Live! Outcry as IS bulldozers attack ancient Iraq site

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Fri, 06 March 2015

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21:03 Outcry as IS bulldozers attack ancient Iraq site

Archaeologists and officials have expressed outrage about the bulldozing of the ancient Assyrian city of Nimrud by Islamic State militants in Iraq.

IS began demolishing the site, which was founded in the 13th Century BC, on Thursday, according to Iraqi officials.

The head of the UN's cultural agency condemned the "systematic" destruction in Iraq as a "war crime".IS, which controls large areas of Iraq and Syria, says shrines and statues are "false idols" that have to be smashed.

Police today investigated the motive of the anti-US activist they say slashed the US ambassador to South Korea, as questions turned to whether security was neglected.

The attack yesterday on Mark Lippert, which prompted rival North Korea to gloat about "knife slashes of justice," left deep gashes on his face and hand and damaged tendons and nerves. It also raised safety worries in a city with a reputation as a relatively low-risk diplomatic posting, despite regular threats of war from North Korea.

A raging fire along the runway at Gaya Airport in Bihar delayed landing of two flights for a couple of hours today following dense smoke and dangerous landing condition, a senior Airport Authorities of India (AAI) official said.

Confirming the fire, Gaya District Magistrate (DM) Sanjay Kumar Agarwal said, "Landing of two flights got delayed. One was Air India's Delhi-Gaya and another was Yangon-Kolkata-Gaya international flight. In fact they were diverted due to the fire, but again called back as the fire was contained. Both have landed now."

Jammu and Kashmir Chief Minister Mufti Mohammed Sayeed today said he has been given a historic opportunity by the people to "connect and further gel" the three distinct regions of the state-- Jammu, Kashmir and Ladakh-- and assured there will be "no digging of the past".

The government has come with a positive agenda to change the system of governance and ensure justice for all.

The Pakistan Maritime Security Agency (MSA) today apprehended 48 Indian fishermen and seized 8 of their boats near Jakhau port off the Gujarat coast, officials of National Fishworkers Forum (NFF) said.

The Forum claimed that the Pakistani agency guards fired several rounds in the air to overpower these fishermen before taking them to Karachi from Indian waters.

Assam Chief Minister Tarun Gogoi today condemned the lynching of an Assamese youth in Nagaland for allegedly raping a girl and termed the incident as "barbaric, heinous and inhuman".

The opposition All India United Democratic Front (AIUDF) too has condemned the incident as "unfortunate" and demanded a CBI inquiry into it.

The United Nations today condemned as a "war crime" the bulldozing by the Islamic State group of the ancient city of Nimrud, the jihadists' latest demolition of Iraq's cultural treasures.

After rampaging through Mosul's museum with sledgehammers and torching its library last month, IS yesterday "bulldozed" the nearby ruins of Nimrud, according to the tourism and antiquities ministry.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who will tour Sri Lanka next week, will lay a wreath at a memorial honouring the IPKF soldiers who died in the country fighting the civil war.

Sri Lankan foreign ministry today said Modi will lay a wreath at the Indian Peace Keeping Force (IPKF) Memorial and visit the Mahabodhi Society near Colombo.

Russian President Vladimir Putin announced today he was cutting his salary by 10 per cent as well as the earnings of several top government officials, as the country's economy reels from the collapse of the ruble.

The salaries of Putin, his Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev, Prosecutor General Yury Chaika and the president of the powerful Investigative Committee Alexander Bastrykin, will all be cut by 10 per cent from March 1 to December 31, according to a decree signed by the president.

ISIS has again destroyed cultural treasures, this time bulldozing the site of the ancient Assyrian city of Nimrud in northern Iraq, the nation's Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities said.

"ISIS continues to defy the will of the world and the feelings of humanity," the ministry said in a statement. "They violated the ancient city of Nimrud and bulldozed its ancient ruins."

Some 28,000 people have fled the Tikrit area as Iraqi forces battle the Islamic State jihadist group in a massive offensive aimed at retaking the city, the UN said.

The involvement of Shiite militiamen in the operation, which has been dubbed an attempt to avenge the IS massacre of hundreds of mainly-Shiite recruits last year, has raised fears of sectarian killings targeting Sunni Arabs.

A North Korean diplomat has been detained by Bangladeshi authorities after 27kg of gold was seized from him at the airport, officials said today.

The North Korean diplomat was held at the Hazrat Shahjalal International Airport with 27kg gold after he landed here last night, police said.

Ministry of External Affair's Syed Akbaruddin (@MEAIndia) tweeted today saying: Holi day is not a holiday for @IndianDiplomacy. Minister @SushmaSwaraj on way to Sri Lanka along with Foreign Secy.

The HRD ministry has set up a committee to probe alleged misappropriation of funds received under the Sarva Siksha Abhiyan by an NGO run by activist Teesta Setalvad, who is facing heat along with her husband in a separate case of embezzlement.

The three-member committee is to be headed by Supreme Court lawyer Abhijit Bhattacharjee and comprise Gujarat Central University Vice Chancellor SA Bari and senior HR Ministry official Gaya Prasad as its members.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi will leave on March 10 on a three-nation visit -- Seychelles, Mauritius and Sri Lanka -- the External Affairs Ministry announced today with no mention, however, of the Maldives, which was being considered earlier.

On his first trip abroad in 2015, the prime minister will be visiting the three countries from March 10 to 14, the ministry said.

The head of the UN agency promoting equality for women is lamenting that a girl born today will be an 81-year-old grandmother before she has the same chance as a man to be CEO of a company, and she will have to wait until she's 50-years-old to have an equal chance to lead a country.

Twenty years after 189 countries adopted a blueprint to achieve equality for women, Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka said in an interview with The Associated Press that not a single country has reached gender parity and equality.

"Indiana Jones" star Harrison Ford has been critically injured when his small plane crash-landed on a golf course outside Los Angeles, media reports and officials said.

The 72-year-old suffered multiple gashes to his head and was left bleeding after the crash of a vintage two-seater plane, according to the TMZ celebrity website, publishing a picture of the downed plane, its nose cone ripped open.

11:18 Ex-Bihar CM Ram Sundar Das passes away

Former Bihar Chief Minister and senior JD(U) leader Ram Sundar Das died here today due to age-related problems.

He was 95. Das, who was admitted to Patna Medical College and Hospital two days back, breathed his last at 4 A.M. He is survived by two sons and one daughter. His wife passed away earlier.

The derogatory comments about women made by two lawyers in the documentary 'India's Daughter' - banned in India and telecast by the BBC - have sparked outrage.

Fellow lawyers want their licences revoked and people are demanding, in hundreds of posts on social media, that they be punished.ML Sharma and AK Singh are defence lawyers for the four men on death row for brutally gang-raping and killing a 23-year-old medical student in a moving bus in Delhi in December 2012.

11:12 From Congress to AAP

There cannot be a greater contrast than that between today's Congress and the Aam Aadmi Party. One is in the midst of a downslide, the other is upbeat. One is literally searching for its leader, the other has no uncertainty about its supreme leader.

One is seen to represent all that is wrong with our democratic politics while the other represents the freshness of pro-people politics. Notwithstanding the contrasts, both currently reflect the challenges of running a political party

11:11 What should be India's response to terror?

The former American ambassador to India, Robert Blackwill, made the speculations public in February when he said that the next time India faces a 26/11-type terrorist attack, the country might consider going to war with Narendra Modi as prime minister.

Blackwill, a Harvard academic who has researched the Asian alliances of the United States of America, was not kite-flying in solitude.

A plane from Atlanta skidded off a runway at New York City's LaGuardia Airport while landing during a snowstorm today, crashing through a chain-link fence and coming to rest with its nose perilously close to the edge of an icy bay.

Photos showed the nose of the plane resting on a berm that separates the runway from Flushing Bay. Passengers saddled with bags and bundled up in heavy coats and scarves slid down an inflated chute to safety on the snowy pavement.

Delta Flight 1086, carrying 125 passengers and five crew members, veered off the runway at around 11:10 am, authorities said. Six people suffered non-life-threatening injuries, said Joe Pentangelo, a spokesman for the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which runs the airport.

Images show the plane resting in snow. Passengers trudged through the snow in an orderly line after climbing off the plane.

Among them was New York Giants tight end Larry Donnell, who said he felt blessed to be safe after the scary landing.

When Hillary Clinton ditched government email in favor of a secret, personal address, it wasn't just an affront to Obama's vaunted transparency agenda -- security experts consulted by Gawker have laid out a litany of potential threats that may have exposed her email conversations to potential interception by hackers and foreign intelligence agencies.

"It is almost certain that at least some of the emails hosted at clintonemails.com were intercepted," independent security expert and developer Nic Cubrilovic told Gawker.

Within the instant classic "ClintonEmail.com" domain, it appears there are three separate servers.

The domain's blank landing page is hosted by Confluence Networks, a web firm in the British Virgin Islands, known for monetizing expired domain names and spam.

Read more HERE

World leaders have fretted for years that terrorists may try to steal one of Pakistans nuclear bombs and detonate it in a foreign country. But some Karachi residents say the real nuclear nightmare is unfolding here in Pakistans largest and most volatile city.

On the edge of Karachi, on an earthquake-prone seafront vulnerable to tsunamis and not far from where al-Qaeda militants nearly hijacked a Pakistan navy vessel last fall, China is supplying two large nuclear reactors for energy-starved Pakistan.

The new plants, utilizing a cutting-edge design not yet in use anywhere in the world, will each supply 1,100 megawatts to Pakistans national energy grid. The reactors are being built next to a much smaller 1970s-era reactor located on a popular beach where fishermen still make wooden boats by hand.

Read more HERE

India has not been able to take meaningful action against notorious markets like the Nehru Place in New Delhi where counterfeit products are openly sold, the US said today.

"Numerous markets in India have appeared in past Lists, with no identified meaningful, effective response by the Indian government," the US Trade Representative said in its 'Out-of-Cycle Review of Notorious Markets' report released today.

"The United States continues to raise the importance of IPR protection and enforcement with India, underscoring the need to combat counterfeiting and piracy in both online and physical markets," it said.

"The United States encourages India to take sustained and coordinated enforcement action at the Nehru Place (New Delhi), previously-listed markets, and numerous other non-listed markets in its territory," the USTR said.

The report highlights certain physical and online markets around the world that are reported to engage in and facilitate substantial copyright piracy and trademark counterfeiting that harms American businesses and undermines our workers.

Boko Haram gunmen killed 68 people, including many children, in a massacre in the northeast Nigeria village of Njaba, two witnesses and two vigilantes said today.

Heavily armed militants stormed the village in Borno state on Tuesday "from all directions", said Falmata Bisika, 62, who escaped to the state capital Maiduguri where she spoke to reporters.

"The terrorists were armed to the teeth," she said, recounting the insurgents' rampage through Njaba, which saw them fire on fleeing residents, including "teenagers and the elderly".

"It is very unlikely (that) I will ever go back," she said. "Four of my grandchildren have been killed."

Mimuni Haruna, 42, said he hid in a silo at the back of his house during the prolonged attack before running to Maiduguri, roughly 50 kilometres (31 miles) north of Njaba.

"I participated in the counting of dead bodies. Sixty-eight people were killed," Haruna said. "Most of the houses in our village have been destroyed."

02:47 Top headlines at this hour

India trying to muzzle free speech: Gangrape filmmaker

10 days of total rest for Kejriwal; yoga, detox in the works

Recruitment scam: HC upholds 10-yr jail term for ex-Haryana CM, son

BBC telecast of documentary: Govt says action will be taken

AAP rift widens: Mayank Gandhi slams public sacking of Yadav, Bhushan

2nd day of spectrum auction ends; bids grow to Rs 65,000 cr

Injury scare for Mohit Sharma ahead of Windies clash

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