Pak retaliation silences Indian guns at Sialkot border

SIALKOT – Indian Border Security Force personnel opened indiscriminate firing on Pakistani border villages in Zafarwal-Shakargarh sector on Sialkot Working Boundary.

Indian firing created panic and harassment in Pakistani border villages along the Sialkot Working Boundary. According to the official sources, the Indian forces started firing on Pakistani border villages near Pakistani ‘Khudadad Post’ in Zafarwal-Shakargarh sector between 1am to 2am, killing a stray dog near the boundary. Chenab Rangers retaliated which resulted in silencing the Indian guns.
However, no loss of life was reported, official sources added.

Pakistan should follow Bangladesh-ban Indian movies

The obsequious and compliant Awami League government in Dhaka has had to reverse itself after popular protests forced it to continue the ban on Indian movies.

Though this reversal happened under the fig leaf of saving Dhallywood, there are indications that the move was done because of the widespread anti-Indian feelings in Bangladesh. The Awami League is already under a lot of pressure because of the trial of some of the powerful members of the Jamaat e Islami Bangladesh.

While Bengalis enjoy Indian movies–they don’t want to increase Bharati (aka Indian) commercial interests in Bangladesh.

DHAKA : Hours after Bangladesh’s film producers, directors, actors and actresses came to the streets in Dhaka on Monday in protest, Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina on Monday asked the Commerce Ministry to repeal its earlier decision to withdraw a ban on import and display of Indian films in the country’s cinema halls.

A cabinet minister revealed it to newsmen seeking anonymity, emerging from a cabinet meeting at the Cabinet Division of the Bangladesh Secretariat. The Prime Minister also expressed her dissatisfaction over the decision regarding to the ban slapped by her father Sheikh Mujibur Rahman in 1972.

The commerce ministry recently lifted the embargo in a bid to inject a momentum into the country’s waning cinema industry.

Earlier, producers, directors and actors on Monday demonstrated in the capital to protest against a government decision to allow screening of Indian films in cinema halls.

Reviewing an import policy, the government allowed import of films from India and other South Asian countries. The decision has not been made effective yet. But the industry people say Bangladesh’s already-ailing film industry, popularly dubbed as Dhallywood, will be devastated if the decision comes into effect.

The ban on import and display of Indian films in the country’s cinema halls was imposed in 1972.

Bangladesh Chalachchitra Oikya Parishad, a platform of the local film industry, organised the protest on the premises of the Film Development Corporation (FDC).

Popular actors including Razzak, Anwara and Mizu Ahmed took part. They said the government had taken this decision without any consultation with the industry insiders. They hoped the government would not take any decision that could destroy Bangladesh’s own film industry.

Details

Hundreds of Bangladeshi film producers, directors, actors and actresses Monday came down to the premises of the Film Development Corporation in Dhaka, held demonstrations and vowed to resist exhibition of Indian movies across the country.

The Bangladesh Chalachitra Oikya Parisad, a combine of film related organisations, staged the demonstration protesting the government’s decision to lift ban on import of Indian films.

Eleven-film related organisations including Bangladesh Film Producers and Distributors Association, Bangladesh Film Directors’ Association, Film Artistes Association, Bangladesh Film Editors’ Guild, Bangladesh Cinematographers’ Association, Bangladesh Film Dancers Association, Cine-Directorial Associates of Bangladesh participated in the demonstration under the newly formed Chalachitra Oikya Parisad.

The Parishad leaders later submitted a memorandum to Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina after the demonstration.

The Bangladesh Film Directors’ Association president, Shawkat Jamil, said, “We want to know whether the Prime Minister, Sheikh Hasina, is aware of the decision,” said Jamil. “How this decision was taken when the country’s founder president Sheikh Mujibur Rahman imposed ban on import of films of the Indian sub-continent in 1972”, Jamil added.

Terming the move a conspiracy, Chalachitra Oikya Parisad convenor Mizu Ahmed said, “This decision will create an unequal competition in Bangladesh’s film industry as the budget of Indian films is much bigger than that of us”.

“The cinema owners are behind the conspiracy and they have provided the government with wrong information that the number of films released annually from the FDC is too small”, Mizu, also president of Film Artistes Association.

Film director Chashi Nazrul Islam said lifting of ban on import of Indian films will be suicidal for the Bengali culture.

COAS vows to defend country at all costs

Chief of Army Staff (COAS), General Ashfaq Parvez Kayani has pledged that Pakistan Army will continue to defend our beloved Motherland at all costs.

To pay homage to the supreme sacrifices rendered by its Shuhada, Pakistan Army celebrated Yaum-e-Shuhada on Saturday.

Ceremonies were held at Garrisons all over the Country, meanwhile impressive ceremony held at Yadgar-e-Shuhada, General Headquarters, was attended by families of Shuhada, Parliamentarians, serving and retired officers of the Armed Forces and a large number of people from all walks of life.

General Kayani along with relatives of Shuhada inaugurated the Shuhada Monument, laid the floral wreath and offered Fatiha. A smartly turned out contingent of Pakistan Army presented Guard of Honour.

Speaking on the occasion, COAS remembered the sacrifices of Shuhada for the defence of the Country.

General Kayani declared martyrs the greatest asset of the nation, and said that the country’s defense is a religious duty for the Pakistan Army. He also acknowledged the perseverance displayed by their families and the support rendered by the great Pakistani Nation.

Army chief declared Youm-e-Shuhada as an annual event, saying that the nation and the armed forces will mark the day every year on April 30.

Few relatives of Shuhada also expressed their sentiments on the occasion and thanked the Army and the Nation for their support.

India court to deliver verdict on Kasab

An Indian court will deliver a verdict on Monday in the trial of a Mumbai suspect accused of being the lone surviving gunman in the 2008 Mumbai attacks, a case that has strained ties between New Delhi and Islamabad.

Mohammad Ajmal Kasab is charged with 86 offences including waging war on India and murder. He could face the gallows if found guilty. Kasab was caught on tape strolling through Mumbai’s main train station carrying an AK-47 rifle and a knapsack on his back, prosecutors say. Nearly 60 people were gunned down in the crowded station. (Reuters)

US opens probe into spy network in Pakistan: Report

US Defence Secretary Robert Gates has opened an investigation into whether a top Defence Department official violated Pentagon rules by setting up a network of private contractors to gather intelligence in Pakistan and Afghanistan, The New York Times reported Tuesday.

CIting a Pentagon spokesman, the newspaper said that Gates was also demanding greater oversight over the millions of dollars the Defence Department spent annually to carry out “information operations,” to ensure that such missions did not “stray off course” into secret intelligence collection.

At the center of the Pentagon inquiry is Michael Furlong, a civilian official working for the Air Force who last year used a web of private contractors to clandestinely gather intelligence in Pakistan and Afghanistan, The Times said in a dispatch from Washington. Citing current and former government officials, it said some of that information was turned over to Special Operations troops to help fight militants.

Some American officials think that Furlong may have financed the secret network by improperly diverting money from an overt programme to gather information about the tribal structures and political dynamics in Afghanistan, according to the paper.

The Pentagon’s inspector general is already conducting a criminal investigation into the matter, i said. One focus of that investigation is whether Furlong engaged in contract fraud by channeling contracts to International Media Ventures, a media technology firm that American officials say Furlong used in the intelligence-gathering effort.
But even if no laws were broken, officials said, the inquiry announced on Tuesday will more clearly define the Pentagon’s boundaries in intelligence operations, and determine whether Furlong’s outsourcing of intelligence collection violated Pentagon rules.

The inquiry will be led by Gates’s senior aide in charge of intelligence oversight.

(c) The Nation

Drone Strikes Continue To Fuel Anti-US Sentiment In Pakistan

Jason Ditz

US Claims Massive ‘Militant’ Deaths and Almost No Civilian Casualties

The CIA’s drone strikes in Pakistan’s tribal areas, something which has become an enormous issue over the past year and a half, have been an enormous source of controversy, both legal and practical.

The US, for its part, maintains that the drone strikes have caused no more than 30 civilian casualties, while killing over 500 militants. The claims seem common among US officials, in keeping with the narrative of precision drone strikes.

But they are tough to swallow for children killed and maimed in the almost constant bombardment. And for villagers the claims that friends and relatives are “suspected militants” are tough to reconcile with reality, as are the claims of US precision.

They also don’t jibe with figures from Pakistan’s own intelligence agencies, which estimate that the US actually killed 700 civilians in 2009 alone, while killing only a handful of confirmed militants. The number of civilians wounded in all these attacks is unknown, but significant.

It is unsurprising, then, that the strikes continue to inflame anti-US sentiment across Pakistan, and US claims that the victims are almost universally “militants” is likely only making matters worse, in the face of enormous evidence to the contrary.

India’s missing nukes panics world

he world’s biggest radioactive ‘event’ in four years may just get a whole lot bigger.

Three radioactive Cobalt-60 ‘pencils’ are understood to be missing at the Mayapuri junkyard, declared safe a few weeks ago. Worried scientists resumed their search for the new radiation sources on Friday.

Sources told HT the scientists realised after examining the remains of the irradiation machine from Delhi University — the Cobalt-60 source — that it had more of the radioactive isotope than earlier recovered.

The machine contains 54 slots for Cobalt pencils. While not all 54 slots are filled, such a machine usually has around seven pencils, sources said.

“The search and recovery team earlier found only four,” said a top official of the Department of Atomic Energy, on condition of anonymity.

One of the injured scrap-workers had even kept a pencil in his chest pocket, not realizing what it was, the official said. The resumed search is to “make sure no radioactivity remains in the area,” said Atomic Energy Regulatory Board (AERB) chairman S.S. Bajaj. “We have to ensure all the radioactive isotopes are in place,” he told HT.

What could be worrying, according to sources, is that Atomic Energy Regulatory Board (AERB) officials have discussed, internally, that there is little chance of finding the missing pencils.

“This means the Cobalt-60 pencils could be anywhere in the area, exposing unsuspecting people,” they said.

The AERB is being assisted by scientists from the Nuclear Power Corporation of India Limited in the investigation. The scientists have calculated that the missing pencils are still potent as DU miscalculated their shelf life while discarding them and ideally, they should be “dead” only around 2018. The radioactive trail led back to the central university on Friday as one AERB official went on a recce of the campus but fortunately found no alarming levels of radioactivity.

The radiation exposure, termed the world’s most serious since 2006 by the International Atomic Energy Agency, killed one scrap-worker and made seven others seriously ill.

Hindustan Times