January 5th, 2016

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tuesDAY • JAnuArY 05 • 2016

DIMAPUR • Vol. XI • Issue 3 • 12 PAGes • 5

T H e

ESTD. 2005

P o W e R

o F

T R u T H

If you asked me for my New Year Resolution, it would be to find out who I am — Cyril Cusack

Earthquake strikes North East region •Seven killed in Manipur, 5 in Bangladesh •Scores injured, properties damaged

IMPHAL/SHILLONG, JANUARY 4 (IANS): At least seven people were killed and over 100 injured when an earthquake measuring 6.7 on the Richter scale rocked Manipur and other northeastern states before dawn on Monday. West Bengal too was hit, as was neighbouring Bangladesh where five deaths took place.

The toll in Manipur could rise even as rescue operations were on, officials said. The quake snapped power supply across the state, felled multi-storeyed buildings in state capital Imphal and damaged many vehicles.

Those killed included four women, Manipur’s Inspector General of Police Clay Khongsai told IANS. “The toll has risen to seven and 69 people have been injured,” principal secretary in-charge of home Suresh Babu told IANS in Imphal.

“There has been a lot of damage in Imphal. It is difficult for us to assess the total damage at the moment but the district administrations are on the job,” he said.

The quake, with epicentre in Manipur’s Tamenglong district, took place at 4.35 am. It was also felt in Assam, Arunachal Pradesh, Meghalaya, Nagaland, Mizoram and Tripura besides Myanmar and Bhutan.

According to the U.S. Geological Survey the quake had a magnitude of 6.8 and occurred 57 km deep and struck 29 km west of Imphal, capital of Manipur, which borders Myanmar. In Tamenglong, Babu said four people were seriously injured at Noney village.

Officials said there were 14 aftershocks on Monday morning.

The Indian Air Force flew a National Disaster Response Force (NDRF) team from Guwahati to Imphal, and to Silchar in Barak Valley of Assam with 3.5 tonnes of

Morung Express News Dimapur /Kohima | January 4

Tragedy struck Manipur and neighboring Bangladesh when a strong 6.7 magnitude earth quake jolted North East India and Bangladesh early Monday morning.

Nagaland state was more fortunate with no reports of human casualties or major damage to properties. Nagaland State Disaster Management Authority (NSDMA), Home Department confirmed there was no report of human casualty. Some damage to properties was reported in Peren and Dimapur district.

In Peren, damage of houses was reported at Nsong and Athibung under Tening block while in Dimapur, the Apostolic Revival Church at Zakisato colony was reported damaged.

According to information from NSDMA, the earthquake originated in the western part of Manipur between Imphal and Noney-Longmai Tamenglong district, and occurred as the result of strike slip faulting in the complex plate boundary region between India and the Eurasia plate in Southeast Asia.

The earthquake occurred at a depth of close to 50-55 km within the lithosphere plate. The origin time was recorded at 4: 37am and travel time residual at 1.05 second. In the neighboring state of Manipur such as Nagaland, Assam, Mizoram and Tripura the intensity was felt very strong.

Home Commissioner Niehu C Thur said the NDSMA is collating more details of loss and damage report due to quake in the State from other district disaster management authorities.

NSDMA has submitted a brief status report to National Emergency Response Center, Ministry of Home Affairs, GoI at New Delhi, the press statement further stated, adding it is also coordinating with the Government of Manipur to

extend any possible help and support if necessary.

The intensity of the quake was strongly felt across the State panicking people to rush out of their homes. Kohima residents said the tremor lasted for more than 20 seconds.

A resident at Naga Hospital colony said he woke up around 4.30 am upon experiencing the first tremor and gathered outside with neighbours.

“After the first tremor I went inside my room to take some warm clothes because of the cold, and then we felt the second tremor which lasted longer and was more intense,” the Naga Hospital colony resident narrated.

Awala, a teacher at a government high school recovering after a c-section birth woke up to rude shaking of the room.

“I thought it would stop, but the shaking kept on going. I panicked and scrambled down to the ground floor with my baby and husband, said Awala, who lives on the second floor of an apartment in Duncan Bosti, Dimapur.

Tsiu Seyie from Mengujuma village under Kohima district said it was one of the most severe quakes the village has experienced in decades.

Meanwhile, NSDMA has informed public not to panic or spread unnecessary rumour which may create fear psychosis.

It also advised the public to be vigilant and call State Emergency Operation Center, NSDMA for any further of information @ toll free number 1070 and landline number @ 0370-2291122.

Further, as precautionary measure, it has informed the public, picnickers and trekkers that the temperature in Kohima will remain between 19-6 °C in the coming week and in the hilly valley of Dzukou the temperature may fall below - °C. The public have therefore been requested to take safety measures during the extreme weather conditions.

• NSDMA ask public not to panic or spread rumours • State Emergency Operation Center, NSDMA toll free number 1070 and landline number @ 0370-2291122

People look at damaged residential houses after an earthquake in Imphal, January 4. (REUTERS)

rescue equipment.

“We have stationed an NDRF team at Imphal and Tamenglong to deal with the rescue and search operation,” an official said.

Manipur Chief Minister Okram Ibobi Singh, who chaired an emergency cabinet meet, said the government has taken all steps to deal with the disaster. The government would pay an ex-gratia of Rs.5 lakh each to the families of those killed and pay for the medical treatment of the injured, Education Minister M. Okendro said.

Telecommunication and electricity services were badly disrupted in the affected areas.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi

spoke to Ibobi Singh, and urged Home Minister Rajnath Singh, who is in Assam and who personally felt the quake, to oversee the situation.

Union Minister of State for Home Affairs Kiren Rijiju flew to Imphal from Arunachal Pradesh.

“Once a report is received, the central government will come out with assistance. There may be more casualties in the interior areas,” he said.

Bangladeshi news portal bdnews24 reported five deaths in Bangladesh and injuries to numerous people. People who fled their homes in panic remained on the streets, fearing aftershocks. Many recited verses from the Quran.

A Guwahati report said at least 20 people suffered minor injuries as some buildings across Assam developed cracks.

At least 12 people were injured in northern West Bengal’s Jalpaiguri and Darjeeling districts.

India’s northeast is considered the sixth major earthquake-prone belt in the world. In September 2011, Sikkim suffered heavy damage as a quake hit the state. Monday’s temblor occurred as a result of a strikeslip faulting (vertical or nearly vertical fractures where the blocks have mostly moved horizontally) in the boundary region between India and the Eurasian plate in Southeast Asia, according to the USGS.

Govt appeals for public peace and tranquillity

KOHIMA, JANUARY 4 (MExN): The Nagaland State Government has appealed to the Yimchungrü Akherü Arihako (YAA) and Yimchungrü Tribal Council (YTC) not to resort to any course of action which may result in the breach of public peace and tranquillity.

The State Government’s appeal, released through the DIPR, was made with reference to the 24 (Twenty four) hours ultimatum given by the YTC and YAA to the Chief Minister of Nagaland in connection with the YAA Golden Jubilee at Shamator Headquarters from January 7 - 10, 2016.

The State Government has solicited “kind co-operation” on the matter in the interest of maintaining public peace and tranquillity.

Meanwhile, the Government has made known the decisions made by the State Cabinet in the emergency meeting held in Dimapur on December 30, 2015, with regards to the said issue.

The State Cabinet decided that

“While celebrations of any jubilee should not be discouraged, in view of the volatile situation that has arisen due to controversy over the proposed celebrations, it would be in the public interest that the YAA Golden Jubilee celebrations be disallowed at Shamator till the matter is amicably resolved.”

Further, the Cabinet noted that “they may hold their celebrations at any other location which will not attract controversy.” The Home department was asked to issue necessary instructions accordingly, and the administration instructed to take all possible measures to prevent “untoward incidents.”

The emergency meeting was held at 9:00am of December 30, 2015, at the residential office of the Chief Minister in Dimapur. The minutes of the meeting signed by the Chief Minister and Cabinet Secretary was released to the media from the Chief Minister’s Office.

The Cabinet further directed in the meeting that in partial modification of

the OM issued by Commissioner, Nagaland vide No. CN/CON (SMTR) 07 dated January 4, 2007, another OM be issued “disallowing any conference in towns and villages where controversies are likely to arise.”

In that, the Cabinet decided to set up Committees to recommend measures to bring a “permanent solution” to such problems in various pockets of the State.

Furthermore, the Commissioner, Nagaland was directed to collect all Village Guard arms from all Yimchungrü and Tikhir inhabited areas and have them deposited with the Commandant, VG.

YTC, YAA call for total bandh

The YTC and YAA have called for a ‘total indefinite bandh’ in the entire ‘Yimchungrü jurisdiction’ including NH-202 from 6:00am of January 5 owing to the ‘non-fulfilment’ of their 24-hours ultimatum. This was informed in a press release from the YTC and YAA presidents respectively.

Tamenglong area sits on Seismic Zone V Morung Express News Dimapur | January 4

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NagalaNd: Properties damaged; no human casualty

When the earth quaked, little did the people of Tamenglong district know that they were rattling on the epicentre of the 6.7 Richter scale quake that jolted the North East awake on the morning of January 4.

According to the Sub-division wise administrative report as of 12:00 noon, Tamenglong district reported no deaths. Four persons were severely injured in Noney (Nungba sub division) and referred to RIMS Imphal for necessary treatment and one more casualty was reported from Tamei sub division. 25 houses were damaged in Khoupum sub division, 5 houses damaged in Tamenglong headquarters, 6 damaged in Nungba sub division and 23 houses damaged in Tousem sub division. Apart from these, a large number of buildings developed cracks and electric poles were damaged.

Though the Deputy Chief Minister of Manipur State hails from Tamenglong district, people have had to fight hard for the little roadways and electricity supplied to the district. Instead of improving the quality of the lives of people in Manipur, the Government has bigger plans for the State—mega dams, oil mining, national railways— all affecting Tamenglong in more jolts than one.

On August 28, 2014, the Govern-

ment of Manipur signed four new Memorandums of Understanding with the North Eastern Electric Power Corporation for construction of four new mega-dams, namely the 60 MW Irang HEP, 67 MW Khongnem Chakha (Upstream Senapati, Downstream Tamenglong), 190 MW Pabram HEP (Upstream and downstream Tamenglong District) and 51 MW Tuivai HEP (Churachandpur District) projects over rivers of Manipur under the Manipur Hydroelectric Power Policy of 2012.

In addition, the controversial and highly opposed 1500 MW Tiapimukh Dam, currently under construction, will submerge large portions of Tamenglong district, while the 66 MW Loktak Downstream Dam (also under construction) is located partly in Tamenglong district.

All this, while Tamenglong area (and pretty much all of the North East) features on Seismic Zone V of the Bureau of Indian Standards (BIS) 2000 seismic zone map of India. Zone V is the highest risk zone for earthquakes in the Indian subcontinent. However, “The plan to build these dams is fraught with absence of consultation and the free, prior and informed consent of communities,” said John Tingenlung Pamei, former president (and present tribunal general) of the All Zeliangrong Students’ Union, who has been at the forefront of claiming peoples’ rights in Mani-

pur.

“Development and power generation needs have been defined exclusively to benefit corporate bodies only. The right to self-determined development has been undermined in the mega dams planned across Manipur,” he maintained. Moreover, “militarization in the proposed dam site and catchment areas is another concern among affected communities, as these military personnel are notorious for committing human rights violations.”

The governments of Manipur and India also have plans to mine oil on a mega scale from Tamenglong district (which is vehemently opposed by the people) as well as build the Jiribam-Tupul rail line passing through the district.

As we are reminded of the precarious geographies inhabited by the indigenous peoples living in Manipur State, scientists also remind us how rushed-up mega development projects without sound studies and geographical sensitivity can be “suicidal.”

“It will be suicidal if proper and detailed geological, geotechnical and earthquake analysis is not done before planning such projects in regions like these. Such projects are rendered useless if fault lines pass by these areas, for instance. Any development on seismic zone V needs proper analysis and relevant design,” stated a geotechnical expert speaking to The Morung Express from New Delhi.

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tuesDAY 05•01•2016

NAGALAND

THE MORUNG EXPRESS

NStCB disburse credit to dairy farmers

DiMaPur, January 4 (Mexn): Nagaland State Cooperative Bank (NStCB) in a programme organized

by DIMUL on January 4 at Dimapur disbursed credit of Rs 61.74 Iakh to 49 dairy farmers of 7 JLGs under Government of India's Dairy Entrepreneurship Development Scheme (DEDS), a sponsorship programme of NABARD. Under the scheme NStCB has disbursed credit to the tune of Rs.12.40 to 31 farmers thereby totaling to Rs 74.14 Lakh benefiting 80 numbers of dairy farmers.

The scheme is mainly launched to increase milk production in the State. Dr. Mhasizokho, Chief Executive Officer D1MUL while welcoming the JLG farmers, NABARD, Government officials and NStCB Asoke Chaktaborty, GM (OIC) NABARD, RD, Nagaland handing over the credit sanction letters issued by NStCB to dairy farmers at DIMUL, Dimapur on January 4. officials explained the economic viability of rearing ability linked to it.

(OIC) NABARD, RD Naga- management of Cows for highlighted the prelude of milk cow and the profitAsoke Chaktaborty, GM land exhorted on realistic better milk yield. He also DEDS and the possibility of

CTE flays December 27 incident at Chukitong

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DiMaPur, January 4 (Mexn): The Chukitong Tsungiki Ekhung (CTE) has vehemently condemned the December 27 incident at Chukitong “purportedly” created by one AR Captain, who is the post commander of 17 Assam Riffles at Chukitong, after being caught violating the Resolution of the CTE. Consequently, in accordance with general meeting resolution of the Union held in December 28, the CTE has extended its strong support to the “Threepoint Resolution in the Representation” submitted by Chukitong Range Public Organisation (CRPO) to the Deputy Commissioner (DC), Wokha regarding the incident.

In this connection, CTE Chairman, T Zuchobemo Ngullie and Secretary, Eyingbemo Ngullie in a press note has further appealed the competent authority to arrest and stringently punish the Captain and the three civilians for disturbing the social harmony of Chukitong.

The Ekhung (Union) has also informed general public it shall resolutely stand to its ‘code of conduct’ and shall not “tolerate” the violation of the same within its jurisdiction.

It may be recalled that the IGAR (N) has ordered an inquiry into the December 27 incident at Chukitong area, Wokha district. The PRO, Assam Rifles had stated that any lapses found to have been committed by any AR official will be dealt with severely.

increasing milk production in the State and at the same time benefiting the farmers.

Imtilemba Longkumer, Managing Director while lauding NABARD for the scheme also appreciated DIMUL for organizing the JLGs. He said that if the farmers repay the loan in time they will be eligible for 33.33% of Central Govt.

Subsidy Scheme and if the farmers can avail the benefit through timely repayment the interest yield on loan will be very minimal.

Dr. Temsu Ozukum, Chief Vertenary Officer (CVO) Dimapur highlighted the farmers on the health of the animals and the necessity of timely vaccinations. Others who spoke in the meeting are Dr. Asenuo Linyu Deputy CVO, Dimapur, Bendangnungsang, GM (Cr) NStCB and M. Kera, Chief Manager, NStCB, NSA Branch.

Leshemi cultural & traditional festival celebrated

DiMaPur, January 4 (Mexn): The 8th session of Leshemi cultural and traditional festival was grandly celebrated on December 28 and 29 at Leshemi Village. Ngulhinyi Krome, NPS, Retd. Addl SP graced the occasion as the Festival Father.

Speaking on the occasion, the chief guest encouraged the people to uphold the dignity of rich cultures and traditions which our forefathers have endowed in us. He further said that our cultures and traditions are fading away with modernity. Simplicity and sincerity are the core of success which every sensible and concern citizen should endorse for a progressive society.

While greeting the occasion, Lhiwepelo Mero, Retd.

Agri. Director said one should be self-reliance and broadminded. One should live an exemplary life for younger generations. He extolled the rich cultures of Leshemi Village and encouraged the community to preserve it.

Besusayo Kezo, IPS, Retd.

DGP exhorted the community saying that they should have a tendency to figure out good leader. Good leaders

BLOs under Dimapur district informed DiMaPur, January 4 (Mexn): BLOs under Dimapur district who were involved in the NERPAP exercise during March 2015 to August 2015 are informed to collect their honorarium on or before January 15, 2016 from the election branch, office of the DC and DEO Dimapur during office hours. This was informed in a press release issued by Dimapur AEO R Toshi Aier.

Free Medical consultations and OPD Check up Mokokchung, January 4 (Mexn): The Board Trustee, Impur Christian Hospital has announced that from the year 2016, all Medical consultations and OPD Check up at the Impur Christian Hospital will be free till further decision. A press note issued by Dr. Sashimeren Aier, Chairman, Impur Christian Hospital hoped that many people will be blessed with this opportunity.

FTC informs on Bible Quest 2015 DiMaPur, January 4 (Mexn): The Faith Theological College (FTC), Ura Villa Colony written Bible Quest 2015 results has been declared and is available on the college notice board. All participants have been requested to come and see their marks and collect their certificates for the office. For details, contact 9436425173/9856319201. This was informed through a press note from the founder principal of the college

International Louise Braille Day observed DiMaPur, January 4 (Mexn): The Naga Blind Association celebrated the 14th International Louise Braille Day on January 4 at its office in Notun Bosti, Dimapur. Temjenyapang Longkumer, president, NBA was the resource person. He said that the main aim of the Braille Day is to celebrate with children who are blind. “Moreover, it is to about encouraging the children to like by faith and that they can achieve anything in life though one is blind,” said Temjenyapang. The programme was chaired by Ayangla.

NHM employees call off abstinence from duty DiMaPur, January 4 (Mexn): The National Health Mission employees of Nagaland have decided to call off the abstinence from duty due to nonpayment of salaries from the month of January as all the pending dues from September 2015 to November 2015 have been released in the month of December to all the respective districts. The NHM employees in a press release stated that they are grateful to the department of Health n Family Welfare and will continue to work sincerely under the department as long as there is no delay in the payment n release of salaries from the state treasury department in the future.

Guests attend the session of Leshemi cultural and traditional festival celebrated on December 28 and 29 at Leshemi Village.

NMA condemns crime

bring development and laurel to village and such leaders can be developed through community support. Being one of the oldest villages, one should promote and uphold its unique identity.

The Festival was marked with various prestigious cul-

DiMaPur, January 4 (Mexn): The Naga Mothers’ Association (NMA) in its strongest term has condemned the alleged "rape of a minor girl at Bhandari and the murder of an elderly woman at Mpai village, Jalukie Town.” The NMA in a condemnation note stated that such crimes against women and children need to be addressed immediately with all seriousness. “We are saddened to begin the New Year with such violence against women. We demand strict action and justice for the victims and urge upon all citizens to address the issue to ensure that every women and girl child can live safely and with dignity,” the condemnation said. Meanwhile, NMA conveyed condolences to the bereaved families and prayed for the departed soul to rest in peace.

tural and traditional exhibitions. The uniqueness of the village history was showcased and displayed in a most brilliant way. The exhibitions of vibrant and rich cultural personae of the village like traditional games, folk songs, dances, plays etc. has mes-

merized the audiences.

The Organising Committee and the Village Community in a press release have expressed gratitude to the dignitaries, village age-old friends, in-laws, invitees, well-wishers, elders, and the fellow village citizens for making the program success.

Special National Integration Camp underway

DiMaPur, January 4 (Mexn): Maj Gen Deepak Saxena, VSM, Chief of staff 3 corps inaugurated the Special National Integration Camp on January 2 at Patkai Christian College, Chumukedima Nagaland.

At around 600 cadets of National Cadets Corps from 17 Directorates from all the precincts of the country and around 100 cadets from the North East Region, attended the inauguration of Special National Integration Camp in the presence of ADG NCC NER Dte, Maj Gen SPS Kohli and Brig MS Nikam Group Commander, Group HQ Kohima who is also the Camp Commandant of the said camp.

Maj Gen Deepak Saxena, VSM, Chief of staff 3 corps, in his inaugural speech has put emphasis on being good and disciplined citizens of

MEx File

Peren DPDB meeting postponed Peren, January 4 (Mexn): The District Planning & Development Board, Peren monthly meeting is postpone to January 12 (Tuesday) at 11:00 am in the Conference Hall of Deputy Commissioner, New District Hqr, Peren. Therefore all DPDB members are informed to take note of the change of date and make it convenient to attend the meeting.

Tetso College informs

Maj Gen Deepak Saxena, VSM, Chief of staff 3 corps alsong with participants and others during the inauguration of the Special National Integration Camp held on January 2.

India since National cadets corps is the nursery for grooming tomorrow’s leader. The message of national spirit and unity has been highly demonstrated through the cultural events organised by the cadets. He accentuat-

ed that every such events keeps our nation united particularly by this young generation representing mini India.

The objective of this camp is a process by which diverse youth and culture are synthesized into a

unified whole in order to achieve harmony, common identity and above all national consciousness.

The aspiration of this camp is to assimilate the entire youth into a common identity i.e. NCC Cadets.

The NCC owes its pop-

ularity among the youth, primarily due to its Armed Forces ethos, who perceive the Armed Forces as the finest institution of our Nation. All training in the NCC is conducted in a military environment, so as to help the cadets inculcate

the finer qualities of our military heritage. It helps in developing discipline and ability to work hard, which gives them a sense of purpose and helps them overcome the trials, tribulations and complexities of their adolescent years.

DiMaPur, January 4 (Mexn): Tetso College has informed that classes will begin from January 13 instead of January 12. However, the office will reopen on January 11. Hostellers may report on January 12.

Tetso College has also announced the launching of free online question paper bank. The question paper bank contains final exam question papers from class 9 (NBSE) to the Nagaland University 6th semester for all streams. The question papers may be accessed from www.tetsocollege.org/resources/downloads. The question paper bank is a community initiative to help students in Nagaland. If any organisation or individual would like to provide feedback or contribute material to the question paper bank then they may email: library@tetsocollege.org

Show cause notice issued to NSCN (K) Thetsümi Baptist Church observes 75th Gospel Anniversary

DiMaPur, January 4 (Mexn): A notification received today through the Directorate of Information and Public Relations (DIPR) has notified the NSCN (K) to show cause, within 30 days from the date of service of this notice, as to why the NSCN (K) be not adjudicated as an unlawful association and why an order confirming such declaration be not made under the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act. It may be noted that the Government of India had declared the NSCN (K) as an unlawful association on September 28, 2015. The centre had constituted a tribunal comprising Justice Najmi Waziri, Judge of the High Court of Delhi, for adjudicating whether or not there is sufficient cause for declaring

National Socialist Council of Nagaland (Khaplang) as an Unlawful Association.

The objections/reply, if any, may be filed/delivered within 30 days from the date of service of notice to the undersigned at his office in Room No. 107, 1st Floor, Administrative Block, Delhi High Court, Sher Shah Road, New Delhi- 110503. In case the objections/reply and the documents are in regional language, true English Translation thereof be also attached, informed the notification. “You may appear through a duly authorized person before the Tribunal on 14th January, 2016 at 3:00pm in Court No. 19, ‘A’ Block, Delhi High Court, Sher Shah Road, New Delhi 110503 for further proceedings,” it added.

Phek, January 4 (Mexn): The Thetsümi Baptist Church (under Chakhesang Baptist Church Council, Phek district) observed the 75th Gospel Anniversary on December 29 and 30, 2015. Following the dedication of the new church building by Rev. Dr. V.K. Nuh, General Secretary, FNBA on December 29, worship services were held under the theme ‘God is our Strength’.

I&P Convenor, Salie Nuh in a press release stated that the monolith commemorating 75th Gospel Anniversarywas unveiled by Rev. Dr. Vezopa Tetseo, Executive Secretary CBCC on December 30. On the occasion, release of balloons, 75 trumpeters in action and elders above 75 years solemnly walking into the church were undertaken. The Anniversary Celebration Souvenir was released by Rev. Prof. K. Lasuh, Execu- The congregation during the inauguration of the monolith commemorating 75th Gostive Director, KBCA. pel Anniversary unveiled by Rev. Dr. Vezopa Tetseo, Executive Secretary, CBCC on The speakers of the celebration in- December 30.

cluded Rev. Dr. V.K. Nuh, who shared on the word of God based on 1 Timothy3:15 ‘The Church and the Living God’, Rev. Dr. Vezopa Tetseo who spoke on the theme ‘God is our Strength’ (Psalm 46:1) and Rev. Dr. Neingupe Chiero, Pastor PTBC who spoke on the significance of the topic ‘Make Disciples of All Nation’ (Matt. 28:19) Greetings on behalf of the in-laws were acknowledged by Chotisü Sazo, Speaker, Nagaland Legislative Assembly, while Vechüloü Kanuo, Executive Director, CWWS sent greetings on behalf of the sisters.

Rev. Dr. Kevekhalo Lasuh, Chairman, 75th Gospel Anniversary Celebration on behalf of the Thetsümi Baptist Church invoked God’s blessing and acknowledged all the represented churches, in-laws, sisters and wellwishers for their support and participation.

TuesDAY 05•01•2016

NORTH-EAST

THE MORUNG EXPRESS

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Manipur quake not linked to Nepal: Experts

LEFT: The interior view of a damaged church is seen after an earthquake at Leimakhong village on the outskirts of Imphal. RIGHT: Medics tend to people who were injured after an earthquake, at a hospital in Imphal on January 4. (REUTERS Photos)

KolKata, January 4 (IanS): The earthquake that devastated Manipur on Monday and rocked other northeastern states, as well as neighbouring Myanmar, Bhutan and Bangladesh, is not connected to last year's April 25 Nepal earthquake, experts have asserted, saying the impetus should be on adhereing to building codes for earthquake-resilient structures.

At least six people were killed and more than 50 injured when an earthquake

measuring 6.7 on the Richter scale hit Manipur and its neighbouring states in northeast and east India.

Reports of more death and devastation continue to trickle in, serving as a haunting reminder of the April 25 killer quake in the Himalayan nation, measuring 7.9 on the Richter Scale, that claimed over 8,000 lives.

However, seismologists and geologists have quashed rumours of the Manipur earthquake being an after-effect of the

Nepal temblor.

"It is not connected to the Nepal earthquake," clarified R. Dharuman of the Geological Survey of India (GSI), adding a GSI team will be sent out to map the region and launch studies on the temblor.

Manipur is situated in seismic zone V, the most earthquake prone in the country. The temblor occurred as the result of a strike-slip faulting (vertical or nearly vertical fractures where the blocks have

mostly moved horizontally) in the boundary region between India and the Eurasian plate in southeast Asia, according to the USGS. The Indian Meteorological Department said the epicenter of the quake was in Tamenglong region of Manipur state at a depth of 17 kilometers (about 10 miles).

Allaying fears, B.K. Rastogi, former director director general of Gandhinagar-based Institute of Seismological Research (ISR) said this earthquake

is "not an indicator or precursor to a larger earthquake" in the near future.

"However, monitoring is essential. The (Indo-Myanmar) region is full of faults and many active faults are there. Monitoring and enforcement is totally missing in India. The government has to ensure monitoring and enforcement of rules while adherence to building codes must be maintained to minimise losses," Rastogi told IANS. India's northeast region is

considered the world's sixth most earthquake-prone belt. The region has a history of powerful earthquakes caused by the northward collision of the Indian and Eurasian plates. They are moving towards each other at a rate of 4-5 cm per year.

Data from Manipur's National Institute of Disaster Management shows that earthquakes of low to moderate intensity are regularly recorded in the state.

The state has weathered dozens of large earth-

quakes, the biggest in recent times being the 1988 temblor measuring 7.2 on the Richter Scale.

The distinguishing feature of Monday's quake is its duration, pointed out Indian Institute of Technology-Guwahati's Chandan Mahanta. Factoring in the vulnerabilities, site-specific building codes must be followed, Mahanta iterated.

"The thing that causes damage is the material on which the buildings are standing. Generally, the

Quake leaves Carnage in iMPhal Disaster management agency coordinating with NE states new DelhI, January 4 (IanS): The National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA) is coordinating with north-eastern states and others concerned for rescue and relief after an earthquake early Monday morning in Manipur, a home ministry statement said.

"The NDMA has begun coordinating with the state governments, ministries of home affairs, defence, telecom, National Disaster Response Force, and government departments and agencies concerned for rescue and relief following the 6.7 magnitude quake in Tamenglong district in Manipur at 4.35 a.m. today (Monday)," the statement said.

The statement said the NDMA authorities, working in close coordination with the Prime Minister's Office, also talked to the control room/relief commissioners of

all north-eastern states.

"So far, five deaths and 33 injuries have been reported from Imphal (8:50 a.m.). Damages to a few buildings, residential units and government offices have been reported, including damage to a six-storey building in Imphal," said the statement.

Two NDRF teams are being airlifted from Guwahati to Imphal. Communication systems are functioning, particularly those of the Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited, in the area.

"The NDMA is monitoring and coordinating all relief activities. National Crisis Management Committee headed by the cabinet secretary was scheduled to meet to assess the situation and provide all necessary help from the government of India," said the statement.

Rajnath Singh assures of central assistance to NE states GuwahatI, January 4 (IanS): Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh on Monday assured A vehicle is crushed by a structure which fell down during the quake in Manipur of all central assistance to the on January 4. (Morung Photo) north-eastern states in the wake of an earthquake in Manipur early morning.

"The prime minister has asked me to coordinate with all the chief ministers of the north-eastern states. I have spoken to almost all of them. However, I could not contact the Manipur chief minister (Okram Ibobi Singh). The Manipur chief secretary told me the damage is more in the state. The Centre will extend all required assistance to the north-

eastern states to deal with the crisis," the minister told the media here.

"I have also spoken to Assam Chief Minister Tarun Gogoi-ji and taken stock of the situation," Rajnath Singh, on a two-day visit to Assam since Sunday, said.

A 6.7-magnitude earthquake shook the north-eastern region of India and neighbouring countries around 4.35 a.m. on Monday.

While the temblor shook most north-eastern states, it is feared to have caused more damage in Manipur although the exact loss is yet to be ascertained.

The Manipur government's

officials said at least four people died while around 50 people were injured.

Rajnath Singh arrived in Silchar in Assam's Barak Valley on Sunday and inspected the IndoBangladesh border at Steamerghat border outpost on the international border and addressed a public rally there.

He is scheduled to visit the Sonahat border outpost in Dhubri sector on the India-Bangladesh border on Monday and is likely to address a public rally in Dhubri before returning to New Delhi on Monday evening.

soil magnifies the seismic waves more so there will be more acceleration and on rocks it is sometimes less.

"In Manipur, there are some areas where there must be soil and rocks in others. The impact also depends on the number of storeys of the building.

Short buildings are vulnerable in rocky foundations and tall buildings are fine on rocky foundations.

Similarly, tall buildings are vulnerable in soil foundations," added Mahanta.

Educational institutes closed in Manipur Imphal, January 4 (IanS): All educational institutes in Manipur have been closed till January 11 following the terrible earthquake in the state, officials said on Monday.

CM Okram Ibobi Singh said the government will extend all assistance to those affected by the disaster. "Prime Minister Narendra Modi rang me up to say that funds will not stand in the way to provide relief measures to the people," he said. "He had instructed Home Minister Rajnath Singh, who is visiting the region, to monitor the relief work," he said.

20 suffer minor injuries in Assam due to quake GuwahatI, January 4 (IanS): At least 20 people suffered minor injuries here on Monday when a quake hit the northeastern region. Cracks developed in some buildings across Assam as the temblor hit around 4.35 a.m. with its epicentre in Manipur's Tamenglong district. Chief Executive Officer of Assam State Disaster Management Authority (ASDMA) P.K. Tiwary said about 20 people received minor injuries in Guwahati town. "There are also reports pouring in from different parts of the state about some minor damage to buildings and houses. We are trying to verify the reports," said Tiwary adding there was no major damage or any causality in Assam. Locals in Fancy Bazar area of the city said at least 7 to 8 buildings developed cracks.

Post quake situation is NAGALAND TOOL ROOM & TRAINING CENTRE challenging: Meghalaya CM (A GOVT. OF NAGALAND SOCIETY, T

ES

TD

*

06

The epicentre of the earthquake was at Tamenglong which is located 33 kilometers from Imphal in Manipur.

The quake occurred at 4.35 am at a depth of 17 km below the ground. The epicentre has been located at Long 24.8 Deg North and Lat 93.5 Deg East.

Tremors were felt in the North Eastern and Eastern part of the country including Kolkata, Assam, Nagaland and Arunachal Pradesh.

Meanwhile, the Cabinet Secretary P. K. Sinha convened a meeting of the National Crisis Management Committee (NCMC) in the morning.

It was decided that NDRF to send two teams to Imphal immediately for relief and rescue. In addition, one team will be sent to Silchar, Assam.

The centre is also sending a team of engineers from Power Grid Corporation to Imphal to assist the state government in the restoration of power.

"A special team of doctors from Delhi including orthopaedics were already in Imphal. All the affected North Eastern states were assured of necessary help for quick rescue, relief and restoration work," MHA sources said.

20

new DelhI, January 4 (IBnlIVe): The Meghalaya Chief Minister Dr. Mukul M. Sangma on Monday said that a large number of people were affected due to the earthquake and he is personally monitoring the rescue and relief operations across the state.

Speaking exclusively to IBN Live, Sangma said, "The situation is challenging but we are well prepared to deal with any crises. I am in constant touch with the officials engaged in the rescue operations".

On the context of casualties so far, he said, "We are awaiting the correct figures and do not want to quote anything, which will create unnecessary panic among the people." However, Union Home Ministry sources confirmed that there are six causalities so far and 43 persons have been injured.

"All the agencies including the disaster management teams are already on the affected areas and started their rescue operations," he added.

On Monday morning, a strong earthquake with a magnitude of 6.7 on the Richter scale rocked Eastern and North Eastern part. At least six People in Imphal crouch on the road during the earthquake in the early hours persons have died and over 100 have been injured in the quake. of Monday. (Morung Photo)

C

A house which sustained damage in Imphal during the earthquake. (Morung Photo)

N

T

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Business

THE MORUNG EXPRESS

Excise Hike on Petrol, Diesel to garner Rs 10,000 Cr New DeLHI, JaNuarY 4 (PTI): The hike in excise duty on petrol and diesel - three times in quick succession - will help the government garner an additional Rs 10,000 crore in the fiscal year and partly make up for the shortfall in disinvestment receipts and direct tax collections.

But without the excise duty hike, petrol and diesel would be selling at around Rs 49.05 and Rs 35.06 per litre, respectively (in Delhi). Petrol currently costs Rs 59.35 per litre in Delhi while diesel is priced at Rs 45.03 a litre.

The higher realisation will come handy to the government to maintain fiscal deficit at 3.9 per cent of GDP in current financial year ending March 2016, notwithstanding poor showing with regard to sale of stakes in state-owned companies.

Although the government has targeted to raise Rs 69,500 crore from PSU disinvestment in current fiscal year, so far only Rs 12,700 crore has been raised and the likelihood of any major stake sale in the remaining three months of 2015-

16 is bleak.

Finance Ministry officials have admitted that there would be a shortfall of around Rs 50,000 crore in disinvestment proceeds and about Rs 30,000-40,000 crore in direct taxes, but he expressed optimism that higher realisation from indirect taxes as well as non-tax revenues will make up for the deficit.

The ministry is also insisting on higher dividends from the stateowned companies in a bid to garner more non-tax revenue.

The government has

raised excise duty on petrol and diesel three times in last two months and by seven times since November 2014.

The three excise duty hikes this fiscal year, totalling Rs 2.27 per litre on petrol and Rs 3.47 a litre on diesel, will yield the government Rs 10,000 crore in additional revenue during the remainder of current fiscal year.

Taken together with four excise duty hikes between November 2014 and January 2015, levies on petrol has gone up by Rs 10.02 a litre and that on diesel by Rs 9.97 per litre.

According to the data, fiscal deficit position has shown a marked improvement at the end of November 2015.

The deficit stood at Rs 4.83 lakh crore, or 87 per cent of the Budget Estimate (BE) for the whole 2015-16. This is much better compared to 98.9 per cent deficit recorded in the same period last year.

During April-November, indirect tax collections grew by 34 per cent to Rs 4.38 lakh crore, as against the projected growth of 19.47 per cent.

In case of direct taxes,

the growth in first eight months of current fiscal year works out to be 12.63 per cent at Rs 3.69 lakh crore, as against the budgetary projection of 13.09 per cent.

The government had budgeted to collect Rs 36,174 crore by way of dividend from the public sector enterprises, higher than last year’s realisation of Rs 28,423 crore.

It has already received a dividend of Rs 65,896 crore from the Reserve Bank of India (RBI), which is higher than this year’s budget projection of Rs 64,477 crore.

Punj Lloyd bags Rs. 1,555- Star Cement customer hits Top Cash Prize Cement customers will have the JaNuarY 4 at Jerimeri in Mangaldoi. cr worth highway projects GuwaHaTI, “I am extremely happy to re- opportunity to win big in the be(aGeNcIeS): It seems New Year New DeLHI, JaNuarY 4 (PTI): Infrastructure major Punj Lloyd today said it has won four highway projects worth Rs. 1,555 crore in Bihar, Chhattisgarh, Odisha and Punjab from the central government.

The engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) projects in Bihar, Chhattisgarh and Odisha have been awarded to Punj Lloyd by the National Highways Authority of India (NHAI) while the order in Punjab has been won from the Ministry of Road Transport and Highways (MORTH), the company said in a statement.

The company said the Bihar project worth Rs. 567 crore entails four—laning of 60 km of the Simaria— Khagaria section of NH31.

Punj Lloyd was the developer for 140 km of the Khagaria— Purnea section on the same highway.

“The Chhattisgarh package, worth Rs. 513 crore, comprises the four/six laning of 48 km of the Raipur— Simga section of NH200 in Chhattisgarh. This contract includes the bypass and 22 supporting structures like flyover, vehicular underpass (VUP) and bridges,” it said.

This section of NH200 is the major power hub of India connecting the state capital, Raipur to Bilaspur through various industrial and commercial establishments.

“In Odisha, Punj Lloyd has been entrusted with the

rehabilitation and upgradation of four laning with paved shoulders of 50 km of the Talebani to Sambalpur section of NH6 in the state of Odisha. The contract is worth Rs. 392 crore,” the company said.

The fourth contract in Punjab, won in joint venture with VRC Constructions (I) Pvt Ltd, has been awarded to Punj Lloyd by MORTH for four laning of 35 km of the Tallewal—Barnala section of the NH 71.

The construction of the Barnala bypass and 13 other supporting infrastructure including flyovers, passenger underpass (PUP), road over bridge (ROB) & bridges, also fall under Punj Lloyd’s scope of work, the company said.

Shantanu Karkun President and CEO, Buildings and Infrastructure Punj Lloyd said” “2016 will be exciting and will unfold multiple opportunities for Punj Lloyd in the infrastructure segment, both in India and abroad.

These orders, won pan—India, are a strong attestation of Punj Lloyd’s delivery in infrastructure“.

The projects fall under the National Highways Development Project (NHDP), Phase IV to widen major highways in India to a higher standard.

With these four contracts, the group’s order backlog stands at Rs. 21,838 crore.

The shares of the company were trading in the afternoon at Rs. 30.05 on BSE, up 4.52 per cent.

ceive this coupon of Rs 50000, which I got on very first day of New Year. I feel Kismat Ki Bori is a very good scheme for customers and I would like to thank star cement for this initiative. I hope the New Year will be a very lucky one for me and many other customers like me. I wish entire star cement family a very happy new year”, Deka said amidst joy in his family over this development.

In the Kismat Ki Bori campaign a consumer is sure to win a cash prize from two rupees to Fifty thousand rupees on purchase of every Star Cement bag. With the Kismat Ki Bori campaign running till 31 January, several other Star

has come with cash bonanza for Star Cement customers in Northeast. Kismat Ki Bori, the biggest consumer connect initiative by any cement company in recent years in this region, is bringing smiles to the faces of Star Cement customers across North-East region.

Although there have been reports of several customers winning the cash prizes of different amount in this recently launched scheme, at least one among them has hit the top cash prize. Pitambar Deka, a messenger in Assam Police at Udalguri, has won the cash prize of 50 thousand rupees while building an Assam type house for his family

Facebook CEO Zuckerberg to focus on AI in 2016 New York, JaNuarY 4 (IaNS): In 2016, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg wants to focus on Artificial Intelligence (AI) and is even thinking of a simple AI to run his home and workplace like the famous Jarvis character in the Hollywood movie “Iron Man”.

“My personal challenge for 2016 is to build a simple AI to run my home and help me with my work.

You can think of it kind of like Jarvis in Iron Man,” he posted on Facebook on Monday.

“I am going to start by exploring what technology is already out there. Then I’ll start teaching it to understand my voice to control everything in our home -- music, lights, temperature and so on.

I’ll teach it to let friends in by looking at their faces when they ring the doorbell,” the 31-year-old billionaire posted.

“I will teach it to let me know if anything is going on in Max’s (his daughter) room that I need to check on when I’m not with her. On the work side, it’ll help me visualise data in VR (virtual reality) to help me build better services and lead my organisations more effectively,” he further wrote.

His past new year challenges included reading two books every month, learning Mandarin lan-

_

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SUDOKU Game Number # 3451

ginning of this New Year.

“This is just the beginning of things to come from East India’s Premier Cement Manufacturer,” said Jyoti Swaroop Agarwal, President (Sales & Marketing), CMCL “and we are looking forward to bring more pleasant surprises for our valued and loyal customers in coming days”.

Cement Manufacturing Company Ltd. (CMCL) is one of the leading cement players in east India cement market. The company is producing more than 3 million tonnes of cement a year and has increased its market share in North-Eastern market despite challenging economic environment and stiff competition.

guage and meeting a new person every day.

“Every year, I take on a personal challenge to learn new things and grow outside my work at Facebook. The theme for his challenge this year is invention,” he posted.

At Facebook, he spends a lot of time working with engineers to build new things. Some of the most rewarding work involves getting deep into the details of technical projects.

“I do this with Internet.org when we discuss the physics of building solar-powered planes and satellites to beam down internet access. I do this with Oculus when we get into the details of the controllers or the software we’re designing,” Zuckerberg said. ”I do this with Messenger when we discuss our AI to answer any question you have. But it’s a different kind of rewarding to build things yourself, so this year my personal challenge is to do that,” he added.

He also noted that despite all the fears about the technology, he thinks AI can be used to help others.

Some Facebook users who read Zuckerberg’s post suggested names for his personal AI assistant including “Zuckerbot” and “HOME-E.”

DAILY CROSS WORD

CROSSWORD # 3463

Answer Number # 3450

RBI imposes Rs. 1 cr fine on State Bank of Travancore MuMbaI, JaNuarY 4 (PTI): Reserve Bank has imposed a penalty of Rs. 1 crore on an SBI associate bank, State Bank of Travancore, for violation of some of its instructions.

“This action is based on deficiencies in regulatory compliance and is not intended to pronounce upon the validity of any transaction or agreement entered into by the bank and its customers,” RBI said in a statement on Monday.

The monetary penalty has been imposed for violation of its instructions including reporting of data to Central Repository of Information on Large Credits (CRILC), it said.

RBI set up CRILC to collect, store, and disseminate data on all borrowers’ credit exposures.

Banks are required to report all such information here, including classification of an account as SMA (Special Mention Accounts), on all borrowers having aggregate fund-based and non-fund-based exposure of Rs. 5 crore and above.

The statement further said RBI had issued a show cause notice to the bank for not having complied with the directions issued by the bank on submission of accurate data to the CRILC. After considering the bank’s reply, information submitted and documents furnished, RBI came to the conclusion that the bank had violated the instructions or guidelines issued, from time to time, which warranted imposition of monetary penalty on it.

IRB to build southeast Asia’s longest road tunnel MuMbaI, JaNuarY 4 (IaNS): The IRB Infrastructure Developers Ltd. will construct southeast Asia’s longest tunnel at Zozi La, spanning 14.08 km, in Jammu and Kashmir, an official said here on Monday.

It has been issued a letter of intent to construct the tunnel at a cost of Rs.10,050 crore, making it the country’s biggest national highway project in terms of project cost, on a design, build, finance, operate, and transfer (DBFOT) basis, within seven years.

The project will include approaches on NH-1 (Srinagar-Sonmarg-Gumri Road), and provide an allweather connectivity to the Leh-Ladakh region which remains cut-off from the rest of the world during winters.

IRB Infrastructure chairman-cum-managing director Virendra Mhaiskar said that the project of ‘national importance’ has a strategic and socio-economic importance as it will be will provide much-needed all-weather connectivity between Jammu and Kashmir and Leh-Ladakh which remains cut-off during winter to due to heavy snowfall.

“The project involves constructing the 14.08 tunnel, 10.80 km approach roads, with three vertical ventilation shafts, snow gallery of 700 metres and avalance protection measures,” Mhaiskar said.

Hoping to complete the project within the stipulated time-frame (7 years) in the tough Himalayan terrain, he said the concession period for the project is 22 years. Besides, the company would receive semi-annual annuity of Rs.981 crore from the ministry of highways, commencing after completion of construction of the project, twice every year till the end of the concession period.

With this prestigious project, IRB now expands its base to the ninth state in the country and its book increases to Rs.16,430 crore, including 20 Road BOT project, including 14 which are already under operation.

DIMAPUR Civil Hospital:

STD CODE: 03862 232224; Emergency229529, 229474

Metro Hospital: Faith Hospital:

227930, 231081 228846

Shamrock Hospital

228254

Zion Hospital:

231864, 224117, 227337

Police Control Room

228400

Police Traffic Control

232106

East Police Station West Police Station

227607 232181

CIHSR (Referral Hospital)

242555/ 242533

Dimapur hospital

224041, 248011

Apollo Hospital Info Centre:

230695/ 9402435652

Railway:

131/228404

Indian Airlines

229366

Nagaland Multispe- 248302, cialty Health & 09856006026 Research Centre

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O PiCNiCS PARK FOOD

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Police Control Room: North Police Station: South Police Station: Fire Brigade: Naga Hospital: Oking Hospital: Bethel Nursing Home: Northeast Shuttles

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STD CODE: 0370 100/2244279 2222222 2222111 2222952 2222916 2243339 2224202 08974997923

ACROSS

1. Faux pas 5. Look at with fixed eyes 10. Scoundrels 14. Soft drink 15. Spiral-horned antelopes 16. Ends a prayer 17. Air force heroes 18. Indifferent 20. Blend 22. Withhold 23. Frequently, in poetry 24. ___ alia 25. Very tiny 32. Runs in neutral 33. Be in a rush 34. British rule in India 37. Tailless stout-bodied amphibian 38. Dye with wax 39. Flower holder 40. Shade tree 41. Adheres 42. Pig sounds 43. Eye doctor 45. 4-door car 49. 7 in Roman numerals 50. Venus and the Earth 53. Liable to sin 57. Esteem 59. Nile bird

DOWN

1. Fraud 2. Hubs 3. Holly 4. Led a church 5. Women’s garments 6. Melody 7. Commercials 8. Regretted 9. Feudal worker 10. A marker of stones 11. Extent 12. Look closely 13. Contemptuous look 19. Piquant 21. Flying saucers 25. Small amount 26. False god 27. Burrowing marine mollusk 28. Cantillate 29. Surpass 30. Light refractor 31. Bother

34. Hindu princess 35. Demands 36. Joke 38. Hit on the head 39. Virus killer 41. Silly mistake 42. Ear-related 44. Happenings 45. Surplus 46. Church officer 47. A type of small mammal 48. Japanese cartoon art 51. Pack down 52. Blend 53. Publicize 54. Cain’s brother 55. Notch 56. Sounds of disapproval 58. Actress Lupino Ans to CrossWord 3462

WE4WOMEN HELPLINE 08822911011

Police Station 1:

DIMAPUR: 03862-232201/ 101 (O) 9856156876 (OC) CHUMUKEDIMA: 7085982102 (O) 8732810051 (OC)

MOKOKCHUNG: 0369-2226225/ 101 (O) 8415830232 (OC) PHEK: 8414853765 (O) 8413822476(OC) ZUNHEBOTO: 03867-280304/ 101 (O) 9436422730 (OC) TUENSANG: 8414853766 (O) 9856163601 (OC)

KIPHIRE: 8414853767 (O) 9436261577 (OC) PEREN: 7085189932 (O) 9856311205 (OC) LONGLENG: 7085924113 (O) 9862414264 (OC)

Toll free No. 1098 childline

MOKOKCHUNG:

KOHIMA NORTH: 7085924114 (O)

MON: 03869-251222/ 101 (O) 9862130954 (OC)

CHILD WELFARE COMMITTEE 60. 500 sheets 61. Center 62. A pack of playing cards 63. Sea eagle 64. Backsides 65. Large North American deer (plural)

KOHIMA SOUTH: 0370-2222952/ 101 (O) 9402003086 (OC)

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KOHIMA

FIRE STATIONS

STD CODE: 0369

2226241

Police Station 2 :

2226214

Civil Hospital: Woodland Nursing Home:

2226216 2226263

Hotel Metsüpen (Tourist Lodge):

2226373/2229343

TAHAMZAM (formerly Senapati) STD CODE: 03871 Police Station: Fire Brigade

CURRENCY NOTES

222246 222491

BUY(Rs)

SELL(Rs)

US Dollars Sterling Pound Hong Kong Dollar Australian Dollar Singapore Dollar Canadian Dollar Japanese Yen

64.77 96.29 8.09 46.64 45.99 46.39 53.17

67.74 101.02 9.01 48.97 48.27 48.68 56.19

Euro

70.64

74.11

Thai Baht Korean Won New Zealand Dollar Chinese Yuan

1.74

1.94

0.0533

0.0594

44.00

46.19

9.58

10.68

TuesdAY 05•01•2016

NAGALAND/North-EAst

Hazi Park Businessman Welfare Committee elects new president 'People's court' demands Gov recall in AP

DImaPUr, JanUarY 5 (mExn): V Hukato Achumi has been unanimously elected as the President of the Hazi Park Businessman Welfare Committee with immediate effect. Achumi was elected at a general meeting of the members

and shopkeeper of Hazi Park at the Committee Office on January 4, a press note from Advisor, HPBWC Tarun Nandi informed. The Committee also express its sadness over the untimely demise of its President, I Pihoto Awomi on December

KTBWU new team kohIma, JanUarY 4 (mExn): The Kohima Town Baptist Women Union (KTBWU) has elected a new team of office bearers for the year 2016 – 2017. According to a press note from its former President Lucy Tep, the new team will be lead by Alito V. Swü as President; Mary Chang as Secretary; Ruokuovinuo Keyho as Vice President; Ratna as Vice Secretary, L.Naomi as Treasurer; and Ameü Kire, Vegwülü Mere and Lucy Tep as Advisors.

30 and condoled the same. the night of December 30 after a brief illness. Late Pihoto was a sportsman of repute DDSC condoles Meanwhile, the Dima- during his younger days, pur District Sports Coun- Nyuvitho Nyuthe District cil has also expressed its Sports Officer and General sadness to learn about the Secretary, DDSC stated in untimely death of I Pihoto a press condolence adding Awomi, Member DDSC on that the entire DDSC has

lost a very loyal friend and a valued member and the void created will be difficult to fill.

“While expressing our deepest condolences to his family members, we also pray to the Almighty for the eternal peace of the departed soul,” it added.

Itanagar, JanUarY (PtI): Over 30,000 people today demanded immediate recall of Arunachal Pradesh Governor J P Rajkhowa at the 'Arunachal People's Adalat (court)' organised at Rajiv Gandhi stadium in Naharlagun near here today.

"We the people of the state strongly condemn the undemocratic, unethical and unconstitutional act of Governor for trying to destabilise a popularly elected and mandated government, his anti-tribal, anti-development and anti-people approach by encouraging dissidence activities within the ruling party through unscruJubilee choir present special number during the golden jubilee celebration of Kandi Students’ Union pulous means with maliat Kandi on December 31. Morung Photo cious intentions leading to chaos and disharmony," a resolution, read out

Rajnath unhappy with Bangladesh border fencing in Assam gUwahatI, JanUarY 4 (IanS): Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh on Monday said he was not satisfied with the way fencing work was going on along the international border with Bangladesh in Assam's Dhubri district.

The home minister visited the Dhubri sector of the international border on Monday. He arrived in Assam on a two-day visit on Sunday and inspected the international border in Karimganj district.

"I visited the Indo-Bangladesh border in Karim-

ganj sector on Sunday.

Today, I visited the Dhubri sector. Assam has 263 km of international border with Bangladesh. However, I am not satisfied with the way fencing work is going on in Dhubri district," he told the media in Guwahati.

"There are several gaps in the Indo-Bangladesh border in Dhubri district.

However, I feel the border in Dhubri sector will be fenced by December 2017," he added.

Rajnath Singh said the riverine border between India and Bangladesh in

Dhubri sector will also be fenced.

"We have started two pilot projects to fence the riverine border in Dhubri sector. We are waiting for the outcome of the two pilot projects. Based on this, the riverine border will be fenced," he said.

Rajnath Singh was accompanied by union Sports and Youth Affairs Minister and state BJP chief Sarbananda Sonowal, who hails from Assam, and a delegation of the All Assam Students' Union (AASU).

The home minister also

expressed concern over the recurrent flood and erosion problem in Assam, saying the state and the Centre should work in coordination to find a lasting solution.

Rajnath Singh also said he felt the tremor that shook the entire northeastern region on Monday.

"I strongly felt the tremor today. I also received calls from Prime Minister Narendra Modi to coordinate with the affected state governments of the northeast region. I have spoken to most of them and took

stock of the situation," he said.

The Centre stands by the state governments in time of disasters and all necessary help will be provided to the affected states, he said.

The Centre has sent two companies of the National Disaster Response Force (NDRF) to Manipur, he added.

Minister of State for Home Affairs Kiren Rijiju and DoNER minister Jitendra Singh are already in Manipur capital Imphal to monitor the situation.

Stage set for inauguration of LCS in Tripura Chamling undertakes recce agartala, JanUarY 4 (PtI): A multi-facility Land Custom Station (LCS) and Immigration Centre will be inaugurated at Srimantapur in Sipahijala district bordering Bangladesh on Wednesday.

Union Minister of State for Commerce Nirmala Sitharaman will inaugu-

rate the LCS at Srimantapur, about 45 km from the state capital, an official of Tripura Industrial Development Corporation said.

Built at a cost of Rs 16 crore on 2.83 acres land bordering Comilla district of the neighbouring country, the LCS is expected to boost the trade between

Tripura and Bangladesh, the official said.

"This LCS is almost like an integrated checkpost having the facilities like weigh bridge, warehouse, computerised immigration system, bank with currency exchange facility among others," according to the official.

before Modi visit to Sikkim

gangtok, JanUarY 4 (IanS): Expressing concern over security, Sikkim Chief Minister Pawan Chamling on Monday directed top police officials to ensure fool-proof security and undertook a recce ahead of Prime Minister Narendra Modi's visit to the state.

Modi will visit the state for the

Organic Festival in Gangtok later this month. Chamling undertook a recce in and around Gangtok during the day. He said people with "vested interests" might act differently to malign the image of the state, and instructed officials to be "very cautious and serious about the security of the area.

by organising committee chairman and former MP Takam Sanjoy, said.

The Adalat, participated by various ministers, MLAs and mass-based organisations including All Arunachal Pradesh Students' Union (AAPSU) and All Nyishi Students' Union (ANSU), asked the Centre to recall the Governor within 24 hours for losing confidence of the people as his continuation would demoralise the essence of democracy.

The resolution demanded the Centre to take immediate measures to resettle Chakma and Hajong refugees in some other part of the country and protect the tribal right, cultures of the strategic and sensitive state from outside influence.

The state government

was also urged to take legal action against former finance minister and dissident leader Kalikho Pul for creating social disharmony and division through his recent remarks against the Nyishi community.

HC hearing on Assembly continues Meanwhile, the Gauhati High Court today heard a batch of interlocutory applications filed by Arunachal Pradesh Assembly's Deputy Speaker Kalikho Pul and some MLAs to vacate or modify the Court's earlier order of keeping the Assembly's December 16 proceedings in abeyance. Justice B K Sharma, after hearing the applications, fixed the case for further hearing tomorrow.

M'laya HC 'closes' state right to file affidavits ShIllong, JanUarY 4 (PtI): The Meghalaya High Court today 'closed' the right of the state government to file affidavits on the provisions of Meghalaya Lokayukta Act, 2014, that allows a non-judicial member to head it, after the chief secretary did not file a comprehensive affidavit on the matter. "We have asked the Chief Secretary only to file a comprehensive affidavit which he has not done.

Thus, we close the right of State to file affidavit," a division bench headed by Chief Justice Uma Nath Singh said in its order. The bench said that despite a detailed order passed by this court last year (on December 17), Chief Secretary P B O Warjri has not filed affidavit.

The High Court had directed the state government to file affidavit on the provisions of Section 3 of Meghalaya Lokayuk-

ta Act, 2014, which allows non-judicial members to be appointed as the Chairperson of the Lokayukta in the state. Justice Singh also said that though the state has decided to file a Special Leave Petition in the Supreme Court, until there is an order of stay, the proceedings pending before this Court cannot be stalled merely on such statements. The next hearing is on January 7.

Feasibility study to stop infiltration: HM gUwahatI, JanUarY 4 (PtI): Expressing dissatisfaction over the progress of border fencing, Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh on Monday said the Centre is doing a feasibility study by carrying out two pilot projects for sealing the international riverine border along AssamBangladesh. "A feasibility study is on to see what we should do to stop infiltra-

tion through riverine route.

Already two pilot projects are going on. We will observe the outcome of those and if they are successful, then we will adopt them in some places," Singh told a press conference here.

The government will initiate strong measures to prevent infiltration from Bangladesh after the feasibility report comes out, the Union Home Minister added.

Singh, on a two-day visit to Assam for inspecting the international border in Karimganj and Dhubri districts, said he is not "happy" with the work going on at present.

Singh, who was accompanied by All Assam Students Union representatives in the border inspection, said the Centre is willing to discuss with the organisation for fulfilling the clauses of the Assam Accord.

Public SPace

NAGAMESE NEEDS REFINEMENT WITH A SCRIPT OF ITS OWN

L

anguage is the most powerful tool of communication where the standard of language influences the education and social developments. Language also brings about unity and belongingness in the sphere of social cohesiveness that ultimately becomes the bonding factor.

Nevertheless, our conscience of accepting the potpourri lingua-franca

(Nagamese) was never in the best of our choice may be but circumstance of circumspect lingual diversities among the various tribes of Nagas the very nagamese cropped up to supplement the communication gaps.

Now, the very pidgin dialect is being spoken not only by the Nagas but widely ramified to neighboring states as well but was never put into formal

communication for the fact that it had not been scheduled then.

Anticipating the lingual setback, the Hon’ble Prime Minister of India Narendra Modi made a herald declaration on 22nd Dec.2015 to promulgate Nagamese to the status of a language could be taken as a shower of blessing in disgust but the reality can take a good beating if the Nagas failed to think

Homage to Fr.(L) Joseph Edukkadan SDB

M

s Roni Daiho Pao, myself and late Neli K. Phimu, one of the crew of the ill fated Air India (AI) Kanishka plane crash killing all the 268 on board in the Irish shores in 1985 were the first students of the opening day of the Little Flower School (LFS) then at the Nirmalabas school, Gandhi Avenue, Imphal in 1958 (exact year?) from Poumai and Memai (Mao) tribes.

When the school was to shift to the present Kwakeithel, boys of class V were to discontinue prosecuting their next higher class and they spread out in different schools of Imphal. Myself, one Shanti, one Chinese Henry Mao joint the Don Bosco School (DBS) Chingmeirong Imphal, where father late Joseph Edukkadan was the headmaster, a very strict disciplinarian.

Despite my weakness in mathematics, my family desires I should take up a professional course after HSLC examination. In the course of time, myself and a senior brother approach Fr. Joseph Edukkadan for

transfer certificate for admission in the Bengali High School, Imphal. But, Fr. Joseph Edukkadan refused time and again.

Then, I was one of the DBS first group to appear HSLCE as full fledged high school and passed out in 1966.

In introspection, I may not have passed the HSLC examination, had I left the school and boarding to stay out without a proper guardian, due to awkward environment of Imphal at that time. As the Meitei youth were in transitional stage of eating pork and dog meat with liquors which were available in plenty and very cheap then in places where there were tribal.

In the boarding, I was one of the unusual. But, Fr. Joseph Edukkadan and old Fr. Wolloston a white migrant from Burma (Myanmar) have soft corner on me. May be, because, I could not speak lies or may be, as I was from one of the first Catholic family in Mao area.

After 3 decades or so, I met my old headmaster at Tadubi and later at the Don

Bosco School Maram and had close door meet. Later, whenever, I meet Salesians of Don Bosco (SDB) priests, I enquire of Fr. Joseph and asked to convey my love, regards and to remember me in his prayers.

On 24.12.2014 and in subsequent days, I came across in the Nagaland, Manipur and Hills Hornbill Express newspapers that Fr. Joseph, a great educator responsible for hundreds of successful people in the government, public affairs in Assam, Manipur and Nagaland states left this earth on 22-12-2014 as billions who left before him.

I am not a holy man but, pray that Lord Jesus forgive his sins and sooner admit his soul from purgatory into paradise. Fr. Joseph, when you are in the land of the angels, saints and good people, please look down upon your past and present Bosconians and guide, help not to fall into sins and that, we be worthy of God’s love and be in His grace.

Patrick A Kolakhe Ex-Bosconian Tadubi Bazar Senapati District.

and act logically which otherwise can also be another collective failure.

Nonetheless, the reality of Nagamese is that it heavily entangled with Hindi, Bangali, Assamese, Nepalis and English that shaped itself into potpourri communication tool (Bazar dialect) has its own shortfall in various aspects which, no one has ever gone into its dept study so far. Whereas,

once it is promulgated to the status of a language certain required criteria will be imminent that we need to pave the way by establishing a Nagamese literature committee. This is because, other intricate vocabularies may be OK but one-fifth of the system is laced up with English words, which otherwise appears too obscure as English by itself is universal scheduled language.

over have script of their own, evolved inclined to their vocabularies and intonation. Similarly, trying to apply roman to the Nagamese can definitely lead to nowhere rather it will create a big confusion to the extent of laughing stock before the intellectual world communities.

Therefore, will not it be imperative to come up with the idea of having a script of our own that will ultimately

augment not only the status of our language (Nagamese) but promote us in every aspect to live in dignity as a competent nation especially when we are at the threshold of finding a solution for free and independent Naga nation. Please take it gently that I may be too assertive about my work but derailing the facts will neither lead to our cherished goal.

A

The New Year Challenge to Nagas

and the main root cause of trouble is clearly mentioned in Ps. 9:15 says "the Nations (Nagas) have fallen into the pit they have dug; their feet are caught in the net they have hidden" this is exactly what we are :sing through and struggling for. Therefore let us retrospect our past mistakes and ask God His wisdom and grace so that nothing is impossible for Him. Lastly but not the least, I would humbly appeal the entire leaders of our National Workers (NPGs) to unite together in one accord and sit together in the room of peace and reason ourselves by asking God's wisdom and come together under common platform and decide our future in collective and constructive manner. I. also humbly encourage the leaders of different civil societies, elected members, church leaders, intellectuals etc, to guide and join hands with the NPGs and work together for the peaceful and permanent settlement of our long protracted Naga Political Problems, for the welfare of the Nagas in general "United we stand, divided we fall" May the Almighty God bless our Nagaland.

t the outset I wish a very happy and prosperous New Year to everyone. The old has passed and the new has begun to countdown a day after another which every one of us have to go through. Just as the New Year has come to us let us renew out heart and mindset and pledge to bring a historic change and peaceful settlement of our long protracted Indo-Naga Political Problem within this year 2016.

In fact we have been expecting a new dimension and a paradigm shift on Indo-Naga issue in the year 2015. But it has been the year of empuzzlement and discouragement that compelled the entire Naga citizen to face the state of uncertainty and hopelessness and has put a big question into the minds of every citizen, a big question and made us stand in crossroad point.

However, whatever past has gone will never come back, therefore let us keep aside all those past realities of blunders and division in every aspect of our Naga Political Issue. Beside, being a Christian state and a nation belongs to God and the "Prince of Peace" (Jesus Christ). We are compelled to

have tolerance and patience of mind. Indeed we have been going through difficult situations of the sense of prejudice and division, and could not live up to the standard of Christian principle.

As we analyze our political movement in the light of biblical saying in Roman 5:1. says "therefore since we have been justified through faith, we have peace with God through our lord Jesus Christ". Besides it is obvious that we the Nagas claims ourselves a peace loving people and claims that we belong to Christ the "Prince of Peace". However when we analize the present political context, we are still lacking in matter of "Peace, Unity and Justice". As such everybody knows the reality of Naga Political Movement and the weakness of the leaders of different groups/factions (NPGs) and some leaders of various organisation.

However many of us do not want to voice out the message of truth and justice.

Therefore let all citizen of Nagaland stand firm and come to the sense of Unity and Justice and voice out against this dangerous virus of dis-

Here, should the Nagamese be really promulgated and scheduled as a language, surely there needs a deep research on grammatical competency, update with scientific knowledge, formal presentation etc. and to do these we badly needed a competent script (Alphabet) of our own.

Well, it will be pertinent to understand that most of the languages the world

unity. Let us also study ourselves and reason together about question of whether we maintain peaceful relationship with God or not?

But to my opinion, we do not maintain this relation-ship in practical, As such if we have the real pee with God, I believe there is no difficulty nor unnecessarily spent time to unite and make peaceful relationship among NPGs. Besides, as we have celebrated the Christmas a few days back in remembrance of the coming of Christ "the Prince of Peace on earth".

But we do not realize and practice the peaceful nature as a Christian and does not bosses the spirit of peace and unity.

Indeed the real factor that causes division and disunity among NPGs is the "lack of peace and lack of true principle of nationalism" when we go through John 14:27, Jesus says "Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. I do not give to you as the world gives...." therefore let us receive the peace which is the gift of our lord by His grace and put it into our daily practical life.

Infact many people are

trying to establish peaceful environment through money power. As such some are trying to sell and buy peace with money. This type of dirty business will never last long rather it will take us to tomb in the end.

Therefore let us come to the sense of real humanity and uphold the real joy of peace and harmony by accepting the Peace of Christ and acknowledge our mistakes before God the Creator of our beautiful hilly country just as the Ps. 2:6-8 says "I have installed my king on Zion (Nagaland) my holy hill, I will proclaim the degree of the lord; He said to me, you are my Son; today I have become your father. Ask of me, and I will make the Nations (Nagaland) your inheritance, the ends of the earth your possession". Thus says the lord to the Nagas today, this is the wonderful and true promise of God the Creator of our land. Therefore let us seek God's Kingdom and His righteousness, so that whatever we ask, shall be given to us through our lord Jesus Christ.

Besides, the main problem we are facing today

N. HAISOYI NDANG Lower Bayavu Kohima

N. Mar. Ao Burma Camp Dimapur

The Morung Express is introducing “Public Space” as part of our intention to provide deliberate space for the opinions of the people to be expressed and heard through this newspaper. Nonetheless, The Morung Express points out that the opinions expressed in the contents published in the “Public Space” do not reflect the views and position of the newspaper or the editor.

tuesDAY 05•01•2016

IN FOCUS

6

THE MORUNG EXPRESS

The Power of Truth

The Morung Express Xivolume issue 3 X issue 185 Thursday 9volume July 2015

‘Supervised Independence’ as a peaceful solution to conflict

I

n March 2007 the United Nations (UN) Special Envoy for Kosovo emphasized that, “Kosovo is a unique case that demands a unique solution,” and recommended independence as “the only viable option” for Kosovo, which involved an initial period of supervised independence from Serbia. The recommendation made by Martti Ahtisaari, former President of Finland to the UN, was remarkable in the light of the fact that the UN had for many years been a strong advocate for protecting state territory and state interest. Interestingly, between 1948 and 1991 the only case of independence recognized by the UN was that of Bangladesh.

Ahtisaari’s observed that, “Upon careful consideration of Kosovo's recent history, the realities of Kosovo today and taking into account negotiations with the parties, I have come to the conclusion that the only viable option for Kosovo is independence to be supervised for an initial period by the international community.” This was a radical and historical departure from conventional peacemaking approaches, as well as one that demonstrated political astuteness in addressing deeprooted conflicts of self-determination. He went on to say that his recommendation provided “the foundation for future independent Kosovo that is viable, sustainable and stable and in which all communities and their members can live a peaceful and dignified existence.”

This recommendation comes across as quite progressive, even revolutionary, in contrast to the current trends of political diplomacy and negotiations which have largely been statecentered with the intent to ensure the continued status-quo of state national security over human security. Clearly this demonstrates that if one is deeply committed to peace, then using pragmatic and realistic approaches are essential in order to break away from traditional approaches. This unique recommendation served as a milestone reaffirming the point that it is the denial of self-determination that is the cause of conflict.

And, hence, the restoration of the right to self-determination forms the basis of a negotiated peace.

History has shown that rigid positions and dogmatic approaches to deep rooted conflicts have not just proved to be futile efforts, but have only threatened possible viable solutions.

Therefore, one key implication of Ahtisaari’s recommendation showed the constant presence of possibilities when creative and imaginative ways are derived to resolve conflicting interests. Peacebuilding requires foresight and willingness to co-create and implement alternatives in the midst of violence and division. This proposal revealed that the more important resolution was regarding how people exercise their independence, and not necessarily the status they arrive at.

The spirit of Ahtisaari’s approach to a peaceful intervention and creatively finding ‘out-of-the-box solutions’ is still relevant today. It would do this world some good to have more courageous and pragmatic diplomats with strong political convictions to pursue justpeace based on values of human security and inclusion, rather than on fear and violence.

As the Nagas enter 2016, it would be prudent on our part to courageously and wisely take steps into an uncertain future by creating out of the box solution based on values and principle, rather than sustaining an unjust status quo.

lEfT wiNg |

Sheikh Qayoom IANS

Storytelling in Kashmir: An Art allowed to die unsung

W

inter in Kashmir has not always been a period of bone-chilling cold and misery. It has also been the magical backdrop to the unending narrative of traditional storytellers in the past that would transport the young and the old to fairylands of princes, princesses, demons, djinns, mythical birds and wooden horses that could fly.

Both in Srinagar city and the countryside, long and dull winter nights were brought alive by storytellers who had mastered the art in such a manner that they would specially be invited for night-long sessions.

"As radio, cinema and television came to Kashmir, the demand for the storytellers died down gradually till the present times when the younger generation of Kashmiris don't even know anything about this tradition", said Noor-ud-Din, an octogenarian who lives in Ganderbal district.

The storyteller would come to the village with regular periodicity during the winter months in the past and the event was no less than a small village celebration.

"Children and elders would all gather around the storyteller whose session would begin after dinner. He would sit in the centre of a large room surrounded by his audience. The room would be lit in village homes by an oil-lamp and in well-to-do urban homes by a kerosene lantern since electricity was not even heard of in our childhood," said Habibullah Dar, another resident of the same district.

Dar's uncle called 'Wali Maam' was a master storyteller.

"He belonged to Anantnag district. He would come to our village for a few weeks during the 'Chillai Kalan' (40-day long period of intense cold beginning December 21). The entire village would wait eagerly for his visit. After dinner, he would begin his stories that often revolved around fairylands, lovesmitten princes, demons, the mythical birds called the 'Rooks' which would lift a person and take him to the 'Koh-e-Kaff' (A far off mountain).

"The changing colours of Wali Maam's face were so intriguing that the audience would forget the biting cold outside as the magic of shadows thrown by the faint light of the oil lamp added to the suspense inside the room," Dar said.

It was an endless narrative that would be interrupted in the morning only to be resumed the next evening, Dar recalled.

He strongly believed the celluloid stars of today could learn the art of articulation and dialogue rendering from Wali Maam. "His voice would rise and fall as if he was on board with the prince who had invented a wooden horse that would fly to the fairyland of his lady love. The prince had to fight the demon who had carried his beloved to the land of djinns and beasts. You couldn't fall asleep as rounds of 'Kehwa' would continue for the entire night to keep the audience alert.

"It was so participative that in between his narrative, the storyteller would ask someone in the audience to repeat the last line of the tale.

"This is perhaps what you people in today's world call interactive audience," Dar said as he laughed.

However long the winter night and the narrative of the storyteller, the conclusion was inescapable - the triumph of good over evil.

"Storytelling in the past was not just an art to keep you amused during the dull and dark winter nights. It was a lesson in morality in which the mighty demons and power villains would always lose to the hero who embodied love, sincerity and compassion", Noor-ud-Din said.

While folk theatre and Sufiyana music are being revived in Kashmir, it is time the art of storytelling is also preserved as the grand heritage of this land.

C O M M E N T A R Y

John Feffer Foreign Policy in Focus

Japan & South Korea: A New Beginning?

Japan and South Korea have reached an agreement on the "comfort women" issue that has made a lot of people uncomfortable

J

apan and South Korea have very close alliances with the United States. They also have had diplomatic relations with each other for 50 years, not to mention considerable trade back and forth during that time. At a popular level, many Japanese are wild about Korean bulgogi and soap operas while many Koreans love Japanese sushi and anime.

That doesn’t mean, however, that the two countries are particularly close. For decades, the legacy of Japanese colonialism and wartime conduct has remained a major stumbling block to improved relations.

South Korea and Japan spar over interpretations of that history, particularly as represented in textbooks. They also have a very concrete dispute over a particular island (Dokdo). But perhaps the most painful disagreement between the two countries has been over the “comfort women” issue.

An agreement this week on the “comfort women” issue—between Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and South Korean President Park Geun-Hye— may finally put the matter to rest. But not everyone in the Korean community is happy with the deal.

A Sensitive Issue As part of its expansionism in the early part of the 20th century, the Japanese Army dragooned as many as 200,000 young women and girls—from Korea, China, the Philippines, and elsewhere in the Asia-Pacific region—into sexual slavery. The practice began in 1931, when Japan occupied Manchuria, and the army wanted to prevent Japanese soldiers from raping Chinese women. At first, the army relied on prostitutes. By 1937, however, the army expanded the pool to those tricked into service or simply forced to participate against their will, including girls as young as 10. They were made to service as many 30-40 Japanese soldiers per day. Korea, a Japanese colony since 1910, provided the bulk of the involuntary participants.

For years after the war, Japanese officials focused on the first part of the story, insisting that the “comfort women” were prostitutes volunteering for the assignment. They also pointed to the 1965 agreement that established diplomatic relations between Japan and South Korea—and provided $800 million in various forms of compensation—as taking care of all colonial and wartime issues. Particularly as it became a democratic society in the late 1980s, South Korea began to reopen many wartime issues, including this issue of sexual slavery (and the even more sensitive question of Korean collaboration in the process).

Only in 1993 did Tokyo finally acknowledge the second, much darker part of the story that involved systematized rape. According to the Kono Statement, named after the Japanese government’s chief spokesman, Tokyo admitted that: The then Japanese military was, directly or indirectly, involved in the establishment and management of the comfort stations and the transfer of comfort women. The recruitment of the comfort women was conducted mainly by private recruiters who acted in response to the request of the military.

It also provided an apology: Undeniably, this was an act, with the involvement of the military authorities of the day, that severely injured the honor and dignity of many women. The Government of Japan would like to take this opportunity once again to extend its sincere apologies and remorse to all those, irrespective of place of origin, who suffered immeasurable pain and incurable physical and psychological wounds as comfort women.

Two years later, the Japanese government also established a fund to compensate the “comfort women.” The money came from private Japanese businesses.

Although the “comfort women” had been calling for an apology and compensation, the Kono

South Korean police stand guard beside a comfort woman statue in front of the Japanese embassy in Seoul.

Statement did not meet their demands. The apology didn’t come from the prime minister nor was it approved by the Diet, and it shifted the responsibility for the brothel system entirely onto the shoulders of the Japanese military. Moreover, the compensation didn’t come from the Japanese government but rather from private sources. Although some “comfort women” took the compensation package, many did not. And the South Korean government considered the apology insufficient as well.

At the same time, however, many Japanese conservatives were outraged at even this mild statement from their government. Denial of the existence of the system of sexual slavery was part of a larger conservative narrative in which imperial Japan acted strictly by the book during the Great Pacific War – no Nanking Massacre, no prisoner camp atrocities, no medical experimentation a la Joseph Mengele.

When the champion of the hard right in Japan, Shinzo Abe, became prime minister, he initially parroted their views on “comfort women.” In 2007, he told the press, “There was no evidence to prove there was coercion as initially suggested.” His comments initiated a fresh wave of outrage in Korea.

Japan’s About-Face?

Shinzo Abe is now on his second tour as Japanese prime minister. He has continued to court the far right by, among other things, visiting Yasukuni Shrine in 2013. But Abe has a larger agenda. He wants to usher in a new era for the Japanese military as a “normal” force that engages in offensive actions, effectively overturning the country’s “peace constitution.” And he is eager to secure a permanent seat for Japan on the UN Security Council.

To achieve these goals, however, Abe must silence the critics who believe that Japan is not sufficiently contrite about its military past. Since South Korea is a major international player—and a key U.S. ally—Abe must somehow repair relations with Seoul. This year was the 50thanniversary of the 1965 agreement, as well as the 70th anniversary of the end of World War II, so Abe’s gambit was well timed.

The latest agreement is a step forward from the Kono Statement. This time, it was the prime minister himself who made the apology. And the money for the compensation fund, to be administered by the South Korean government, will come not from private Japanese businesses but from the Japanese government itself.

But many South Koreans remain skeptical. They don’t trust Abe, in part because of his earlier statements on the matter. And they have their doubts about Park Geun-Hye as well. The South Korean prime minister has been constrained in her remarks about Japanese conduct during World War II in part because her father, the South Korean authoritarian leader Park Chung-Hee, had been a collaborator

with the Japanese army.

And for those who have been struggling against the historical amnesia of Japanese government officials, the wording of the recent agreement is still too vague. One of the key organizations representing the “comfort women”—the Korean Council for the Women Drafted for Military Sexual Slavery by Japan—issued a statement condemning the agreement: Although the Japanese government announced that it “feels [its] responsibilities,” the statement lacks the acknowledgment of the fact that the colonial government and its military had committed a systematic crime. The government had not just been simply involved but actively initiated the activities which were criminal and illegal. Also, the apology was not directly made by the Prime Minister himself as the official representative of the government but was read by a diplomatic representative, while it was unclear to whom he was actually apologizing. Hence it is hard to believe if it was a sincere apology.

In addition, the announcement specified that Korean government will be responsible for establishing the foundation, despite the fact that Japanese government must be actively involved in follow-up initiatives, including acknowledgement of its criminal responsibilities and legal reparations. It appears that Japan will pass the future responsibilities on to the government of the victims’ country after simply paying off the money.

Another point of contention is the statue in front of the Japanese embassy in Seoul. Erected in 2011, the statue depicts a young girl sitting on a chair and looking with great emotion at the embassy. Tokyo has long complained about the statue. As part of the agreement, the South Korean government promised to “address this issue” (the Japanese government would probably have appreciated less vagueness on this aspect of the deal).

It’s not just one silent statue, however. Since 1992, protestors have gathered every Wednesday in front of the Japanese embassy in Seoul to stage a protest on the “comfort woman” issue. This week, hundreds of people angry about the agreement joined the protest. Meanwhile, the Chinese government has deemed the deal insufficient, the Taiwanese are pushing for a comparable agreement, and the main Filipino organization of “comfort women” wants the government in Manila to take advantage of the new situation to press their case more effectively.

The governments in Tokyo and Seoul, under pressure from Washington, are willing to move on.

With the number of survivors dwindling every year, perhaps they reason that soon the issue will soon effectively disappear. But memories are long in South Korea, and Abe’s larger agenda of increasing Japan’s military and diplomatic influence is far from winning over all its skeptics.

What if the Aborigines had Colonized England?

I

n 1988 a legendary Aboriginal leader claimed possession of England. What were his plans for Colonization?

We will teach you how to have a spiritual relationship with the Earth and show you how to get bush tucker – Burnum Burnum

When England ‘discovered’ the land now known as Australia in the late 1700s, they planted a flag and declared it their own by claiming it was uninhabited. This was despite the fact that the contintent had been lived in – and cared for – by hundreds of sovereign Aboriginal Nations for thousands and thousands of years.

The British settlers went on to violently remove families, communities, tribes and nations from their ancestral land in the name of colonization, first cutting down ancient forests and introducing non-native animals and pests, and later by poisoning waterways and building cities where beautiful ecosystems once stood.

The colonizers took away the Aborigines’ right to practice their own culture and forced upon them one that had little respect for the environment, and little concept of equal rights for all people. They stole their hunting and gathering grounds and gave them white flour and Coca Cola. They took away their access to native medicines and gave them alcohol and drugs.

It was a tragedy of immense propor-

tions. Our most ancient culture on Earth decimated. Wisdom and knowledge of the ages gone forever. Generations of children still living in trauma and confusion. But what if it had been the other way around? If Indigenous Australians had colonized England, what would they have done differently?

Taking Possession of England on Behalf of Indigenous Australians Burnum Burnum was an Indigenous Australian of the Woiworung and Yorta Yorta tribes on the south coast of New South Wales. A member of the Stolen Generation, he was taken from his family as a boy and placed into institutions designed to squeeze the ‘blackness’ out of half caste children.

Despite the tragedy of forced removal and living through intense discrimination against his people and culture, he went on to become a legendary Indigenous leader and activist who is best known for planting an Aboriginal flag on English soil and ceremonially taking possession of England on behalf of his people.

Times Obituary, 1997

His full declaration (below) is a stark contrast to the colonial policies of the early British settlers and the legalized discrimination of many Australian governments that followed. But more impor tantly, it highlights the very un-colonial Aboriginal nature of inclusiveness and understanding, love for all people, and respect for all of Creation.

wRiTE-wiNg

Gray beard flowing, brown eyes flashing, he made a speech full of barbed allusions to the treatment of the Aborigines by the English settlers of Australia. No harm, he promised, would come to England’s ‘native people’ from his invasion. – New York

THE BURNUM BURNUM DECLARATION – ENGLAND, 26th JANUARY, 1988 “I Burnum Burnum, being a nobleman of ancient Australia do hereby take possession of England on behalf of the Aboriginal People.

In claiming this colonial outpost, we wish no harm to you natives, but assure you that we are here to bring you good manners, refinement and an opportunity to make a Koopartoo – “a fresh start.”

Henceforth, an Aboriginal face shall appear on your coins and stamps to signify our sovereignty over this domain.

For the more advanced, we bring the complex language of the Pitjantjajara; we will teach you how to have a spiritual relationship with the Earth and show you how to get bush tucker.

We do not intend to souvenir, pickle

and preserve the heads of 2,000 of your people, nor to publicly display the skeletal remains of your Royal Highness, as was done to our Queen Truganinni for 80 years. Neither do we intend to poison your waterholes, lace your flour with strychnine or introduce you to highly toxic drugs.

Based on our 50,000 year heritage, we acknowledge the need to preserve the Caucasian race as of interest to antiquity, although we may be inclined to conduct experiments by measuring the size of your skulls for levels of intelligence. We pledge not to sterilize your women, not to separate your children from their families.

We give an absolute undertaking that you shall not be placed into the mentality of government handouts for the next five generations but you will enjoy the full benefits of Aboriginal equality.

At the end of two hundred years, we will make a Treaty to validate occupation by peaceful means and not by conquest.

Finally, we solemnly promise not to make a quarry of England and export your valuable minerals back to the old country Australia, and we vow never to destroy three-quarters of your trees, but to encourage Earth Repair Action to unite people, communities, religions and nations in a common, productive, peaceful purpose.

Signed – Burnum Burnum” Source: Uplift

Letters to the Editor should be sent to: The morung express, House No. 4, Duncan Bosti, Dimapur - 797112, Or –email: morung@gmail.com All letters (including those via email) should have the full name and Postal address of the sender.

Readers may please note that the contents of the articles, letters and opinions published do not reflect the outlook of this paper nor of the Editor in any form.

tuesDAY 05•01•2016

PERSPECTIVE

THE MORUNG EXPRESS

"Conservation" Is Used to Justify the Displacement of Indigenous Peoples

A

theory, however elegant and economical must be rejected or revised if it is untrue. Likewise laws and institutions no matter how efficient and well-arranged must be reformed or abolished if they are unjust - John Rawls, A Theory

of Justice Echoing the pleas of illegally displaced tribal peoples in a number of countries, a leading human rights NGO has called the loss of home, livelihoods, culture and customary rights in the name of conservation, "one of the most urgent and horrific humanitarian crises of our time"[1]. Such concerns are often absent from the narratives of the international conservation establishment. When they are addressed, it tends to be at the fringes, the magnitude of the crisis not appreciated.

Instead, what we usually hear from international conservation organizations is that parks, game reserves and other kinds of protected areas are the most important conservation success story and should be extended, improved, and strengthened worldwide. Recent research that provided a preamble to the November 2014 World Parks Congress, for instance, argued similarly that "protected areas are core to the future of life on our planet," requiring larger coverage, representation and better management and funding. Such assertions require reflection.

It is true that, in many cases, protected areas are allowing critical species and ecosystems to persist, and in this way they provide a cushion of hope in our ability to preserve some of the world's remaining natural wealth. Biodiversity is often higher inside of protected areas than outside. They can provide opportunities for improving health and well-being, support human life through invaluable environmental services, and offer opportunities for new forms of economic development and financial mechanisms, including through tourism, payments for ecosystem services, offsets, and bioprospecting. Yet the strategy based on protected areas, which defines conservation success in terms of spatial control, fails to tackle the most significant challenges to preserving biodiversity.

The celebration of protected areas hides ways in which the perpetuation of exclusionary conservation in many countries does not protect against so-called "development" so much as it mirrors it, as extractive industries, agribusiness, and conservation alike encroach into community and indigenous lands, and hinder local people's ability to manage and be sustained by their territories, and to play a role in fostering biodiversity.

The "Promise" of the World Parks Congress has encouragingly identified the role and rights of aboriginal peoples within community-based systems. It also pledges to "seek to redress and remedy past and continuing injustices in accord with international agreements." Yet, state- and privatelymanaged conservation pursuits undertaken within former and current aboriginal ancestral territories, exercise ever greater control over large, highly biodiverse landscapes, without the needed scrutiny and appropriate responses to rights violations. The Promise's call "to ensure that protected areas do not regress but rather progress" demands that more attention be paid to territorial jurisdiction and stewardship by indigenous peoples and local communities.

Predatory and Perilous Conservation The idea that state conservation agencies and large international conservation NGOs have pursued their agendas at the expense of indigenous and local communities is not new. In 2003 for instance, at the fifth World Parks Congress in Durban, issues of justice and human rights were put on the table.[5] The following year, an important paper by anthropologist Mac Chapin called the conservation establishment to account for how it had dealt with indigenous communities[6]. Since then, governments endorsed and adopted the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, and work has been underway to clarify, implement and uphold rights, including in the context of conservation standards.

However, what lasting effect this kind of attention to human rights issues has had on the practice of state conservation is not clear. Evidence of the negative social impact of state managed conservation continues to pile up. In 2009, Dowie's Conservation Refugees exposed how conservation organizations have become one of the biggest threats to indigenous peoples all over the world[8]. Moreover, research efforts continue to document the trampling of community rights through the accumulation of land and resources by government conservation agencies, their international NGO partners, and corporate tourism. Dispossession, forced resettlement and violation of the rights of local communities in places targeted for conservation have recently been documented in India, Thailand, and Central and Eastern Africa.

Despite the sheer volume of cases of forced evictions and destroyed livelihoods, the prominent message from last year's World Parks Congress was clear and simple: let there be no retreat; let every country play its part in the push to achieve protected area targets; let the park rangers have more support in their war against poachers! This trend once again compels an examination of a global conservation strategy which in many countries signifies the continuation of policies of forced resettlement in order to create, extend and strengthen state managed parks and game reserves.

To appreciate the impacts of current approaches to conservation, one only needs to take a quick look at some of the most park-friendly countries, such as Tanzania whose protected areas cover no less than one-third of the country's territory. In Tanzania, a barrage of factors frustrate conservation efforts, including climate change, a growing human population, poverty, unsustainable resource use outside of protected areas, encroachment into park lands, and most notably an overwhelming poaching crisis. The steady expansion of the protected area network together with the need to combat the unprecedented level of organized poaching of iconic wildlife species such as elephants and rhinos have been accompanied by a relentless push for escalating security budgets.

Yet these challenges only partially describe the nature of the problem facing conservation in the country today.

Tanzania's pattern of forcibly displacing ancestral communities from their land and significantly hindering mobile people's ability to seasonally access needed resources, while the tourism industry and the government conservation agencies continue to accumulate territory may be the most fundamental challenge to the conservation of biodiversity in the country[12].

On one side, disillusioned communities surrounding parks and game reserves, once stewards of their own environments, have been divested of all but tiny remnants of their ancestral lands or have been fully dispossessed, leading to destroyed livelihoods, out-migration and social conflict. Peoples integrally connected to their natural environment, such as the Maasai of Loliondo, and communities who in the past proactively reached out to seek a partnership with the government to implement conservation, such as Uvinje on Tanzania's northern coast, have been stripped of their tenure rights and their ability to properly care for themselves and the wildlife, and portrayed as enemies of conservation. On the other side, there are the comparatively well-funded activities of an entrenched conservation machinery. Under their watch, wildlife has been imperilled by organized criminal poaching taking advantage of corruption and by ill-managed trophy hunting.

Similar stories can be told about other countries, with poaching ironically reaching alarming and critical levels inside protected areas. Yet overall, protected areas have come to be widely regarded as the best or even the only

hope for nature's survival.

To what extent this is a response to increased opportunities for international assistance and investment in tourism, a defensive reaction against mining and other forms of economic development that result in destruction of habitat, or a result of skepticism about the ability of human beings to live in harmony with nature, is unclear. Probably all of these factors are playing a role.

Regardless, protected areas are — under the premise the ends justify the means— being pursued at any price and by any means possible. For indigenous and rural communities who live on land targeted for conservation by the state or by conservation NGOs, even when they have been stalwart stewards of the ecosystems they inhabit, the result is devastating.

The Culture of Conservation Unfortunately, as long as we remain resigned to a culture of conservation that treats human beings as the enemy and that turns a blind eye to violations of human rights, the approach will be self-defeating. Current declines in biodiversity are not primarily a result of gaps in the number, extent and representation of parks and other kinds of protected areas, nor is the decline of iconic species caused by insufficiently strict exclusion of poor rural people from their traditional territories. What we are seeing are the consequences of a fundamentally misguided strategy being pursued by global and national conservation establishments. There are three essential problems with this strategy.

First, the pursuit of conservation through the creation of boundaries and enclosures which divide communities and nature and place nature under the strict control of powerful, unaccountable non-local institutions can only work to the extent that protected areas can be buffered from social discontent beyond their boundaries—an essentially impossible task. The marginalization and dispossession of indigenous peoples and rural communities in the name of conservation, the capturing of the tourism dollars and other economic benefits of conservation by local and national elites and by international investors, and the militarization of protected areas can only lead to increasing social conflict and disillusionment with the very idea of conservation and with the organizations promoting it. Cash payouts as a part of "benefit sharing", even when they do actually materialize, even when they do amount to something more than crumbs, cannot compensate for losing one's livelihood, cultural bearings, land and home.

In contrast to this trend is the growing recognition from both researchers and practitioners that biological diversity is intrinsically connected to cultural diversity, and that indigenous peoples and local communities enrich the practice of conservation. Indeed, where indigenous and local communities have been able to secure their rights to govern their territories as well as implement their values and outlook on protected areas and conservation, positive conservation outcomes have been achieved, and productive partnerships and new forms of collaboration have developed.

Conversely, the failure to acknowledge this has prevented national governments and the conservation establishment from benefiting from traditional ecological knowledge, from grassroots social and institutional experience in sustainably managing ecosystems, and from the home-grown, heartfelt conservation ethic which people who live on and from the land so often possess. We cannot expect to achieve conservation when the means of doing so violate the welfare of those who have fostered biodiversity.

Second, the dominant approach seems to ignore the fact that we live in an interconnected world, where local processes have global consequences and vice versa. What happens beyond parks is as critical as what happens within them, often more so. The international trade in engendered species, climate change, and the destruction of habitat by conflicts and by industrial resource extraction all affect indigenous and rural communities whose traditional territories lie within and adjacent to parks, but are not caused by them. This problem was identified at the recent World Parks Congress: The failure of the IUCN and the conservation sector to take seriously the surge in mining, extractive industries and other forms of development has put into question the integrity of protected and conserved areas, the maintenance of livelihoods for Indigenous peoples and local communities, and possible solutions to climate change and instability.

Even when these communities are, in some places, contributing to the loss of biodiversity, as through the expansion of agriculture into ever more marginal lands and wildlife habitats, it must be recognized that these activities are intricately connected to conditions of poverty, failings of governance, and social injustice. Addressing environmental challenges in a fragmented way that does not account for these deeper drivers and that does not take into account the need to engage with a broader range of custodians of territories who could help to counter these drivers will not shield us from serious environmental consequences either within or outside of protected areas. Often, it is communities members' practices we blame, as well as communities' territories we turn our attention to, and in doing so, we fail to see what happens in the more industrialized and geopoliticized landscapes.

The third problem is more fundamental. It relates to the thinking underlying a culture and approach to conservation which divides people and nature. This fragmented worldview produces solutions based on fragmentation. It leads either to the belief that nature is a resource, something to be dominated and used, or to the conviction that it must be defended from human beings. Most state-led conservation approaches are based on a dualistic separation between people and the environment, in many cases leading to displacement, resettlement and to loss not only of rich biological, but also of cultural, diversity.

Indigenous worldviews, on the other hand, see human beings as part of the world of nature and recognize an interconnectedness which runs deeper than simply acknowledging that our material survival depends on healthy ecosystems. In a worldview founded on interconnectedness, nature shapes who we are as human beings. And it is shaped by us—not as engineers fabricating a machine to chosen specifications, but as creatures that move within and help to make up the world of nature. Small parts called "protected areas" cannot be healthy apart from the whole.

From this perspective, the very phrase "protected area" reveals misguided thinking. Protected from what? The answer—protected from us—reveals the imbalance that calls out for correction. Indigenous worldviews suggest that it is interconnectedness that allows diversity to thrive. These views have been, more often than not, persistently disregarded in state-managed conservation and the mainstream conservation paradigm whose worldview is one of reducing the world and ways of thinking down to their component parts. Another question—protected for whom?—calls into question who it is that really benefits. As protected areas increasingly become linked to economic ventures, through payment for ecosystem services and offsets, bioprospecting and tourism, the people who benefit most are seldom those who live in or adjacent to the actual sites of conservation.

Meaningful Institutional and Collective Action Is Needed Setting conservation on a different path will require thorough changes in institutions and institutional culture, the challenging of vested interests, and new ways of thinking about human beings' relationship with nature, all of which will be long term undertakings. Yet, there are some steps that could be taken immediately to help reframe conservation in a way that respects human rights, protects cultural diversity, and mobilizes local communities as allies in environmental conservation efforts.

Reassesing Protected Area Targets as a Measure of Progress Through the Convention on Biological Diversity, the countries of the world have agreed to targets for the establishment of protected areas: at least 17% of terrestrial and inland water areas and 10% of coastal and marine areas.

The guidelines for achieving these targets allow for protected areas with differing management objectives, including sustainable use of resources, and allow for different forms of governance, including governance by local communities and indigenous groups. However, in their implementation the targets have provided a perfect excuse for land grabs and other unjust practices in the name of conservation. The single-minded push to create national parks and game reserves has undermined the role of people who are connected with and care about nature, and in so doing it undermines conservation.

The protected areas targets of the Convention on Biological Diversity also include a milestone that "all protected areas are effectively and equitably managed." It is time for this milestone to be given some teeth. Unless it is aboriginal peoples specifically requesting for a park to be established on their territory, this might entail withdrawing support towards the establishment of national parks within territories inhabited by aboriginal peoples, and not counting these cases as contributing to protected area targets.

Ultimately, progress in conservation effectiveness needs to be defined also in terms of equity, shared or community-led jurisdiction and the cooperative engagement of local custodians rather than percentage of territories set aside as protected areas.

Reorienting What Conservation Budgets Are Spent On Currently, much of the assistance from international conservation organizations and aid agencies for conservation in developing countries supports, either directly or indirectly, the dominant strategy based on strong, stategoverned protected areas.

An alternative approach would direct more resources to initiatives such as supporting ongoing but overlooked efforts of local communities, and building the capacity of community-based organizations and indigenous and local governments to engage in conservation and develop sustainable economies. It would also facilitate equitable partnerships for conservation, which put communities on an equal footing with government, international conservation NGOs and the tourism industry in terms of participation in decision-making, access to training and certification, and access to employment.

Conservation dollars might also be expected to achieve a greater long term impact by monitoring and addressing drivers of environmental degradation beyond protected areas, the real culprit behind loss of ecosystems and biodiversity.

Support is needed for landscape-wide approaches which include communities as full partners, which recognize and protect their assets and tenure rights inside and outside protected areas, and which aim for protection of habitats as well as sustainable and just use of natural resources beyond protected area islands.

Where powerful interests cannot be expected to partner with communities in good faith, the financing of social justice initiatives is needed: funds to support community legal action in defence of human rights, and mechanisms to ensure meaningful engagement, informed collective consent, and compliance on the part of powerful states and non-state conservation actors.

Reconnecting People With Nature Even in rural areas, people's connection to their environment is changing. But this is a trend that could be reversed by taking a more socially conscious approach to conservation.

Countries that still have large areas of natural forest and savannah should not be building walls to keep people away from nature or slowly depriving areas of badly needed services and infrastructure as a way to push people away. Instead, they should support people to make decisions for the wellbeing of their children and grandchildren, provide requested extension services, and encourage local economies that protect biocultural diversity while also adding value to it.

The primary purpose of parks should not be to attract international tourists. Instead, more should be done to attract and assist local people to (re)connect with their territory.

This is particularly true for rural people who live adjacent to protected areas. Rural people we have spoken to who live near Serengeti National Park Tanzania, for instance, miss the days when the Park regularly sent buses to take their children on trips into the park. People living on the northeast side of Saadani National Park do not understand how government reclassification of their former village lands can be used to prevent them from visiting ancient sacred places.

There is a need to recognize and support indigenous people's and local communities' ability to live well in their territories and to use their resources according to their values and knowledge. Indeed, there is growing evidence that indigenous peoples whose human rights are protected, e.g. their rights to their lands, territories and resources and right to self-determination, have ecosystems that are in much better shape than national parks and reserves managed by the State or other external actors. The separation of communities from their ancestral territories undermines the interconnectedness that we so badly need and depend upon.

Just Conservation Beyond the specific necessities of reassessing protected areas targets as a policy tool and reorienting what conservation budgets are spent on, there is a broader, longer term need to re-examine existing global and national policies and governance mechanisms for conservation. At a moment when organized poaching and international trade in endangered species is threatening the survival of too many species, in some instances fuelling armed conflicts (…even within state-governed parks and game reserves! … even though conservation spending is the highest in history!), threats within and beyond protected areas surpass the ability of any one stakeholder, approach or institution to maintain biologically and culturally diverse landscapes.

The need to re-enlist local communities as allies in conservation is urgent. This need can be met, not through "awareness-raising" programs, but through tangible steps toward recognition of rights to territory, concrete redress of social justice infringements and participation in decisionmaking processes, as well as effective delivery of requested services and infrastructure in areas that are often impoverished and marginalized.

Meaningful institutional inclusion, shared jurisdiction and clear recognition of diverse values and knowledge systems guiding conservation, direct training and employment and sustainable economies can lead to multi-level cooperation and concerted collective action. Meager benefit-sharing programs and draconian restrictions on inhabitation, access and use of protected areas will not suffice.

In particular, enforceable mechanisms are needed for the defence of human rights and the preventing of evictions of local communities and indigenous peoples from targeted landscapes. This must include safeguarding and in many cases reinstating communities' land tenure rights, as well as creating systems for meaningful engagement between local communities on the one hand and government conservation agencies and conservation NGOs on the other. Just conservation is effective conservation: it is time for tangible action to make it happen.

Alejandra Orozco‐Quintero, Catie Burlando and Lance W. Robinson truth-out.org

7

“Arena of Mind” portrays a space for idea germination, a field where ideas from multi-disciplinary viewpoints fertilize the world of intelligence. The writers aspire to envision a new future by exploring the mind, discovering new seeds of insights and unleashing them to enlightenment.

Impact of technology on banking in India

T

echnology and banking are inseparable now in India. The transformation from brick and mortar banking to technology driven banks has been been fairly rapid during the last two decades. Economic liberalization and the integration with international best practices in banking and finance gave the much needed push to a largely stagnating computerization programme. It was also understood that if banking was to become efficient and penetrative the aid of technology was crucial. Challenges of diverse nature were faced to achieve the current status though it can safely be said that much is still to be done.

Banking in India had fairly laid back approach prior to the emergence of the reform period during the mid 1990s.

The nationalized banks and a handful of old private sector banks were managing the banking sector in their own inimitable way. The direction was given by the government by their periodic policy statements which were an extension of the social control initiated by banks’ nationalization in 1969. The major thrust was on penetrating the rural sector by opening of bank branches in this region and starting of rural development programmes with bank support. There was undoubtedly much activity in rural and semi urban regions with focus on directed funding of priority sectors.

However, during the late 1980s computerization was introduced in India and the banking sector was also identified as a thrust area.

The cautious beginning was made with introduction of ALPMs or automatic ledger posting machines. The start met with very limited success as employees’ union across the banking sector strongly opposed computerization.

They felt threatened that the workforce would be directly affected as a result of the machines.

This stand off enabled only gradual penetration with only a handful of staff deployed to give shape to government’s initiative and directives. Some back room activities were attempted to be done during this period on an experimental and parallel basis.

In between ATMs or Automated Teller Machines were introduced by foreign banks and a couple of Indian banks. The cash dispensation services and the benefits of credit cards were a novel experience to some customers who were willing to accept new practices in banking. The business generated through credit cards by the first movers encouraged other banks to accept this technology but only in a measured manner. Credit cards evolution was cautious and calibrated with more and more banks offering this facility in a phased manner. During this time the liberalization and globalization of the world economy had started.

India too understood the necessity of initiating the reforms process and also align the financial sector with international standards for participating in trade and commerce. The nineties saw a major shift in the thought process of managing international trade and to have complimentary financial and banking standards. Prudential and regulatory norms were accepted for the banking sector in accordance with international practices. The single biggest contributor in making technology carry forward the banking services is the core banking solutions or CBS. CBS refers to software application for recording transactions, storing customer information, calculating interest and completing the process of passing entries in a single data base. It enables accessing of complete customer account details centrally. In this way it makes it possible for the customer to reach the bank through which ever channel it prefer be it internet, mobile banking, phone banking,ATM,etc.

This technology solution is the basis of spreading anytime, anywhere banking through adopting any module of banking. Banking has therefore become 24*7 from any place of choice of the customer. This paradigm shift in banking has revolutionized the speed, efficiency and reach of the delivery systems.

Accounting, processing and management information systems which were trouble spots earlier have witnessed dramatic improvements enabling banks to calculate interest on daily basis in savings accounts, sanction retail loans quickly and most of all finalize annual accounts in the shortest possible time. The payments and settlement systems are being continuously upgraded with faster mechanisms. The clearing house operations have got further boost with cheques to be sent instead of the physical cheque. This facility which has been successfully implemented in Delhi is to be extended to other centres in phases to reduce heavy work load and chances of fraud.

The intention is to have paperless banking in due course. Security safeguards are an important aspect in electronic banking and require close scrutiny. Technology has however brought in sophisticated means of committing frauds through internet hacking, identity theft, phishing, skimming of cards for making making duplicate cards and many other modes. This has meant that security and risk perception be adequately addressed if the technology push is to be accepted by many more customers.

The scope of frauds is being minimized through use of passwords, personal identification numbers, double authentication steps in internet banking, sms alerts etc.Use of technology also necessitates greater awareness on the part of bank staff and customers to fully understand the risks involved in using electronic means. Financial literacy is therefore essential to gain from the newer and faster modes of banking.

The role of technology in banking services is bound to strengthen in due course as demands increase to making banking services cheaper and accessible for the maximum number of people.

Rajani Das, Assistant Professor St. Joseph’s College Jakhama

Readers may please note that, the contents of the articles published on this page do not reflect the outlook of this paper nor of the Editor in any form.

8

TuesDAY 05•01•2016

INDIA

THE MORUNG EXPRESS

5 militants killed in Pathankot, operations still on Pathankot (Punjab), january 4 (IanS): Over 62 hours after suspected Pakistani terrorists raided the IAF base here killing seven security personnel and losing five of their own, senior officers said on Monday evening that they were still sensitizing the area for possible hidden attackers.

"The operations are still going on. We have been able to eliminate the fifth terrorist. Combing and search operations continue," Inspector General Major Gen Dushant Singh of the NSG told the media in the evening.

He said that security forces comprising NSG, the army, air force with its air and ground assets, police and intelligence agencies were working in sync to make the operation successful.

"All the assets of the air base, including personnel and families, have been secured and are safe," he said. "Given the magnitude of the base, the operations will continue till we are able to fully render it safe."

The terrorists infiltrated the Indian Air Force (IAF) base in Pathankot before dawn on Saturday, leading to fierce gun battles with security forces.

Four terrorists died on Saturday after 15 hours of fighting.

Seven security personnel, including an officer of the National Security Guards (NSG), an IAF Ga-

Pathankot air base attack threatens Pak talks nEW DELhI, january 4 (rEutErS): A rapprochement effort between India and Pakistan appeared to be in jeopardy on Monday, as Indian security forces battled for the third day to clear out militants who attacked one of its air bases and killed seven soldiers.

The foreign secretaries of the nuclear-armed neighbours are due to meet for talks on Jan. 15, building on a thaw in relations after a surprise visit by Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi to Pakistani counterpart Nawaz Sharif last month.

But an Indian government official said India was now considering whether to go ahead with the talks or not, and that a final decision will be taken once the operations to secure the Pathankot Air Force base in Punjab state are Security personnel stand guard inside the Indian Air Force (IAF) base at Pathankot in Punjab on January over. The government official, who requested anonymity, said 4. (REUTERS Photo) rud commando and five Defence Services Corps (DSC) personnel, were killed by the terrorists.

The United Jehad Council (UJC), an umbrella grouping of Kashmiri militant groups based in Pakistan, on Monday claimed responsibility for the attack.

The UJC, led by Syed Salahuddin, said the raid "was carried out by the national highway squad of the UJC".

The Dawn, a leading a Pakistani newspaper, on Monday urged Islamabad

to act if it was proved that Pakistanis were involved in the terror attack.

Search and combing operations continued even on Monday evening, the third day of the attack.

Security forces moved to secure every inch of the air base. Occasional sound of firing and a blast was heard from inside earlier when it was suspected that two terrorists were still holed up.

Brigadier Anupinder Singh of the army said the terrorists were holed up in a double-storeyed build-

ing, a living accommodation of the IAF personnel.

"The operations are on to clear this building."

Officers said the terrorists were well prepared and heavily armed and wanted to target strategic assets of the IAF at the base where a MIG-21 Bison fighter squadron and MI-35 attack helicopters are stationed.

A search was also on in nearby villages for possible terrorists.

Punjab Police on Monday arrested three men linked to smuggling gangs

and recovered sophisticated weapons with Pakistani and Chinese markings from them.

NSG and army commandos conducted a thorough mopping of the entire area where the terrorists, suspected to be from Pakistan and trained by the outlawed Jaish-e-Muhammed (JeM) outfit, had been cornered, police said.

IAF helicopters flew through the night over the base.

Twenty security personnel, including 12 from the NSG and eight

it could take another 48 hours for the base to be secured, and by then the government hoped to have more information about the attackers and what links they may have to Pakistan, if any.

On Monday, the United Jihad Council, an alliance of more than a dozen pro-Pakistan militant groups based in Pakistanadministered Kashmir, claimed responsibility for the air base attack, according to a statement from the group's spokesman.

"The attack is a message by Mujahideen (militants) that no sensitive installation of India is out of our reach," said UJC spokesman Syed Sadaqat Hussain in a statement, a copy of which was seen

by Reuters.

Pathankot air base were still active after Home Minister Rajnath Singh declared on Saturday evening that they had been "neutralised".

The reluctance of officials to declare the mission complete appeared to reflect an abundance of caution until all the attackers' bodies had been accounted for.

The sound of continuing gunfire from the base added confusion to the picture.

A senior central government official said earlier on Monday that two militants hiding in the administrative block of the base had been killed on Sunday, but authorities had yet to recover the bodies. The official said six militants had been killed. "But every inch of the air base has to CONFLICTING REPORTS be secured before we call off the Indian security officials have operation," said the official in given conflicting accounts on New Delhi, who requested anowhether the attackers at the nymity.

from the IAF, have been injured. A grievously injured securityman was flown to Chandigarh.

On Monday, those killed by the terrorists were cremated with military honours.

Thousands paid tributes to NSG commando Lt. Col. Niranjan E.K. at his residence in Bommasandra in Bengaluru.

IAF Garud commando Gursewak Singh was cremated with military honours on Monday in his village Garnala in Haryana's Ambala district. Hundreds

thronged the venue.

Gursewak Singh, 25, was killed on Saturday.

The commando had got married only about 45 days back.

"I am proud of my son.

He has laid down his life for the country," said Gursewak's father Sucha Singh, a former soldier.

In Punjab's Gurdaspur district, international-level shooting champion Subedar Major Fateh Singh was cremated with military honours. Breaking tradition, his daughter led the coffin bearers.

"I am proud of my father. He was a very brave man. Everyone should get a father like him," she said.

Punjab Chief Minister Parkash Singh Badal visited the families of Fateh Singh and Havildar Kulwant Singh in their native villages Jhandewal Khurd and Chak Sharif in Gurdaspur district.

The Punjab government urged New Delhi to accord "sensitive" status to areas along the international border with Pakistan in view of the recent attacks

by Pakistani terrorists.

'Will shoot culprits in crimes against women if law permits' Drought-hit Indian farmers seek support in budget nEW DELhI, january 4 (PtI): If the Constitution permits shooting or hanging on spot, Delhi Police "will not refrain" from doing so to people who commit heinous crimes against women, Delhi Police Commissioner BS Bassi said today.

Sharing points from his analysis of crime against women in the national capital, Bassi said 70 per cent of the perpetrators in rape cases belong to the age group 21-35 years.

He further said, "Crimemapping analysis of the city suggested that any woman in a locality is surrounded by anything between 250400 men who would not think twice before assaulting a woman."

Speaking at Delhi Police's annual press conference today, the commissioner used as examples two rape cases in which the victims were two-monthold and 80-year-old, respectively.

He also said women need to be trained in selfdefence, which can help in tackling the steep rise in instances of crime against women.

"Analysis also suggests that 60-65 per cent of women victims are between 1530 years old. Their self-de-

17% rise in crime in Delhi in 2015: Police nEW DELhI, january 4 (IanS): A total of 182,644 cases of crimes were reported in the national capital in 2015, up from 155,654 in 2014 - a 17.33% rise, according to Delhi Police's annual report released on Monday. Of all the crime cases, only 27% (49,903 cases) were solved.

Delhi Police Commissioner B.S. Bassi said 2015 had been "very satisfying as our initiative to lodge maximum number of First Information Report (FIRs) has been satisfactory. "From goat theft to stealing of Rs.20, we registered every relevant FIR. It is really satisfactory as per the expectation of people of Delhi," Bassi told the media at the annual press conference.

The annual report shows that the complaints of non-registration of FIRs saw a substantial decline compared to 2014 and 2013. "As a result, the registered IPC (Indian Penal Code) crime rose to 80,184 in 2013, 155,654 in 2014 and 182,644 in 2015 (up to Dec 15)," Bassi said in its introductory comments.

"Along with truthful registration comes the onus of prevention and detection of crime, and Delhi Police has given an excellent account in this regard." A total of 49,903 IPC cases, including 6,328 heinous ones, were solved in 2015 as compared to 43,431, including 5,784 heinous cases, in the previous year, Bassi said. "Almost all sensational cases were solved in record time." fence expertise shall be a sure counter to sick mindset men," Bassi said.

“I have often been criticised for my views on selfdefence, mostly by groups who know how to shed crocodile tears.

"If the Constitution permits shooting... if it permits hanging on spot, Delhi Police will not refrain from doing so to people who indulge in heinous crimes against women. But we are committed to human rights," the police chief said.

He further clarified that promoting self-defence for women doesn't mean that

the police is shedding its responsibilities of protecting every citizen.

"The police's objective is to build up capacity and it has been so even when I was not a part of the security force.

In this regard, it is capacity building if a girl can take on four men. This in itself will act as deterrence.

"However, people who shed crocodile tears will never appreciate the role of the police," Bassi said without naming whom he was referring to.

Police records revealed that 2,095 cases of rape, 5,192 molestations and

1,444 cases of eve-teasing were reported till December 15, 2015, compared to 2,085 rapes, 4,182 molestations and 1,282 eve-teasing cases in the corresponding period previous year.

Records further revealed, almost 39 per cent of the rapes were committed by friends and family members' friends.

While nearly 16.50 per cent rapes were committed by neighbours of the victims and around 14 per cent by relatives, around 2 per cent of the offenders were co-workers and 25 per cent cases pertained to other known persons.

nEW DELhI, january 4 (rEutErS): India will need to increase budgetary allocations for irrigation projects and offer higher procurement prices for crops to support farmers hit by two years of drought, farmer associations said on Monday.

Drought in many parts of the country has hit production of rice, cotton and other crops, hurting the popularity of Prime Minister Narendra

Modi, whose party recently lost village council elections in Gujarat, a state he ran for over a decade.

In a pre-budget meeting with Finance Minister Arun Jaitley, farm leaders urged him to implement Modi's promise of ensuring higher income for farmers.

During his victorious 2014 election campaign, Modi promised to raise public investment in the farm sector to ensure a

minimum profit margin of 50 percent over the cost of production.

Jaitley, who will present his 2016/17 budget at the end of February, has promised to spend nearly 500 billion rupees ($7.5 billion) on irrigation projects over a period of five years.

"A bad monsoon and low international commodity prices have aggravated the misery of farmers," Ajay Vir Jakhar, Chairman of the

Farmers' Forum India, told reporters after the meeting.

Growth in farm output, which contributes nearly 13 percent to India's $2 trillion economy, fell to 2 percent in the first half of the current fiscal year from 2.4 percent a year ago. Jakhar said more funds should be allocated to improve weather forecasts for farmers besides a state-funded insurance scheme for all crops.

Net Neutrality: Nasscom opposes Airtel Zero, Free Basics plans nEW DELhI, january 4 (PtI): IT industry body Nasscom today opposed Airtel Zero and Free Basics type platforms which it feels violate net neutrality principles by differentiating internet access for certain types of services.

"We at Nasscom oppose any model where TSPs (Telecom service providers) have a say or discretion in choosing a content that is made available at favourable rates or speeds etc," Nasscom President R Chandrashekhar said today.

He further said that Nasscom has submitted its views before regulator Trai requesting not to allow operators price different kinds of services differently such as higher (rpt) higher prices for video streaming, accessing e-commerce websites thereby segmenting the internet. "... any such differential pricing by

TSPs either directly like in the case of Airtel Zero or indirectly as in the case of Free Basics through a platform provider with limited access to the websites or internet, which are selected by the TSP or by the partner, violate criteria of net neutrality that we have outlined," Chandrashekhar said.

The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai) has invited comments from public till January 7 on its paper on differential data pricing - a key aspect of the raging debate on net neutrality. A debate on net neutrality stirred across the country after Airtel decided to charge separately for Internet-based calls but withdrew it later after people protested.

Internet activists and experts flayed the operator for 'Airtel Zero' service along with Facebook's Internet.org service, now Free Basics.

Trai's paper mentions some plans

which amount to differential tariffs of the telecom service provider who offer zero or discounted tariffs to certain contents of some websites, applications or platforms.

Facebook has been aggressively campaigning to support Free Basics service as it fears that platform may be banned in India. Facebook has tied up with Reliance Communications to offer the free Internet platform to its customers.

Earlier, Trai asked RCom to keep services of Facebook's free Internet platform, Free Basics, in abeyance, till the issue on differential pricing is sorted out.

Chandrashekhar said that Nasscom has highlighted additional dangers that are posed by TSP or by its partner having near monopolistic access to vast amount of data based on this differential pricing.

Sikh group wants law to Now, RSS plans to launch a Christian outfit ban racial, religious jokes nEW DELhI, january 4 (IanS): The Delhi Sikh Gurdwara Management Committee (DSGMC) on Monday demanded a law to put an end to jokes on racial, religious and regional lines in the country.

The Sikh organisation's representatives will soon meet union Minister of State for Home Affairs Kiren Rijiju to seek his support for a complete ban on such jokes, DSGMC president Manjit Singh G.K. said in a statement here.

The demanded law should be formulated on the pattern of the Scheduled Castes and the Scheduled Tribes Act in force in the country as well as the anti-bullying law in various European countries, he added.

The DSGMC leader said a battery of top lawyers in the country would be hired to fight the case in the Supreme Court to seek a ban on Sikh jokes.

A Supreme Court bench headed by Chief Justice T.S. Thakur on Monday admitted a petition filed by advocate Harvinder Chaudhary that sought a ban on Sikh jokes, he said.

The DSGMC has sought the services of legal luminaries like Ram Jethmalani and R.S. Suri and retired justice R.S. Sodhi for effective presentation of the community's case before the apex court.

"The Sikh body has approached communities facing ridicule due to such jokes in the country so as to forge a grand alliance for fighting the case in the Supreme Court," Manjit Singh added.

nEW DELhI, january 4 (Et): The Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh has held meetings with Christian leaders as part of a plan to reach out to the community by setting up an organisation on the lines of the Muslim Rashtriya Manch that it established over a decade ago.

Sources said that while the nomenclature is not yet final, it is envisaged that a Rashtriya Isai Manch on similar lines be set up to build bridges of 'goodwill' with the community.

A senior RSS Pracharak, who is also the 'Margdarshak' (guide) for the Muslim Rashtriya Manch since its inception, confirmed to ET that efforts are on to reach out to the Christians and a meeting for the same was held on December 17, 2015.

"On December 17, 4-5 Archbishops, 40-50 Reverend Bishops from across 10

gara, Bishop Jacob Mar Barnabas of the Gurgaon diocese, Bishop Issac Osthatheous of the Delhi diocese and the general secretary of the Church of North India, Alwan Masih.

Volunteers of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) shout religious slogans as they arrive to attend a conclave on the outskirts of Pune on January 3. (REUTERS Photo)

to 12 states met and it was decided to develop a movement. This is preparing the ground to lay the seeds for an organisation," Indresh Kumar, member of RSS' National Executive, told ET. This is said to be the

first such outreach to the clergy made through a Sangh-backed initiative.

The December 17 meeting, held in New Delhi, was presided over by Indresh Kumar. Chinmayananda Swami of Vishva Hindu

Parishad was also present at the event, called the 'Christmas Message for Love, Peace and Harmony from Indian Soil'.

It was attended, among others, by Archbishop Mar Kuriakose Bharanikulan-

ROw OvER CONvERSION It also marks a full circle of sorts for RSS, whose wing Dharm Jagran Manch had proposed to hold a massive religious reconversion exercise in Agra, a move that was aborted only after it sparked a political furore and the Modi government requested the RSS leadership to step in and cancel the event.

Kumar did not specify whether the proposed organisation will be similar in structure to the Muslim Rashtriya Manch, with which he is closely associated. "Muslim Rashtriya Manch is by the Muslims, for the Muslims and of

the Muslims. I only guide them," he said. The Sangh's move chimes with the Modi government's efforts to assuage the Christian community ever since a series of attacks on churches in Delhi and elsewhere led to global condemnation.

Home Minister Rajnath Singh last month addressed a Christmas celebration organised by the Catholic Bishops Conference of India, and assured Christians that he would not let any "injustice" happen to them while adding that he was deeply hurt by the attacks on churches in the year before.

Just a few days later, Finance minister Arun Jaitley also hosted clergy and professionals from the Christian community at a gathering which was attended, among others, by Cardinal Oswal Gracias, who is a member of Pope Francis' advisory council.

TuesdaY 05•01•2016

WORLD

THE MORUNG EXPRESS

9

Saudi Arabia cuts ties with Iran DUBAI/RIYADH, JAnUARY 4 (ReUteRs): Saudi Arabia cut ties with Iran on Sunday, responding to the storming of its embassy in Tehran in an escalating row between the rival Middle East powers over Riyadh’s execution of a Shi’ite Muslim cleric.

Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir told a news conference in Riyadh that the envoy of Shi’ite Iran had been asked to quit Saudi Arabia within 48 hours. The kingdom, he said, would not allow the Islamic republic to undermine its security.

Iranian protesters stormed the Saudi embassy in Tehran early on Sunday and Shi’ite Iran’s top leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, predicted “divine vengeance” for the execution of Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr, an outspoken opponent of the ruling Al Saudi family.

Jubeir said the attack in Tehran was in line with what he said were earlier Iranian assaults on foreign embassies there and with Iranian policies of destabilising the region by creating “terrorist cells” in Saudi Arabia.

“The kingdom, in light of these realities, announces the cutting of diplomatic relations with Iran and requests the departure of delegates of diplomatic missions of the embassy and consulate and offices related to it within 48 hours.

The ambassador has been summoned to notify them,” he said.

Speaking on Iranian state television, Deputy Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian said in Tehran’s first response that

Sudan cuts diplomatic ties with Iran

Protesters holding pictures of Shi’ite cleric Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr are pushed back by Iranian riot police during a demonstration against the execution of Nimr in Saudi Arabia, outside the Saudi Arabian Embassy in Tehran January, 3. (REUTERS Photo)

by cutting diplomatic ties, Riyadh could not cover up “its major mistake of executing Sheikh Nimr”.

The United States, Saudi Arabia’s biggest backer in the West, responded by encouraging diplomatic engagement and calling for leaders in the region to take “affirmative steps” to reduce tensions.

“We believe that diplomatic engagement and direct conversations remain essential in working through differences and we will continue to urge leaders across the region to take affirmative steps to calm tensions,” an official of President Barack Obama’s administration said.

Tensions between revolutionary, mainly Shi’ite

Iran and Saudi Arabia’s conservative Sunni monarchy have run high for years as they backed opposing forces in wars and political conflicts across the Middle East, usually along sectarian lines.

However, Saturday’s execution of a cleric whose death Iran had warned would “cost Saudi Arabia dearly”, and the storming of the kingdom’s Tehran embassy, raised the pitch of the rivalry.

Strong rhetoric from Tehran was matched by Iran’s Shi’ite allies across the region, with Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, the head of Lebanese militia Hezbollah, describing the execution as “a message of blood”. Moqtada al-Sadr, an

Americans seek swap in U.S. reporter case: Iranian official DUBAI, JAnUARY 4 (ReUteRs): Unnamed Americans have contacted Iran for a deal to swap Washington Post reporter Jason Rezaian, convicted and jailed in Iran on spying charges, for other unspecified detainees, according to a senior Iranian official quoted on Sunday.

“Some Americans contact us sometimes, asking us to exchange him with other detainees, but the sentence has not been announced yet,” said judiciary spokesman Gholamhossein Mohseni Ejei, quoted by Iran’s Fars news agency.

Ejei did not specify which detainees could be under consideration nor give any other details of what the Americans could have in mind for a swap with Rezaian.

But Iranian parliament speaker Ali Larijani has hinted at the possibility that Rezaian could be freed in exchange for Iranian prisoners in the United States. Other Iranian officials have played down the possibility of such a swap.

In Washington, a senior White House official, asked for comment, said: “We’re not going to comment on every public remark

by Iranian officials concerning our detained and missing citizens. We continue to make all efforts to bring our citizens home.”

Iranian officials have repeatedly said that Rezaian, a California-born IranianAmerican, has been convicted but they have declined to announce the sentence.

Rezaian was arrested in July 2014 and accused of espionage.

The case has been a sensitive issue for Washington and Iran, and Ejei’s statement on Sunday did little to resolve it.

Iran has accused Rezaian, 39, of collecting confidential information and giving it to hostile governments, writing a letter to U.S. President Barack Obama and acting against national security. The Post has dismissed the charges as absurd. The final hearing in his trial was on Aug. 10.

Washington Post foreign editor Douglas Jehl has said the vague nature of an earlier announcement by Iran showed that Rezaian’s case was not just about espionage but that the reporter was a bargaining chip in a “larger game.”

Four other U.S. citizens - Christian pastor Saeed Abedini, Amir Hekmati, a former U.S. Marine Corps sergeant, American-Lebanese IT expert Nizar Zakka and U.S.-Iranian businessman Siamak Namazi - are also believed to be held in Iran. Robert Levinson, a private investigator, disappeared there in 2007.

Some of these cases have been raised in subsequent talks, including those between Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif and U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry when they met during the U.N. General Assembly in New York last month. No progress was announced.

Iraqi Shi’ite cleric, called for angry protests.

Demonstrators protesting against the execution of the cleric, Sheikh Nimr alNimr, broke into the embassy building, smashed furniture and started fires before being ejected by police.

Iran’s President Hassan Rouhani condemned the execution as “inhuman”, but also urged the prosecution of “extremist individuals” for attacking the embassy and the Saudi consulate in the northeastern city of Mashhad, state media reported.

Tehran’s police chief said an unspecified number of “unruly elements” were arrested for attacking the embassy with petrol bombs and rocks. A prosecutor said

40 people were held.

“The unjustly spilled blood of this oppressed martyr will no doubt soon show its effect and divine vengeance will befall Saudi politicians,” Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei was quoted as saying by Iran’s state television.

PROTESTS Nimr, the most vocal critic of the dynasty among the Shi’ite minority, had come to be seen as a leader of the sect’s younger activists, who had tired of the failure of older, more measured, leaders to achieve equality with Sunnis.

His execution, along with three other Shi’ites and 43 members of Al Qa-

KHARtOUM, JAnUARY 4 (ReUteRs): Sudan said on Monday it was cutting diplomatic ties with Iran after the storming of the Saudi Arabian Embassy in Tehran and consulate building elsewhere in Iran. “In response to the barbaric attacks on the Saudi Arabian Embassy in Tehran and its consulate in Mashhad ... the government of Sudan announces the immediate severing of ties with the Islamic Republic of Iran,” a Foreign Ministry statement said. eda, sparked angry protests in the Qatif region in eastern Saudi Arabia, where demonstrators denounced the ruling Al Saud dynasty, and in the nearby Gulf kingdom of Bahrain.

Relatives of Nimr, reached by telephone, said authorities had informed them that the body had been buried “in a cemetery of Muslims” and would not be handed over to the family.

Although most of the 47 men killed in the kingdom’s biggest mass execution for decades were Sunnis convicted of al Qaeda attacks in Saudi Arabia a decade ago, it was Nimr and three other Shi’ites, all accused of involvement in shooting police, who attracted most attention in the region and

beyond.

Khamenei’s website carried a picture of a Saudi executioner next to notorious Islamic State executioner ‘Jihadi John’, with the caption “Any differences?”.

The Revolutionary Guards said “harsh revenge” would topple “this pro-terrorist, anti-Islamic regime”.

Saudi Arabia on Saturday summoned the Iranian ambassador to protest what it described as hostile remarks emerging from Tehran. On Sunday, Riyadh’s Gulf allies the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait and Bahrain also summoned Tehran’s envoys to their countries to lodge complaints.

IRAQ ALSO FURIOUS In Iraq, whose Shi’iteled government is close to Iran, religious and political figures demanded that ties with Riyadh be severed, calling into question Saudi attempts to forge a regional alliance against Islamic State, which controls swaths of Iraq and Syria.

Iraq’s top Shi’ite cleric Grand Ayatollah Ali alSistani described the executions as an “unjust aggression”. The opinion of Sistani, based in the Shi’ite holy city of Najaf south of Baghdad, carries weight with millions of Shi’ites in Iraq and across the region, including in Saudi Arabia.

Despite the focus on Nimr, the executions seemed mostly aimed at discouraging jihadism in Saudi Arabia, where dozens have died in the past year in attacks by Sunni militants.

But Saudi Arabia’s West-

ern allies, many of whom supply it with arms, are growing concerned about its new assertiveness.

The U.S. State Department said Nimr’s execution “risks exacerbating sectarian tensions at a time when they urgently need to be reduced”, a sentiment echoed by EU foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini. The State Department also urged Saudi Arabia to respect and protect human rights.

France said on Sunday it deeply deplored the mass execution and said it reiterated its opposition to the death penalty in all circumstances. In Istanbul, hundreds of protesters, some carrying pictures of Nimr and chanting “Saudi Arabia will pay the price”, gathered outside its consulate on Sunday as riot police stood guard.

The four Shi’ites had been convicted of involvement in shootings and petrol bomb attacks that killed several police during anti-government protests from 2011-13. More than 20 Shi’ites were shot dead by the authorities in those protests. Family members of the executed Shi’ites have denied they were involved in attacks and said they were only peaceful protesters against sectarian discrimination.

Human rights groups say the kingdom’s judicial process is unfair, pointing to accusations that confessions have been secured under torture and that defendants in court have been denied access to lawyers. Riyadh denies torture and says its judiciary is independent.

Myanmar: Suu Kyi asserts peace process will be govt’s priority YAnGOn, JAnUARY 4 (ReUteRs): Myanmar’s Aung San Suu Kyi said on Monday the country’s peace process will be the first priority of her new government that will take power later this year, following a landslide victory in a November election.

The country has struggled for decades to reach lasting peace agreements with a multitude of ethnic minority guerrilla groups that have fought against the government for greater autonomy and recognition.

The government signed a ceasefire in October, but the deal fell short of its nationwide billing, with seven of 15 groups invited declining to sign, including some of the most powerful.

Fighting has since flared in eastern parts of the country between the military, non-signatories and groups that did not take part in the negotiations.

“The peace process is the first thing the new government will work on. We will try for the all inclusive

Myanmar pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi gives a speech to mark 68th Myanmar Independence Day at National League for Democracy (NLD) party head office in Yangon on January 4. (REUTERS Photo)

ceasefire agreement,” Suu Kyi said in a speech to mark Independence Day at the headquarters of her party, the National League for Democracy (NLD) in Yangon.

“We can do nothing without peace in our country.”

Suu Kyi spurned the government-lead peace talks that President Thein Sein touted as a major achievement of his semicivilian administration, which took power in 2011, ending 49 years of direct military rule.

She did not attend a signing ceremony in October. The next step in the peace process, a political dialogue with the eight groups that signed, is set to begin on Jan. 12.

The NLD-lead government will take power in

March following a presidential election expected to take place in February, but the military will remain a powerful political force.

A quarter of seats in parliament are reserved for unelected military officials. Three important cabinet ministers - home affairs, defence and border affairs - are also chosen by the commander-in-chief.

Suu Kyi remains barred from becoming president under the military-drafted constitution.

Suu Kyi’s speech was one of her first since winning the election and marked 68 years of Myanmar’s independence.

The Nobel laureate’s father, Aung San, is greatly revered in Myanmar for leading the country’s fight for independence from the British and founding the military.

He was assassinated in 1947, six months before his dream of an independent nation was realized when Suu Kyi was just two years old.

targets Israeli forces, Afghan forces besiege insurgents near the Indian consulate in Mazar Hezbollah as Israel shells South Lebanon

MAZAR-I-sHARIF, JAnUARY 4 (ReUteRs): Afghan special forces fought with insurgents barricaded in a house near the Indian consulate in the northern city of Mazar-i-Sharif on Monday after an overnight attack that coincided with an assault on an Indian air base near the border with Pakistan.

As the battle stretched into the afternoon, soldiers entered the building, a large structure formerly used as an office by U.S. development agency USAID, where between four and six attackers had locked themselves inside a safe room.

The attack began late on Sunday after gunmen tried unsuccessfully to break into the consulate, taking advantage of the fact that many people were watching the final of a football championship between Afghanistan and India.

After a heavy exchange of fire that went on until well into the night, security forces suspended operations before resuming in Members of Afghan Quick Reaction Force (QRF) talk among themselves during an operation near the Indian consulate in Mazar-i-Shar- the morning, firing rocket-propelled grenades and heavy maif, Afghanistan on January 4. (REUTERS Photo)

chine guns at the building.

“The area is sealed off and we are proceeding cautiously and making all possible efforts to protect the lives of those in the area. The attackers will be killed,” the provincial governor, Atta Mohammad Noor, said on his Facebook page.

Gunfire rang out as a helicopters circled overhead in a residential area of the city, in Balkh province, bordering Uzbekistan.

At least four civilians and six security force personnel were wounded but the Indian ambassador said all the consulate staff were safe. There was no confirmation of any killed or wounded among the attackers.

Noor blamed “enemies of peace and stability” for the attack, which came amid renewed efforts to lower tension between India and its rival Pakistan and restart peace talks with the Taliban in Afghanistan.

But there was no more concrete indication of who may have been responsible.

Last month, Indian Prime

Minister Narendra Modi visited Kabul and Islamabad on the same day, underlining the drive to improve stability and overcome the longstanding hostility in the region.

However, Sunday’s attack and a separate assault on an Indian air base in Pathankot, in the northwest Indian state of Punjab, underlined how difficult that process is likely to be.

As the attack in Mazar-i-Sharif began, Indian security forces were still engaged in mopping up the insurgents in Pathankot.

In 2014, India’s consulate in the western Afghan city of Herat was hit by heavily armed insurgents including suicide bombers, one of a series of attacks on Indian diplomatic stations in Afghanistan over previous years.

Pakistan has long been suspicious of India’s engagement with Afghanistan and its diplomatic presence there.

In Kabul, a suicide bomber in a car blew himself up close to a police checkpoint near the airport on Monday but caused no other casualties, police said.

BeIRUt, JAnUARY 4 (ReUteRs): Hezbollah said it set off a bomb targeting Israeli forces at the Lebanese border on Monday in an apparent response to the killing in Syria last month of a prominent commander, triggering Israeli shelling of southern Lebanon.

Israel’s army said the blast targeted military vehicles in the Shebaa farms area, and that Israeli forces responded with artillery fire. It made no mention of casualties.

The explosive device was detonated in the Shebaa farms area, Hezbollah said in a statement. Lebanese media said Israeli shelling had hit the nearby town of Al Wazzani and other areas, with initial reports of injuries and damage to homes.

Hezbollah’s statement named the group that had carried out the attack after Samir Qantar. The Iranian-backed Shi’ite group has accused Israel of killing Qantar in air strike in Syria, and vowed to retaliate.

“The martyr leader Samir Qantar group detonated a large explosive device on an Israeli patrol in the Shebaa farms... which destroyed an Israeli vehicle... and injured those inside it,” Hezbollah said.

Witnesses said at least 10 Israeli shells had hit Al Wazzani shortly after the blast, causing material damage.

Lebanese New TV said in a newsflash there had been reports of injuries from the shelling.

Hezbollah is fighting on the side of President Bashar al-Assad in Syria’s civil war. Syrian state media said Qantar was involved in a major offensive earlier this year in Quneitra, near the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights.

10

tuesDAY 05•01•2016

sports

THE MORUNG EXPRESS

'Angry' United players breathing Watson, Lyon ignored as Australia easy after Swansea win: Van Gaal name ODI squad against India sYDNeY, JANUARY 4 (IANs): Veteran all-rounder Shane Watson and offspinner Nathan Lyon were ignored as Australia on Monday announced their 13-member squad for the first three matches of the One-Day International (ODI) series against India starting in Perth on January 12.

Australian selectors named Glenn Maxwell as the only spinner in the squad citing the pitches in Perth, Melbourne and Sydney would assist quick bowlers. Uncappped fast bowlers Scott Boland and Joel Paris are in line for their international debuts after being named in the squad.

Test batsmen Usman Khawaja and Joe Burns were also not included in the ODI squad that will assemble in Perth on Friday, with Australia’s Twenty20 skipper Aaron Finch, former

T20 captain George Bailey and recently-dropped Test batsman Shaun Marsh all named in the top order.

Watson announced his Test retirement during the One-Day series against England after last year's failed Ashes series campaign to focus on limitedovers cricket, but a poor showing in the Big Bash League (BBL) for the Sydney Thunder was a good

Chhetri's SAFF Cup-winning goal mind-blowing: Kohli

enough reason for selectors to leave the 34-year-old out of the squad.

Lyon earlier made it clear he wants to play limited-overs cricket for his country, but selectors, for the time being, have found no room for him despite his success at Test and domestic T20 level recently.

Skipper Steven Smith will lead the side alongside vice-captain David Warner.

National selector Rod Marsh said the two young quicks (Boland and Paris) deserved their chance at international cricket.

"Scott has continued to impress the selection panel having bowled very well for Victoria this year. He certainly deserves this chance at the top level,” Marsh said.

"Joel is an exciting young left-arm bowler who swings the ball well and has bowled

bRIsbANe, JANUARY 4 (ReUteRs): Twice Australian Open champion Victoria Azarenka breezed past Russian Elena Vesnina 6-2 6-0 in the Brisbane International on Monday to set up a secondround showdown against top seed Simona Halep.

The former world number one has been plagued by injuries in the last two years which have sent her down to 22nd in the world rankings but showed little signs of rust against qualifier Vesnina.

Playing for the first time since retiring from the WTA event in Wuhan, China in September, Azarenka broke Vesnina six times to wrap up victory.

She will have a much sterner test against former French Open finalist Halep, who had a first-round bye.

62nd KVSA meet from today

NASA Group-C 25th silver anniversary celebration

KOhIMA, JANUARY 4 (MexN): The Northern Angami Sports Association (NASA) Group-C will hold its 25th silver anniversary celebration from January 12 to 15 at Zhadima Sports Complex under the theme “Commitment to sports excellence.” The celebration will be hosted by Zhadima Village Youth & Sports Organization. MLA Dr. Neiphrezo Keditsu, chairman NSMDC Ltd will grace the inaugural function as the chief guest. KT Vilie, chairman Zhadima village council and vice president APO will the guest of honour.

Welcome address will be delivered by Roko Angami, convenor organizing committee while greetings will be shared by Vitseizolie Soriinuo, president ZVYSO while presidential address will be delivered by NASA ‘C’ president Kevipusa Kezieo. NASA ‘C’ wrestling secretary Zhabu Miario will administer oath to the participating teams. The highlight of the celebration include Marathon race, wrestling, volleyball.

NSA 61 wrestling meet on Jan 6

KOhIMA, JANUARY 4 (MexN): The Nerhema Sports Association (NSA) will hold its 61st wrestling meet on January 6 at Tekhuzie Ground. MLA Dr. Neiphrezo Keditsu, chairman NSMDC Ltd will grace the occasion as the chief guest while Dr. Kruolalie Tsiirho, team leader Nagaland Bio Resource Mission will be the guest of honour. The programme will start from 9:00 AM onwards. The function will be chaired by NSA vice president Neivicha Vimerha while presidential address will be delivered NSA president Peteneizo Pienyii. Short speech will be delivered by Nerhema Village Council chairman Zakieneisa Kiewhuo. Administration of oath will be done by NSA wrestling secretary Khrietuolie Usou.

PYO wrestling meet 2016

KOhIMA, JANUARY 4 (MexN): The Phesama Youth Organization (PYO) will hold its wrestling meet 2016 on January 14 at Phesama Panchayat Ground from 9:30 AM onwards. Er. Zale Neikha, president Southern Angami Sports Association (SASA) will grace the occasion as the chief guest. The inaugural function will be led by PYO tournament director Rokovise Koutsu while presidential address will be delivered by Medokolie Zashiimo, president PYO. Visako Zashiimo will administer oath to the wrestlers.

LONDON, JANUARY 4 (ReUteRs): Manchester United's 2-1 Premier League win over relegation-threatened Swansea City on Saturday has eased the pressure on their "angry" players, manager Louis van Gaal has said.

Saturday's win ended United's eight-game winless run in all competitions, which has seen them being knocked out of the group stages in the Champions

League and slip out of the league's top-four. "I shall think that now the pressure is lowering, the performance shall be better every week. But that it also dependable on whether or not we score goals," Van Gaal told British media.

"And when we score goals and we create always chances, then it is a big difference because a lot of journalists are saying the second-half was better. I can

Azarenka sets up Halep clash in Brisbane

MUMbAI, JANUARY 4 (IANs): Following India's record seventh South Asian Football Federation (SAFF) Cup triumph, Test skipper Virat Kohli heaped praise on the football team's captain Sunil Chhetri for his title-clinching extra-time goal. India defeated defending champions Afghanistan 2-1 in a hard-fought final at the Trivandrum International Stadium on Sunday. Chhetri (101st minute) scored the decisive goal for India when he capitalised on a defensive lapse by the visitors in the first half of extra time. The two teams were locked 1-1 after the regulation 90 minutes.

Zubayr Amiri (70th) put Afghanistan in front before Jeje Lalpekhlua (72nd) put India back in the game, and then Chhetri finally sealed the matter. “Congratulations Team India for lifting the SAFF cup for the 7th time. That extra time winner from Chhetri was mind blowing!” Kohli tweeted after India’s win on Monday.

The Indians thus avenged their 0-2 loss to Afghanistan in the final of the last edition of the tournament in Katmandu in 2013. The Delhi-born Kohli co-owns Indian Super League (ISL) football franchise FC Goa.

KOhIMA, JANUARY 4 (MexN): The 62nd Kohima Village Sports Association (KVSA) meet will start from January 5 to 9 at Khuochiezie, Kohima Local Ground.

The meet will be hosted by Kohima Village Youth Organization (KVYO). Parliamentary secretary for youth resources & sports, state lotteries and music task force Khriehu Liezietsu will grace the inaugural function as the chief guest on January 5 while Atuo Mezhiir, president Nagaland Football Association will be the guest honour for the valedictory function on January 9. The inaugural function will take place at 10:30 AM. Blessing and lighting of KVSA torch at Thevokemouzie will be done by Rev. Fr. Visosie-o Solomon Vizo. Welcome address will be delivered by organizing committee convenor Medovilhoulie Tseikha while KVYO president Ketounei Kire will deliver presidential address.

Chief marshal Petekhriezo Dziivichii will administer oath to the participating teams. A weeklong meet will be marked by athletics, volleyball, basketball, football, badminton, table tennis, chess and wrestling.

beautifully in the Big Bash League for the Perth Scorchers. He has had very good figures in short-form cricket and we really want him to make the most of this opportunity,” he said.

South Australian paceman Kane Richardson returns to the side having last played for Australia against the visiting South Africans in Canberra in 2014.

“Kane has had a taste of cricket at the international level and although that has been interrupted on occasions through injury we think he is ready to perform consistently for Australia.”

Australia ODI Squad: Steve Smith (captain), David Warner, George Bailey, Scott Boland, Josh Hazlewood, James Faulkner, Aaron Finch, Mitchell Marsh, Shaun Marsh, Glenn Maxwell, Kane Richardson, Joel Paris, Matthew Wade.

say that it was not better.

"It is because they are very angry that we have lost so many games in a row.

They are also not used to that, I'm not used to that, losing four matches in a row."

United are currently fifth in the league after 20 games, but find themselves nine points behind leaders Arsenal and defender Chris Smalling said they cannot afford to drop anymore points in their bid to win title for the first time since 2013.

"December was a poor month and it's a great feeling to get that win. I think, especially in the last couple of games, we've fought hard and we need to kick on like we did today," Smalling told the club website (www.manutd.com). "As players, we knew we had to stop that run and get on the front foot. It was a good start to the year and we can't afford any more slip-ups now, so we need to make sure we keep playing like this."

Australian Sam Stosur had a much difficult match and narrowly avoided disappointment on home turf by battling through a wrist injury to claim an opening victory.

The former U.S. Open champion recovered from 0-3 down in the final set to beat Slovakian qualifier Jana Cepelova 6-4 3-6 6-4 to start her year.

The 31-year-old has frequently failed to hit the heights on home turf having never won a tournament or progressed past the fourth round at the Australian Open.

The world number 27 looked set for another disappointment before a spirited effort saw off the world number 147 and set up a second-round clash with Spain's Carla Suarez Navarro. "I am really pleased to walk away with a win, especially being

Arsenal have right vibe to lift title, says Wenger

LONDON, JANUARY 4 (ReUteRs): Arsenal's victory over Newcastle United has left manager Arsene Wenger confident that his team's mental strength will help them mount a strong challenge for the Premier League title this season.

The Gunners beat Newcastle 1-0 on Saturday to move two points clear at the top of the Premier League table and the Frenchman viewed the victory as proof that his team have acquired a resilience they perhaps lacked in the past.

Arsenal last won the league in 2004, two years before shifting from Highbury to the Emirates Stadium, and Wenger says the current crop have a charisma that sets them apart from his teams of the intervening decade.

"I think we are more experienced than the teams I had when I moved into the stadium here," the French-

man told the club's website (www.arsenal.com).

"On our day we could play everybody off the park and when you had to dig deep you experienced it was a bit more difficult. It was different.

"We were more questioned on that aspect than the way we played football.

Now, (in terms of) the experience, the quality of

their attitude, the team always has the charisma.

"If you look at the team as a unit, it is like a person.

If you look at your team like a person and the vibes that are coming out -- you can sense in this job if you feel it or not. "I must say (you see) another aspect of your team in a game like (against Newcastle). It is more the mental aspect -- you fight,

don't panic and wait for your chance."

In Per Mertesacker, Mesut Ozil, Alexis Sanchez, Petr Cech and Olivier Giroud, Wenger has an experienced core of senior players who have won titles at their former clubs, which should stand Arsenal in good stead as the season builds to its climax.

Giroud, Arsenal's top scorer with 10 league goals so far, says that experience will play a key part in whether the Gunners will win the league.

"To be a champion, I know (what it takes) because I was a champion with Montpellier," he said.

"You need a bit of luck and sometimes you cannot play a fantastic game (but you need to win).

"We have a good mixture of experienced players and young players and the older ones bring confidence to the youngest and lead them."

down in that third set and then find that ability to come back and play well and win it when you are down, to turn things around," Stosur said.

Italy's Roberto Vinci, who ended Serena Williams's bid for a calendar grand slam in the U.S. Open semi-finals last year, beat former world number one Jelena Jankovic 3-6 6-2 6-4.

Russian Maria Sharapova is the tournament draw card and she will kick off her campaign on Tuesday against compatriot Ekaterina Makarova. On the men's side, 17-times grand slam champion Roger Federer will play Germany's Tobias Kamke.

Bulgarian Grigor Dimitrov, who has slumped from eighth to 28th in the rankings, started the year with a 6-3 7-6(10) win over fifth seed Gilles Simon of France.

Chelsea can still finish in top four, says Hiddink

LONDON, JANUARY 4 (ReUteRs): Chelsea still have a chance of finishing in the Premier League top four and securing Champions League football at the end of the season, interim manager Guus Hiddink has said.

Chelsea beat Crystal Palace 3-0 on Sunday to register their sixth league win of the season and their first since Hiddink took the reins from Jose Mourinho last month.

The win moved Chelsea up to 14th place in the table and 13 points behind fourth-placed Tottenham Hotspur, and Hiddink refused to write off his side's chances of finishing in the top four although he admitted it would be "difficult". "Everyone knows there's a lot of quality but sometimes a team which has just become champions has a tendency to become complacent," the Dutchman told the BBC. "When I started, we said mathematically when we could get to a Champions League position it would be lovely. "It's difficult because this league has become so strong. Everyone can win from everyone, which means it's very difficult to get there. "But as long as we play like (we did against Palace), we can be happy and then results will come. It's possible still, but a long way to go."

Amla makes century, De Villiers falls for 88

CAPe tOWN, JANUARY 4 (ReUteRs): Captain Hashim Amla scored an unbeaten century on the third day of the second test against England and AB de Villiers made 88 as South Africa reached tea on 290 for three on Monday.

Amla scored his first hundred for more than a year and De Villiers reached 8,000 test runs before he pulled a short ball from Steven Finn to James Anderson at mid-wicket just before the interval. South Africa trailed the touring side by 339 runs, 91 short of avoiding the follow-on, with Amla on 132 not out and Faf du Plessis on 15.

Amla and De Villiers resumed on 141 for two and extended their partnership to 183, giving South Africa a foothold in the game after England declared on a massive total of 629 for six on a second day of record-breaking batting.

The experienced pair played with much circumspection but did offer chances.

Amla was twice dropped -- by

Joe Root on 76 and Nick Compton on 120 -- and De Villiers survived an lbw appeal after asking for a review, which showed he got a slight nick to a Ben Stokes delivery.

De Villiers became the third South African batsman to pass 8,000 runs while Amla, who last made a significant contribution with 208 runs against the West Indies in December 2014, moved past 7,000 runs.

The 31-year-old De Villiers joined Jacques Kallis (13,206) and Graeme Smith (9,253) on the list of South Africans with more than 8,000 test runs.

England, 1-0 up in the series, bowled good lines and with spells of aggression on a pitch that offered little assistance and in hot temperatures of over 30 degrees celsius.

The third day, however, provided none of the fireworks of Sunday when Stokes and Jonny Bairstow smashed the ball to all corners of the picturesque South Africa's Hashim Amla (R) celebrates scoring a century with AB de Villiers during the second cricket ground. test match against England in Cape Town, South Africa, January 4. (REUTERS)

Tuesday 05•1•2016

EntErtainmEnt

'Winds of Winter' isn't coming out anytime soon W inter is not coming anytime soon.

In a lengthy blog post to kick off the new year, author George R.R. Martin confirmed that his new book in the A Song of Ice and Fire series, The Winds of Winter, will not be completed before Season 6 of the HBO show, "Game of Thrones" -and that the show will spoil the books.

In the post, the author

covers a saga so epic it's perhaps only surpassed by his novels. Martin recalls how everyone, including HBO, wanted the book to come out before Season 6 of "GoT" premieres in April, because the show has basically caught up to his source material. Martin said he missed multiple deadlines due to distractions, previous obligations and just not feeling it. The au-

thor explained that he was having more bad writing days than good ones.

Martin wrote that he's still "months away" from finishing Winds. And that's "if the writing goes well."

"You're disappointed, and you're not alone," he wrote. "My editors and publishers are disappointed, HBO is disappointed, my agents and foreign publishers and translators are dis-

appointed... but no one could possibly be more disappointed than me."

Even worse, the author confirmed some book spoilers are coming.

"Given where we are, inevitably, there will be certain plot twists and reveals in season six of 'Game of Thrones' that have not yet happened in the books," Martin said.

Book readers shouldn't totally freak out, though.

At this point, the show has diverted so much from the books that a lot of the perceived twists probably won't even happen in the books, Martin said. And many characters who are dead in the show still have significant stories coming in his novels.

But whether you prefer the show's take or the books, "you can still enjoy the hell out of both," Martin said.

Preity Zinta all set to make a comeback

B

ollywood's sweetheart, Preity Zinta, had chosen to stay away from Bollywood after her movie, Love In Paris had a disastrous run at the box office and failed to impress the audience. Reportedly, the gorgeous actress

is all set to make a comeback. According to reports, it seems that the actress, who is currently in Chicago, has been going through few scripts.

A source was quoted saying that Preity has started reading scripts as she wants

to face the camera again.

She also has a few scripts which she wants to produce herself. The source further added that an official announcement will be made soon. We can't wait to see the dimpled beauty returning to the silver screen.

Will Smith not happy with his 'Independence Day' character’s fate

I

n case you hadn't heard, Will Smith's cigar-smoking, alien-killing alter ego Steven Hiller won't appear in the sequel to the 1996 action classic "Independence Day," because, well ... he's dead.

Smith was noticeably absent from the trailer for the film's sequel, "Independence Day: Resurgence," which debuted back in December. The clip left many fans wondering what happened to the famed protagonist of the original film.

According to the sequel's promotional web-

site, Col. Hiller died in 2007 between the events of the first and second films. A headline from a fake broadcast on the website reads, "Alien Tech Malfunction Kills Col. Hiller."

For the first time, the actor is commenting on his decision to exit the franchise and his reaction upon hearing his character's untimely fate.

"I was working on 'Suicide Squad' during that time," he told Yahoo Movies. “['Independence Day' director] Roland [Emmerich] and I had talked about it. The

"Independence Day: Resurgence" takes place 20 years after the first film, when an alien distress signal draws a new force of life-threatening extraterrestrials to Earth, forcing the human race to once again fight for its survival.

Jeff Goldblum, Bill Pullman and Vivica Fox reprise their roles from the original film, while Liam Hemsworth and newcomer Jessie Usher (playing Hiller's stepson) round out the new cast.

"Independence Day: Resurgence" hits theaters Jun. 24.

trailer looks really cool. I’m going to be sitting around with tears in my eyes when that one comes out … It was terrible when I found out my character died."

According to the New York Daily News, director Roland Emmerich confirmed that Smith would not be part of the film because "he's too expensive" and later toldCinema Blend that Smith opted out because he "was tired of sequels" and had just completed "another science-fiction film, which was his father-son story ['After Earth']."

Salman asked to withdraw 'Khan Market' name from shopping portal

T

he Confederation of All India Traders (CAIT) on Sunday asked actor Salman Khan to withdraw the "Khan Market" name from his

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shopping portal to protect the brand name of the market here designated as the most expensive retail location in India.

"CAIT has shot up a communication to actor Salman Khan today (Sunday) urging him to withdraw the name of Khan Market from his web portal 'khanmarketonline.com' which he has announced on his birthday on December 27, 2015," CAIT said in a statement here.

KriTi Sanon enjoys summit on women's leadership

Established in 1951, Kahn Market was, last month, ranked the 24th most expensive retail location worldwide in a report by global real estate services firm Cushman & Wakefield.

"The name chosen by Salman Khan is more deceptive and infringes the rights of traders of Khan Market," said CAIT secretary general Praveen Khandelwal. "We will not allow anyone to encroach

upon the goodwill earned by traders for the market in the last 65 years," he added.

CAIT contended that things sold on 'khanmarketonline' would also be construed as sold by traders of the actual and physical Khan Market, leading to confusion and misunderstandings for consumers. Sales discounts that Salman Khan may offer on products may lead to confusion and embarrassing situations for traders and

consumers, the statement added.

Describing Khan Market itself as a brand, CAIT said: "A name by custom/ practice/usage over a long period of time by a group of persons becomes an intellectual property right of that group of persons is an integral part of principle of natural justice. Accordingly, the first lien of using the name 'Khan Market' lies with traders of Khan Market only."

Lana Del Rey gets restraining orders against two fans

L

ana Del Rey claims that two Russian fans are so obsessed with her that they will probably kill her. According to Gossip Cop, the "Young and Beautiful" singer filed a set of restraining orders against the overzealous fans.

The 30-year-old singer claimed in her restraining order filings that the Russian girls named Nataliia Krinitsyna and Luliia Vladimirovna Pozdina had hounded her and screamed at her in public. Lana said that she had to move because of them. Unfortunately, the fans found her new place and continued to sleep outside her house and shout her name in the middle of the night.

Both girls allegedly put letters in Lana's mailbox. In the letters sent to the singer, Nataliia and Luliia reportedly made a violent threats and even said they would commit suicide. Such threats frightened the "Pretty When You Cry" singer. She thought it could get worse in the future and they might kill her.

A judge then granted the restraining orders which require the girls to stay 100 yards clear of Lana and her home.

As the singer is still afraid if the girls will approach her, she has hired a full-time bodyguard and off duty LAPD cops for protection.

B'wood revenues may cross Rs 19,300 cr by FY17

R

evenues from hindi film industry are likely to cross Rs 19,300 crore by next fiscal, owing to aggressive marketing campaigns, growing contribution from overseas markets and improved quality of movies, says a study. The current estimated size of Bollywood is about Rs 15,500 crore.

Increased number of multiplexes and growing digitisation in the industry are also contributing to the rise in revenue.

"Box office collections in In-

dia that are estimated at over Rs 11,500 crore are likely to cross Rs 14,200 crore mark by 2017 and will account for about 74 per cent of the majority of Bollywood revenues," said the joint study conducted by Assocham and Deloitte.

The industry s revenues from overseas box office collections are likely to cross Rs 1,300 crore from current size of about Rs 1,100 crore, it said.

Rising demand for movies on TV along with growing penetration of smartphones across

the country will spur growth in cable and satellite rights.

Online and digital aggregation revenues are likely to grow at a compounded annual growth rate of about 15 per cent till 2017, it said.

The study noted that the home video industry will further shrink at a CAGR of 10 per cent due to increasing piracy and growing popularity of digital platforms.

"Home video has lost share to video on demand (VoD) through direct to home (DTH)

operators and over the top (OTT) platforms," the study added.

Noting that the regional movies are gaining popularity in India and abroad, it said that cinema in southern India especially Tamil and Telugu may soon dethrone Bollywood from the top spot which accounts for 43 per cent share in terms of box office collections by language.

"Large national producers plan to spend 20 per cent of their annual budgets on regional cinema," it said.

Taylor Swift ‘Completely Shocked’ over Harry Styles & Kendall’s new romance

“Dilwale”

actress Kriti Sanon was happy to be part of a summit which revolved around how women should push themselves to achieve their goals.

Being an outsider in Bollywood, and one who has made a mark in the industry with her talent, Kriti was glad to be a panel member amongst other women who have proved their mettle in various fields.

Kriti represented Bollywood at the discussion, which was held at the 10th annual Global Healthcare Summit (GHS) 2016, organised by the Association of American Physicians of Indian Origin (AAPI) in New Delhi on Sunday.

"It was a very good experience to be on the panel with such wonderful women who have achieved so much and made a place for themselves in different fields. The discussion was absolutely enriching," Kriti said. At the event, she shared her experience of being part of the film industry, and making her own place.

Hillstar NOW SHOWING

K

endall Jenner and Harry Styles look happier than ever — but the people seeing their New Year’s photos aren’t feeling the same way: specifically, Taylor Swift!

“Taylor heard from a mutual friend that Harry and Kendall are back together and she is completely shocked. She can’t believe that Kendall would actually date Harry,” an insider told HollywoodLife.com exclusively.

They also added that Taylor and Kendall had “bonded” over their pasts with Harry and they actually compared notes, after Kendall and Harry called it quits in 2014. You probably remember it took Taylor and Kendall a while to get through it that time — Taylor thought Kendall didn’t respect the girl code.

Harry and Kendall

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called off their fling last year right before he headed on tour, but it looks like now it’s definitely back on — on New Year’s! “The fact that Harry and Kendall are celebrating New Year’s Eve together is beyond weird to Taylor,” our source added.

“She really can’t trust anything that Kendall tells her, not now that she’s back with Harry!”

Kendall and Harry’s NYE date comes after they were spotted together in Anguilla on Dec. 29. And in the new pics, they’re

spotted getting very cozy on a yacht together and actually look like they’re playfully wrestling. Regardless, it’s probably not fun for Taylor to see her ex hanging out like that with a girl she brought on stage at tour!

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tuesDAY 05•01•2016

SPORTS

THE MORUNG EXPRESS

Alcacer earns Valencia Lodha panel for legalising betting in India draw with Real in thriller

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MADRID, JANUARY 4 (REUTERS): A Paco Alcacer header gave Valencia a 2-2 draw in a highly charged La Liga clash against third-placed Real Madrid who had taken the lead with eight minutes remaining on Sunday.

Real, who had Mateo Kovacic sent off after 68 minutes for a two-footed challenge, went 2-1 ahead with a superb Gareth Bale header only for Alcacer to level just over a minute later.

Real had opened the scoring after a magical team move in which Karim Benzema linked up with Bale and Cristiano Ronaldo before finishing clinically after 17 minutes.

Both sides had spells of dominance and Valencia equalised through a Dani Parejo penalty just before halftime after a foul by Pepe on Andre Gomes.

The game was evenly poised when Kovacic was red carded for a reckless challenge on Joao Cancelo shortly after Ronaldo thought he should have had a penalty when he was bundled over.

Bale put Real back in front when he headed into the top corner from a free-kick after 82 minutes but Alcacer nodded in the equaliser from close range.

Valencia coach Gary Neville is still without a win in four league games but will be delighted at how his team fought back.

For under-fire Real coach Rafa Benitez, back at the club where he won the league in 2002 and 2004, plus the UEFA Cup, it was another game where they failed to beat battling opponents. "It is difficult to maintain a high intensity and double if you have a player less but we showed pride," Real defender Sergio Ramos told reporters.

"We wanted to start the year showing character and I think we did so here."

Atletico Madrid are top with 41 points from 18 matches, two ahead of Barcelona, who have a game in hand, while Real have 37, one more than Villarreal who won 2-1 at Deportivo La Coruna thanks to a late penalty from Bruno Soriano who scored twice.

NEw DElhI, JANUARY 4 (IANS): The Supreme Court appointed Justice R.M. Lodha Committee on Monday made a host of far-reaching reccommendations for improvement of cricket administration in the country.

The various proposals in the committee's report to the apex court include separate governing bodies for the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) and the Indian Premier League (IPL) in a bid to partially segregate their functioning, bringing the BCCI under the Right to Information (RTI) act, limiting age and tenures for

officials, legalisation of betting, uniformity in structure of state associations, and a one-state-one-member (vote) pattern for the BCCI governing body.

The 159-page report by the threemember committee -- comprising former Chief Justice Lodha, Justice Ashok Bhan and Justice R.V. Raveendran -- former judges of the Supreme court -- also suggested changes in the BCCI's administrative set-up, proposing the introduction of a CEO assisted by a team of six professional managers to handle the day-to-day non-cricketing affairs of the BCCI. The Lodha panel said the CEO

and his managers will be responsible to an apex council that will comprise of nine members. Issues related to the selection, coaching, performance evaluation and umpiring are to be handled by cricket committees manned only by former players.

The panel also suggested limiting the autonomy of the Indian Premier League (IPL), adding that the IPL governing council should be reduced to nine members with the secretary and the treasurer of the BCCI as its ex-officio members and two other members to be nominated or elected by the full members.

Benitez to be Sacked, Zindane to take over: Reports

MADRID, JANUARY 4 (AFP): Beleaguered Real Madrid manager Rafael Benitez could be sacked by the Spanish giants after just seven months in charge, several Spanish media outlets reported.

Sports daily Marca reported Benitez's sacking will be made official in the coming hours on Monday with French legend and the club's reserve team coach Zinedine Zidane to take over.

Madrid twice threw away the lead in drawing 2-2 away to Valencia on Sunday to leave Benitez's men four points adrift of local rivals Atletico Madrid at the top of La Liga. They also trail eternal rivals Barcelona by two points having played a game more.

The appointment of the former Liverpool and Chelsea manager in June wasn't a popular one with either fans or the club's star players, who had voiced their desire for his sacked predecessor Carlo Ancelotti to stay.

real chance. Benzema exchanged passes with Bale, who back-heeled the ball to Ronaldo, and the Portuguese set up Benzema to score. Valencia’s improved as the first half went on and equalised after Pepe was caught out by Gomes and he brought him down for a penalty struck by Parejo.

Real rallied in the second half following the dismissal of Kovacic and went back ahead through a pinpoint Bale header from a Toni Kroos free-kick but then they were exposed at the back with Rodrigo FIRST CHANCE heading back across goal Real moved the ball and Alcacer scored. around slickly in attack and In the dying moments went ahead with their first of the game Alvaro Negre-

A run of three league defeats in five games in November and December, including a 4-0 thrashing at home to Barcelona, wiped away the early credit Benitez had gained with an unbeaten 14-game run to start his reign. Further embarrassment was to follow when Madrid were thrown out of the Copa del Rey for fielding an ineligible player last month.

Benitez's relationship with the dressing room has also failed to improve with key players such as Karim Benzema and James Rodriguez often showing their disgust at being substituted.

And captain Sergio Ramos failed to offer a strong sign of support for Benitez when given the chance after the Valencia game. "His future doesn't depend on us," said the Spanish international. "Whoever the coach is he will always have the confidence of the players. Whether it is Rafa or anyone else."

do was through on goal but denied by keeper Keylor Navas.

Villarreal went ahead with the only clear chance in the first period when Soriano was given space inside the area from a Mario Gaspar pass and he slotted home in the 36th minute.

The game opened up after the break and Depor's Luis Alberto converted a Lucas Perez cross to equalise after 48 minutes.

Perez fired just wide in front of goal and Villarreal’s Denis Suarez was denied by the feet of German Lux but the game appeared to be heading for a draw until Fernando Navarro pushed Samu Garcia in the area to

concede a penalty.

Soriano stepped up to slot home his second goal in the 94th minute for their fifth straight win after a lively second half.

Elsewhere, Eibar's Ander Capa, Keko, Adrian Gonzalez and Borja Baston were on target for the mid-table side in a 4-0 win at Real Betis, while lowly Granada's Isaac Success and Adalberto Penaranda scored in a 2-1 victory over Sevilla.

Second-bottom Rayo Vallecano's Diego Llorente and Jozabed Sanchez struck in a 2-2 draw at home to Real Sociedad whose goals came from Aritz Elustondo and Bruma.

25th MDCA Trophy begins today

MokokchUNg, JANUARY 4 (MExN): The 25th edition of the Mokokchung District Cricket Associations (MDCA) Tournament is all set to begin on January 5 where 12 teams will battle it out against each other to lift the district’s biggest cricket trophy on the 15th. The matches will be played in the T20 format at Imkongmeren Sports Complex. The 12 teams are divided into 4 pools with three teams each and the top two teams from each pool will move on to the knock-out stages. There are about 30 clubs registered with the MDCA out of which only 12 turned up for this year’s competition.

However, although the number of teams competing are comparatively lesser this year, the quality of matches promises to be far better this time with more matches going all the way down to the wire as all the local talents are evenly represented in all the teams.

Another exciting feature about the tournament is the presence of players from other states too.

Four Assam-based players Sadek Imran, Biplab Saikia, Azar Ali and Bastav will be playing for Team Bendangsunep. They play for the Under-19 and U-23 teams

of that state. Some of Nagalandr’s top cricket players are also reportedly playing for various teams including Imliwati and Tejasol for Sovran CC, Sunny and Rohit for Titans CC while Hokaito Zhimomi, Vicky Hangsing and Jalal Uddin Laskar are playing for Züngameden CC. The top two Naga cricket players today, Jonathan Rongsen Longkumer and Hokaito Zhimomi, are both featuring in this tournament, playing for Sovran CC and Züngameden CC respectively.

They are perhaps the only two Naga cricketers playing in the Ranji Trophy – Jonathan plays for the Railways while Hokaito plays for Assam – and their playing in this tournament is expected to help attract more interest in the game in the district. Another interesting feature is the presence of Longmiasang CC from Mopungchuket village, the only team from the rural areas playing in this tournament. MDCA Trophy is perhaps one of the oldest cricket tournaments in the state. There has also been a change of leadership in the MDCA recently and it is expected that the sport would gain more fan following in the following years.

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