1. no sooner does gates leave — they probably didn’t even clear his lunch dishes yet — than we find out that The Terrorists Are Ready to ATTACK! like — immediately.
NEW DELHI: Army chief Deepak Kapoor on Tuesday warned that 26/11 type Mumbai terror attacks were a possibility and that India has to take all steps to counter such strikes. “We have to take all steps to prevent any Mumbai type attacks. We cannot rule out apprehensions of such possibilities,” Kapoor told reporters on the sidelines of an Army function. To a question if there were any terror alerts in the recent times, he said the South Asian region is infested with terror groups. Be it India, Afghanistan or Pakistan, “we have to collectively battle such threats.”
…On the Naxal menace, Kapoor said the Army would continue to train paramilitary forces to fight against the Naxals and it would be an ongoing process. “The battle against Naxals will not be over in one day. To eradicate Naxalism, it is going to take time. It is going to be a long drawn battle,” he said, giving examples of counter-insurgency operations in Jammu and Kashmir and the Northeast which had gone on for decades. He said providing strategy and equipment to paramilitary forces in the fight against Naxals would be a futuristic option.
2. Air India planes — on high alert
NEW DELHI: Government has put all Air India planes operating in the country’s neighbourhood on high security alert and directed the airlines to deploy sky marshalls following intelligence inputs that Pakistan-based LET and other terror groups were planning to hijack a flight….According to intelligence inputs, terrorist groups having allegiance with al-Qaida, Lashker-e-Taiba and Jamat-ul-Dawa were planning to hijack an Air India plane especially operating in or from SAARC countries — Nepal, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Bhutan, Maldives, Afghanistan, Pakistan and India as well.
3. OR, they might use hang gliders or toy airplanes. ANYTHING IS POSSIBLE WITH THE WILY TERRORISTS! it’s very important to keep looking up in the sky in the most paranoid manner possible. thank you for your cooperation. this will make for excellent teevee footage…
NEW DELHI: Pakistan-based Lashkar-e-Taiba has acquired more than 50 para-gliding equipment from Europe, setting off alarm bells that these could be used to carry out air-borne suicide attacks in the country….The input about movement of overground workers, owing allegiance to LeT, in Europe led the sleuths to find out that they were on a shopping spree for para-gliding equipment, the sources said….Radars located at strategic locations have been tuned to intercept all low flying objects and authorities are not taking any chances, sources said. …Ahead of the Republic Day, elaborate air defence measures, including deployment of anti-aircraft guns, have also been taken to check possible intrusion of air space. Besides, helicopters of the Indian Air Force will hover over the areas around Rajpath and all along the route of the Republic Day parade. Earlier, intelligence reports suggested that Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence had directed the militants operating in Jammu and Kashmir to use explosive-laden ‘Toy Planes’ to hit VIPs in the state and the national capital.
4. get your FRESH terror alerts right here !!!
NEW DELHI: Intelligence agencies on Friday sounded a terror alert in Kolkata, Mumbai and Delhi following reports that terrorists had sneaked into these cities to target vital installations. Home ministry sources said that Taliban-trained ‘fidayeen’ (suicide squads) had reportedly entered the country to carry out attacks at specific iconic structures. Barely a fortnight back, there was a similar alert saying that ‘Pashtun-looking’ suicide bombers, trained by Taliban, had entered India to launch a fresh wave of attacks. Security has been beefed up at key installations and patrolling has been intensified in market places, railway stations, airports and hotels, sources said.
5. India not alarmed at US supplying drones to Pak. pfft. why would they be? these are only used to kill terrorists. not to worry.
BANGALORE: India is not perturbed over the US supplying drones, or unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), to Pakistan as long as they are used against the Taliban militants, Chief of Air Staff PV Naik said on Friday….The Indian Air Force (IAF) chief said he was not unduly concerned over such a development as it had no bearing on India. US defence secretary Robert Gates said in Islamabad late on Thursday that the US planned to provide Pakistan with a dozen Shadow aerial drones to help its military to take on the Taliban militants. …The US has been employing armed drones for missile strikes against al-Qaida and Taliban operatives in Pakistan, fuelling anti-American sentiment there and attracting public condemnation from Islamabad.
6. Holbrooke: India is so, so, so important. so really, i hope you understand that a little duty-free legislation would do WONDERS for resolving the intractable problems in Pakistan and Afghanistan.
“I want to be sure that everyone here recognises how centrally important Indian will be to this (the US success in Afghanistan and Pakistan),” he told US lawmakers at a Congressional hearing on Afghanistan and Pakistan convened by the powerful Senate Foreign Relations Committee chaired by Senator John Kerry, a key aid of President Barack Obama…. “India is not formally part of my mandate, but with the support of the Indians, I try to go to New Delhi as often as I can to keep them informed and to discuss the situation with them,” Holbrooke told US lawmakers.
…“I don’t think it would be valuable to go into details in the public forum, but I do want to stress that the Indians are very, very anxious that we succeed in Afghanistan. They’re supporting us,” he said. …”I know that all of you feel that they ought to do more, and I understand that. We all hope that they will be able to find ways to deal with all of the militants in the frontier areas. But there are two full Pakistani divisions right now just in Swat, and they have pulled over a hundred thousand troops off their eastern border in order to deal with this,” he said.
Noting that Pakistan is facing capacity issues, he said: “That’s why, in addition to asking for the Kerry-Lugar-Berman legislation, we have asked for increases in FMF and other forms of military assistance.” …”That is why we’re so hopeful that the ROZ legislation will pass the Senate - it passed the House in the last session - because it is both symbolically and substantively important,” he said in reference to a pending legislation in the Congress which if passed would allow duty free export of US products from certain parts of Pakistan to the US.
7. India to reassert authority in Maoist areas
“(Our aim is) to reassert the civil administration to be followed immediately by development in areas dominated by Naxalites (Maoists) for quite some years,” Chidambaram said after a meeting with top officials of Orissa, Maharashtra and Chhattisgarh here. “The meeting was successful. We identified progress we made… We identified steps to be taken,” the minister told reporters. “The (anti-Maoist) operations will continue. Our goal is not to kill anyone but to reassert the civil administration to be followed immediately by development in areas dominated by Naxalites for quite some years,” he said.
…When asked to comment on reports saying the Shibu Soren government in Jharkhand has decided to go slow on anti-Maoist drives, he said: “There is a new government in Jharkhand, the chief minister and other senior officials are coming to Delhi Jan 28 to meet me on the Naxal issue.” Chidambaram said the Indian government had no evidence of Naxals getting external monetary help. “(There is) no evidence of Naxals getting external monetary help though they are getting smuggled arms,” the minister commented when asked about foreign help to Maoists.
8. Pak interior minister Malik tells it straight
Islamabad: Pakistani Interior Minister Rehman Malik said India has not provided credible evidence in connection with Mumbai terror attacks despite repeated demands by Islamabad. He made the remarks during a discussion at the Pakistani Senate Thursday, an online news agency reported.
He said terror attacks such as in Mumbai and on Samjhota Express were plotted by India to discredit Pakistan. Malik said Indian citizens were involved in the attack on Samjhota Express and warned that India would be responsible if more such attacks take place in the future.
Meanwhile, a Pakistani academician has urged the government to bar US Defence Secretary Roberts Gates from visiting the country in the future unless he apologizes for his remarks that it was unreasonable to think India would continue to be patient in the face of another terrorist attack. Gates, who made the statement during his recent visit to India, is currently in Pakistan along with a 150-member US delegation. Professor Khurshid Ahmad said the statement was alarming.
9. gates: (convenient) “mistakes” were made by well-intentioned but misguided people. — accidental theory of history.
‘I was in government in the early 1990s, when Russia left the region and the United States largely abandoned Afghanistan and cut off defence ties with Pakistan - a grave strategic mistake driven by some well-intentioned but short-sighted US legislative and policy decisions,’ said Mr Gates. Many Pakistanis feel bitterness over what they saw as US abandonment of the region once the Soviet Union withdrew from Afghanistan in 1989. Mr Gates, a former CIA director who served under several presidents, said the move ‘tainted the perception of the United States in Pakistan,’ creating fertile ground for ‘propaganda’ from extremist militants. The US has no plans for military bases and ‘we have no desire to control Pakistan’s nuclear weapons,’ Mr Gates added. — AFP
more @ straits times
10. India poses very helpful question to the WHO. thank you for that question. it gives the WHO a chance to respond fully and “quell the doubts”!
Secretary Health, K.Sujatha Rao urged World Health Organization (WHO) to effectively explain reports appearing in the media that the Swine Flu was a false pandemic. Making an intervention in the Executive Board meeting of WHO currently going on in Geneva, Secretary Health pointed out that such news reports were adversely impacting upon the public health measures being undertaken by countries- She also called for greater transparency about terms and conditions on which international vaccine manufacturers were supplying vaccines to countries, In response to this intervention by India, it was agreed that WHO would formally write to National Focal Points in all countries clarifying the factual position about the H1N1 pandemic to quell all doubts that had been created.
Commenting upon the report of the WHO on the progress towards achieving the Millennium Development Goals Secretary Health urged WHO to clearly promote generic drugs as a strategy for rational drug use. India emphasised that it is only the WHO that has the credibility to withstand the persuasive power of branded and patent drugs. India urged all countries to promote access to medicines and not to confuse the issue of counterfeits which is an IPR issue with safe and efficacious generic drugs.
http://pib.nic.in/release/release.asp?relid=57124
11. after all, the WHO was a little surprised how badly this flu thing went
Jan 19, 2010 (CIDRAP News) – The H1N1 influenza pandemic brought no “devastating surprises,” but what has surprised public health agencies is the public’s lack of interest in getting vaccinated, Margaret Chan, director-general of the World Health Organization (WHO), said yesterday. Chan, speaking at the opening of the WHO Executive Board’s meeting in Geneva, made the comment in the wake of moves by a number of European countries to reduce their vaccine orders in response to falling public demand for the vaccine.
“Although the virus has not delivered any devastating surprises, we have seen some surprises on other fronts,” Chan said in her prepared remarks. “We anticipated problems in producing enough vaccine fast enough, and this did indeed happen. But we did not anticipate that people would decide not be vaccinated.”…Chan did not refer explicitly to those allegations in her speech. But, given the vast range of health information now available to the public, she said, public health leaders may not have the authority and credibility they once did….
“When the history of this pandemic is written, I believe that the speed of actions taken by governments to protect their populations will earn the highest marks,” she said. Despite heavy burdens on emergency rooms and intensive care units, “nearly all health systems have coped well. Let me pay tribute to all the health care workers who have worked tirelessly to care for patients.”
The close observation of the pandemic will yield “a wealth of new knowledge,” Chan said.
12. speaking of Switzerland and India, S. Korean president to stress new ties with India. also, to sign a pact on nuclear technology for peaceful purposes! yes. exactly like the stuff Iran wants to do except in this case it will be allowed.
President Lee Myung-bak will take advantage of his seven-day visit to India and Switzerland from Jan. 24 to 30 to seek broader support for his “New Asia Initiative,” which calls for a closer partnership between Korea and its neighbors, officials here said Friday. Lee will deliver an address at the Davos economic forum Thursday to show Korea’s commitment to playing a bridging role between developed and developing countries at the G-20 Seoul Summit in November.In particular, he will stress Korea’s efforts to be a voice for Asian countries on the global stage in charting a roadmap for sustainable economic growth, and addressing pressing issues such as climate change.
..During his visit to India from Sunday to Wednesday, he will focus on strengthening his New Asia Initiative by laying the groundwork for closer economic ties with the rapidly developing economy. At a planned summit between Lee and India’s Prime Minister Manmohan Singh in New Delhi on Monday, they may sign a pact on nuclear technology exchange for peaceful purposes, opening the way for Korean firms to participate in India’s project to build nuclear reactors.
