INDIA
Army kills Kashmir militants
Troops yesterday killed six separatist militants in a gunfight in the disputed region of Kashmir, the army said, taking the death toll in the region for the year to the highest in nearly a decade. This year, 400 people have been killed in the country’s only Muslim-majority state, more than half of whom were guerrillas fighting Indian rule. It is the highest toll since 2008, when 505 people died. Security forces have stepped up an offensive against militants operating inside the Kashmir Valley, as well as those trying to intrude from across the border with Pakistan, officials have said. The militants have hit back, targeting members of the Kashmir police and their families in the past few months. An operation was launched in Sekipora village, about 50km south of Srinagar, after intelligence reports about the presence of a group of militants, army spokesman Rajesh Kalia said. “Six militants were killed during a fierce gunfight, and arms and ammunition along with their bodies have been recovered,” Kalia said. Among the dead was a member of the Pakistan-based Lashkar-e-Taiba who police have said was part of the group that gunned down a top newspaper editor, Syed Shujaat Bukhari, outside his office in June.
NEW ZEALAND
Man sets record pace in run
Powered by hash browns and chocolate milkshakes, a 64-year-old man has run the length of the country in a record time of 18 days and eight hours. Perry Newburn, a former drug addict, is not your typical endurance athlete. His nutrition plan included plenty of stops at McDonald’s restaurants. He kept his pace in his head rather than using a fancy GPS watch and his support crew for half the distance consisted of his friend Graeme driving ahead in Newburn’s Toyota Corolla wagon. However, Newburn ran and ran and ran, averaging close to three full marathons each day along the 2,100km journey, which he finished on Wednesday. About 50 people ran alongside him at various points and he raised several thousand dollars for an autism charity.
PAKISTAN
Kids die playing with shell
Police yesterday said that three children have been killed in the northwestern Swat Valley while handling an abandoned mortar shell they thought was a toy. Two children were also wounded in Wednesday’s incident in the village of Matta, police official Bakhat Khan said. The mortar round might have been lying there since 2009, when the army evicted the Pakistani Taliban from the area, he said, adding that security officials have launched a search to clear the region of other unexploded ordnance. The Swat Valley is the home of Nobel Peace Prize winner Malala Yousafzai, who was shot and wounded in 2012 by militants for promoting girls’ education.
A fire caused by a burst gas pipe yesterday spread to several homes and sent a fireball soaring into the sky outside Malaysia’s largest city, injuring more than 100 people. The towering inferno near a gas station in Putra Heights outside Kuala Lumpur was visible for kilometers and lasted for several hours. It happened during a public holiday as Muslims, who are the majority in Malaysia, celebrate the second day of Eid al-Fitr. National oil company Petronas said the fire started at one of its gas pipelines at 8:10am and the affected pipeline was later isolated. Disaster management officials said shutting the
US Vice President J.D. Vance on Friday accused Denmark of not having done enough to protect Greenland, when he visited the strategically placed and resource-rich Danish territory coveted by US President Donald Trump. Vance made his comment during a trip to the Pituffik Space Base in northwestern Greenland, a visit viewed by Copenhagen and Nuuk as a provocation. “Our message to Denmark is very simple: You have not done a good job by the people of Greenland,” Vance told a news conference. “You have under-invested in the people of Greenland, and you have under-invested in the security architecture of this
UNREST: The authorities in Turkey arrested 13 Turkish journalists in five days, deported a BBC correspondent and on Thursday arrested a reporter from Sweden Waving flags and chanting slogans, many hundreds of thousands of anti-government demonstrators on Saturday rallied in Istanbul, Turkey, in defence of democracy after the arrest of Istanbul Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu which sparked Turkey’s worst street unrest in more than a decade. Under a cloudless blue sky, vast crowds gathered in Maltepe on the Asian side of Turkey’s biggest city on the eve of the Eid al-Fitr celebration which started yesterday, marking the end of Ramadan. Ozgur Ozel, chairman of the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP), which organized the rally, said there were 2.2 million people in the crowd, but
JOINT EFFORTS: The three countries have been strengthening an alliance and pressing efforts to bolster deterrence against Beijing’s assertiveness in the South China Sea The US, Japan and the Philippines on Friday staged joint naval drills to boost crisis readiness off a disputed South China Sea shoal as a Chinese military ship kept watch from a distance. The Chinese frigate attempted to get closer to the waters, where the warships and aircraft from the three allied countries were undertaking maneuvers off the Scarborough Shoal — also known as Huangyan Island (黃岩島) and claimed by Taiwan and China — in an unsettling moment but it was warned by a Philippine frigate by radio and kept away. “There was a time when they attempted to maneuver
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