A significant outing

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Editorial: The Hindu (India) PRIME Minister Narendra Modi has concluded an important visit to Nepal, where he tapped all the right nodes of the relationship -- political, economic and cultural -- to turn around ties, which had begun to languish over the last few years. The visit seems to have caught the imagination of the people of Nepal. Partly, this was because Mr. Modi managed to connect with the common person through his carefully choreographed visit to the ancient Pashupatinath temple, and a generous announcement of donations to give the ancient place of worship an essential facelift. The prime minister's visit also created a buzz because he seemed to have fresh ideas, born out of a vision that Indo-Nepal ties can flourish only when they are connected with South Asia's promising future. Mr. Modi has re-emphasised that bilateral ties with neighbours must promote the overall well-being of the eight-nation South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (Saarc).
In his bid to reinvigorate the relationship, Mr. Modi underscored his penchant for using energy as an instrument to reinforce political bonds. During his stay, India pledged to bolster Nepal's energy security by agreeing to establish a two-phase products pipeline, which will eventually carry petroleum products from Raxaul in Bihar to Kathmandu. More significantly, discussions have been held to link Nepal with a gas pipeline from India. If that happens, it would lock India and Nepal into a genuine strategic embrace, opening up the possibility of Nepal benefiting from gas that India might in the future procure from a variety of overseas destinations, including Iran and Turkmenistan. India's energy pledge to Nepal follows a decision to build a pipeline channeling diesel and kerosene to Pakistan from its refinery in Bhatinda. Besides, India is planning to send gas, transported from Dahej in Gujarat to Jalandhar, before it is sent on to Pakistan. Nepal would be one of the beneficiaries if the project fructifies; it could also be connected with the futuristic Iran-Pakistan-India (IPI) and Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India (TAPI) pipeline networks. Following improved atmospherics resulting from Mr. Modi's visit, India and Nepal decided to “once and for all” resolve the pending Nepal-India boundary issues, including differences over Kalapani and Susta. Yet, both sides have their task cut out to remove the remaining impediments in the relationship. New Delhi and Kathmandu need to quickly revise the Treaty of Peace and Friendship of 1950, so that the archaic “big-brother” tag on India is swiftly removed. Besides, the two have to learn to work together with China, which has the political heft and the economic surplus to make solid investments in the Himalayan republic.
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14 million at risk

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Afp, Nairobi Poor rains and multiple conflicts across eastern Africa have put over 14 million people in need of food aid, three years since extreme drought devastated the region, the United Nations said yesterday.
"The situation is very worrisome," said Matthew Conway, spokesman for the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) for Eastern Africa.
"There are similarities to the situation that we saw leading to the 2011 crisis," he said, adding that the United Nations was appealing for $2.6 billion (1.9 billion euros) in aid.
Conditions are still far from the crisis in 2011, when some 12 million people in four nations were hit by one of the worst droughts in 60 years, with parts of Somalia declared famine zones.
The 14.4 million people classified by the UN as food insecure are spread over nine nations, with the hardest hit countries including war-torn South Sudan and Somalia.
Aid workers say famine could be declared in South Sudan within weeks if fighting continues, while last month the UN warned Somalia is sliding back into an acute hunger crisis.
Arid northern Kenya, which like much of the region suffers from recuring droughts, is also struggling.

Oxfam said failed or poor rains, conflict and drought have contributed to the rising food insecurity in the region.
"It is imperative that we learn from the lessons of 2011," Oxfam's regional director Fran Equiza told AFP.
"Early intervention has the potential to save thousands of lives and keep millions more from the brink of starvation."
Some 2.7 million people are in dire need of supplies in Ethiopia and 1.3 million in Kenya, many of them refugees from neighbouring Somalia. Some 120,000 are in need in Djibouti.
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59 attackers killed in China

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Armed policemen prepare to patrol near the site of an explosion in Urumqi, northwest China's Xinjiang, May 22. Security has been tightened in Xinjiang following a string of attacks.

Armed policemen prepare to patrol near the site of an explosion in Urumqi, northwest China's Xinjiang, May 22. Security has been tightened in Xinjiang following a string of attacks.
Chinese state media say 37 civilians were killed by a gang in Xinjiang, with 59 attackers killed by security forces.
The incident happened on 28 July but this is the first definitive death toll released by Xinhua news agency.
Xinhua says 215 attackers armed with knives and axes were arrested after they stormed a police station and government offices.
But an Uighur rights group says police opened fire on people protesting against a Ramadan crackdown on Muslims.
At the time, Xinhua reported the incident in the towns of Elixku and Huangdi in Shache county as a "terror attack" and said police had shot dead many attackers.
It said 30 police cars had been damaged or destroyed and "dozens" of Uighur and Han Chinese civilians had been killed or injured.
'RAMADAN CRACKDOWN'
"This was a serious terrorist attack incident which has links to domestic and overseas terrorist organisations and was organized, premeditated, carefully planned and evil," said a statement from the Xinjiang government, posted on its website on Sunday.
The US-based activist group Uyghur American Association (UAA), however, said sources in the region had told them that local Uighurs had been protesting at the time of the "attack".
The UAA said the protest was "against Chinese security forces' heavy-handed Ramadan crackdown and extrajudicial use of lethal force in recent weeks in the county".
Neither account of the violence could be independently confirmed.
Tensions between Uighurs and Han Chinese migrants have been growing for several years, with some Uighurs opposing Chinese rule in Xinjiang.
In recent months there has been an upsurge in Xinjiang-linked violence that authorities have attributed to Uighur separatists and authorities have stepped up security operations in the region.
Last Wednesday, the imam of China's largest mosque, in the city of Kashgar in Xinjiang, died after reportedly being stabbed after morning prayers.
Jume Tahir, 74, had been appointed imam of the 600-year-old mosque by China's ruling Communist Party and he was a vocal public supporter of Chinese policies in the region.
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Palestinian militants captured an Israeli soldier

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An Israeli soldier rides atop a moving tank near the border with Gaza on August 2, 2014. - Reuters
An Israeli soldier rides atop a moving tank near the border with Gaza on August 2, 2014. – Reuters
The bloodshed in Gaza showed no sign of letting up Saturday, with 50 Palestinians reported killed amid renewed Israeli shelling following accusations that Palestinian militants captured an Israeli soldier.
The fate of the soldier, identified by the Israel Defense Forces as 2nd Lt. Hadar Goldin, remains unclear.
And each side blames the other for the collapse of an attempted cease-fire in Friday, which disintegrated before it ever really took hold.
Pointing the finger at Hamas and its militant allies for the attack, in which Goldin went missing and two other soldiers were killed, Israel resumed shelling on what it has described as militant strongholds in Gaza.
As of Saturday, the overall Palestinian death toll has risen to 1,650, with more than 8,900 wounded, said Ashraf el-Qedra, spokesman for the Palestinian Health Ministry in Gaza, on his Facebook page.
The IDF said Saturday morning that it had hit 200 ‘terror targets’ in Gaza in the past 24 hours, including ‘tunnels, weapon manufacturing and storage facilities, and command and control centers.’
A huge pre-dawn blast rocked Gaza as the Islamic University was apparently hit by Israeli shelling. According to the IDF, it was targeting ‘a Hamas military wing facility that was used for research and development of weapon manufacturing’ within the university.
Shelling also targeted weapons caches and Hamas facilities within five mosques, it said.
In addition, Israeli aircraft targeted a missile launcher used to fire at Tel Aviv, the IDF said. Two rockets were intercepted over that city and another over Beersheba early Saturday. In the past 24 hours, 65 rockets have been fired into Israel, the IDF said, 11 of which were intercepted.
Hamas acknowledged responsibility on Saturday for a deadly Gaza Strip ambush in which an Israeli army officer may have been captured, but said the incident likely preceded and therefore had not violated a US- and UN-sponsored truce.
The statement by Hamas’s armed wing, the Qassam Brigades, appeared aimed at preempting any intensification of Israel’s 25-day-old offensive in the Palestinian enclave and deflecting international blame for the collapse of Friday’s ceasefire.
But in a signal the war could wind down, Israel’s military said its objectives, chiefly the destruction of tunnels dug by Hamas for cross-border attacks, were close to being achieved.
Israel says Hamas gunmen and a suicide bomber stormed out of a tunnel to ambush its infantrymen in southern Rafah a 9.30 a.m. on Friday, one and a half hours after the halt to hostilities came into effect, killing two troops and hauling another, Lieutenant Hadar Goldin, away through the underground passage.
The incident triggered Israeli shelling of Rafah from the mid-morning that killed 150 Palestinians. By early afternoon, Israel declared an end to the truce – which was meant to have lasted 72 hours, allowing humanitarian relief to reach Gaza’s 1.8 million Palestinians and for further de-escalation talks.
Washington accused Hamas of a ‘barbaric’ breach of the deal mediated by Egypt with the involvement of Turkey, Qatar and US-backed Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas. The United Nations said it had not verified the flare-up’s causes, but questioned Hamas’s truce commitment and urged Goldin be freed.
Hamas said it did not know what had happened to the soldier but if he was captured, he probably died in Israeli hostilities that followed the ambus
The bloodshed in Gaza showed no sign of letting up Saturday, with 50 Palestinians reported killed amid renewed Israeli shelling following accusations that Palestinian militants captured an Israeli soldier.
The fate of the soldier, identified by the Israel Defense Forces as 2nd Lt. Hadar Goldin, remains unclear.
And each side blames the other for the collapse of an attempted cease-fire in Friday, which disintegrated before it ever really took hold.
Pointing the finger at Hamas and its militant allies for the attack, in which Goldin went missing and two other soldiers were killed, Israel resumed shelling on what it has described as militant strongholds in Gaza.
As of Saturday, the overall Palestinian death toll has risen to 1,650, with more than 8,900 wounded, said Ashraf el-Qedra, spokesman for the Palestinian Health Ministry in Gaza, on his Facebook page.
The IDF said Saturday morning that it had hit 200 ‘terror targets’ in Gaza in the past 24 hours, including ‘tunnels, weapon manufacturing and storage facilities, and command and control centers.’
A huge pre-dawn blast rocked Gaza as the Islamic University was apparently hit by Israeli shelling. According to the IDF, it was targeting ‘a Hamas military wing facility that was used for research and development of weapon manufacturing’ within the university.
Shelling also targeted weapons caches and Hamas facilities within five mosques, it said.
In addition, Israeli aircraft targeted a missile launcher used to fire at Tel Aviv, the IDF said. Two rockets were intercepted over that city and another over Beersheba early Saturday. In the past 24 hours, 65 rockets have been fired into Israel, the IDF said, 11 of which were intercepted.
Hamas acknowledged responsibility on Saturday for a deadly Gaza Strip ambush in which an Israeli army officer may have been captured, but said the incident likely preceded and therefore had not violated a US- and UN-sponsored truce.
The statement by Hamas’s armed wing, the Qassam Brigades, appeared aimed at preempting any intensification of Israel’s 25-day-old offensive in the Palestinian enclave and deflecting international blame for the collapse of Friday’s ceasefire.
But in a signal the war could wind down, Israel’s military said its objectives, chiefly the destruction of tunnels dug by Hamas for cross-border attacks, were close to being achieved.
Israel says Hamas gunmen and a suicide bomber stormed out of a tunnel to ambush its infantrymen in southern Rafah a 9.30 a.m. on Friday, one and a half hours after the halt to hostilities came into effect, killing two troops and hauling another, Lieutenant Hadar Goldin, away through the underground passage.
The incident triggered Israeli shelling of Rafah from the mid-morning that killed 150 Palestinians. By early afternoon, Israel declared an end to the truce – which was meant to have lasted 72 hours, allowing humanitarian relief to reach Gaza’s 1.8 million Palestinians and for further de-escalation talks.
Washington accused Hamas of a ‘barbaric’ breach of the deal mediated by Egypt with the involvement of Turkey, Qatar and US-backed Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas. The United Nations said it had not verified the flare-up’s causes, but questioned Hamas’s truce commitment and urged Goldin be freed.
Hamas said it did not know what had happened to the soldier but if he was captured, he probably died in Israeli hostilities that followed the ambus
- See more at: http://newagebd.net/36327/israeli-shells-pound-gaza-as-fate-of-missing-soldier-remains-unknown/#sthash.YYssqwkA.dpuf
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