India has condemned US Congresswoman Ilhan Omar's visit to Pakistan occupied Kashmir (PoK) last week as violative of India’s territorial integrity and sovereignty. The remarks came during a briefing by the ministry of external affairs spokesperson Arindam Bagchi where he was answering a question on the US representative’s visit to Pakistan. The 37-year-old Omar represents the MN in Congress. She is one of two Muslim women elected to the US Congress in 2018. Born in Somalia, she and her family fled the country’s civil war when she was eight. The family spent four years in a refugee camp in Kenya before coming to the United States in the 1990s. In 1997, she moved to Minneapolis with her family.
Sikh leader, sons beaten by Pak land mafia
Pakistani Sikh leader Sardar Mastan Singh and his sons Dilawar Singh and Palla Singh were beaten by the Islamist radicals at Nankana sahib. Sardar Mastan Singh is the former president of Pakistan Sikh Gurudwara Prabandhak Committee and a Sikh leader. He and his sons were badly injured in the attack, and were undergoing treatment at the government hospital. In a video, Dilawar said, “ for the last ten years, these people have repeatedly assaulted us. We had a fight with them in Nankana. My maternal uncle and we have our own lands there. It is around five and a half acres. We have somehow managed to maintain it. But the people and the police keep on negotiating with us. This bothers us. Today, when we were harvesting the crop, a few people suddenly came and beat us brutally.”
Court seeks info on Imran’s gifts
In a setback to Imran Khan, a Pakistani court ordered the government to make public details of the gifts received by the former PM Imran Khan from foreign dignitaries since assuming office in August 2018. Gifts given to government officials by foreign governments belong to the state of Pakistan and not some individuals, Justice Mian Gul Hassan Aurangzeb observed. “These gifts are not meant for taking home,” he said, adding that these gifts should be recovered.
Nawaz Sharif to return after Eid
Pakistan’s former PM Nawaz Sharif is returning to the country after Eid to voluntarily face the judicial process in all cases against him, federal minister and PML-N leader Javed Latif said. Nawaz, whose third term as PM ended in 2017 when he was forced to resign in accordance with the Supreme Court’s decision in the Panama papers case, flew to London in November 2019 to seek treatment for various ailments. “Nawaz Sharif will be seen in Pakistan after Eid,” Latif said in a video statement a day after new PM Shehbaz Sharif’s 37-member cabinet took the oath of office. On the cases as pending against Nawaz, the minister said PML-N believed in the sanctity of the legal process and would accept whatever verdict the courts gave.
Pak PM, Russian president exchange letters
Pakistan’s new PM Shehbaz Sharif and Russian President Putin have quietly exchanged letters to strengthen bilateral relations, a media report said, amid allegations by Imran Khan that his maiden visit to Moscow, much against Washington’s wishes, led to his ouster. The letters were exchanged after the election of Shehbaz as PM but both the sides kept development away from the media glare, Express Tribune reported. A senior Pakistan foreign office official confirmed that Putin wrote a letter to the PM, congratulating him on his election and expressed his desire to deepen cooperation between the two countries. The congratulatory message by Putin was made public by the Kremlin Press Office. Shehbaz wrote back to Putin thanking him and expressed similar sentiments on ties, the newspaper reported.
Afghan mosque blast kills 33
A Taliban official said a bombing at a mosque and religious school in northern Afghanistan killed at least 33 people, including students of a religious school. Zabihullah Mujahid, the Taliban’s deputy culture and information minister, said the bombing in the town of Imam Saheb, in Kunduz province, also wounded another 43 people, many of them students. No one immediately claimed responsibility, but Afghanistan’s Islamic State affiliate claimed a series of bombings that happened a day earlier. Since assuming power, the Taliban have been battling the Islamic State affiliate known as Islamic State in Khorasan Province or IS-K which is proving to be an intractable security challenge for Afghanistan's religiously driven government.
Spain reopens embassy in Kyiv
Spain last week reopened its embassy in Kyiv, the government said, the latest European country to return its diplomats to the Ukrainian capital after Russia invaded the pro-Western country. Spain’s diplomatic delegation was evacuated from Kyiv to Poland the day after Russia invaded on February 24. But last week, a delegation led by Spain’s ambassador to Ukraine, Silvia Cortes, reopened the embassy with “the support of special police forces”, the interior ministry said. France, UK and Italy, have either reopened their embassies in Kyiv or announced an imminent return.
Philippines’ poll body clears last hurdle for Marcos
The Philippines’ poll body cleared a major legal hurdle in front runner Ferdinand Marcos Jr’s - son of the late authoritarian ruler Ferdinand Marcos - path to the presidency when it dismissed the final petition calling for his disqualification from the May 9 election. The Commission on Elections (COMELEC) ruled that a case calling for Marcos to be barred from the contest based on his failure to file income tax returns lacked merit. “Regardless of the fact that the non-filing of income tax return was done repeatedly by the respondent, there is still no tax evasion to speak of as no tax was actually intentionally evaded,” the COMELEC’s first division said in the ruling. “The government was not defrauded. ” Marcos has consistently topped opinion polls.
Priest attacked with knife in French church
A man described as mentally unstable attacked a priest with a knife in a church in Nice, southern France, officials said. Interior minister Gerald Darmanin said on his Twitter feed the priest’s life was not in danger and added that police had arrested the attacker. Nice mayor Christian Estrosi said the attacker was mentally unstable, had no criminal record and was known to have purchased a knife several days earlier. BFM TV quoted police as saying the attacker was a 31-year-old French man and there was no suspicion of a terror motive. A local lawmaker said the priest, named as Father Christophe, had been stabbed several times and a nun had been hurt.
Russia expels Dutch, Belgian, Austrian officials
Moscow is expelling 15 Dutch diplomats after the Netherlands last month told 18 Russian diplomats to leave, Russia's foreign ministry said. The ministry said in separate statements that Russia was also expelling four Austrians and an unspecified number of Belgian diplomats in retaliatory moves. European countries have kicked out more than 300 Russian embassy staff since Moscow sent its troops into Ukraine on February 24. Russia has stepped up its response in the past week by expelling diplomats from the Czech Republic, Bulgaria and the European Union, as well as the Dutch, Belgians and Austrians. Meanwhile, Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov said Moscow is committed to avoiding nuclear war after he was quizzed repeatedly about the possible use of atomic weapons in Ukraine.
US, 10 nations walk out at G20 meet
US treasury secretary Janet Yellen and her counterparts from the mostly western bloc walked out of a G20 finance boffins session last week as Russian officials began to speak, a boycott - to protest Moscow’s war on Ukraine - that was not joined by officials from at least ten other nations, including Indonesia, China, India, Brazil, South Africa and Saudi Arabia. A photo posted on social media by Canada’s finance minister Chrystia Freeland showed 10 finance officials, including UK chancellor of the exchequer Rishi Sunak, who walked out of the meeting. “The world’s democracies will not stand idly by in the face of continued Russian aggression and war crimes. Russia’s illegal invasion of Ukraine is a grave threat to the global economy. Russia should not be participating or included in these meetings,” Freeland wrote.
34 people shot in LA in ‘troubling week’
A total of 34 people were shot in Los Angeles in a “troubling week,” local media reported citing Chief of the Los Angeles Police Department Michel Moore. The police chief told the Los Angeles Police Commission that 23 of the shootings happened within a “remarkably small area” last week in the second-largest city in the US. “The problem that we have probed throughout Los Angeles is that too many guns in too many hands,” Moore was quoted as saying. So far, 70 people have been shot in Los Angeles this month, which was 55 during the same period last year. There have been 107 homicides, till now, in 2022, while at this point last year, there were 109. While the number has decreased slightly in 2022, Moore said, it still represents a 37 per cent increase over a two-year period.
Woman buries both sons 10 days apart
A grief-stricken Ukrainian mother had to bury both her sons after Russians killed them in the latest heart-breaking story to emerge from the war. In a window of 10 days this month, Ahafiya Vyshyvana buried both of her sons, Vasyl and Kyrylo Vyshyvaniy, side by side, in plots that had been reserved for her and the boys’ father. The roses piled atop Vasyl’s grave had barely wilted before she put Kyrylo in the ground. Vasyl, 28, was killed on March 3 in the Mykolayiv region during Russian shelling, while his older brother Kyrylo, 35, died in a Russian missile attack on a training base near Lviv on March 13.
Xi told me Quad is against China, says US Prez
US President Joe Biden has said that his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping once told him that he was strengthening Quad against China. China, which has territorial disputes with many countries in the strategic Indo-Pacific region, has been vehemently opposing the Quad alliance since its formation. Biden, during a Democratic Party fundraiser event in Seattle last week, said that he had indicated to Xi that “I was going to pull together the Quad: Australia, India, Japan and the United States. He said, ‘You’re just doing that to affect us’. I said, ‘No, it’s because we’re trying to put together those folks who have an opportunity to work together in the Indo-Pacific.”
US man threatens to bomb dictionary firm
A California man was arrested on charges that he sent messages to Merriam Webster in which he threatened to shoot and bomb its offices because he didn’t like the company’s dictionary definitions relating to gender identity. The man, Jeremy David Hanson, was arrested, the US attorney’s office said. In October, Hanson sent anonymous messages to Merriam-Webster condemning the company for changing the definitions of “boy, “girl” and “trans woman”. “There is no such thing as ‘gender identity,’” he wrote about the definition of “female.”
