India's missile misfire had put Saudi, Dubai, Kuwait, Qatar planes at risk

Agencies
March 17, 2022

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New Delhi, Mar 17: A missile that was accidentally fired from India last week narrowly missed dozens of commercial jets that were in the same skies.

Several planes passed through the direct trajectory of the missile that day, which flew from the Indian garrison town of Ambala and ended up in Mian Channu in Eastern Pakistan. They included a Flydubai jet heading to Dubai from Sialkot, an IndiGo plane from Srinagar to Mumbai and an Airblue Ltd. flight from Lahore to Riyadh. All crossed the missile’s trajectory within an hour of its accidental launch, data from flight-tracking application Flightradar24 show.

Other international flights in the vicinity of the missile’s trajectory -- and within its range -- included a Kuwait Airways Co. jet heading to Guangzhou from Kuwait City, a Saudi Arabian Airlines flight to Riyadh from New Delhi, and a Qatar Airways service from Kathmandu to Doha, the data show. No advisory to pilots operating in the vicinity -- known as a notice to airmen or NOTAM -- was issued.

A time-lapse video of the airspace -- prepared by Flightradar24 on request from Bloomberg News -- showed busy activity in the skies within an hour and half of both sides of 7 p.m. local time on March 9, which India said was the approximate time of the accidental launch. India’s “robust” missile handling procedures are being reviewed and will be strengthened further, Defense Minister Rajnath Singh told lawmakers earlier this week.

India says it was reviewing missile handling protocols

The averted tragedy is reminiscent of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 in 2014, when a missile owned by a Russia-based military unit hit the plane over Ukraine, killing all 298 people aboard. In 2020, Iran unintentionally shot down a Ukrainian passenger jet it mistook for a cruise missile, killing 176.“Very unfortunate. It could have led to a disaster, what if it hit a Pakistan International aircraft?” said Mark Martin, founder of Dubai-based Martin Consulting. “The bigger concern is what if it was taken as a hostile action by Pakistan? We can’t brush it under the carpet, those accountable must be held accountable. This could have escalated into a full-blown conflict.”

The Indian mishap last week had the potential of turning deadly, with Pakistan preparing to launch a similar missile to strike India, Bloomberg News reported earlier this week. The nuclear-armed Indian neighbour eventually held fire after an initial assessment indicated something was amiss.

The flight path of the missile -- which Pakistan continuously monitored from near the point of its origin in Sirsa in India -- endangered many international and domestic passenger flights both in Indian and Pakistani airspace and could have resulted in a “major aviation disaster,” Pakistan’s military spokesman Babar Iftikhar told reporters in the northern city of Rawalpindi on March 10. The missile flew at an altitude of 40,000 feet and an ultimate speed of Mach 3 (2,300 miles) an hour, Tariq Zia, a spokesman for the Pakistan Air Force said in the same briefing.

Modern commercial jets tend to cruise below and around that altitude.

A top official at India’s Directorate General of Civil Aviation didn’t respond to a request for comment. Pakistan’s Civil Aviation Authority and India’s defense ministry also didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment.

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News Network
November 18,2024

Advisors to US President-elect Donald Trump have instructed his allies and associates to refrain from using the inflammatory language they previously employed when discussing issues related to migrants and the deportation of asylum seekers, in a bid to avoid “looking like Nazis.”

US media reports said that Trump’s associates had been asked to stop using the word “camps” to describe potential facilities that would be used to accommodate migrants rounded up in deportation operations across the country.

The reports said the US president-elect’s allies had been ordered to stave off such charged terms as they would bring to mind “Nazis,” and be used against Trump.

“I have received some guidance to avoid terms, like ‘camps,’ that can be twisted and used against the president, yes,” one Trump ally told American monthly magazine Rolling Stone.

“Apparently, some people think it makes us look like Nazis.”

The presidential advisers also cautioned surrogates and allies to keep racist terms, which have dogged Trump’s campaign, out of their remarks.

They said with Trump’s heated rhetoric that used to compare undocumented immigrants to “animals” and his slight that they are “poisoning the blood of our country,” detractors did not need to reach too far to find parallels to Nazi Germany.

Stephen Miller, who Trump tapped to be his deputy chief of staff of policy, specifically used the word “camps” to describe holding facilities that he hoped the military could put together for immigrants.

Tom Homan, who served as the acting director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement and is chosen by Trump to be in charge of the US borders, was no stranger to such language.

“It’s not gonna be a mass sweep of neighborhoods,” he said in an interview earlier this week. “It’s not gonna be building concentration camps. I’ve read it all. It’s ridiculous.”

Becoming a little more forthright about the new government’s aggressive deportation plans, Homan likened the early days of the Trump administration to the initial invasion of Iraq in 2003.

“I got three words for them – shock and awe,” he said. “You’re going to see us take this country back.”

Trump made immigration a central element of his 2024 presidential campaign but unlike his first run, which was mainly focused on building a border wall, he has shifted his attention to interior enforcement and the removal of undocumented immigrants already in the United States.

People close to the US president and his aides are laying the groundwork for expanding detention facilities to fulfill his mass deportation campaign promise.

The businessman-turned-politician deported more than 1.5 million people during his first term.

The figure do not include the millions of people turned away at the border under a Covid-era policy enacted by Trump and used during most of Biden’s term.

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News Network
November 10,2024

Bengaluru: The Karnataka government has warned that disciplinary action will be taken against those officials who change the land mutation records and serve eviction notices to farmers under the Waqf Act.

In a letter, the Revenue Department Principal Secretary Rajender Kumar Kataria reminded all regional commissioners and deputy commissioners in the districts that Chief Minister Siddaramaiah recently had a meeting following complaints about certain land properties being made in favour of the Karnataka Board of Waqfs.

In the meeting it was decided that all the directions issued previously by any government office or authority to change the mutation records has been withdrawn, the letter said.

It added that all the notices served in the past have also been withdrawn and no action should be taken against the farmers who are cultivating on the said land.

On the directions of the chief minister, the previous letters and the latest reminders served on November 7 to the farmers and land owners have been withdraw, the letter said.

"The officials who served reminder-2 despite the chief minister's direction will face appropriate disciplinary action," Kataria said in his letter.

He said he has been instructed to strictly implement the chief minister's direction.

The fresh direction was issued in poll-bound Karnataka, where bypolls to three crucial assembly segments are due on November 13.

Some farmers in Honwad village in Vijayapura in north Karnataka had alleged last month that they were served eviction notices as the Waqf Board claimed rights over it.

Subsequently, complaints started in pouring in from some other parts of the state.

BJP leader Tejasvi Surya on October 25 alleged that Karnataka Waqf Minister B Z Zameer Ahmed Khan directed the deputy commissioners and revenue officials to register lands in favour of the Waqf Board within 15 days, which resulted in confusion.

On Surya's request, the Chairman of the Joint Committee of Parliament on the Waqf (Amendment) Bill, Jagdambika Pal visited Karnataka on November 7 and met farmers in Hubballi, Vijayapura and Belagavi districts who had alleged that their lands were marked as Waqf properties.

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News Network
November 21,2024

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The International Criminal Court (ICC) has issued arrest warrants for Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his former minister of military affairs Yoav Gallant over war crimes against Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.

The court’s Pre-Trial Chamber I issued warrants of arrest for Netanyahu and Gallant "for crimes against humanity and war crimes committed from at least 8 October 2023 until at least 20 May 2024, the day the Prosecution filed the applications for warrants of arrest”, it confirmed in a statement Thursday.

It is the first instance in the court's 22-year history it has issued arrest warrants for Western-allied senior officials.

In its statement, the ICC's Pre-Trial Chamber I, a panel of three judges, said it has rejected appeals by Israel challenging its jurisdiction. 

The chamber said it has decided to release the arrest warrants because "conduct similar to that addressed in the warrant of arrest appears to be ongoing", referring to Israel's ongoing onslaught on Gaza.

Netanyahu and Gallant, it said, “each bear criminal responsibility” for “the war crime of starvation as a method of warfare; and the crimes against humanity of murder, persecution, and other inhumane acts,” as well as “intentionally directing an attack against the civilian population.”

All 124 states that signed the Rome Statute, the treaty that established the court, are now under an obligation to arrest the wanted individuals and hand them over to the ICC in the Hague. 

The court relies on the cooperation of member states to arrest and surrender suspects. The Netherlands' foreign minister quickly said his country was prepared to enforce the warrants while 93 nations earlier reiterated their support for the ICC.

Triestino Mariniello, a lawyer representing Palestinian victims at the ICC, called the warrants "a historic decision".

He noted that the court had endured "pressure and threats of sanctions" from the US government, but acted nonetheless.

As expected, the Tel Aviv regime rejected the rulings, with its security minister Itamar Ben Gvir calling the warrants “anti-Semitic through and through.”

The ICC said Israel’s acceptance of the court’s jurisdiction was not required.

Israel and its major ally, the United States, are not members of the court. 

Israel unleashed its bloody Gaza onslaught on October 7, 2023. So far, it has killed at least 43,985 Palestinians, mostly women and children, and injured 104,092 others, according to the Gaza Health Ministry.

Israel faces an ongoing South Africa-led genocide case at the International Court of Justice (ICJ).

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