Patiala, a scholar , and doyen of diplomats India had. His is a unique personality, having uninterruptedly observed Indian polity, economy, and foreigners view of India since 1947. As regards, Volcker report it is predicated to American design to discredit and destroy Saddam Hussain and Iraq, what they have done to it. Americans spawned ISIS threatening existence of Iraq notwithstanding its 7000 year old history and it being cradle of human civilisation. Volcker report was used as handle by Sonia Manmohan combine to ease out Natwar Singh who was intellectually much superior to them and was no pushover. His new book would interest all right thinking Indians, for getting a view of Natwar's assessment of India its polity and morr importantly how world view of India had changed since independence. I for one eagerly await his book.about a month ago · (0) · (0) · reply (0)- amaruvi.comLet us hope the Natwar Singh does not suffer from sudden health ailment or road accident as those are the normal methods used to 'silence' critics.about a month ago · (0) · (0) · reply (0)
- Radhakrishnan RadhakrishnanThere is nothing much to rock as far as Congress is concerned! But even if there is, who is going to bother about the tales of a man who had to go out so unceremoniously? People enjoy their positions and speak well of you as long as you keep them in their positions and pamper them. The moment you push them out, they start telling tales.about a month ago · (4) · (2) · reply (0)Points100
- V.Vedagiri VEDAGIRIArnab Goswami, Sardesai and Karan Thapar are rearing to go! -)about a month ago · (16) · (0) · reply (0)Points360
Venkatesha Murthy
With this book the congress is going to be embarrassed further and many take years to recover.At least not in the near future. They are in for yet another round of shock in the assembly elections which is round the corner.about a month ago · (2) · (1) · reply (0)Points290- vinodI am unable to understand why the people like Natwar, Baru and Parakh remained silent for years and wrote only when circumstances are favorable to them. The waiting for opportunity in my opinion raises question mark for their credibility.about a month ago · (9) · (2) · reply (2)
- RamanpreetNot just these three, i think everyone do same. This is mostly ordinary people do. And if someone brave enough to face the music to speak the truth. That would be a exception... Because that needs sacrifice, isolation and much moreabout a month ago · (13) · (0) · reply (1)Ramanpreet Up Voted
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Mahadevan N "because that needs sacrifice, isolation and much more" I agree.. and it needs a NaMo to come out of such situations successfullyabout a month ago · (3) · (1) · reply (0)
- L.MyneniSuhashini Haider...that is a great teaser about the great reveal about to happen. Cannot wait for it to hit the stands. The timing is absolutely perfect..we are seeing a regime change, a paradigm shift in Foreign policy and the end of stalemates in every area. One man sacrificed by his Party for deeds involving a War that was not his making!!!about a month ago · (0) · (0) · reply (0)
Shyamaprasad Bhattacharjee
Now season to reveal, MR. singh is set to come out of his own revelations, surely it would rock the nation for a while, then dusts would settle in the ground. The indications in the report is serious .Quote, U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice mentions his contribution to the negotiations in Washington in her autobiography, saying that it would have been impossible to conclude the deal without Mr. Singh. At one point in her book, No Higher Honor, Ms. Rice describes how Dr. Manmohan Singh had decided against the nuclear agreement, but she and Mr. Singh hadn’t given up. “Natwar was adamant. He wanted the deal, but the Prime Minister wasn’t sure he could sell it in New Delhi. We pushed as far as we could toward agreement,” she described unquote. Please mark the word"PUSH'. USA had to push the deal , for whose interest? India's, certainly not It was for commercial interests of USA.about a month ago · (0) · (0) · reply (0)Points520- SundaramNatwar Singh as usual knows how to boost the sale of his books nd keep him in the lime light.There is no need for his support to put Congress on the spot, as it had already gone down deep by its own commissions and omissions by their Nehru legacy custodians -Sonia, Rahul and Priyanka.about a month ago · (0) · (0) · reply (0)Points3370
- Rakesh MishraNatwar singh as foreign affairs minister had shown his nature by being adanant to wrapp out the indo-us nuke deal successfully.but sonia gandhi led upa has awarded him & gestured him to be away from party.about a month ago · (1) · (0) · reply (0)
Siva Subramaniam Director of Engineering at Hospitality Enterprises
The only way to find the truth about all wrong doings by congress party, which ruled the country for almost six decades, is all the living babus / ministers do come forward boldly and write the facts, will be best of their service to the nation.about a month ago · (3) · (0) · reply (0)Points595Jay Up Voted- maniSore grapes. One cannot take anything Mr Natwar Singh says at face value. He has been tainted by a scam. His timing of the release of the book needs to be examined. My enemy's enemy is my friends - Mr Singh's mantra. He wants to cuddle up to the BJP Party in the hope of atleast getting a Governorship. I am no lover of the Gandhi famliy, but people like Mr Singh as 'close confidants', the family's slide is guaranteed.about a month ago · (1) · (0) · reply (0)Points180
- ShivaThe Congress party's corrupt and criminal activities, the use of state machinery against opponents, cover up of crimes, alleged fake encounters to accuse opponents, impunity to their friends and party men and collaborate to the genocide and war crimes. It is time for the BJP under brave and honest leader Modi, should review all ill activities, wrongdoing and other inhuman behaviours must be reviewed or ordered for retrial in order to deliver fair justice, deliver justice to the victims and to punish the perpetrators. New appointments in 2014 should be cancelled, order for review or retrial of Rajiv Gandhi assassination case, collaboration to the Sri lankan regime against the Tamils and fake encounters require fresh review and trials in the best interest of judiciary.about a month ago · (0) · (0) · reply (0)Points1650
- Louis S.There is no lack of betrayers in any party. Once they ditch the party, or were shown the door, they would make use of whatever information materials gathered during the tenure to portray themselves as paragon of virtues and throw slur on the organization or others with whom they had any reservation. What revelation? Why they were so dormant so far? They are all most dishonest plagiarists. All that the media require some fodder for churning out stories to embarrass the powerless. Nothing else.
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ISIS 'burns down ancient church' as Christians are told: Convert or die
ISIS 'burns down ancient church' as Christians are told: Convert or die
Hundreds of Christian families fled their homes in Mosul on July 20 as a jihadist ultimatum threatening their community's centuries-old presence in the northern Iraqi city expired. (AFP Photo)
Radical insurgents in Iraq have reportedly set fire to a church, amid a wake of thefts and ultimatums directed at Christians in the country's second-largest city of Mosul.
The Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIS wrestled control of the northern Iraqi city on 10 June in an attempt to carve out a Sunni caliphate.
Large swathes of Christian and Iraqi property has been seized by the militant group as it grows its governance in the aim of making Mosul the capital of its new Islamic state.
Another property seized by militants, the ancient Catholic Mar Behnam Monastery, located 15 miles south of Mosul, was a place of pilgrimage and an important Christian landmark.
However on Sunday, it was seized by ISIS fighters and its monks expelled, who were permitted only to take the clothes they were wearing.
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Iraqi Christians receive communion during a mass at the Saint-Joseph church in Arbil, the capital of the autonomous Kurdish region of northern Iraq, on July 20.
Last week, the extremists gave Christians in Mosul three options: either convert to Islam, pay a special tax or be killed.
They gave a deadline of Saturday 19 July, which led to a mass exodus of Iraqi Christians - communities that had had 2,000-year-old links to the country - on Friday, Al Arabiya News reports.
Though a number of Christians - a religious minority in Iraq - had already fled the city after hard-line ISIS captured it last month, for many the ultimatum was the final straw. The city is now said to be all but clear of Christians.
Iraqi Christians who have fled the violence say that they had to either leave most of their belongings behind or have it stolen by armed militants.
"We had to go through an area where they had set up a checkpoint," Zaid Qreqosh Ishaq, 27, said of his family, as he explained they were on their way to the relatively safe region of Iraqi Kurdistan.
"[The militants] asked us to get out of the car. We got out. They took ... our things, our bags, our money, everything we had on us."
At least 400 Christian families are making their way to Dohuk and Arbil, the UN said, with Arbil's governor, Nawzad Hadi, promising to protect the refugees.
Noel Ibrahim, who also fled the crackdown, said ISIS gunmen stopped cars as they tried to leave and stole cash and jewellery from the women.
"One of the gunmen told us 'You can leave now, but do not ever dream of returning to Mosul again'," Mr Ibrahim said.
The number of Christians in Iraq began to decrease after the 2003 US-led invasion toppled Saddam Hussein, which resulted in sectarian violence swelling.
The militants are using newly-seized oil fields to fund their new state, Reuters reports, transporting the resource to mobile refineries in Syria before selling the gasoline back in Mosul.
The group has taken over the Najma, Qayara, Himreen and Ajil fields, though many of the wells are thought to be sealed and not pumping.
Larger shipments of crude oil are also being sold to Turkish traders via smugglers.
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Iraqi Christians, pray during a mass at the Saint-Joseph church in Arbil, the capital of the autonomous Kurdish region of northern Iraq on July 20.
The Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIS wrestled control of the northern Iraqi city on 10 June in an attempt to carve out a Sunni caliphate.
Large swathes of Christian and Iraqi property has been seized by the militant group as it grows its governance in the aim of making Mosul the capital of its new Islamic state.
Another property seized by militants, the ancient Catholic Mar Behnam Monastery, located 15 miles south of Mosul, was a place of pilgrimage and an important Christian landmark.
However on Sunday, it was seized by ISIS fighters and its monks expelled, who were permitted only to take the clothes they were wearing.
Iraqi Christians receive communion during a mass at the Saint-Joseph church in Arbil, the capital of the autonomous Kurdish region of northern Iraq, on July 20.
Last week, the extremists gave Christians in Mosul three options: either convert to Islam, pay a special tax or be killed.
They gave a deadline of Saturday 19 July, which led to a mass exodus of Iraqi Christians - communities that had had 2,000-year-old links to the country - on Friday, Al Arabiya News reports.
Though a number of Christians - a religious minority in Iraq - had already fled the city after hard-line ISIS captured it last month, for many the ultimatum was the final straw. The city is now said to be all but clear of Christians.
Iraqi Christians who have fled the violence say that they had to either leave most of their belongings behind or have it stolen by armed militants.
"We had to go through an area where they had set up a checkpoint," Zaid Qreqosh Ishaq, 27, said of his family, as he explained they were on their way to the relatively safe region of Iraqi Kurdistan.
"[The militants] asked us to get out of the car. We got out. They took ... our things, our bags, our money, everything we had on us."
At least 400 Christian families are making their way to Dohuk and Arbil, the UN said, with Arbil's governor, Nawzad Hadi, promising to protect the refugees.
Noel Ibrahim, who also fled the crackdown, said ISIS gunmen stopped cars as they tried to leave and stole cash and jewellery from the women.
"One of the gunmen told us 'You can leave now, but do not ever dream of returning to Mosul again'," Mr Ibrahim said.
The number of Christians in Iraq began to decrease after the 2003 US-led invasion toppled Saddam Hussein, which resulted in sectarian violence swelling.
The militants are using newly-seized oil fields to fund their new state, Reuters reports, transporting the resource to mobile refineries in Syria before selling the gasoline back in Mosul.
The group has taken over the Najma, Qayara, Himreen and Ajil fields, though many of the wells are thought to be sealed and not pumping.
Larger shipments of crude oil are also being sold to Turkish traders via smugglers.
Iraqi Christians, pray during a mass at the Saint-Joseph church in Arbil, the capital of the autonomous Kurdish region of northern Iraq on July 20.
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Aircel-Maxis ghotala impinges on our national security. Dayanidhi Maran, P Chidambaram involved -- Subramanian Swamy
Aircel-Maxis deal impinges on our national security: Subramanian Swamy
Zee Media BureauNew Delhi: Senior BJP leader Subramanian Swamy on Wednesday said that the Aircel-Maxis deal is a very big scam and it impinges on the national security.
Swamy also accused former Telecom Minister Dayanidhi Maran of misusing his office for the sale of Aircel to Maxis.
Swamy said, "Dayanidhi Maran forced national company to sell to foreign company and then Finance Minister P Chidambaram ensured he got 100 percent shares".
CBI in 2011 had filed its FIR in the case alleging that then Telecom Minister Dayanidhi had used his influence to help Malayasian business tycoon T Ananda Krishnan acquire Aircel by coercing its owner Chinnakannan Sivasankaran.
It was alleged by former Aircel chief C Sivasankaran that the then Telecom Minister had favoured Malaysia-based Maxis group in the takeover of his company and in return investments were made by the company through Astro network in a company owned by the Maran family.
CBI has named Dayanidhi, his brother Kalanithi Maran, Maxis owner T Ananda Krishnan, senior executive Ralph Marshall three companies on charges of criminal conspiracy under Indian Penal Code (IPC) and Prevention of Corruption Act.
With Agency Inputs
http://zeenews.india.com/business/news/companies/aircel-maxis-deal-impeaches-on-our-national-security-subramanian-swamy_104508.html
Chidambaram helped son to benefit from Aircel-Maxis deal, says Subramanian Swamy
All India | Rahul Shrivastava | Updated: April 26, 2012 22:10 IST
New Delhi: Subramanian Swamy, who wants P Chidambaram to be investigated for his alleged role in the telecom scam, today made new allegations of corruption against the Union Minister's son. In a three-page letter dated April 24 to the Prime Minister, Mr Swamy has said that Mr Chidambaram should be asked to resign as Home Minister and that the CBI should include him and his son, Karti, in its investigation on the sale of telecom Aircel to Malaysia-based Maxis.
Mr Swamy says that, Karti, benefited from Mr Chidambaram's position as Finance Minister to earn huge profits during the sale of Aircel which Mr Chidambaram sanctioned in 2006. However, Mr Swamy did not produce any documentary evidence to substantiate his claims.
Mr Swamy says that in 2005, telecom company Aircel was verging on bankruptcy. Its then owner, C Sivasankaran, was approached by Maxis, which wanted to pick up 74% stake in Aircel for nearly 4,000 crores, according to Mr Swamy. He says that this deal needed clearance from the Foreign Investment Promotion Board.
"But this permission - Chidambaram delayed it because he wanted a cut - this is my allegation," said Mr Swamy at a press conference today. He alleged that before the deal was sanctioned, a company Ausbridge Holding and Investments Pvt Ltd in which Karti Chidambaram is a 94 per cent equity holder bought shares in the holding company, Advantage Strategic Consultancy Pvt Ltd, of Aircel. When the deal went through, Mr Swamy says, Karti Chidambaram made considerable profits, though he did not specify how much.
Karti Chidambaram has refused to comment on Mr Swamy's allegations, but sources close to him, said, "No company directly or indirectly held by Karti P Chidambaram owns or owned in the past any equity directly or indirectly in Aircel or for that matter in any telecom company." They also point out that it was in 2010-11 that Karti's company invested in Advantage.
Mr Swamy wants Mr Chidambaram and his son to be included in the FIR, with Dayanidhi Maran, that looks at the Aircel-Maxis deal. Maran, the then Telecom Minister, is already being investigated by the CBI for allegedly misusing his office.
Mr Sivasankaran has alleged that licenses vital for his business were held up by Mr Maran, who was allegedly pressuring him to sell Aircel to the owner of Maxis, T Ananda Krishnan. After Mr Sivasankaran sold Aircel to Maxis, the licenses he had applied for were granted. The CBI is checking whether 600 crores invested by Maxis in Sun Direct, owned by Mr Maran's brother, Kalanidhi, was a quid pro quo.
Mr Swamy, who is the Janata Party president, was turned down in February by a Delhi court when he asked that Mr Chidambaram be investigated by the CBI for his role as Finance Minister during another telecom scam in 2008 - this one allegedly orchestrated by A Raja, who took over from Mr Maran as telecom minister in 2004. Mr Raja is in jail for awarding mobile network licenses at clearance prices to ineligible companies - he threw in spectrum for free. Mr Swamy says that as Finance Minister, Mr Chidambaram failed to prevent Mr Raja from gypping the country of thousands of crores, and that he sanctioned the low prices fixed by Mr Raja.
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What is Westernization? Science,Technology,Industrial infrastructure..? Listen to S Gurumurthy (1:58:59)
Published on Feb 26, 2014
In this Daksh PowerTalk, Shri S.Gurumurthy spoke on achieving Peace Through Religious
Harmony.
In a thorough and detailed manner, he traced the past of religious conflicts.
This was the second of the PowerTalks for Daksh Octa, 2014.
This PowerTalk took place at Chanakya Vihar auditorium on February 21st, 2014.
Harmony.
In a thorough and detailed manner, he traced the past of religious conflicts.
This was the second of the PowerTalks for Daksh Octa, 2014.
This PowerTalk took place at Chanakya Vihar auditorium on February 21st, 2014.
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Explain growth of your family's wealth: Katju to Karunanidhi
Katju to Karunanidhi: explain growth of your wealth
HT Correspondent, Hindustan Times Chennai, July 23, 2014First Published: 20:19 IST(23/7/2014) | Last Updated: 22:13 IST(23/7/2014)
Former Supreme Court judge and Press Council of India chairman Markandey Katju on Wednesday hit back at DMK chief M Karunanidhi by asking him to disclose how much his family's wealth has grown after joining politics.
He was responding to the DMK leader's remarks questioning the timing of Katju's blog post that said three former chief justices of India helped an allegedly corrupt Tamil Nadu judge to remain in office in 2004.
Karunanidhi had said Katju was making allegations at someone's behest and his silence for 10 years "spoke volumes about his integrity".
In a stinging response posted on Facebook, Katju said, "Mr. Karunanidhi has made various allegations against me.
He was responding to the DMK leader's remarks questioning the timing of Katju's blog post that said three former chief justices of India helped an allegedly corrupt Tamil Nadu judge to remain in office in 2004.
Karunanidhi had said Katju was making allegations at someone's behest and his silence for 10 years "spoke volumes about his integrity".
In a stinging response posted on Facebook, Katju said, "Mr. Karunanidhi has made various allegations against me.
Watch: Markandey Katju clarifies not raising the corrupt judge issue earlier
He should disclose what was the wealth of himself and his family (including the Marans) before he joined politics, and what is it today?"
The PCI chairman had alluded in his blog that DMK had pressurised its ally UPA to appoint the tainted judge on a post at the Madras High Court.
Katju's poser comes a day after the attorney general of India Mukul Rohtagi said there was enough material to prosecute former telecom minister and DMK leader Dayanidhi Maran and his brother Kalanidhi Maran in a case involving Malaysian company Maxis, Aircel and Sun TV network run by the Marans.
According to the case, 2G licenses to Aircel were given only after the company was acquired by Malaysia-based company Maxis group. Its wholly-owned subsidiary had invested Rs. 650 crore in Sun Direct, a television company owned by Kalanidhi.
Katju's stinging attack, seen in the light of these developments, alludes to corruption suspected to be behind the huge wealth amassed by the DMK leadership over the years in politics.
The PCI chairman had alluded in his blog that DMK had pressurised its ally UPA to appoint the tainted judge on a post at the Madras High Court.
Katju's poser comes a day after the attorney general of India Mukul Rohtagi said there was enough material to prosecute former telecom minister and DMK leader Dayanidhi Maran and his brother Kalanidhi Maran in a case involving Malaysian company Maxis, Aircel and Sun TV network run by the Marans.
According to the case, 2G licenses to Aircel were given only after the company was acquired by Malaysia-based company Maxis group. Its wholly-owned subsidiary had invested Rs. 650 crore in Sun Direct, a television company owned by Kalanidhi.
Katju's stinging attack, seen in the light of these developments, alludes to corruption suspected to be behind the huge wealth amassed by the DMK leadership over the years in politics.
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Meluhha epigraphs including hieroglyph 190 (‘sprouts in watery field’) of Mahadevan ‘Sign List’
Mirror: https://www.academia.edu/7761493/Meluhha_epigraphs_including_hieroglyph_190_sprouts_in_watery_field_of_Mahadevan_Sign_List
http://www.scribd.com/doc/234989354/Meluhha-epigraphs-including-hieroglyph-190-sprouts-in-watery-field-of-Mahadevan-Sign-List
The following readings suggested are consistent with the cipher presented in “Meluhha hieroglyphs on cylinder and other seals of Bronze Age”
https://www.academia.edu/6898842/Meluhha_hieroglyphs_on_cylinder_and_other_seals_of_Bronze_Age
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Variants of Sign 342: ‘rim-of-jar’ hieroglyph
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Variants of Sign 258 ‘spine, backbone’
http://www.scribd.com/doc/234989354/Meluhha-epigraphs-including-hieroglyph-190-sprouts-in-watery-field-of-Mahadevan-Sign-List
Meluhha epigraphs including hieroglyph 190 (‘sprouts in watery field’) of Mahadevan ‘Sign List’
S. Kalyanaraman July 23, 2014
Wim Borsboom and SM Sullivan discuss this hieroglyph in the context of Sanskrit readings of a few Indus script epigraphs. http://www.academia.edu/7751469/Decipherment_Interpretation_and_Translation_of_Indus_Script_Sign_430_Sinha_ The readings do not refer to the pictorial motif hieroglyphs (such as one-horned young bull, rhinoceros, tiger) which occupy the field on some epigraphs.
I would suggest variant readings – of both ‘sign’ glyphs and ‘pictorial motif’ glyphs. They are treated as hieroglyph rebus cipher based on Meluhha which was the lingua franca of artisans and traders of the civilization region. The inscriptions recorded trade transactions along the Tin Road of Bronze Age. – as descriptive parts or bills of materials in bills of lading. http://www.academia.edu/7751469/Decipherment_Interpretation_and_Translation_of_Indus_Script_Sign_430_Sinha_
The following readings suggested are consistent with the cipher presented in “Meluhha hieroglyphs on cylinder and other seals of Bronze Age”
https://www.academia.edu/6898842/Meluhha_hieroglyphs_on_cylinder_and_other_seals_of_Bronze_Age
Top left: Shortugai, Bactria (Jarrige 1984). Top right: H-48A
Middle: 1. M-543A. 2, 3. M2047 AB. 4. M-1498A
Bottom: 1. M-546A 2. M-1498B
In these examples of epigraphs, six pictorial motifs are vivid and clearly distinguishable as occupying the field:
1. Standard device (in front of the one-horned young bull with a pannier)
2. Trough
3. One-horned young bull with a pannier (and rings on neck)
4. Ox
5. Tiger
6. Rhinoceros
Some examples of ‘signs’ as hieroglyphs are:
||| Number three
Part A. Pictorial motif hieroglyphs
pattar ‘trough’ rebus: pattar ‘guild’.
sangada 'lathe', 'portable furnace'G. sãghāṛɔ m. ʻlathe’ ;sã̄gāḍā m. ʻ frame of a building ʼ, °ḍī f. ʻ lathe ʼ(CDIAL 12859)Rebus:
sangataras. संगतराश lit. ‘to collect stones, stone-cutter, mason.’ संगतराश संज्ञा पुं० [फ़ा०] पत्थर काटने या गढ़नेवाला मजदूर । पत्थरकट । २. एक औजार जो पत्थर काटने के काम में आता है । (Dasa, Syamasundara. Hindi sabdasagara. Navina samskarana. 2nd ed. Kasi : Nagari Pracarini Sabha, 1965-1975.) पत्थर या लकडी पर नकाशी करनेवाला, संगतराश, ‘mason’.
Ku. balad m. ʻ ox ʼ, gng. bald, N. (Tarai) barad, id. Rebus: L. bhāraṇ ʻ to spread or bring out from a kiln ʼ; M. bhārṇẽ, bhāḷṇẽ ʻ to make strong by charms (weapons, rice, water), enchant, fascinate (CDIAL 9463) Ash. barī ʻ blacksmith, artisan (CDIAL 9464). Baran, bharat ‘mixed alloys’ (5 copper, 4 zinc and 1 tin) (Punjabi) bharana id. (Bengali) bharan or toul was created by adding some brass or zinc into pure bronze. bharata = casting metals in moulds (Bengali)
खोंडी [ khōṇḍī ] f An outspread shovelform sack (as formed temporarily out of a कांबळा, to hold or fend off grain, chaff &c.) (Marathi) koḍiyum'rings on neck' (Gujarati)
kondh ‘heifer’. kōḍu horn (Kannada. Tulu. Tamil) खोंड [khōṇḍa] m A young bull, a bullcalf. (Marathi) Rebus: kõdār 'turner' (Bengali); kõdā ‘to turn in a lathe’ (Bengali).कोंद kōnda ‘engraver, lapidary setting or infixing gems’ (Marathi) kõdā ‘lathe-turner’. kũdār ‘turner, brass worker’. कोंद kōnda ‘engraver, lapidary setting or infixing gems’ (Marathi) kũdār, kũdāri (B.); kundāru (Or.)कोंडण [kōṇḍaṇa] f A fold or pen. (Marathi) खोट [khōṭa] Alloyed--a metal (Marathi).
kul 'tiger' (Santali); kōlu id. (Te.) kōlupuli = Bengal tiger (Te.)Pk. kolhuya -- , kulha -- m. ʻ jackal ʼ < *kōḍhu -- ; H.kolhā, °lā m. ʻ jackal ʼ, adj. ʻ crafty ʼ; G. kohlũ, °lũ n. ʻ jackal ʼ, M. kolhā, °lā m. krōṣṭŕ̊ ʻ crying ʼ BhP., m. ʻ jackal ʼ RV. = krṓṣṭu -- m. Pāṇ. [√kruś] Pa. koṭṭhu -- , °uka -- and kotthu -- , °uka -- m. ʻ jackal ʼ, Pk. koṭṭhu -- m.; Si. koṭa ʻ jackal ʼ, koṭiya ʻ leopard ʼ GS 42 (CDIAL 3615). कोल्हा [ kōlhā ] कोल्हें [ kōlhēṃ ] A jackal (Marathi) kol ‘tiger, jackal’ (Konkani.) Rebus: kol ‘iron’ (Tamil.) Rebus: kol ‘furnace, forge’ (Kuwi) kol ‘alloy of five metals, pañcaloha’ (Tamil.)
gaṇḍá4 m. ʻ rhinoceros ʼ lex., °aka -- m. lex. 2. *ga- yaṇḍa -- . [Prob. of same non -- Aryan origin as khaḍgá --1: cf. gaṇōtsāha -- m. lex. as a Sanskritized form ← Mu. PMWS 138]1. Pa. gaṇḍaka -- m., Pk. gaṁḍaya -- m., A. gãr, Or. gaṇḍā. 2. K. gö̃ḍ m., S. geṇḍo m. (lw. with g -- ), P. gaĩḍā m., °ḍī f., N. gaĩṛo, H. gaĩṛā m., G. gẽḍɔ m., °ḍī f., M. gẽḍā m.Addenda: gaṇḍa -- 4. 2. *gayaṇḍa -- : WPah.kṭg. geṇḍɔ mirg m. ʻ rhinoceros ʼ, Md. genḍā ← H. (CDIAL 4000). காண்டாமிருகம் kāṇṭā-mirukam , n. [M. kāṇṭāmṛgam.] Rebus: kāṇḍa ‘tools, pots and pans and metal-ware’ (Gujarati) Rebus: khāṇḍa ‘tools, pots and pans and metal-ware’ (Marathi)
Part B. ‘Signs’ as hieroglyphs
er-aka 'upraised arm' (Ta.); rebus: eraka = copper (Ka.)
adaru 'twig'; rebus: aduru 'native, unsmelted metal'.
kolmo ‘three’; rebus: kolom'sprout'; kolom = cutting, graft; to graft, engraft, prune; kolma hoṛo = a variety of the paddy plant (Desi)(Santali.) kolmo 'rice plant' (Mu.) rebus: kolami ‘forge, smithy’ (Telugu)
kolmo ‘rice plant’ (Mu.) Rebus: kolami ‘furnace,smithy’ (Te.) Vikalpa: pajhaṛ = to sprout from a root (Santali); Rebus: pasra ‘smithy, forge’ (Santali)
kūdī ‘bunch of twigs’ (Sanskrit) rebus: kuṭhi‘smelter furnace’ (Santali)
Hieroglyph: 'rim-of-jar': Phonetic forms: kan-ka (Santali) karṇika (Sanskrit) Rebus: karṇī, supercargo for a boat shipment. karṇīka ‘account (scribe)’.कारणी kāraṇī ‘the supercargo of a ship’ (Marathi) कर्णधार [ karṇadhāra ] m S (A holder of the ear.) A helmsman or steersman देशकुळकरणी [dēśakuḷakaraṇī] m An hereditary officer of a Mahál. He frames the general account from the accounts of the several Khots and Kulkarn̤ís of the villages within the Mahál; the district-accountant.
mēd ‘body’ (Kur.)(DEDR 5099); rebus: mered (Mundari); meḍ'iron' (Ho)
Left: a seal published by Omananda Saraswati. In Pl. 275: Omananda Saraswati 1975. Ancient Seals of Haryana (in Hindi). Rohtak.” (I. Mahadevan, 'Murukan' in the Indus Script, The Journal of the Institute of Asian Studies, March 1999). B.B. Lal, 1960. From Megalithic to the Harappa: Tracing back the graffiti on pottery. Ancient India, No.16, pp. 4-24.
bharaDo ‘spine’ (Gujarati); spine, backbone (Punjabi); baraDo thADavo lit. to strike on the backbone or back (Gujarati). baraDo -barad BHANGI NAKHI- Brocken) - means KED/KAMAR Backbone specifically of LUMBAR REGION (Kutchi. Gujarati). Rebus: L. bhāraṇ ʻ to spread or bring out from a kiln ʼ; M. bhārṇẽ, bhāḷṇẽ ʻ to make strong by charms (weapons, rice, water), enchant, fascinate (CDIAL 9463) Ash. barī ʻ blacksmith, artisan (CDIAL 9464). Baran, bharat‘mixed alloys’ (5 copper, 4 zinc and 1 tin) (Punjabi) bharana id. (Bengali) bharan or toul was created by adding some brass or zinc into pure bronze. bharata = casting metals in moulds (Bengali)
Alternative 1: Pa. piṭṭhi -- kaṇṭaka -- m. ʻ bone of the spine ʼ; Tir. mar -- kaṇḍḗ ʻ back (of the body) ʼ; S. kaṇḍo m. ʻ back ʼ, L. kaṇḍ f., kaṇḍā m. ʻ backbone ʼ, awāṇ. kaṇḍ, °ḍī ʻ back ʼ; N. kaṇḍo ʻ buttock, rump, anus ʼ, kaṇḍeulo ʻ small of the back ʼ; H. kã̄ṭā m. ʻ spine ʼ, G. kã̄ṭɔ m., M. kã̄ṭā m.; Si. äṭa -- kaṭuva ʻ bone ʼ, piṭa -- k° ʻ backbone ʼ. Pk. kaṁḍa -- m. ʻ backbone ʼ. Pk. karaṁḍa -- m.n. ʻ bone shaped like a bamboo ʼ, karaṁḍuya -- n. ʻ backbone ʼ. Rebus: khāṇḍā ‘metal tools, pots and pans’ (Marathi) Rebus: kāṇḍa ‘tools, pots and pans and metal-ware’ (Gujarati)
Alternative 2 kaseru [Skt.] n. The backbone. rebus: kasērā ʻ metal worker ʼ, (Lahnda) P. kaserā m. ʻ worker in pewter ʼ (CDIAL 2988, 2989)
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Geneva's Banks Push Clients to Come Clean -- Giles Broom
Geneva's Banks Push Clients to Come Clean
Photograph by Valentin Flauraud/Bloomberg
Geneva
For more than a century, Geneva has provided wealthy French families a convenient and safe place to stash their money. Switzerland’s political neutrality, stability, and tradition of bank secrecy have kept their fortunes beyond the reach of warring powers and the most determined tax collectors, even though Geneva is less than 3 miles from the French border. In turn, French funds have helped build the city into a showpiece for Gallic culture—and the world’s largest concentration of wealth managers.
Those long-standing ties are unraveling as France toughens its tax laws and Paris prosecutors investigate UBS (UBS), Switzerland’s largest lender, and HSBC Holdings (HSBC) to find out whether they helped clients hide wealth in Swiss accounts. Already bruised by battles with the U.S., Geneva bankers are pressing French customers to “regularize,” a polite way of saying they must declare hidden funds to French tax authorities. Failure to do so will result in the closing of their accounts, clients have been told.
Banks are “very scared,” says Rémi Dhonneur, a lawyer at Kramer Levin Naftalis & Frankel in Paris. “Clients are being kicked out or pushed to regularization.” The French have at least €250 billion ($340 billion) in foreign accounts, and more than half may be undeclared, says a Geneva-based banker who asked not to be named, saying the figures were supplied confidentially by a consulting firm. Geneva holds 80 percent to 90 percent of that money, according to tax lawyers interviewed by Bloomberg.
France offered last June to reduce fines on unreported wealth held abroad to encourage voluntary declarations. The program has yielded €764 million in taxes from 1,260 cases examined so far, the French government said in late May. A law adopted in December gives French authorities more power to go after suspected tax cheats and calls for a €2 million fine and a sentence of as many as seven years for bankers, wealth managers, advisers, and lawyers who organize tax fraud. Judicial authorities are investigating UBS after France’s banking regulator fined the bank €10 million last year for deficient controls against tax fraud and illegal sales practices. The probe into HSBC, which also began last year, concerns allegations that the bank helped French clients avoid taxes. The government has built its case from a list of clients leaked from the bank’s Geneva unit by Hervé Falciani, a former software technician at HSBC.
Since 2009, U.S. tax probes have cost Switzerland’s biggest banks, UBS and Credit Suisse (CS), more than $3 billion in penalties and felled the country’s oldest bank, Wegelin & Co. About a dozen other banks are under investigation for allegedly helping wealthy Americans cheat on their taxes. Credit Suisse became the first bank in more than a decade to admit to a crime in a U.S. courtroom when it pleaded guilty to a decades-long pattern of helping Americans evade taxes in offshore havens and agreed to pay $2.6 billion in penalties. The resolution of that case cleared the way for other Swiss banks to settle their own U.S. tax disputes. Many of these banks, including Pictet & Cie. Group and HSBC’s Swiss unit, are the same ones putting pressure on their French clients to come clean.
Swiss banks “are doing as much as they can” to guide French clients through their country’s “costly” and “complicated” disclosure program, Patrick Odier, chairman of the Swiss Bankers Association and senior partner at private bank Lombard Odier, said in an interview with L’Agefi newspaper on May 8. Neither Lombard Odier nor Pictet would comment on policies toward French account holders. Credit Suisse “is asking clients to regularize their tax situation,” spokesman Jean-Paul Darbellay wrote via e-mail.
For most clients of Paris-based lawyer Lea Falcon, Geneva still has appeal—if not for secrecy, then for stability. She points to Cyprus, where the government seized bank deposits to qualify for a bailout from the European Union last year after its financial system nearly collapsed. “They still trust Switzerland more than they trust France,” Falcon says. “They are scared their assets might be taken by the state if they are with a local French bank, following the example of Cyprus.”
The bottom line: France’s offer to reduce fines on foreign money has yielded €764 million in taxes in 1,260 cases.
http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2014-06-19/france-fights-tax-evasion-swiss-banks-ask-clients-to-come-clean
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ISIS jihadists order genital mutilation of all women in Iraq
ISIS jihadists order genital mutilation of all women in Iraq
An Iraqi refugee girl washes her younger sister at a camp for displaced Iraqis who fled from Mosul and other towns in Khazer area outside Irbil, northern Iraq. (AP photo)
GENEVA: Jihadists in Iraq have ordered that all women between the ages of 11 and 46 must undergo female genital mutilation, which could affect up to four million women and girls in the war-ravaged country, a UN official said Thursday.
The UN's second most senior official in Iraq, Jacqueline Badcock, said, "It is a fatwa (or religious edict) from ISIS, we learnt about it this morning. We have no precise numbers."
The Islamic State, formerly known as the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIS), took over large swathes of the country last month and has begun imposing its extreme Salafist interpretation of Islam.
Badcock said that if you took UN population figures as a guide, around "four million girls and women could be affected".
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ISIS jihadists marching through the Syrian town of Raqqa.
Female genital mutilation is unusual in Iraq and is only practised in "certain isolated pockets of the country", she added.
She said only 20 families from the ancient Christian minority now remain in Mosul, the northern Iraq city which ISIS has taken as the capital of its Islamic state. Most have reportedly fled north into Kurdish-controlled territory.
Badcock said some Christians have converted to Islam, while others have opted to stay and pay the jiyza, the tax on non-Muslim's ISIS has imposed.
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Iraqi refugees displaced from the fighting between ISIS jihadists and government forces near the norther city of Irbil. (Reuters photo)
The UN's second most senior official in Iraq, Jacqueline Badcock, said, "It is a fatwa (or religious edict) from ISIS, we learnt about it this morning. We have no precise numbers."
The Islamic State, formerly known as the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIS), took over large swathes of the country last month and has begun imposing its extreme Salafist interpretation of Islam.
Badcock said that if you took UN population figures as a guide, around "four million girls and women could be affected".
ISIS jihadists marching through the Syrian town of Raqqa.
Female genital mutilation is unusual in Iraq and is only practised in "certain isolated pockets of the country", she added.
She said only 20 families from the ancient Christian minority now remain in Mosul, the northern Iraq city which ISIS has taken as the capital of its Islamic state. Most have reportedly fled north into Kurdish-controlled territory.
Badcock said some Christians have converted to Islam, while others have opted to stay and pay the jiyza, the tax on non-Muslim's ISIS has imposed.
Iraqi refugees displaced from the fighting between ISIS jihadists and government forces near the norther city of Irbil. (Reuters photo)
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Remembering Kargil war heroes in school textbooks -- Ardhra Nair. NaMo, Smriti Irani to note Vijay Diwas and instruct textbook writers.
Posted at: http://pmindia.nic.in/interact_with_pm.php http://bharatkalyan97.blogspot.com/2014/07/remembering-kargil-war-heroes-in-school.html
Remembering Kargil war heroes in school textbooks -- Ardhra Nair. NaMo, Smriti Irani to note Vijay Diwas and instruct textbook writers. Our school children should remember and pay tribute to the soldiers of Bharat who sacrificed their lives defending territorial integrity of the nation.
Kalyanaraman
Kargil struggles to get into school textbooks
Written by Ardhra Nair | Pune | July 26, 2013 2:44 am
SUMMARY
It has been 14 years since Pakistani intruders were driven out of Tiger Hill and Captain Vikram Batra,Captain Manoj Pandey,Captain Sourabh Kalia besides numerous unsung heroes became irreplaceable names in the history of contemporary India.
It has been 14 years since Pakistani intruders were driven out of Tiger Hill and Captain Vikram Batra,Captain Manoj Pandey,Captain Sourabh Kalia besides numerous unsung heroes became irreplaceable names in the history of contemporary India. And while the Armys bravehearts rewrote history with their blood,the education system does not find it significant to include their mention in history books for basic introduction to young Indian minds.
The Maharashtra state board has no mention of Kargil in social science books till standard ten.
The case is no different with languages books,where no stories about their bravery is featured. Instead,the social science book of the state board focuses on history,the latest event to be touched being Goa liberation. According to N K Jarag,head,State Council of Educational Research and Training (SCERT) that designs content of the textbooks,”Children between standard one to eight do not have the understanding (to grasp facets of Kargil).” Jarag agrees Kargil/ Kargil heroes deserve a mention in textbooks for standard nine and 10.
SCERT follows NCERT guidelines. A quick look at some guidelines which aim at enabling students to be familiar with some key political events and figures in the post-independence period,events and processes of recent history,to take a historical perspective of making sense of contemporary India makes one wonder why none of India’s post independence conflicts,including Kargil,feature in the textbooks.
While this is the case with the state board,the CBSE class 12 political science book has a passing mention of the Kargil conflict (Box- 1).
This,when earlier editions of the syllabus included a rather elaborate account of Kargil (Box- 2). Even in Sainik Schools in the city/ state,Kargil is covered only in military training through individual initiatives.
“We conduct talks by inviting guest lecturers. In fact,a subject called ‘Purandar te Kargil’ was taught to our students for two years under military training. But we have now stopped the same. It is mandatory for Sainik School girls to know the history of Kargil,but it is unfortunate that it does not form a part of the syllabus,” said Shraddha Walimbe,principal,Rani Laxmibai Military School for Girls.
According to a department head in the University of Pune,Indian history in textbooks predominantly follows the outlines of non-violent struggle and the Gandhian thoughts.
“Our policy seems to be not to project ourselves as imperialists through the history books. Also,on a bigger history of contemporary India where governance,politics,administration or foreign policy are the elements,Kargil looks like a relatively small event,” he said. Suhas Palshikar,former advisor to the NCERT,said Kargil is a relatively “smaller or minor” event from the academic perspective,unless it is about war history or Indo-Pak relations. “In academic perspective,the relation between India-Pakistan gains more significance than armed conflicts between the two countries.”
Veteran soldiers have a different take. Major General (retd) G D Bakshi,veteran security analyst,said,”I had written to the authorities asking them for inclusion of Kargil in the education system,but there was no response. Representation of military history is a neglected aspect in the country.”http://indianexpress.com/article/cities/pune/kargil-struggles-to-get-into-school-textbooks/
Army Chief Pays Tribute to Kargil War Martyrs
All India | Indo Asian News Service | Updated: July 25, 2014 10:58 IST
General Singh, who is retiring on July 31, paid homage at the Kargil war memorial in the Drass area.
"I want to assure you as chief of the army staff that the Indian Army is deployed at the border and has the capability to protect India's sovereignty and integrity," General Singh told the media.
He added that the army is "fully geared to take on challenges" and that the present government is committed towards ensuring the needs and aspirations of the soldiers.
Each year since 1999, the army observes Vijay Diwas to remember its soldiers who laid down their lives in Kargil district in the cold desert region of Ladakh during the conflict between India and Pakistan.
The Kargil conflict was the most serious military engagement between the two neighbours since the war of 1971 that resulted in the division of Pakistan into two countries and the creation of Bangladesh.
http://www.ndtv.com/article/india/army-chief-pays-tribute-to-kargil-war-martyrs-564884
Kargil War
| May–July 1999 | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Location | Kargil district, Kashmir, India | ||||
| Result | Pakistani military retreat;[1] India regains control of occupied territory[2] | ||||
| Territorial changes | Status quo ante bellum |
| Strength | |
|---|---|
| 30,000 | 5,000 |
| Casualties and losses | |
Indian official figures
Pakistani claims
| Pakistani official figures Other Pakistani claims Indian claims |
The Kargil War (Hindi: करगिल युद्ध kārgil yuddh, Urdu: کرگل جنگ kārgil jang), also known as the Kargil conflict,[note (I)] was an armed conflict between India and Pakistan that took place between May and July 1999 in the Kargil district of Kashmir and elsewhere along theLine of Control (LOC). The conflict is also referred to as Operation Vijay (Victory in Hindi) which was the name of the Indian operation to clear the Kargil sector.[19]
The cause of the war was the infiltration of Pakistani soldiers and Kashmiri militants into positions on the Indian side of the LOC,[20]which serves as the de facto border between the two states. During the initial stages of the war, Pakistan blamed the fighting entirely on independent Kashmiri insurgents, but documents left behind bycasualties and later statements by Pakistan's Prime Minister andChief of Army Staff showed involvement of Pakistani paramilitary forces,[21][22][23] led by General Ashraf Rashid.[24] The Indian Army, later on supported by the Indian Air Force, recaptured a majority of the positions on the Indian side of the LOC infiltrated by the Pakistani troops and militants. With international diplomatic opposition, the Pakistani forces withdrew from the remaining Indian positions along the LOC.
The war is one of the most recent examples of high altitude warfare in mountainous terrain, which posed significant logistical problems for the combating sides. To date, it is also the only instance of direct,conventional warfare between nuclear states (i.e., those possessingnuclear weapons). India had conducted its first successful test in 1974; Pakistan, which had been developing its nuclear capability in secret since around the same time, conducted its first known tests in 1998, just two weeks after a second series of tests by India.
Further information: Kargil order of battle
Conflict events
| Date (1999) | Event |
|---|---|
| May 3 | Pakistani intrusion in Kargil reported by local shepherds |
| May 5 | Indian Army patrol sent up; Five Indian soldiers captured and tortured to death. |
| May 9 | Heavy shelling by Pakistan Army damages ammunition dump in Kargil |
| May 10 | Infiltrations first noticed in Dras, Kaksar, and Mushkoh sectors |
| Mid-May | Indian Army moves in more troops from Kashmir Valley to Kargil Sector |
| May 26 | IAF launches air strikes against infiltrators |
| May 27 | IAF loses two fighters — MiG-21 and MiG-27;. Flt Lt Nachiketa taken POW |
| May 28 | IAF MI-17 shot down by Pakistan; four air crew dead |
| June 1 | Pakistan steps up attacks; bombs NH 1A |
| June 5 | Indian Army releases documents recovered from three Pakistani soldiers indicating Pakistan’s involvement |
| June 6 | Indian Army launches major offensive in Kargil |
| June 9 | Indian Army re-captures two key positions in the Batalic sector |
| June 11 | India releases intercepts of conversation between Pakistani Army Chief Gen Pervez Musharraf, while on a visit to China and Chief of General Staff Lt Gen Aziz Khan in Rawalpindi, as proof of Pakistani Army’s involvement |
| June 13 | Indian Army secures Tololing in Dras |
| June 15 | U.S. President Bill Clinton, in a telephonic conversation, asks Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif to pull out from Kargil |
| June 29 | Indian Army captures two vital posts: Point 5060 and Point 5100 near Tiger Hill |
| July 2 | Indian Army launches three-pronged attack in Kargil |
| July 4 | Indian Army recaptures Tiger Hill after an 11-hour battle |
| July 5 | Indian Army takes control of Dras. Sharif announces Pakistani army’s withdrawal from Kargil following his meeting with Clinton |
| July 7 | India recaptures Jubar Heights in Batalik |
| July 11 | Pakistan begins pullout; India captures key peaks in Batalik |
| July 14 | Indian Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee declares Operation Vijay a success. Government sets condition for talks with Pakistan |
| July 26 | Kargil conflict officially comes to an end. Indian Army announces complete eviction of Pakistani intruders. |
There were three major phases to the Kargil War. First, Pakistan infiltrated forces into the Indian-controlled section of Kashmir and occupied strategic locations enabling it to bring NH1 within range of its artillery fire. The next stage consisted of India discovering the infiltration and mobilizing forces to respond to it. The final stage involved major battles by Indian and Pakistani forces resulting in India recapturing some territory held by Pakistani forces and the subsequent withdrawal of Pakistani forces back across the Line of Control after international pressure.
The terrain of Kashmir is mountainous and at high altitudes; even the best roads, such as National Highway 1D from Leh to Srinagar, are only two lanes. The rough terrain and narrow roads slowed traffic, and the high altitude, which affected the ability of aircraft to carry loads, made control of NH 1D (the actual stretch of the highway which was under Pakistani fire) a priority for India. From their observation posts, the Pakistani forces had a clear line-of-sight to lay down indirect artillery fire on NH 1D, inflicting heavy casualties on the Indians.[68] This was a serious problem for the Indian Army as the highway was its main logistical and supply route.[69] The Pakistani shelling of the arterial road posed the threat of Leh being cut off, though an alternative (and longer) road to Leh existed via Himachal Pradesh.
The infiltrators, apart from being equipped with small arms and grenade launchers, were also armed with mortars, artilleryand anti-aircraft guns. Many posts were also heavily mined, with India later stating to having recovered more than 8,000anti-personnel mines according to an ICBL report.[70] Pakistan's reconnaissance was done through unmanned aerial vehicles and AN/TPQ-36 Firefinder radars supplied by the US.[71] The initial Indian attacks were aimed at controlling the hills overlooking NH 1D, with high priority being given to the stretches of the highway near the town of Kargil. The majority of posts along the Line of Control were adjacent to the highway, and therefore the recapture of nearly every infiltrated post increased both the territorial gains and the security of the highway. The protection of this route and the recapture of the forward posts were thus ongoing objectives throughout the war.
The Indian Army's first priority was to recapture peaks that were in the immediate vicinity of NH 1D. This resulted in Indian troops first targeting the Tiger Hill and Tololing complex in Dras, which dominated the Srinagar-Leh route.[72] This was soon followed by the Batalik-Turtok sub-sector which provided access to Siachen Glacier. Some of the peaks that were of vital strategic importance to the Pakistani defensive troops were Point 4590 and Point 5353. While 4590 was the nearest point that had a view of NH 1D, point 5353 was the highest feature in the Dras sector, allowing the Pakistani troops to observe NH 1D.[73] The recapture of Point 4590 by Indian troops on June 14 was significant, notwithstanding the fact that it resulted in the Indian Army suffering the most casualties in a single battle during the conflict.[74] Though most of the posts in the vicinity of the highway were cleared by mid-June, some parts of the highway near Drass witnessed sporadic shelling until the end of the war.
Once India regained control of the hills overlooking NH 1D, the Indian Army turned to driving the invading force back across the Line of Control. The Battle of Tololing, among other assaults, slowly tilted the combat in India's favor. The Pakistani troops at Tololing were aided by Pakistani fighters from Kashmir. Some of the posts put up a stiff resistance, including Tiger Hill (Point 5140) that fell only later in the war. Indian troops found well-entrenched Pakistani soldiers at Tiger Hill, and both sides suffered heavy casualties. After a final assault on the peak in which 10 Pakistani soldiers and 5 Indian soldiers were killed, Tiger Hill finally fell. A few of the assaults occurred atop hitherto unheard of peaks – most of them unnamed with only Point numbers to differentiate them – which witnessed fierce hand to hand combat.
As the operation was fully underway, about 250 artillery guns were brought in to clear the infiltrators in the posts that were in the line-of-sight. The Bofors FH-77B field howitzer played a vital role, with Indian gunners making maximum use of the terrain that assisted such an attack. However, its success was limited elsewhere due to the lack of space and depth to deploy the Bofors gun.
It was in this type of terrain that aerial attacks were used with limited effectiveness. French made Mirage 2000H of the IAF were tasked to drop laser-guided bombs to destroy well-entrenched positions of the Pakistani forces.[20] However, The IAF lost a MiG-27 strike aircraft which it attributed to an engine failure as well as a MiG-21 fighter which was shot down by Pakistan; initially Pakistan said it shot down both jets after they crossed into its territory.[75] One Mi-8 helicopter was also lost, due to Stinger SAMs.
On May 27, 1999, Flt. Lt. Nachiketa developed engine trouble in the Batalik sector and bailed out of his craft. Sqn Ldr Ajay Ahuja went out of his way to locate his comrade but was shot down by a shoulder-fired Stinger missile. According to reports, he had bailed out of his stricken plane safely but was apparently killed by his captors as his body was returned riddled with bullet wounds.[20]
In many vital points, neither artillery nor air power could dislodge the outposts manned by the Pakistani soldiers, who were out of visible range. The Indian Army mounted some direct frontal ground assaults which were slow and took a heavy toll given the steep ascent that had to be made on peaks as high as 18,000 feet (5,500 m). Since any daylight attack would be suicidal, all the advances had to be made under the cover of darkness, escalating the risk of freezing. Accounting for thewind chill factor, the temperatures were often as low as −15 °C to −11 °C (12 °F to 5 °F) near the mountain tops. Based on military tactics, much of the costly frontal assaults by the Indians could have been avoided if the Indian Military had chosen to blockade the supply route of the opposing force, virtually creating a siege. Such a move would have involved the Indian troops crossing the LoC as well as initiating aerial attacks on Pakistan soil, a manoeuvre India was not willing to exercise fearing an expansion of the theatre of war and reducing international support for its cause.
Two months into the conflict, Indian troops had slowly retaken most of the ridges that were encroached by the infiltrators;[76][77] according to official count, an estimated 75%–80% of the intruded area and nearly all high ground was back under Indian control.[34]
Withdrawal and final battles
Following the outbreak of armed fighting, Pakistan sought American help in de-escalating the conflict. Bruce Riedel, who was then an aide to President Bill Clinton, reported that U.S. intelligence had imaged Pakistani movements of nuclear weapons to forward deployments for fear of the Kargil hostilities escalating into a wider conflict. However, President Clinton refused to intervene until Pakistan had removed all forces from the Indian side of the Line of Control.[78] Following the Washington accord of July 4, 1999, when Sharif agreed to withdraw Pakistani troops, most of the fighting came to a gradual halt, but some Pakistani forces remained in positions on the Indian side of the LOC. In addition, the United Jihad Council (an umbrella for extremist groups) rejected Pakistan's plan for a climb-down, instead deciding to fight on.[79]
The Indian army launched its final attacks in the last week of July; as soon as the Drass subsector had been cleared of Pakistani forces, the fighting ceased on July 26. The day has since been marked as Kargil Vijay Diwas (Kargil Victory Day) in India. By the end of the war, India had resumed control of all territory south and east of the Line of Control, as was established in July 1972 as per the Simla Agreement.
India
A number of Indian soldiers earned awards for gallantry:[90]
- Grenadier Yogendra Singh Yadav, 18 Grenadiers, Param Vir Chakra
- Lieutenant Manoj Kumar Pandey, 1/11 Gorkha Rifles, Param Vir Chakra, Posthumous
- Captain Vikram Batra, 13 JAK Rifles, Param Vir Chakra, Posthumous
- Rifleman Sanjay Kumar, 13 JAK Rifles, Param Vir Chakra
- Captain Anuj Nayyar,17 JAT Regiment, Maha Vir Chakra, Posthumous
- Major Rajesh Singh Adhikari, 18 Grenadiers, Maha Vir Chakra, Posthumous
- Major Saravanan, 1 Bihar, Vir Chakra, Posthumous
- Squadron Leader Ajay Ahuja, Indian Air Force, Vir Chakra, Posthumous
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Memorial of Operation Vijay![]()
Kargil War memorial, built by the Indian Army, is located in Dras, in the foothills of the Tololing Hill. The memorial, located about 5 km from the city centre across the Tiger Hill, commemorates the martyrs of the Kargil War. A poem "Pushp Kii Abhilasha"[164] (= Wish of a Flower) by Makhanlal Chaturvedi, a renowned 20th century neo-romantic Hindi poet, is inscribed on the gateway of the memorial greets visitors. The names of the soldiers who lost their lives in the War are inscribed on the Memorial Wall and can be read by visitors. A museum attached to the Kargil War Memorial, which was established to celebrate the victory of ‘Operation Vijay’, houses pictures of Indian soldiers, archives of important war documents and recordings, Pakistani war equipments and gear, and official emblems of the Army from the Kargil war.A giant national flag, weighing 15 kg was hoisted at the Kargil war memorial to commemorate the 13th anniversary of India’s victory in the war.[165]
References
- Asymmetric Warfare in South Asia: The Cause and Consequences of the 1999 Limited War in Kargil the CCC Kargil Project.
- Kargil Conflict (GlobalSecurity.org)
- Limited Conflict Under the Nuclear Umbrella (RAND Corporation)
- War in Kargil (Center for Contemporary Conflict) PDF download
- Essay on the outcomes of the Kargil War
- Stephen P. Cohen (2004). The Idea of Pakistan. Brookings Institution Press. ISBN 0-8157-1502-1.
- Kargil Review Committee (2000). From Surprise to Reckoning: The Kargil Review Committee Report. SAGE Publications. ISBN 0-7619-9466-1. (Executive summary of the report, Online)
- Limited War with Pakistan: Will It Secure India's Interests? ACDIS Occasional Paper by Suba Chandran, Published 2004 by Program in Arms Control, Disarmament, and International Security (ACDIS), University of Illinois.
- An Analysis of the Kargil Conflict 1999, by Shaukat Qadir, RUSI Journal, April 2002 (PDF)
- V.P. Malik (2006). Kargil; From Surprise to Victory. Harper Collins, New Delhi, India.
Indian literature on Kargil war
- M. K. Akbar (1999). Kargil Cross Border Terrorism. South Asia Books. ISBN 81-7099-734-8.
- Amarinder Singh (2001). A Ridge Too Far: War in the Kargil Heights 1999. Motibagh Palace, Patiala. ASIN: B0006E8KKW.
- Jasjit Singh (1999). Kargil 1999: Pakistan's Fourth War for Kashmir. South Asia Books. ISBN 81-86019-22-7.
- J. N. Dixit (2002). India-Pakistan in War & Peace. Books Today. ISBN 0-415-30472-5.
- Ranjan Kumar Singh. Sarhad Zero Mile. Parijat Prakashan. ISBN 81-903561-0-0.
- Mona Bhan. Counterinsurgency, Democracy and the Politics of Identity in India. Routledge Contemporary South Asia Series.
- Indian Armed Forces site on Kargil
- Animated timeline and other Kargil stories – India Today
- Impact of the conflict on civilians – BBC
- The Day A Nuclear Conflict Was Averted – YaleGlobal Online
- Kargil Debacle: Musharraf's Time Bomb, Waiting to Explode
- Brief analysis of the Kargil conflict by Center for Strategic and International Studies (PDF)
- Kargil—nine years on The News International, Pakistan
- POSTCARD USA: Kargil, Kargil everywhere – Pakistan's Daily Times
- Pakistan's lessons from its Kargil War
- Video of Pakistani PoWs from the conflict
- Video – Tiger hill, Kargil hill's turning point
- Video of Indian army handling over bodies of Pakistani soldiers to Pak army
- India Pakistan 1999 Kargil war documentary
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This audio file was created from a revision of the "Kargil War" article dated 2006-08-10, and does not reflect subsequent edits to the article. (Audio help)KARGIL WAR 15 YEARS ONHow the initiative at sea was seizedThe role of the Indian Navy in the Kargil war has not been talked about much. The former Navy Chief gives a first-hand account of the Navy’s Operation Talwar as the Kargil conflict unfolded
Admiral Sushil KumarVERY little has been spoken or written about what the Indian Navy did during the Kargil conflict of 1999. In fact, it is largely believed and mistakenly so, that the Indian Navy played no role at all. While the Army and Air Force undoubtedly played a stellar role and won the war for us, the Navy, albeit on the sideline, made a silent but significant contribution. And this is a first-hand account of how the Kargil conflict unfolded and what the Navy’s Operation Talwar was all about. I recall the initial phase of how the Kargil conflict began. As the Navy Chief, I was also officiating as the Chairman of the Chiefs of Staff Committee since General Ved Malik, the Army Chief, was abroad on an assignment.![Specialist hydrographic survey teams of the Indian Navy were conjoined with the Army’s artillery batteries to pin-point gun locations]()
Specialist hydrographic survey teams of the Indian Navy were conjoined with the Army’s artillery batteries to pin-point gun locations.![The three Chiefs of the Services during the Kargil war: (From left) Admiral Sushil Kumar, Air Chief Marshal Tipnis and General Ved Prakash Malik]()
The three Chiefs of the Services during the Kargil war: (From left) Admiral Sushil Kumar, Air Chief Marshal Tipnis and General Ved Prakash MalikThe reports that first came in were quite vague and hazy. They alluded to stray incidents along the Line of Control with Pakistan. There was also a report of an Indian Army patrol that had not returned and of shepherds having seen strangers on our side of the Line of Control (LoC). Despite the uncertain nature of these reports, the Army was understandably concerned and requested for air effort by way of armed reconnaissance. At that stage, Air Chief Marshal Tipnis, the Air Chief, quite rightly advised, that hastily inducting the Indian Air Force may send the wrong signal. With scanty reports available, the situation was confused and seemed to be only a minor border incident in an area that had always been regarded as no-man’s land.More than a border incidentBy the time General Malik returned from his trip abroad, it became clear that the incursion on the Himalayan border in the Kargil sector was not just a mere border incident. Not only was the extent of the Pakistani intrusion very vast but it also appeared that something sinister was afoot. The manner in which the intruders had entrenched themselves on our side of the LoC, in well-prepared concrete bunkers at strategically commanding locations, clearly showed that this was a well-planned manoeuvre that had been executed over a carefully calculated time frame. There was no doubt that Pakistani treachery had caught us by surprise. Promptly, the Indian Government swung into action and gave the Indian Armed Forces a clear-cut directive: Evict the intruders. But do not cross the LoC was the Prime Minister’s diktat which proved to be a diplomatic masterstroke. This was the start up for Operation Vijay. For Navymen like me who had been around during the India-Pakistan war of 1965, the lasting memory had always been of the mischief carried out by the Pakistan Navy at sea. When all attention had been on the land war, a couple of Pakistan Navy destroyers had sneaked in one night and lobbed a few shells onto a deserted beach on the Gujarat coast. Ever since then, the Pakistan Navy has celebrated that event as “Pakistan Navy Day.”By early June 1999, as our Army and Air Force were preparing for action on the LoC, task forces of the Indian Navy’s Western Fleet had already been deployed to their battle stations — to seize the initiative at sea. With the situation getting tense, it was at an important war council briefing that the Prime Minister reiterated his Directive of not crossing the LoC.Operational constraintFor the Army and Air Force this was surely an operational constraint but not so for the Navy, as we always operate in international waters anyway. Moreover, coercive diplomacy has always been the Navy’s forte and the tactic of exerting pressure from over the horizon has always been a well- tested strategy referred to as gunboat diplomacy from Nelsonian times.We realised that the Indian Navy’s forward deployment had certainly had the desired effect when we learnt that Pakistan had frantically started escorting its oil tankers at sea, for this indeed was their lifeline for survival.By the middle of June, the Army and Air Force had scaled up their operations. With tension mounting, the situation looked as though it would escalate beyond a border conflict. At this time the Navy’s Operational Commanders re-appreciated the situation and decided to prepare for hostilities. The Navy’s Eastern Fleet from the Bay of Bengal was rapidly mobilised and deployed in strength to the Arabian Sea.And so as the operations on the Himalayan heights at Tololing and Tiger Hill reached a crescendo, the Indian Navy remained poised with both fleets in full readiness. As we approached what seemed like the precautionary stage for war, operation orders for combat were issued with the rules of engagement clearly defined for commanders at sea. This was a very important threshold for us. The codename assigned was Operation Talwar.The silent force![]()
By the middle of June, the Army and Air Force had scaled up operations. The situation looked as though it would escalate beyond a border conflict. The Navy’s Operational Commanders re-appreciated the situation and decided to prepare for hostilities .![]()
The Navy’s Eastern Fleet from the Bay of Bengal was rapidly mobilised and deployed in strength to the Arabian Sea .![]()
As the operations on the Himalayan heights at Tololing and Tiger Hill reached a crescendo, the Indian Navy remained poised with both fleets in full readiness.![]()
As we approached the precautionary stage for war, operation orders for combat were issued with the rules of engagement clearly defined for commanders.![]()
We knew Pakistan Navy was on the defensive when we monitored a special message from the Pakistan Navy high command to all their warships. Threat of nuclear retaliationIt was around this time that Pakistani generals started resorting to threats of nuclear retaliation. Much of it was rhetoric but it could not be dismissed altogether, as we were obviously dealing with a desperate foe whose misadventure had been exposed, through recovered Pakistani documents and captured prisoners of war. By the end of June 1999, full-scale hostilities seemed imminent. At a crucial tri-Service briefing, the Army Chief General Ved Malik issued an advisory for the Indian Armed Forces — you better prepare for war, be it declared or otherwise. We in the Navy were fully armed and ready for battle.Here I must add that while our task forces were well poised; we had our fingers crossed. Our warships were vulnerable with no Anti-Missile Defence (AMD) against the Pakistan Navy’s deadly Harpoon Exocet sea-skimming missiles. It was a serious vulnerability but the Flag Officer Commanding-in-Chief, Western Naval Command, Vice Admiral Madhavendra Singh, and I had taken stock of the situation. There is always the fog of war and the adversary may not be entirely aware of the opponent’s strengths and weaknesses. Moreover, we had deployed in preponderant strength and our strike forces were aggressively poised. It certainly had the desired effect. We knew that the Pakistan Navy had gone on the defensive when we monitored a special message from the Pakistan Navy high command to all their warships ‘Remain in harbour’.Seizing the initiative at seaThe signal from the Pakistani Naval (PN) Headquarters said it all and that day, at the briefing for the Chiefs of Staff Committee, I informed my colleagues that the Indian Navy had achieved what it had set out to do. We had seized the initiative at sea. Tri-Service cooperation had many facets during the Kargil operations and the Navy was able to chip in where needed. The Navy’s squadron of specially equipped electronic warfare aircraft operated extensively along the Line of Control in support of land operations. Specialist hydrographic survey teams of the Indian Navy were conjoined with the army’s artillery batteries to pin-point gun locations. But all this is trivia compared to the overall canvas of tri-service understanding and cooperation that Kargil 1999 portrayed. Many too are the lessons that the Kargil conflict has brought forth. Most important of all being that the Indian Armed Forces have the natural ability and resilience to face adversity when the chips are down. Kargil had caught us by surprise, yet motivated by the Government, the Armed Forces turned the tables onto the Pakistani intruders.Force-multiplying effectWhat Kargil also demonstrated was that when the Service Chiefs are in sync everything falls into place with a force-multiplying effect. General Malik, Air Chief Marshal Tipnis and I had trained together initially at the National Defence Academy as young cadets while still in our teens. In later years we served together on various operational and staff assignments and we also had the opportunity to serve concurrently as Vice Chiefs of our respective service.When Kargil erupted we finally came together as the three Service Chiefs of the Indian Armed Forces. All this certainly mattered and was in sharp contrast to what happened on the other side of the border.Undoubtedly, students of military history will remember Kargil as an operation conducted on the snowy Himalayan heights where the Indian Army and the IAF brought glory to the country. The role that the Indian Navy played during Kargil may yet remain lost as a footnote. But that is the way navies operate anyway; over the horizon and unseen. Perhaps, that is the reason why the Navy has always been known worldwide, as the silent service.The writer was the Navy Chief during the Kargil warhttp://www.tribuneindia.com/2014/20140724/edit.htm#7
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Ganga is life, all Indians must join to save it. -- KP Prabhakaran Nair
Can we save the immortal Ganga?
| by KP Prabhakaran Nair | on 25 Jul 2014 |
The river Ganga is our national heritage. According to legend, when a sinner takes a dip in the holy Ganga, he/she washes away all the sins. This author with his family was recently in Varanasi to visit the famous Kashi Vishwanath temple which was desecrated by the Moghul tyrant, Aurangzeb, who built a mosque where the temple stood. It was Rani Ahalya Bai who recovered the Siva Linga from a nearby well and later got it installed in the new temple; Narendra Modi visited this temple after winning a landslide victory in the Parliamentary election.
We went to witness the aarti on the banks of the Ganga, which starts every evening at 7 p.m. and is witnessed by lakhs of people, including foreign tourists, who come to Varanasi to witness this unique spectacle. Narendra Modi had wished to partake in this aarti before his election, but the UP Government had denied permission.
Along the banks are the famous Harischandra Ghat and Ahalya Ghat. It is here that Bharat’s most truthful king, Harischandra, demanded payment from his wife when she brought the body of their son for cremation; it is one of the greatest examples in Hindu history of the value of absolute truthfulness. There are several ghats on the bank of Ganga. Hindus believe that a human being cremated on the banks of Ganga gets salvation. Unfortunately, many throw away half-burnt bodies into this holy river. Now, the pollution of the Ganga is getting political attention. When Narendra Modi won from Varanasi he came and witnessed the famous “Ganga Aarti” and later gave Water Resources Minister Uma Bharati the task to clean the Ganga. What does it take to clean our holiest river? To understand, let us take a critical look at the state in which mother Ganga is now in.
Sisamu Nala: Kanpur’s most polluted and largest open drain, which spews waste into the Ganga
As we took a boat ride on the Ganga, we found our boatman fidgety as he rowed his boat. He had to control himself from spitting the betel nut juice in his mouth, as that would now invite a penalty of Rs 10000 or a jail term of three days under the new order of Uma Bharati. One may wonder what a little spit would do to the Ganga. The following details will show how the river has become so polluted, including from human spittle.
In 1986, the government launched the first phase of Ganga Action Plan (GAP-I) to protect the country’s largest river basin. It selected stretches of the river along 25 cities in Uttar Pradesh, Bihar and West Bengal. In 1993, GAP-II was initiated which included the river’s tributaries - the Yamuna, Gomti, Damodar and the Mahanadi. On February 20, 2009, the Union government gave the Ganga the status of a National River and re-launched GAP with a reconstituted National Ganga River Basin Authority.
The re-launched GAP took into account the entire river basin and emphasised the river’s need to have adequate water to maintain its ecological flow. But five years after the re-launch, pollution levels are still, to say the least, grim. Rivers have the ability to clean themselves - to assimilate and treat biological waste using sunlight and oxygen. But the Ganga gets no time to breathe and revive. There are more settlements and more people living along its banks. All take water and return only waste. The Ganga dies not once but many times in its 2,500 km journey from Gangotri in the Himalayas to Diamond Harbour in the Bay of Bengal (see ‘Highly polluted stretches’ below).
The July 2013 report of the Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB) shows unacceptable levels of faecal coliform, (E. Coli, a clear sign of human excreta, all along the river’s mainstream). It is even more worrying that faecal coliform levels are increasing even in upper reaches like Rudraprayag and Devprayag, where the river’s oxygenating ability is the highest. In these parts, water withdrawal for hydropower plants has put the river’s health in danger. As the Ganga flows down the plains, water is taken away for irrigation and drinking, so much so that during winters and peak summer months the river goes dry in many parts, and only sewage flows between its banks. The holy river is, thus, converted into a stinking sewer.
Why is Ganga so polluted?
Thirty-six settlements, classified as Class-I cities, contribute 96 per cent of wastewater draining into the river. According to CPCB’s 2013 report, 2,723 million litres per day (mld) of domestic sewage is discharged by cities along the river. But even this may be a gross underestimate as the calculation is based on the water that is supplied in the cities. As city managers often do not supply all the water that is used - much is groundwater - the actual sewage is often higher. This is what CPCB found when it measured the discharge from drains into the Ganga - 6,000 mld was discharged into the river.
Needless to say, the capacity to treat this sewage is inadequate. But it is even smaller if we consider two facts: one, that the gap between sewage generation and treatment remains the same every year - 55 per cent. So even as treatment capacity is added, more sewage gets added because of population growth. The situation worsens if the actual measured discharge from drains is taken to estimate the pollution load. Then the gap between what is installed and what is generated goes up to 80 per cent.
Over and above this, 764 industrial units along the main stretch of the river and its tributaries Kali and Ramganga discharge 500 mld of mostly toxic waste. All efforts to rein in this pollution have failed.
The horror does not end here. These cities have grown without planning and investment, so most do not have underground drainage networks. Even in Allahabad and Varanasi 80 per cent of the areas are without sewers. Waste is generated but not conveyed to treatment plants. There is no power to run treatment plants; bankrupt municipalities and water utilities have no money to pay for operations. CPCB checked 51 out of 64 sewage treatment plants (STPs) along the Ganga in 2013 and found only 60 per cent of installed capacity was being used; 30 per cent of the STPs were not even operational. So actual treatment is even less, and untreated waste discharged into the river even more.
Ganga’s journey through Uttar Pradesh - from Kanpur through Unnao, Fatehpur to Rai Bareilly and then Allahabad and Varanasi via Mirzapur - is killing. The river does not get the chance to assimilate the waste poured into it from cities and industries. It is only in Allahabad that some cleaner water is added through the Yamuna, which helps it to recover somewhat. Then as it moves towards Varanasi, sewage is poured in again. It dies again.
This land is where the poorest of India live; where urban governance is almost non-existent; and pollution thrives. In 2013, CPCB identified 33 drains along the Kanpur-Varanasi stretch with high biological oxygen demand (BOD), the key indicator of pollution. Of the 33, seven are big offenders, with high BOD load.
Uttar Pradesh has 687 grossly polluting industries, the CPCB found. These largely small scale, often illegal units - tanneries, sugar, pulp, paper and chemical - contribute 270 mld of wastewater. But what really matters is the location of the plants. While over 400 tanneries contribute only 8 per cent of the industrial discharge, they spew highly toxic effluent into the river and are located as a cluster near Kanpur. So the concentration of pollution is high. And the law is helpless. In 2013, an inspection of 404 industrial units by CPCB showed that all but 23 did not comply with the law. Directions have been issued and closure notices served. But it is business as usual.
Pollution has unnerved the people living along the river. After Uma Shankar manages to rinse his mouth, he says, “We cannot wash or bathe or catch fish. Why are the drains that pour in the city’s filth not plugged? People talk of cleaning the Ganga. The slogan should be ‘save the Ganga’.”
Save Ganga Movement is a widespread Gandhian non-violent movement supported by saints and social activists across Uttar Pradesh and Bihar in support of a free Ganga. The movement is supported by Ganga Seva Abhiyanam, Pune-based National Women's Organisation (NWO) and many like-minded organisations and with moral support from many religious leaders, political scientists, environmentalists, writers and others. Ganga Calling–Save Ganga is another campaign supported by Indian Council for Enviro-Legal Action (ICELA).
Ganga is the largest and the most sacred river of India with enormous spiritual, cultural, and physical influence. It provides water to about 40% of India's population in 11 states. It is estimated that the livelihoods of over 500 million people in India are dependent upon the river, and that one-third of India's population lives within the Ganges Basin. Despite this magnitude of influence and control by the river over present and future generations, it is allegedly under direct threat from various manmade and natural environmental issues.
The river flows through the most densely populated regions, passing 29 cities with population over 100,000, 23 cities with population between 50,000 and 100,000, and about 48 towns. A sizeable proportion of the effluents are caused by this population through domestic usage like bathing, laundry and public defecation. Countless tanneries, chemical plants, textile mills, distilleries, slaughterhouses, and hospitals contribute to the pollution by dumping untreated toxic and non-biodegradable waste into it. It is this sheer volume of pollutants released into the river daily that are causing irreparable damage to the ecosystem and contributing to significant sanitation issues.
Dams
Built in 1854 during British rule, the Haridwar dam has led to the decay of the Ganges by greatly diminishing the flow of the river. The Farakka Barrage was built originally to divert fresh water into the Bhagirathi River, but has since caused an increase of salinity in the Ganges, having a damaging effect on the ground water and soil along the river. Bangladesh and India face major tensions due to this barrage. The Government of India planned about 300 dams on the Ganga and its tributaries in the near future despite a Government-commissioned green panel report that has recommended scrapping 34 of the dams citing environmental concerns.
Global warming
Gangotri glacier which feeds the river Ganges is 30.2 km long and between 0.5 and 2.5 km wide, one of the largest in the Himalaya. However, due to global warming it has been receding since 1780; studies show its retreat quickened after 1971. Over the last 25 years, Gangotri glacier has retreated more than 850 meters, with a recession of 76 meters from 1996 to 1999 alone. The UN 2007 Climate Change Report has suggested that the glacial flow may completely stop by 2030, at which point the Ganges would be reduced to a seasonal river during the monsoon season.
Failure of Ganga Action Plan
The Ganga Action Plan was launched by the then Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi on 14 January 1986, with the main objective of pollution abatement, to improve water quality by Interception, Diversion and treatment of domestic sewage and present toxic and industrial chemical wastes from identified grossly polluting units entering into the river. The other objectives of the Ganga Action Plan are as under:
• Control of non-point pollution from agricultural run-off, human defecation, cattle wallowing and throwing of unburnt and half burnt bodies into the river.
• Research and Development to conserve the biotic diversity of the river to augment its productivity.
• New technology of sewage treatment like Up-flow Anaerobic Sludge Blanket (UASB) and sewage treatment through afforestation has been successfully developed.
• Rehabilitation of soft-shelled turtles for pollution abatement of river have been demonstrated and found useful.
• Resource recovery options like production of methane for energy generation and use of aquaculture for revenue generation have been demonstrated.
• To act as trend setter for taking up similar action plans in other grossly polluted stretches in other rivers.
http://www.vijayvaani.com/ArticleDisplay.aspx?aid=3276
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Daft and dangerous: Muslim scholar's plan for a militia to fight global jihad -- Hasan Suroor
Daft and dangerous: Muslim scholar's plan for a militia to fight global jihad
I'm not sure if the name Maulana Syed Salman Hussaini Nadvi will ring a bell in many places. My own first reaction when I heard it was “Nadvi, who?”
But apparently he is a big cheese in Islamic circles.An influential theologian and author of numerous scholarly tomes in Urdu and Arabic, Nadvi is Dean of the Faculty of Shariah at Darul Uloom Nadwa, Lucknow, whose reputation as a premier institution of Islamic teaching ranks in the same class as Darul Uloom, Deoband. He is also a member of the All-India Muslim Personal Law Board and Aligarh Muslim University's court, its highest decision-making body.
So, what he says matters and carries weight. It is important to stress this because what he has done has shocked even conservative Muslims. Nadvi has written a long and passionate letter (in Arabic!) to the Saudi government offering to raise a militia of 500,000 Sunni Muslim Indian youth as his contribution to a "powerful global Islamic army" he has proposed in order to fight Shia militants in Iraq and "help Muslims in need" elsewhere. The army would become part of a Caliphate that he wants Saudis to set up for the Muslim ummah, the international Muslim community.
He also suggested that terrorists should not be referred to as terrorists as they were engaged in a “noble cause'' and called for a “confederation'' of all jihadi organisations so that they could transform themselves into a single “powerful global force”.
But apparently he is a big cheese in Islamic circles.An influential theologian and author of numerous scholarly tomes in Urdu and Arabic, Nadvi is Dean of the Faculty of Shariah at Darul Uloom Nadwa, Lucknow, whose reputation as a premier institution of Islamic teaching ranks in the same class as Darul Uloom, Deoband. He is also a member of the All-India Muslim Personal Law Board and Aligarh Muslim University's court, its highest decision-making body.
So, what he says matters and carries weight. It is important to stress this because what he has done has shocked even conservative Muslims. Nadvi has written a long and passionate letter (in Arabic!) to the Saudi government offering to raise a militia of 500,000 Sunni Muslim Indian youth as his contribution to a "powerful global Islamic army" he has proposed in order to fight Shia militants in Iraq and "help Muslims in need" elsewhere. The army would become part of a Caliphate that he wants Saudis to set up for the Muslim ummah, the international Muslim community.
He also suggested that terrorists should not be referred to as terrorists as they were engaged in a “noble cause'' and called for a “confederation'' of all jihadi organisations so that they could transform themselves into a single “powerful global force”.
]![Muslim]()
Muslim scholar Maulana Syed Salman Hussaini Nadvi.
Earlier, Nadvisent fawning greetings to Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, leader of the notorious Sunni militant group Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) and self-appointed caliph of a sharia administration he has set up along Iraq- Syria border.
Muslim scholar Maulana Syed Salman Hussaini Nadvi.Nadvi is the only Asian theologian of to have recognised Bagdhadi's “Caliphate''. But it is his offer of raising an Indian Muslim militia to fight on foreign lands which has caused a stir even in the normally complacent Muslim quarters as it comes amid mounting concern over the increasing radicalisation of young Indian Muslims who had far defied the global Islamisation trend.
Reports that four educated middle class Mumbai Muslim boys (two engineering students, one medical student, and a call centre worker) have fled the country to join jihadisfighting a vicious sectarian war in Iraq and Syria have deepened concerns about home-grown Muslim extremism and put the entire community under the scanner.
It now seems so long ago when the then US President George W. Bush hailed Manmohan Singh as the leader of the "most fascinating democracy in the world" pointing out that al-Qaeda hadn't been able to “recruit a single Indian Muslim”. And The Washington Post commented that India's s "large and tolerant" Muslim population "may serve as an ally against Islamic militancy".
Suddenly, questions are being asked whether Indian Muslims are going the way of Pakistani youth. There are fears that what has started as a trickle with four Mumbai boys could turn into a “flood'' if not nipped in the bud immediately. The Biju Janata Dal leader Jay Panda rightly reminded us of the Pakistani experience pointing out how “their youth got involved in jihadist activities, later on they came back and started hunting their own country''.
Nadvi's action, not surprisingly played up by the Urdu press which has its own sectarian agenda, is certain to encourage extremist elements already engaged in brainwashing and radicalising Muslim youth. There is a view that Nadvi may have broken Indian laws against inciting terror and there have been calls for an investigation into his conduct and for him to be stripped of his Indian nationality.
“The worrying thing for me is that this is not just his view. There are many takers for this view. If he is promising to put together an army of five lakh Muslim youth from the Indian sub-continent, essentially India, as he has no influence anywhere else, is he just making a tall claim? Only proper investigation can reveal,'' wrote Sultan Shahin editor of the progressiveNewAge Islam website which published the text of Nadvi's letter, both in Arabic and in English translation.
He pointed out that what Nadvi effectively wanted was for Saudi Arabia to “organise a Khilafat for the Muslim Umma, the global Muslim community, which would have a world Islamic Army in which he would contribute five lakh Muslim youth from India''.
]![Nadvi's letter on Facebook.]()
Nadvi's letter on Facebook.
“He says there is no need for recruiting youth from among the messed up youth of the Gulf, when you can find them right here. This army would stand behind Muslims wherever they are in trouble. He wishes that terrorists should not be called terrorists and thus antagonised. They are sincere Muslim youth fighting for a noble cause. There should be a confederation of Jihadi organisations active across the Islamic world midwifed by Ulema who should help them hold a dialogue among themselves so they come together and iron out their differences and emerge as one powerful global force.''
Nadvi's letter on Facebook.At the best of times, such conduct should be a matter of concern because it amounts to exporting terror but it becomes even more alarming in the current climate with a full scale bloody conflict raging across the Muslim world.
Ask Nadwi about his daft and dangerous proposal, and I'm sure he would do what all fundamentalists do--resort to some Islamic justification by selectively quoting the Qur'an and Hadith (compilation of Prophet Mohammad's sayings and teachings).Believe it or not, there are people who cite Hadith to claim that a male child's urine is purer than a girl child's!
Can it get any more absurd than this? Yet such claims, citing unreliable and inauthentic Qur'anic verses and the Prophet's sayings are routinely made on Islamist websites making a mockery of Islam. The reason they get away with it is because the Qur'anic text is hugely ambiguous and often contradictory, allowing people to cherry- pick to back their argument. Likewise, the Prophet 's sayings are too numerous and were uttered in vastly different situations. It is easy to manipulate them by plucking them out without context-such as the claim over the relative purity of a male child's urine vis- a-vis a female's. Islamic theology is full of inauthentic Hadith. Even many authentic Hadith have been found to be flawed because of misinterpretation or contextual mistakes.
Coming back to Nadvi, it will not be easy to dismiss his behaviour as the act of a mad mullah. Because, as I pointed out, he is no ordinary clergy but a highly respected figure. And so is the institution he represents. What is particularly disturbing if it is true, as Shahin points out, that Nadvi's view is widely shared by mainstream Muslims.
My own sense is that moderate opinion is far more widespread than there is public evidence for it. But moderate Muslims are reluctant to speak up for a variety of reasons. One is the fear of playing into the hands of Hindu Right. Second, most Muslims don't have sufficient knowledge of Islam to challenge those who invoke Islamic teachings to justify their actions. Third, many simply want to get on with their lives instead of sticking their neck out.
But time for such excuses is over. If Muslims are serious about rescuing whatever remains of moderate Islam from the jihadi mafia which is acquiring ever more menacing teeth with each passing day, they cannot remain passive spectators any longer.
http://www.firstpost.com/world/daft-and-dangerous-muslim-scholars-plan-for-a-militia-to-fight-global-jihad-1634307.html
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