World
State of emergency in British Columbia; more deaths expected
The Canadian Pacific coast province of British Columbia declared a state of emergency Wednesday following floods and mudslides caused by extremely heavy rainfall, and officials said they expected to find more dead.
Every major route between the Lower Mainland of British Columbia, where Canada’s third largest city of Vancouver is, and the interior of the province has been cut by washouts, flooding or landslides following record-breaking rain across southern British Columbia between Saturday and Monday. The body of a woman was recovered from one of the mudslides late Monday.
“Torrential rains have led to terrible flooding that has disrupted the lives and taken lives of people across B.C. I want people to know that the federal government has been engaging with the local authorities,” Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said in Washington. “We’re sending resources like the Canadian Armed Forces to support people but also we’ll be there for the cleanup and the rebuilding after impacts of these extreme weather events.”
The federal government said it was sending the air force to assist with evacuations and to support supply lines.
Military helicopters already helped evacuate about 300 people from one highway where people were trapped in their cars Sunday night following a mudslide,
“We expect to confirm even more fatalities in the coming days,” British Columbia Premier John Horgan said.
Horgan called it a once in a 500 years event. He said the state of emergency will include travel restrictions so the transport of essential goods medical and emergency services will reach the communities that need them. He asked people not to hoard goods.
“These are very challenging times. I’ve been at this dais for two years now talking about challenging times we have faced — unprecedented challenges with public health, wildfires, heat domes and now debilitating floods that we have never seen before,” Horgan said.
Horgan said over the past six months there have been drought conditions in Merritt, where the river was at its lowest point in living memory and where people had to be evacuated because of wildfires in temperatures that were unprecedented. And now, he said, much of the community is under water.
Also read: Heavy rains in southern India kill 14 people, flood Chennai
“We need to start preparing for a future that includes more events like this,” Horgan said.
The weather events are all connected and can be attributed to climate change, said John Clague, a professor in the Earth Sciences Department at Simon Fraser University.
“Scientists are now saying these particular events, they’re becoming more frequent, exacerbated or ramped up by climate change,” he said.
The record temperatures in the summer set the stage for the wildfires, said Clague. The fires burned the ground in a way that prevents water from seeping into the soil. He said that resulted in the water from the torrential rains pouring more quickly into steams and rivers, causing floods.
The total number of people and vehicles unaccounted for had not yet been confirmed near the town of Lillooet. Investigators had received reports of two other people who were missing but added that other motorists might have been buried in a slide on Highway 99. ‘’
Chelsey Hughes said she was thankful to have survived the slide that slammed into her car before it landed in a swamp as she was driving along the highway. Hughes was heading home Sunday when she saw a tree starting to fall as a slide shoved her car about a mile off the road and down an embankment.
Read: Red alert issued as Teesta flows 60 cm above danger level
“Then the car stopped moving and I was just shocked. I was afraid to move because I didn’t know if I was injured,” she said after spending about five hours shivering on top of her car without a jacket next to another vehicle with four university students sharing one jacket atop their vehicle.
When Hughes finally connected with a 911 dispatcher, he helped her monitor one student’s condition after he had an asthma attack before they finally saw the lights of rescuers.
They spent an hour hiking out, she said of the traumatic events that unfolded Sunday night before nine of them were taken to hospital. She said she has been thinking about the family of a woman who died.
“I think that could have been any one of us, and there’s nothing that you can do. When we got hit by that landslide, we just had to surrender,” she said.
Agriculture Minister Lana Popham said thousands of animals had died and the province was rushing to get veterinarians to other animals that are in danger.
``I can also tell you that many farmers attempted to move animals and then had to walk away because the roads were disappearing beneath them,″ she said.
A trade expert said the loss of major transportation routes will hurt the movement of goods both in and out Canada’s largest port in Vancouver.
“Vancouver really has an outsized role to play in our Pacific trade,” said Werner Antweiler, an associate professor at the UBC Sauder School of Business. “Commodities will be impacted in a much more significant way because it’s coming by rail or coming by big trucks.”
Five relatives of late actor Sushant Singh Rajput die in India accident
Five members of late Bollywood actor Sushant Singh Rajput's family have been killed in a road accident in the eastern Indian state of Bihar.
The accident occurred on Tuesday when nine relatives of Sushant were returning to Jamui district from state capital Patna on a sports utility vehicle (SUV) after attending the last rites of another relative.
Read: Schools, plants close as Indian capital is smothered by smog
"A speeding truck coming from the opposite direction rammed the SUV in the Halsi area of Lakhisarai, in which 10 people, including the driver, were travelling," police officer Awadhesh Kumar told the local media.
"The impact of the crash was such that six occupants -- the five relatives of Sushant and the driver -- died on the spot. The truck driver managed to flee the spot," he said.
Four other relatives sustained injuries in the accident and were admitted to hospitals in Lakhisarai and Jamui, the officer said. "We suspect that the SUV driver dozed off at the wheel."
The deceased were identified as Laljit Singh, his two sons -- Ram Chandra Singh and Amit Shekhar -- daughter Baby Kumari and niece Anita Devi, as well as SUV driver Pritam Kumar.
Read:India opens to vaccinated foreign tourists after 18 months
An FIR for rash and negligent driving has been filed against the truck driver. "Efforts are on to nab the driver of the killer vehicle," the police officer said.
Sushant was found hanging from a ceiling fan in his Mumbai flat on June 14 last year. An autopsy revealed the 34-year-old took his own life. A federal investigative agency probe also confirmed the autopsy report.
Schools, plants close as Indian capital is smothered by smog
Schools were closed indefinitely and some coal-based power plants shut down as the smog-shrouded Indian capital and neighboring states invoked harsh measures Wednesday to combat worsening air pollution after an order from the federal environment ministry.
The measures come as India’s top court is deliberating whether New Delhi should go into a lockdown as a blanket of thick, gray smog continued to envelope the city, particularly in the mornings. The panel issued the guidelines on Tuesday night to stem the pollution and to show residents that the government was taking action to control an environmental crisis that has been plaguing the capital for years.
Read: Dhaka’s air quality still ‘unhealthy’
Besides the closure of schools, the Commission for Air Quality Management ordered a stop to construction activities until Nov. 21 and banned trucks carrying non-essential goods. The panel also directed the states to "encourage" work from home for half of the employees in all private offices.
Despite some improvement in New Delhi air over the past two days, readings of dangerous particles Wednesday were still as high as seven times the safe level, climbing above 300 micrograms per cubic meter in some parts of the city.
The World Health Organization designates the safe level for the tiny, poisonous particles at 25.
Forecasters warned air quality would worsen before the arrival of cold winds next week that will blow away the smog.
Coming off climate talks, US to hold huge crude sale in Gulf
The U.S. Interior Department on Wednesday will auction vast oil and gas reserves in the Gulf of Mexico estimated to hold up to 1.1 billion barrels of crude, the first such sale under President Joe Biden and a harbinger of the challenges he faces to reach climate goals that depend on deep cuts in fossil fuel emissions.
The livestreamed sale invited energy companies to bid on drilling leases across some 136,000 square miles (352,000 square kilometers) — about twice the area of Florida.
It will take years to develop the leases before companies start pumping crude. That means they could keep producing long past 2030, when scientists say the world needs to be well on the way to cutting greenhouse gas emissions to avoid catastrophic climate change.
Read: Climate talks soften stance on fossil fuel phaseout
The auction comes after a federal judge in a lawsuit brought by Republican states rejected a suspension of fossil fuel sales that Biden imposed when he first took office.
The Democrat campaigned on promises to curb fossil fuels from public lands and waters, which including coal account for about a quarter of U.S. carbon emissions, according to the U.S. Geological Survey. Yet even as he’s tried to cajole other world leaders into strengthening international efforts against global warming, Wednesday’s sale illustrates Biden’s difficulties gaining ground on climate issues at home.
The administration last week proposed another round of oil and gas lease sales in 2022, in Montana, Wyoming, Colorado and other western states. Interior Department officials proceeded despite concluding that burning the fuels could lead to billions of dollars in potential future climate damages.
“We had Trump’s unconstrained approach to oil and gas on federal lands and Biden’s early attempt to pause drilling. Now it looks like the Biden administration is trying to find a new policy,” said researcher Robert Johnston with Columbia University’s Center on Global Energy Policy.
“They’re being very cautious about undermining their fragile momentum” on climate issues, he added.
Read: Climate talks agree on 1.5 C cap efforts with last-minute compromise
The energy bureau said in pre-sale documents released Tuesday that it received bids on 307 tracts totaling nearly 2,700 square miles (6,950 square kilometers). That’s the largest total for a single sale since Gulf-wide bidding resumed in 2017. Those seven sales have generated almost $1 billion in total revenue.
Environmental reviews of the Gulf of Mexico sale conducted under former President Donald Trump and affirmed under Biden reached an unlikely conclusion: Extracting and burning the fuel would result in fewer greenhouse gases than leaving it in the ground.
Similar claims in two other cases, in Alaska, were rejected by federal courts after challenges from environmentalists. Climate scientist Peter Erickson — whose work was cited by judges in one of the cases — said the Interior Department’s analysis had a glaring omission: They left out greenhouse gas increases in foreign countries that would result from having more Gulf oil on the market.
“The math is extremely simple on this kind of stuff,” said Erickson, a senior scientist with the Stockholm Environment Institute, a nonprofit research group. “If new leases expand the global oil supply, that has a proportional effect on emissions from burning oil. Therefore, giving out these leases in the Gulf of Mexico would be increasing global emissions.”
The Interior Department’s Bureau of Ocean Energy Management in recent months changed its emissions modeling methods, citing Erickson’s work. But officials said it was too late to use the new approach for Wednesday’s lease sale, which they said had been through “a rigorous process with specific timelines.”
“The environmental analysis for Lease Sale 257 was already complete and as such does not contain the newer approach to considering the impacts of foreign consumption of oil and gas,” the agency said in a statement provided to The Associated Press.
Administration officials declined AP’s interview requests. For upcoming sales, spokesperson Melissa Schwartz said Interior is conducting a more comprehensive emission review than any prior administration, as it appeals the court order that forced their resumption.
Read: Closing time: Climate diplomats decide wording and the world
Erik Milito, president of the National Ocean Industries Association said he was uncertain that using the new approach would have changed the government’s conclusions, since drilling for oil in other parts of the world is less efficient and hauling imports also adds to carbon costs. He described the Gulf as the “backbone of U.S. oil production” and said companies consider it a strong investment.
The continued use of the old analysis rankles drilling opponents who say Biden isn’t following through on his climate pledges.
“We’re talking about transitioning away from a fossil fuel economy and they are selling a giant carbon bomb of a lease sale,” said attorney Drew Caputo with Earthjustice, which has a lawsuit challenging the Gulf lease sale pending in federal court. “That creates a property right to develop those leases. It’s a lot harder to keep the carbon in the ground if you sell the lease.”
Some Democrats also objected to the sale. The chairman of the House Natural Resources Committee, Arizona Rep. Raúl Grijalva, said Biden promised to lead on climate issues but continues running a fossil fuel program with a long history of mismanagement.
“The administration needs to do better,” Grijalva said in a statement Tuesday.
The Gulf of Mexico accounts for about 15% of total U.S. crude production and 5% of its natural gas.
Industry analysts had predicted some heightened interest in Wednesday’s sale since oil prices rose sharply over the past year. It’s also a chance for companies to secure drilling rights before the administration or Congress can increase drilling fees and royalty rates or adopt new restrictions on environmental permits, said analyst Justin Rostant with industry consulting firm Wood Mackenzie.
An outright ban on new leases and drilling seems unlikely after the federal court shot down Biden’s temporary suspension, he added.
“Different companies have different approaches and different strategies,” Rostant said. “Some could think this might be the year to go big.”
Pfizer asks US officials to OK promising COVID-19 pill
Pfizer asked U.S. regulators Tuesday to authorize its experimental pill for COVID-19, setting the stage for a likely launch this winter of a promising treatment that can be taken at home.
The company’s filing comes as new infections are rising once again in the United States, driven mainly by hot spots in states where colder weather is driving more Americans indoors.
Pfizer’s pill has been shown to significantly cut the rate of hospitalizations and deaths among people with coronavirus infections. The Food and Drug Administration is already reviewing a competing pill from Merck and several smaller drugmakers are also expected to seek authorization for their own antiviral pills in the coming months.
Read: Pfizer agrees to let other companies make its COVID-19 pill
“We are moving as quickly as possible in our effort to get this potential treatment into the hands of patients, and we look forward to working with the U.S. FDA on its review of our application,” said Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla, in a statement.
Specifically, Pfizer wants the drug available for adults who have mild-to-moderate COVID-19 infections and are at risk of becoming seriously ill. That’s similar to how other drugs are currently used to treat the disease. But all FDA-authorized COVID-19 treatments require an IV or injection given by a health professional at a hospital or clinic.
The FDA is holding a public meeting on the Merck pill later this month to get the opinion of outside experts before making its decision. The agency isn’t required to convene such meetings and it’s not yet known whether Pfizer’s drug will undergo a similar public review.
Some experts predict COVID-19 treatments eventually will be combined to better protect against the worst effects of the virus.
Pfizer reported earlier this month that its pill cut hospitalizations and deaths by 89% among high-risk adults who had early symptoms of COVID-19. The company studied its pill in people who were unvaccinated and faced the worst risks from the virus due to age or health problems, such as obesity. If authorized, the FDA will have to weigh making the pill available for vaccinated people dealing with breakthrough infections, since they weren’t part of the initial tests.
Read: US announces another 14mn Pfizer jabs for Bangladesh
For best results, patients need to start taking the pills within three days of symptoms, underscoring the need for speedy testing and diagnosis. That could be a challenge if another COVID-19 surge leads to testing delays and shortages seen last winter.
Pfizer’s drug is part of a decades-old family of antiviral drugs known as protease inhibitors, which revolutionized the treatment of HIV and hepatitis C. The drugs block a key enzyme which viruses need to multiply in the human body. That’s different than the Merck pill, which causes tiny mutations in the coronavirus until the point that it can’t reproduce itself.
On Tuesday, Pfizer signed a deal a with U.N.-backed group to allow generic drugmakers to produce low-cost versions of the pill for certain countries. Merck has a similar deal for its pill, which was authorized in Britain earlier this month.
Read: Pfizer asks FDA to OK COVID-19 booster shots for all adults
The U.S. has approved one other antiviral drug for COVID-19, remdesivir, and authorized three antibody therapies that help the immune system fight the virus. But they usually have to be given via time-consuming infusions by health professionals, and limited supplies were strained by the last surge of the delta variant.
The U.S. government has already committed to purchasing Merck’s pill. Federal authorities were in negotiations with Pfizer to buy millions of doses of its pill, according to an official familiar with the matter.
US spl envoy discusses Afghanistan with top Indian officials
Visiting US special envoy for Afghanistan Thomas West on Tuesday held high-level talks with Indian National Security Advisor Ajit Doval and the country's Foreign Secretary Harsh Vardhan Shringla in the national capital.
After the two meetings, Indian External Affairs Ministry said that the top officials exchanged views on recent developments and issues of common interest in war-torn Afghanistan.
"Foreign Secretary @harshvshringla met US Special Representative for Afghanistan Thomas West @US4AfghanPeace and exchanged views on recent developments and issues of common interest in Afghanistan,” Ministry spokesperson Arindam Bagchi tweeted.
Also read: US urged to help more people escape Taliban-led Afghanistan
India was among several countries that evacuated their diplomatic staff from Kabul when the Taliban took over the Afghan capital on August 15, with the US troops ending their 20-year military presence in the South Asian country. The same day, India stopped flight services with Afghanistan.
However, exactly two weeks later, India began direct communication with the Taliban. The country's envoy in Qatar, Deepak Mittal, held talks with Sher Mohammad Abbas Stanekzai, the head of the Taliban's Political Office, in the Indian Embassy in the Gulf state's capital Doha, according to the Foreign Ministry.
At that meeting, Ambassador Mittal had raised India's concern that Afghanistan's soil should not be used for anti-Indian activities and terrorism in any manner, "to which Abbas Stanekzai assured him that these issues would be positively addressed", the Ministry had said.
Also read: Allow unimpeded aid into Afghanistan, say NSAs in Delhi Declaration
India is worried about the security situation in Afghanistan, given it has already infused over three billion USD worth development aid into that country and the horrific memories of the Taliban's role in the hijacking of an Indian airliner in 1999.
At the time too, the nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party was in power, led by then Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee.
Pfizer agrees to let other companies make its COVID-19 pill
Drugmaker Pfizer Inc. has signed a deal with a U.N.-backed group to allow other manufacturers to make its experimental COVID-19 pill, a move that could make the treatment available to more than half of the world’s population.
In a statement issued Tuesday, Pfizer said it would grant a license for the antiviral pill to the Geneva-based Medicines Patent Pool, which would let generic drug companies produce the pill for use in 95 countries, making up about 53% of the world’s population.
The deal excludes some large countries that have suffered devastating coronavirus outbreaks. For example, while a Brazilian drug company could get a license to make the pill for export to other countries, the medicine could not be made generically for use in Brazil.
Still, health officials said the fact that the deal was struck even before Pfizer’s pill has been authorized anywhere, could help to end the pandemic quicker.
“It’s quite significant that we will be able to provide access to a drug that appears to be effective and has just been developed, to more than 4 billion people,” Esteban Burrone, head of policy at the Medicines Patent Pool, said.
Also Read: Pfizer says COVID-19 pill cut hospital, death risk by 90%
He estimated that other drugmakers would be able to start producing the pill within months, but acknowledged the agreement wouldn’t please everyone.
“We try to strike a very delicate balance between the interests of the (company), the sustainability required by generic producers and most importantly, the public health needs in lower and middle-income countries,” Burrone said.
Under the terms of the agreement, Pfizer will not receive royalties on sales in low-income countries and will waive royalties on sales in all countries covered by the agreement while COVID-19 remains a public health emergency.
Earlier this month, Pfizer said its pill cut the risk of hospitalization and death by nearly 90% in people with mild to moderate coronavirus infections. Independent experts recommended halting the company’s study based on its promising results.
Also Read: FDA paves way for Pfizer COVID-19 vaccinations in young kids
Pfizer said it would ask the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and other regulators to authorize the pill as soon as possible,
Since the pandemic erupted last year, researchers worldwide have raced to develop a pill to treat COVID-19 that can be taken at home easily to ease symptoms, speed recovery and keep people out of the hospital. At the moment, most COVID-19 treatments must be delivered intravenously or by injection.
Britain authorized the Merck’s COVID-19 pill earlier this month, and it is pending approval elsewhere. In a similar deal with the Medicines Patent Pool announced in October, Merck agreed to let other drugmakers make its COVID-19 pill, molnupiravir, available in 105 poorer countries.
Doctors Without Borders said it was “disheartened” that the Pfizer deal does not make the drug available to the entire world, noting that the agreement announced Tuesday also excludes countries including China, Argentina and Thailand.
“The world knows by now that access to COVID-19 medical tools needs to be guaranteed for everyone, everywhere, if we really want to control this pandemic,” said Yuanqiong Hu, a senior legal policy adviser at Doctors Without Borders.
The decisions by Pfizer and Merck to share their COVID-19 drug patents stands in stark contrast to the refusal of Pfizer and other vaccine-makers to release their vaccine recipes for wider production. A hub set up by the World Health Organization in South Africa intended to share messenger RNA vaccine recipes and technologies has not enticed a single pharmaceutical to join.
Fewer than 1% of Pfizer’s COVID-19 shots have gone to poorer countries.
Despite mistrust, Afghan Shiites seek Taliban protection
Outside a Shiite shrine in Kabul, four armed Taliban fighters stood guard on a recent Friday as worshippers filed in for weekly prayers. Alongside them was a guard from Afghanistan’s mainly Shiite Hazara minority, an automatic rifle slung over his shoulder.
It was a sign of the strange, new relationship brought by the Taliban’s takeover of Afghanistan. The Taliban, Sunni hard-liners who for decades targeted the Hazaras as heretics, are now their only protection against a more brutal enemy: the Islamic State group.
Sohrab, the Hazara guard standing watch over the Abul Fazl al-Abbas Shrine, told The Associated Press that he gets along fine with the Taliban guards. “They even pray in the mosque sometimes,” he said, giving only his first name for security reasons.
Not everyone feels so comfortable.
Syed Aqil, a young Hazara visiting the ornate shrine along with his wife and 8-month-old daughter, was disturbed that many of the Taliban still wear their traditional garb — the look of a jihadi insurgent — rather than a police uniform.
Read: US urged to help more people escape Taliban-led Afghanistan
“We can’t even tell if they are Taliban or Daesh,” he said, using the Arabic acronym for the Islamic State group.
Since seizing power three months ago, the Taliban have presented themselves as more moderate, compared with their first rule in the late 1990s when they violently repressed the Hazaras and other ethnic groups. Courting international recognition, they vow to protect the Hazaras as a show of their acceptance of the country’s minorities.
But many Hazaras still deeply distrust the insurgents-turned-rulers, who are overwhelmingly ethnic Pashtu, and are convinced they will never accept them as equals in Afghanistan. Hazara community leaders say they have met repeatedly with Taliban leadership, asking to take part in the government, only to be shunned. Hazaras complain individual fighters still discriminate against them and fear it’s only a matter of time before the Taliban revert to repression.
“In comparison to their previous rule, the Taliban are a little better,” said Mohammed Jawad Gawhari, a Hazara cleric who runs an organization helping the poor.
“The problem is that there is not a single law. Every individual Talib is their own law right now,” he said. “So people live in fear of them.”
Some changes from the previous era of Taliban rule are clear. After their August takeover, the Taliban allowed Shiites to perform their religious ceremonies, such as the annual Ashura procession.
The Taliban initially confiscated weapons that Hazaras had used, with permission from the previous government to guard some of their own mosques in Kabul. But after devastating IS bombings of Shiite mosques in Kandahar and Kunduz provinces in October, the Taliban returned the weapons in most cases, Gawhari and other community leaders said. The Taliban also provide their own fighters as guards for some mosques during Friday prayers.
“We are providing a safe and secure environment for everyone, especially the Hazaras,” Taliban government spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid said. “They should be in Afghanistan. Leaving the country is not good for anyone.”
Read: Bangladesh condemns bomb-laden drone attack in Saudi Arabia
The Hazaras’ turning to Taliban protection shows how terrified the community is of the Islamic State group, which they say aims to exterminate them. In past years, IS has attacked the Hazaras more ruthlessly than the Taliban ever did, unleashing bombings against Hazara schools, hospitals and mosques, killing hundreds.
IS is also a shared enemy. Though they are Sunni hard-liners like the Taliban, IS militants are waging an insurgency, with frequent attacks on Taliban fighters.
Some Hazara leaders see a potential for cooperation. Ahmed Ali al-Rashed, a senior Hazara cleric, praised the Taliban commanders who now run the main police station in Dashti Barchi, the sprawling district of west Kabul dominated by Hazaras.
“If all Taliban were like them, Afghanistan would be like a garden of flowers,” he said.
Others in Dashti Barchi were skeptical the Taliban will ever change.
Marzieh Mohammedi, whose husband was killed five years ago in fighting with the Taliban, said she’s afraid every time she sees them patrolling Dashti Barchi.
“How can they protect us? We can’t trust them. We feel like they are Daesh,” she said.
The differences are partly religious. But also Hazaras, who make up an estimated 10% of Afghanistan’s population of nearly 40 million, are ethnically distinct and speak a variant of Farsi rather than Pashtu. They have a long history of being oppressed by the ethnic Pashtu majority, some of whom stereotype them as intruders.
Aqil said that when he tried to go to a police station for a document, the Taliban guard at the gate only spoke Pashtu and impatiently slammed the door in his face. He had to come back later with a Pashtu-speaking colleague.
“This sort of situation makes me lose hope in the future,” he said. “They don’t know us. They are not broadminded to accept other communities. They act as if they are the owners of this country.”
Read: Bangladesh Embassy in Seoul joins 'Busan International Seafood & Fisheries EXPO 2021'
A young Hazara woman, Massoumeh, said four people were killed last month in her part of Dashti Barchi, raising residents’ fears that people with roles in the previous government were targets.
She went with a community delegation led by a local elder to the area’s Taliban police station to discuss security. The only woman in the delegation, she had to wait in the yard while the others met with the district commander, who she said tried to blame the security failings on the local elder. As the delegation left, a guard told them not to bring a woman with them again, she said.
“How can you keep security in Afghanistan if you can’t keep security in our village?” she said.
The 21-year-old Massoumeh was a nurse at Dashti Barchi’s main hospital in 2020 when IS gunmen stormed the maternity ward, killing at least 24 people, mostly mothers who were pregnant or had just given birth — one of the militants’ most horrific attacks.
Since then, she has been too afraid to return to work because of death threats after she spoke about the attack on Afghan TV. Soon after the attack, two militants approached her on a bus late at night, picking her out using a photo on their phone, and pulled a gun on her, warning her not to go back to work, she said. She and her father still get threatening phone calls, she said.
Police under the previous government gave her some protection, she said. But she doesn’t even bother to ask the Taliban police for help.
“Of course not. We are afraid of them,” she said. “No one will come and help us.”
Other events in the Hazaras’ central Afghanistan heartland have raised the community’s concerns. In Daikundi province, Taliban fighters killed 11 Hazara soldiers and two civilians, including a teenage girl, in August, according to Amnesty International. Taliban officials also expelled Hazara families from several Daikundi villages after accusing them of living on land that didn’t belong to them.
Read: Indian government is revamping aquaculture for a ‘blue revolution’
After an uproar from Hazaras, further expulsions were halted, Gawhari and other community leaders said.
But so far, the Taliban have rejected repeated requests from the Hazaras for a say in government. Gawhari, the cleric, said a Hazara delegation approached the Taliban and proposed 50 Hazara experts and academics to be brought into the administration. “They were not interested,” he said.
The international community is pressing the Taliban to form a government that reflects Afghanistan’s ethnic, religious and political spectrum, including women. The Taliban’s Cabinet is comprised entirely of men from their own ranks.
Last week, Foreign Minister Amir Khan Muttaqi expressed impatience with international demands for inclusivity. “Our current Cabinet fulfils that requirement, we have representatives from all ethnicities,” he told reporters.
The highest level Hazara in the administration is a deputy health minister. Several other Hazaras hold some provincial posts, but they are Hazaras who long ago joined the Taliban insurgency and adopted its hard-line ideology. Few in the Hazara community recognize them.
Ali Akbar Jamshidi, a former parliament member representing Daikundi province, said Hazaras won’t be satisfied with a few local positions and want to be brought into the Cabinet and the intelligence and security services.
The Taliban, he said, are running a government “that acts like a warlord who has seized everything.”
“Physical security is not enough. We need psychological security as well, feeling like we are part of this government and it is part of us,” he said. “The Taliban can benefit from us. They have the opportunity to form a government for the future, but they are not taking this opportunity.”
North Korean leader praises efforts to build 'model' city
North Korean leader Kim Jong Un has returned from a monthlong break from public view to inspect a major development project near the border with China, which he said epitomizes his country’s “iron will” to achieve prosperity in the face of international isolation and pressure.
The North’s official Korean Central News Agency said Tuesday that Kim expressed satisfaction during his visit to Samjiyon city over the progress of construction in an area he called the “sacred place of the sun.” Samjiyon is at the foot of Mount Paektu, the heart of North Korea’s foundation myth revolving around the Kim family and is described by official narratives as the spiritual center of the country's revolution.
Read:US urges NKorea to stop missile tests and return to talks
Building Samjiyon into a “model cultured city” was one of the main focuses of a nationwide construction campaign that North Korea had aimed to complete in time for the 75th anniversary of its ruling party’s founding in October last year. But construction was slowed amid pandemic border closures and international sanctions over Kim’s nuclear weapon and missile programs.
Kim has been struggling to overcome what appears to be his toughest period as leader with the country's self-imposed COVID-19 lockdown creating a further shock for an economy battered by sanctions and decades of mismanagement.
KCNA said the construction at Samjiyon could be finished by the end of this year, which could give Kim a badly needed trophy achievement as he reaches a decade in rule since taking power following the death of his father in December 2011.
Kim praised workers for their “lofty loyalty, strong will and sweat” to push ahead with the project in the face of an “unfavorable environment” and said Samjiyon would become a guideline for rural development. He said the four years the country has spent developing Samjiyon, which involved the building of thousands of houses and buildings as well as new roads and a power grid, demonstrated its single-minded unity and “iron will” to “achieve prosperity our own way,” KCNA said.
The visit was Kim’s first public appearance reported in state media since he delivered a speech at an arms exhibition on Oct. 11.
“Claiming the success of Samjiyon’s development is politically important at this time because the Mount Paekdu region is central to North Korean mythology and the embellished story of the previous leader‘s birth,” as Kim may soon commemorate 10 years since his father’s death, said Leif-Eric Easley, a professor at Ewha University in Seoul.
Read: North Korea fires ballistic missile into sea in latest test
North Korea closely associates Paektu with Kim’s state-founding grandfather, Kim Il Sung, who, according to official narratives, saved the Korean Peninsula with daring guerrilla raids against Japanese invaders from his base on the mountain’s slopes before the end of World War II. North Korea also claims, probably incorrectly, that Kim Jong Un’s father, Kim Jong Il, was born on Paektu.
Since becoming leader, Kim Jong Un has spent years consolidating his power by removing political rivals and family members while spurring the development of nuclear weapons and missiles he sees as his strongest guarantee of survival.
He initiated diplomacy with former U.S. President Donald Trump in 2018 while attempting to leverage his nuclear program for sanctions relief, but those talks derailed in 2019 because of disagreements over a proposed withdrawal of U.S.-led sanctions in exchange for partial denuclearization by North Korea.
India's first grass conservatory established in Uttarakhand's Ranikhet
India's first Grass Conservatory was established in Uttarakhand's Ranikhet town in an area of three acres, funded under the Central Government's CAMPA scheme.
The conservatory was developed in three years and has been developed by the Research Wing of the Uttarakhand Forest Department, reports ANI.
Read:Indian government is revamping aquaculture for a ‘blue revolution’
Around 100 different grass species have been conserved/demonstrated in this conservation area.
Sanjiv Chaturvedi, Chief Conservator of Forest said, "The project aims to create awareness about the importance of grass species, promote conservation, and to facilitate further research in these species."
"It has been proved in the latest researches that grasslands are more effective in carbon sequestration than forest land," Chaturvedi said.
He further stressed that grasslands are facing various types of threats and areas under grasslands are shrinking, thereby endangering the entire ecosystem of insects, birds and mammals dependent on them.
"Grasses are economically the most important of all flowering plants because of their nutritious grains and soil-forming function," he said.
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The conservation area has seven different sections of grasses as Aromatic, Medicinal, Fodder, Ornamental, Religiously important Grasses and Agricultural Grasses. Thysanoleanamaxima also called Tiger grass / Broom grass- an important fodder grass found along steep hills, ravines, and sandy banks of rivers up to an altitude of 2000 m, in Uttarakhand. Its dry flowering stocks are used as a broom.
Being a perennial species it can be used as green fodder round the year and also helps in preventing soil erosion on steep hillsides and is used in rehabilitation of degraded land. Pennisetumpurpureum also called Napier grass / Elephant grass- makes a good contour hedgerow and is an excellent bank and pasture fodder. Used for firebreaks, windbreaks in paper pulps production and bio-oil, biogas and charcoal.