Aug 14,2021:Taliban insurgents have seized Afghanistan’s second and third-biggest cities, local officials said on Friday, as resistance from government forces crumbled and fears grew that an assault on the capital Kabul could be just days away.
A government official confirmed that Kandahar, the economic hub of the south, was under Taliban control as U.S.-led international forces complete their withdrawal after 20 years of war.
Herat in the west also fell to the hardline Islamist group.
“The city looks like a frontline, a ghost town,” provincial council member Ghulam Habib Hashimi said by telephone from the city of about 600,000 people near the border with Iran.
“Families have either left or are hiding in their homes.”
A U.S. defence official said there was concern that the Taliban – ousted from power in 2001 after the Sept. 11 attacks on the United States – could make a move on Kabul within days.
President Joe Biden’s administration on Thursday announced plans to send 3,000 additional troops to help evacuate U.S. embassy staff, and the Pentagon said most would be in Kabul by the end of the weekend. Britain also confirmed the start of a military operation to support the evacuation of its nationals.
“Kabul is not right now in an imminent threat environment, but clearly … if you just look at what the Taliban has been doing, you can see that they are trying to isolate Kabul,” Pentagon spokesman John Kirby said on Friday.
The White House said Biden was receiving regular briefings from his national security team on efforts to remove U.S. civilians.
The U.S. embassy in the Afghan capital informed staff that burn bins and an incinerator were available to destroy material including papers and electronic devices to “reduce the amount of sensitive material on the property,” according to an advisory seen by Reuters.
A State Department spokesperson said the embassy was following standard procedure to “minimize our footprint.”
The United Nations has said it would not evacuate its personnel from Afghanistan but was relocating some to Kabul from other parts of the country. Many other Western embassies and aid groups said they were bringing some staff home.
U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres warned that “Afghanistan is spinning out of control” and urged all parties to do more to protect civilians.
“This is the moment to halt the offensive. This is the moment to start serious negotiation. This is the moment to avoid a prolonged civil war, or the isolation of Afghanistan,” Guterres told reporters in New York.
Afghan First Vice President Amrullah Saleh said after a security meeting chaired by President Ashraf Ghani that he was proud of the armed forces and the government would do all it could to strengthen resistance to the Taliban.
‘Humanitarian catastophe’
The explosion in fighting has raised fears of a refugee crisis and a rollback of gains in human rights. Some 400,000 civilians have been forced from their homes since the start of the year, 250,000 of them since May, a U.N. official said.
Families were camping out in a Kabul park with little or no shelter, having escaped violence elsewhere in the country.
“The situation has all the hallmarks of a humanitarian catastrophe,” the U.N. World Food Programme’s Thomson Phiri told a briefing.
Under Taliban rule from 1996 to 2001, women could not work, girls were not allowed to attend school and women had to cover their face and be accompanied by a male relative if they wanted to venture out of their homes.
Of Afghanistan’s major cities, the government still holds Mazar-i-Sharif in the north and Jalalabad, near the Pakistani border in the east, in addition to Kabul.
The Taliban has taken the towns of Lashkar Gah in the south and Qala-e-Naw in the northwest, security officials said. Firuz Koh, capital of central Ghor province, was handed over without a fight.
Kandahar’s loss is a heavy blow to the government. It is the heartland of the Taliban – ethnic Pashtun fighters who emerged in 1994 amid the chaos of civil war.
The militants have taken control of 14 of Afghanistan’s 34 provincial capitals since Aug. 6.
After seizing Herat, the insurgents detained veteran commander Ismail Khan, an official said. They had promised not to harm him and other captured officials.
A Taliban spokesman confirmed that Khan, who had been leading fighters against the insurgents, was in their custody. Al-Jazeera later reported Khan had boarded a plane to Kabul bearing a message from the Taliban. The report could not immediately be confirmed.
The speed of the Taliban’s gains has led to recriminations over the U.S. withdrawal, which was negotiated last year under the administration of Biden’s Republican predecessor, Donald Trump.
Biden said this week he did not regret his decision to follow through with the withdrawal. He noted Washington spent more than $1 trillion and lost thousands of troops over 20 years of war, and called on Afghanistan’s army and leaders to step up.
Opinion polls showed most Americans back Biden’s decision. But Republicans criticized the Democratic president.
U.S. Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell called the situation in Afghanistan “a debacle” but said it was not too late to stop the Taliban overrunning the capital by providing air and other support for Afghan forces.
Toronto, Aug 14,2021: Canada will resettle up to 20,000 vulnerable Afghan nationals including female activists and journalists as the Taliban terror group (banned in Russia) advances in its bid to reclaim control of the war-torn country, Ottawa announced.
“Canada will build on our earlier special immigration program to welcome over 20,000 vulnerable Afghan refugees, in total,” Immigration Minister Marco Mendicino said during a press briefing on Friday.
Last week, Ottawa announced that it would resettle “thousands” of Afghans through special immigrant programs designed for those who assisted Canadian military efforts in Afghanistan, in particular, interpreters, who the Taliban views as traitors and have vowed vengeance against.
Canada’s minister noted Friday’s announcement would be in addition to the efforts to relocate those who provided direct assistance to the Canadian Armed Forces (CAF).
Mendicino said the Canadian government will welcome individuals at greatest risk of Taliban reprisals, including women leaders, human rights activists, journalists and members of the so-called LGBT community.
The fourth flight carrying refugees landed in Canada just a “few hours ago,” Minister of National Defense Harjit Sajjan said during the same press briefing. The first flight carrying Afghan refugees touched down in Toronto on August 4, carrying an unspecified number of people, with the second and third flights arriving on August 8 and 11, according to Canada’s defense chief.
According to Sajjan, the Canadian government requested the military’s help with the resettlement operation on July 30.
Ottawa has also signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) with the Alberta-based Manmeet Singh Bhullar foundation to relocate Sikhs and Hindus displaced by the Taliban offensive.
Canada, as well as other countries including the United States, are working to assist interpreters and other Afghans facing imminent danger amid the US withdrawal from the war-torn country.
The scramble comes amid a Taliban advance, which has seen the terror group capture 15 of 34 Afghan provincial capitals including Kandahar, Herat and Pol-e-Khomri in spate of one week.
The Canadian military, which was primarily active in Kandahar, exited the Afghan war in 2014.
Aug 13,2021: The U.S. became more diverse and more urban over the past decade, and the non-Hispanic white population dropped for the first time on record, the Census Bureau reported Thursday as it released a trove of demographic data that will be used to redraw the nation’s political maps.
The new figures offered the most detailed portrait yet of how the country has changed since 2010, and they are sure to set off an intense partisan battle over representation at a time of deep national division and fights over voting rights. The numbers could help determine control of the House in the 2022 elections and provide an electoral edge for years to come. The data will also shape how $1.5 trillion in annual federal spending is distributed.
Americans continued to migrate to the South and West at the expense of the Midwest and Northeast, the figures showed. The share of the white population fell from 63.7% in 2010 to 57.8% in 2020, the lowest on record, driven by falling birthrates among white women compared with Hispanic and Asian women. The number of non-Hispanic white people shrank from 196 million in 2010 to 191 million.
White people continue to be the most prevalent racial or ethnic group, though that changed in California, where Hispanics became the largest racial or ethnic group, growing from 37.6% to 39.4% over the decade, while the share of white people dropped from 40.1% to 34.7%. California, the nation’s most populous state, joined Hawaii, New Mexico and the District of Columbia as a place where non-Hispanic white people are no longer the dominant group.
“The U.S. population is much more multiracial and much more racially and ethnically diverse than what we have measured in the past,” said Nicholas Jones, a Census Bureau official.
Some demographers cautioned that the white population was not shrinking as much as shifting to multiracial identities. The number of people who identified as belonging to two or more races more than tripled from 9 million people in 2010 to 33.8 million in 2020. They now account for 10% of the U.S. population.
People who identify as a race other than white, Black, Asian, American Indian, Native Hawaiian or Pacific Islander — either alone or in combination with one of those races — jumped to 49.9 million people, surpassing the Black population of 46.9 million people as the nation’s second-largest racial group, according to the Census Bureau.
But demographers said that may have to do with Hispanic uncertainty about how to answer the race question on the census form, as well as changes the Census Bureau made in processing responses and how it asked about race and ethnicity.
Asians were the next most populous racial group, reaching 24 million people in 2020, a jump of more than a third.
The Hispanic population boomed over the decade, growing by almost a quarter to 62.1 million residents in 2020 and accounting for almost half of the overall U.S. population growth, which was the slowest since the Great Depression. By comparison, the non-Hispanic growth rate over the decade was 4.3%.
The data “demonstrates that the Latino community is a huge and increasing part of our nation’s future,” said Thomas Saenz, president of the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund.
Almost all of the growth of the past 10 years happened in metropolitan areas. About 80% of metropolitan areas saw population gains as more people in smaller counties moved to larger, more urban counties.
The share of children in the U.S. declined because of falling birth rates, while the share of adults grew, driven by aging baby boomers. Adults over age 18 made up more than three-quarters of the population in 2020, or 258.3 million people, an increase of more than 10% from 2010. However, the population of children under age 18 dropped from 74.2 million in 2010 to 73.1 million in 2020.
In addition, there is now no majority racial or ethnic group for people younger than 18, as the share of non-Hispanic whites in the age group dropped from 53.5% to 47.3% over the decade.
“If not for Hispanics, Asians, people of two or more races, those are the only groups underage that are growing,” said William Frey, a senior fellow at Brookings’ Metropolitan Policy Program. “A lot of these young minorities are important for our future growth, not only for the child population but for our future labor force.”
The data comes from compiling forms filled out last year by tens of millions of Americans, with the help of census takers and government statisticians to fill in the blanks when forms were not turned in or questions were left unanswered. The numbers reflect countless decisions made over the past 10 years by individuals to have children, move to another part of the country or to come to the U.S. from elsewhere.
The release offers states the first chance to redraw their political districts in a process that is expected to be particularly brutish since control over Congress and statehouses is at stake.
It also provides the first opportunity to see, on a limited basis, how well the Census Bureau fulfilled its goal of counting every U.S. resident during what many consider the most difficult once-a-decade census in recent memory. Communities of color have been undercounted in past censuses. The agency likely will not know how good a job it did until next year, when it releases a survey showing undercounts and overcounts.
“The data we are releasing today meet our high quality data standards,” acting Census Bureau Director Ron Jarmin said.
Even before it began, the headcount was challenged by attempted political interference from the Trump administration’s failed efforts to add a citizenship question to the census form, a move that critics feared would have a chilling effect on immigrant or Hispanic participation. The effort was stopped by the Supreme Court.
The information was originally supposed to be released by the end of March, but that deadline was pushed back because of delays caused by the coronavirus pandemic.
The start of the 2020 census for most U.S. residents coincided with the spread of the virus last year, forcing the Census Bureau to delay operations and extend the count’s schedule. Because census data is tied to where people were on April 1, 2020, the numbers will not reflect the loss of nearly 620,000 people in the U.S. who died from COVID-19.
On top of the pandemic, census takers in the West contended with wildfires, and those in Louisiana faced repeated hurricanes. Then, there were court battles over the Trump administration’s effort to end the count early that repeatedly changed the plan for concluding field operations.
Back in April, the Census Bureau released state population totals showing how many congressional seats each state gets.
Kinnaur (Himachal Pradesh), August 12,2021: Indo-Tibetan Border Police (ITBP) officials informed that the number of corpses recovered from the landslide site of Himachal Pradesh’s Kinnaur has climbed to 13.
“We have located the remnants of the bus and one body has been recovered from the site,” Deputy Commandant of ITBP Dharmender Thakur told the media personnel here.
Thakur also said that the rescue operation was halted last night because of another landslide hit in the area and resumed at 3:30 in the early morning on Thursday and it is underway.
A 30-seater Himachal Road Transport Corporation (HRTC) bus, a truck and four cars were among the vehicles that came under the rubble, as the landslide hit the Reckong Peo-Shimla Highway around 12 noon on Wednesday.
The HRTC bus, which was moving from Murang to Haridwar was believed to have fallen into the Sutlej river after rescue officials could not locate it under the debris. As per ITBP spokesperson Vivek Pandey, over 30 people were said to be travelling in the bus.
Meanwhile, Prime Minister Narendra Modi has announced an ex-gratia of Rs 2 lakh each to the next of kin of those who were killed and Rs 50,000 for those injured in the tragedy.
President Ram Nath Kovind also expressed his anguish at the deaths in the landslide. “It is sad to hear that many people have died and others are in danger due to landslides in Kinnaur, Himachal Pradesh. I express my condolences to the bereaved families and pray for full success in the relief and rescue work.”
Earlier Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Union Home Minister Amit Shah both spoke to chief minister Jairam Thakur and assured of all possible help in the rescue and search operations.
Aurangabad/Mumbai, Aug 11,2021: Maharashtra Minister of Public Works Department (PWD) and Chairman of the Cabinet Sub-Committee on Maratha Reservation Ashok Chavan said that the central government had a great opportunity to ease the court battle of Maratha reservation by relaxing the 50 per cent reservation limit while amending the constitution regarding the rights of the states.
However, he lamented that the Center had lost this opportunity.
In his official statement, he stated that the 127th Amendment passed in the Lok Sabha. Chavan welcomed the bill. Despite the stalemate in Parliament on a number of issues such as Pegasus, the Centre’s Black Agriculture Act, all the Opposition parties discussed this important bill and co-operated with the Center.
However, the central government could not have shown such rationality. Union Minister for Social Justice Dr Virendra Kumar said that the center would’ve considered relaxing the reservation limit in due course. But it was a golden opportunity to think and decide in Parliament, he said .
How much longer did the Maratha community have to fight a court battle, he asked.
It was easily possible for the center to facilitate the court battle for Maratha reservation.
Congress president Sonia Gandhi had instructed Congress group leader in the Lok Sabha Adhir Ranjan Chaudhary to take a stand for this. He is the MP from West Bengal. But he was adamant in favor of Maratha reservation and relaxation of the 50 per cent reservation limit. Shiv Sena MPs Vinayak Raut, Prataprao Jadhav, MP of NCP. Supriya Sule, Congress MP Balubhau Dhanorkar also fought hard for Maratha reservation. But the central government did not take it seriously.
Mr Chavan further said that it was unfortunate for Maharashtra that not a single Maratha MP from BJP in Maharashtra uttered a word in this regard in the Lok Sabha, he added.
Moscow, Aug 11,2021: Afghanistan’s acting Finance Minister Khalid Payenda has stepped down and left the country following pressure from the presidential palace, Tolo News reported, citing sources.
According to sources, Payenda is not likely to return to Afghanistan. A letter from the Ministry of Finance, referred to by the TV channel, says the minister left the country “on an official visit.”
“Today I stepped down as the Acting Minister of Finance. Leading MoF was the greatest honor of my life but it was time to step down to attend to personal priorities. I’ve put Mr. Alem Shah Ibrahimi, Deputy Minister for Revenue & Customs in charge until a new Minister is appointed,” Payenda wrote on Twitter.
New Delhi , August 10,2021: Minister of State for Home Affairs Nityanand Rai in a written reply to Lok Sabha on Tuesday said that the Central Government had proscribed the Islamic State of Iraq and Levant (ISIL) or Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), Daesh as a terrorist organisation under the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act, 1967.
Rai said, “Some instances of individuals from different states including Kerala having joined is have come to the notice of Central and State Security Agencies. The National Investigation Agency (NIA) and the States Police have registered cases against such individuals and have taken action as per law.”
He further stated that “The primary responsibility for Public Order’ and ‘Policing’ rests with the State Governments. However, in matters such as terrorism, the Central Government assists the State Governments in acknowledging it as the shared responsibility. Intelligence and Security agencies of the Centre and States work in tandem to keep a close watch on the elements involved in terrorist acts and take action as per law.”
“The Central Government has also proscribed the Islamic State (IS) Islamic State of Iraq and Levant (ISIL). Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), Daesh as a Terrorist Organization under the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act, 1967,” he added.
Kabul/New Delhi, Aug 10,2021: As the Taliban intensified their attacks on Mazar-e-Sharif, India on Tuesday began evacuating its nationals, including diplomats and staff of the consulate, from the northern Afghanistan city as a matter of caution.
The Indian Embassy in Kabul also asked members of the Indian media arriving or staying in Afghanistan to contact the Embassy security wing for a personalized briefing, including advice on the locations they are planning to travel to.
“This will help media persons make a better assessment of the risks involved, given the rapid changes in the security situation taking place in different parts of the country,” the Embassy said in an advisory.
In the advisory, the Embassy asked Indian nationals to “make immediate travel arrangements to return to India”.
Earlier last month, India had evacuated its staff from the Consulate in Kandahar in the wake of the Taliban attack on the city.
The Indian Consulate in Mazar-e-Sharif on Tuesday tweeted that it has arranged a special flight to evacuate its citizens from the city.
In a series of tweets, the Consulate urged Indian citizens to contact the Indian mission.
It said that a special flight is leaving from Mazar-e-Sharif to New Delhi.