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A woman protects herself with an umbrella from the searing heat of the sun as she walk across a road on one of the hottest days of the year in Dimapur, Nagaland on Wednesday, 07 June 2017. Though many parts of the country were facing intense heat waves over the past few months, most parts of the Northeast region including the state experienced rainfall that kept the mercury in check till now. According to the MET department, the State can expect rains only on June 9.

(L-R) Chief seretary Pankaj Kumar, Home commissioner Temjen Toy and NDMA consultant Brig. Kuldip Singh.

Major Manlun

rni no. nageng/2002/07906vol. Xvi no. 154 | Pages 12 ` 4/- dimaPUr, thUrsday, JUne 8, 2017

EM Images

SC to hear plea against new cattle sale rules on June 15

Mizoram faces blockade, supply of essentials hit

dPP issues progress report, open doors

Army officer, civilian and three militants killed in Tizit

Dimapur Police to reward detection of unsecured wi-fi networks

Presidential election on July 17

EastErn Mirror

Min.Max. Max.Min.aizawl 29° 21°

agartala 34° 26°

gangtok 24° 16°

guwahati 35° 25°

imphal 31° 20°

itanagar 31° 22°

shillong 24° 18°

delhi 36° 27°

Kolkata 35° 26°

chennai 36° 28°

Max: Min:KOHIMA 28° 17°dIMApur 34.6° 26.2° rF: rH:KOHIMA nil 93%dIMApur nil 93%* Rainfall (RF) * Relative humidity (RH)Temperature in State Capitals

WEATHERteMperAture

State still underprepared for earthquakes, says CS

Parasol to the rescue

Yechury manhandled by two Hindu Sena activists at press meet | p8

‘Bridging the Gap’ is what the world needs: priyanka Chopra | p10

Our CorrespondentKohima, June 7 (EMN): Chief Secretary Pankaj Kumar today said despite serious efforts being made to increase the state’s capacities to deal with natural and manmade disasters, Nagaland is still underprepared even today for an event like an earth-quake of huge magnitude.

Speaking at the inau-gural session of a two-day stakeholders workshop on Incident Response System (IRS) at the Capital Con-vention Centre Kohima, the chief secretary said overlaying all the differ-ent aspects of disasters, the Nagaland faces the big challenge of earthquakes, which can occur anytime, particularly as the state lies on a vulnerable zone. He expressed concern that when it comes to earth-quake resistant structures, the state’s progress is still not enough and under-scored that much more needs to be done. “It is only a matter of good for-tune that at most places, the hill-type structures themselves are of such a nature that they are not so vulnerable but there is a fast conversion to ‘puc-ca’ structures, we have to do more to make them earthquake resistant,” he stated.

Sharing the challenges that the state faces, Kumar pointed out that Nagaland has a peculiar weather cy-cle, roughly categorised into two seasons- the ‘rainy season’ from April to September and the ‘dry season’ from October till March. Both these sea-sons, he said, are associat-ed with different kinds of risks and disasters, such as landslides and floods during rainy season while the dry season sees the problem of drought in the agricultural areas and fire incidents in forests and in-habited areas.

What the state has been experiencing during the recent years is that with the change in cli-mate pattern, such events are becoming more fre-quent and their severity I also increasing, he stated while also expressing con-cern that the degradation of the forest cover is also contributing to the resist-ance of the terrain to deal with the shocks that come to the terra firma. Besides these, he remarked that there are freak incidents

Staff Reporter Dimapur, June 7 (EMN): One army officer, three militants (non Naga) sus-pected to be from Unit-ed Liberation Front of Asom (ULFA) and one civilian-an auto driver was killed on Tuesday night at around 10.30 pm in an encounter between the suspected militant group and a joint team of 35 As-sam Rifles (AR) and 164 Naga Territorial Army (NTA), reported Tizit po-lice officials. The incident took place along the road leading to Lapa Village lo-cated in Tizit under Mon district.

As per the account of Tizit Police Station Offic-er In-Charge (OC) Neivi Zumu, the militants were

travelling in a hired auto rickshaw when the en-counter took place and the auto driver identified as Rajendra Gupta was also killed on the spot includ-ing the three suspected ULFA militants.

The army officer who was also killed in the en-counter was identified as Major David Manlun of 164 NTA. The three sus-pected militants have been identified as Phonendra Asom, Dikon Konwar and Dipul Asom. The militants were in combat uniform at the time of the incident, added police. Three Naga defence forces were also injured in the encounter but their condition is said to be stable.

The joint operation

must have been carried after a tipoff from reliable sources, said the police sources.

One AK-47, two M69 rifle, two Chinese gre-nades, six pieces of 5.56 mm ammunitions and 252 pieces of 7.62 mm am-munition was recovered from the possession of the killed cadres, the police in-formed.

Though the militant’s link with the ULFA and the auto driver’s involve-ment with the militant group could not be au-thenticated directly, the influx of non-Nagas has created insecurity among the people said OC Zumu. The situation is said to be under control he further added.

Aizawl, June 7 (PTI): The supply of essential commod-ities in Mizoram has been hit as the blockade of NH 54 by NGOs and student groups in Mizoram-Assam border district of Kolasib entered its second day today.

The people of Kola-sib are protesting against the transfer of a surgeon from a government hospital without a replacement.

The state government is-sued an order to all the fill-ing stations to ration oil to

the vehicles and prohibited purchase of petrol with con-tainers.

Long queues of vehicles were seen at various filling stations in Aizawl as the ve-hicle owners and drivers an-ticipated shortage of fuel due to the blockade.

The 850 km long national highway, considered lifeline of Mizoram, connects As-sam and Mizoram and the blockade, if prolonged, could create problem in availability of essential commodities.

New Delhi, June 7 (IANS): The election to elect 14th President of India will be held on July 17 with counting of votes slated for July 20, the Election Com-mission announced on Wednesday.

Announcing the schedule, Chief Elec-tion Commissioner Nasim Zaidi told re-porters here that the last date of filing nomi-nations is June 28, scru-tiny of nominations will take place on June 29 and the last date for

withdrawal of candida-ture is July 1.

"The date on which polling will be held, if required, is July 17. Counting, if required, will be done on July 20," Zaidi said.

Elected members of the Lok Sabha, Ra-jya Sabha and state as-semblies including as-semblies of Delhi and Puducherry are eligible to take part in the elec-tion.

The term of Presi-dent Pranab Mukherjee will end on July 24.

New Delhi, June 7 (IANS): The Supreme Court on Wednesday said it will hear, on June 15, a plea challeng-ing the Central government notification prohibiting sale and purchase of cattle at ani-mal markets for slaughter on the grounds that it violates the right to free trade.

Petitioner Mohammed Ab-dul Faheem Qureshi has also challenged the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (Care and Maintenance of Case Property

Animals) Rules, 2017 which deals with the seizures, recov-ery of the cost of transporta-tion, maintenance and treat-ment of seized animals.

Hearing counsel Sanobar Ali Qureshi, appearing for the Hyderabad-based petitioner, a vacation bench of Justice Ashok Bhushan and Justice Deepak Gupta listed the mat-ter for hearing on June 15.

Faheem Qureshi, who is himself a lawyer, contended that the Prevention of Cru-

elty to Animals (Regulation of Livestock Markets) Rules, 2017, which bans sale of cat-tle for slaughter and restricts cattle trade to farm owners, is arbitrary, illegal, and unconsti-tutional.

He argued that the rules violate his constitutional rights to practise any profession or to carry on any occupation, protection of life and personal liberty, freedom of conscience and free profession, practice and propagation of religion

and protection of interests of minorities.

Challenging different stipu-lations of two notifications that came on May 23, Sanobar Qureshi said the rule that the purchaser "shall not sacrifice the animal for any religious purpose" was contrary to the Prevention of Cruelty to Ani-mals Act, 1960, whose Section 28 says it is not an offence to "kill any animal in a manner required by the religion of any community".

Meanwhile, the petitioner, who also heads the All India Jamiatul Quresh Action Com-mittee, also attacked the stipu-lation which prohibits bringing young cattle to animal market, unless the purchaser furnishes an undertaking saying he is an agriculturist, that the animal would be used for agricultural purposes, and not resold for six months.

He also argued that its provision holding a first-time offender should be deprived

of the animal's ownership vio-lates the 1960 law's Section 29 which says that no person would be deprived of his ani-mals unless he has been previ-ously convicted under the Act or it is shown that his charac-ter, or record of treatment of animals makes him unfit.

Qureshi also objected to the provision of the notification requiring the owner to submit a bond to pay for the transpor-tation, maintenance and treat-ment of the cattle.

Dimapur, June 7 (EMN): The Dimapur Police on Wednesday announced a reward of Rs. 500 to any person who detects unse-cured wireless networks other than free wi-fi hotspots around Dimapur Town .

A press note from the PRO Dimapur Police stated that it is concerned over the availability of unsecured private wi-fi networks across Dimapur Town which are accessible by any person with a wi-fi enabled device.

"Ignorance and care-lessness of the subscribers leaving their network with-out password protection makes them vulnerable to hacking and also monetary losses due to unauthorized uses by unknown people." it stated.

Therefore id any one comes across unsecured networks in the locality or while moving about across the town, they are required to note the location and the network name and e-mail the details to dimapurpo-lice@gmail.com.

If found true after veri-fication, the person will be rewarded and in cases of persons reporting the same network, the person who reported the first will be re-warded.

Dimapur, June 7 (EMN): The newly launched Dem-ocratic Progressive Party has reiterated that that the doors of the Party are open for all citizens who have the concern for work-ing towards the progres-sive uplift of all sections of the society and those who want to contribute towards realisation of real and gen-uine peace.

A press note released to the media by its Presi-dent Chingwang Konyak on Wednesday also stated that the party has been receiving overwhelming

response from the leaders and masses at all levels and the "response of the people has been most positive."

He also gave out the detail of the progress of the party's registration with the ECI and that necessary documents for registration have been sub-mitted to the ECI on 25th May, 2017.

He also stated that the party is currently undergo-ing the process of establish-ing its Party headquarters and the Central Executive Board (CEB) is undertak-ing extensive deliberations

for the establishment of the party in all the Regions.

"The Party’s organi-sational structure will be officially established after officials from the CEB are deputized to coordinate with the regions for ap-pointment to various party posts and responsibilities." it further added.

The president also gave an advisory to the public that since the establish-ment of the party is still in process in all the regions, any meetings at present are not officially endorsed by the party.

EM Images/Caisii Mao

such as lightning which destroys property and sometimes are fatal to humans; the frozen lake incident at Dzukou valley wherein young lives were lost; and more recently the flooding in Meluri district where four lives perished.

He also highlighted the structure of the state dis-aster management agency, mentioning in particular the recently set up perma-nent organisation State Disaster Response Force (SDRF) which is prima-rily manned by the Home Guards personnel and the trainings for armed per-sonnel, village guards and village youth on disaster response.

On IRS, he suggested that more line depart-ments should be taken on board, taking into account the roles they could play, such as the Public Works Department (PWD), Ir-rigation & Flood Control and also some coordina-tion with the security forc-es to aid the civil admin-istration, first responders and the SDRF.

Also stressing on the importance of conducting mock drills, he said such demonstrations help in putting one in a simulated situation and test one’s re-sponses. Kumar is of the view that learning how to respond to incidents theo-retically is different from how one responds in an actual situation.

In his opening re-marks, resource person

of the programme, Na-tional Disaster Manage-ment Authority (NDMA) consultant for mock ex-ercises & IRS, Brigadier Kuldip Singh said natu-ral disasters impact more devastatingly on populous and developed places. He explained that the Indian sub-continent is one of the world’s most disas-ter prone areas, ranking fourth, after China, the United States and Philip-pines. The vulnerabilities of the country are being compounded by expand-ing demographic changes, socio-economic condi-tions, unplanned urbani-sation, lack of stringent building norms and non-adherence to existing norms, environment deg-radation, climate change etc in addition to chemi-cal biological radiologi-cal and nuclear and other manmade disasters. He said that any natural or manmade disaster has the potential to wreck im-mense damage- social and economic havoc which in turn impinges on the sustainable development of the place. This is why, he stated, disaster man-agement is today accom-panied by disaster risk reduction (DRR) which have become a politi-cal imperative, therefore all future infrastructures whether private or public should be disaster resil-ient.

The NDMA official also gave a brief back-ground on the formation

of the IRS, which he said, was an “Indianised ver-sion” of the United States’ Incident Command Sys-tem. While stating that many states and UTs were yet to adopt IRS, he said it was heartening to see the IRS being ‘very capably’ co-opted by the state of Nagaland. He observed that the state has gone beyond just co-opting the IRS by covering 159 vil-lages in community first responders’ programme and expecting to expand double that number by the end of 2017.

He also emphasized on the necessity of invest-ing in DRR, for which, he said the benefits are seen only after disasters strike. He said the private sector and other stakeholders have a huge role to play including local govern-ments from the standard disaster management to a more holistic risk resilient development practices.

The official also high-lighted the vision and mandate of the National Disaster Management Au-thority on the occasion.

Earlier, Home Com-missioner and additional chief secretary, Temjen Toy delivered the wel-come address.

The workshop is be-ing organized by the Nagaland State Disaster Management Authority (NSDMA) in collabora-tion with the National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA), Gov-ernment of India.

thiem stuns djokovic, sets date with Nadal in French Open semis | p11

Tseminyu BJP mandal office inaugurated Governor and Raj Bhavan staffs condole

Education officers conduct spot verification of water supply to ZPC

NCP Mon members resign

Workshop on use of Hindi as official language held

CEDOK inter-school competitions held

Bethany colony youths organise fete cum sales day

Fortnight crime report in Dimapur

IPR officers urged to be more responsible and proactive

2 STATEEastErn Mirror | Dimapur, Thursday, June 8, 2017

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Dimapur, June 7 (EMN): Of-fice of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) 12th Tseminyu mandal was inaugurated by state BJP president, Visasalie Lhoungu on June 5 as chief guest at Tseminyu town,.

Speaking at the inaugural programme, the chief guest highlighted the development ac-tivities and schemes of Central Government. He encouraged the party workers to stay united and committed and not to be deceived by the false political propaganda on BJP by other rival political parties.

While encouraging the party workers to work hard for the party, he promised if the BJP forms the next government in 2018 election in Nagaland, the BJP government in the Centre would develop the state and grant “big projects” to solve the unemployment problems and uplift the economy of the

state. He also advised the man-dal workers to think wise and

choose the right BJP leader for the constituency as Rengma

have a lone seat in Nagaland Assembly.

General secretary (Adm) BJP Tseminyu Mandal, Rushvu-lo Kent, exhorted the gathering. State BJP vice president, Tsasepi Sangtam; president of BJP Ko-hima district; Dr.Khriezovolie Kesiyie, secretary of state BJP, K.Thong, also spoke for the bet-terment of the party.

The meeting was chaired by Gwasenlo Kent, vice president of Tseminyu mandal; Shoyhun-lo Kemp, president of Tsemi-nyu mandal gave presidential address; invocation was pro-nounced by Athonglo Khing, Pastor of Tseminyu Town Bap-tist Church; president of BJYM Tseminyu mandal, Yhunchulo Seb delivered welcome address and general secretary Kisan Morcha, Tseminyu Mandal, Japhet Tep delivered vote of thanks. Special numbers were presented by BJP Tseminyu village unit and BJYM Kohima district.

Dimapur, June 7 (EMN): State Governor, PB Acha-rya, his wife Kavita Acha-rya, officers and staff of Raj Bhavan, Kohima have ex-pressed sadness over the un-timely demise of late Than Prasad Regmi on June 6.

In a condolence mes-sage issued by PRO to Governor, stated that late Regmi was working in Raj Bhavan since September 16, 2010, with sincerity and full dedication. It described him as a person with pleas-ant and accommodating personality, easy to get along with and worked equally hard with his co workers.

His untimely demise

has saddened Raj Bhavan and is a great loss to all who had contact with him, it added.

Raj Bhavan, Kohima conveyed deepest sympathy and prayers to the bereaved family at this time of sorrow and prayed to almighty God to give strength and comfort to overcome from this tough time.

A short funeral service was held at the premises of Raj Bhavan, Kohima where all friends, officers and staff of Raj Bhavan attended. Regmi is survived by his wife and two children. His body had been taken to Bragatinagar, Nepal for the last rites.

Dimapur, June 7 (EMN): The verification team for connection of water sup-ply to newly constructed Zisaji Presidency Govern-ment College conducted a spot verification at Phakroki River.

The committee com-prised of Inakhu Sema, Laison Officer of Higher Education Kohima; Lisepi Sangtam, OSD (inspection) Higher Education, Kohima;

Helen Jamir, Principal of ZPC; Benjamin Longkap SDO(C) HQ Kiphire along with head GB of Singrep village and land owner.

The team found that the water is available in all seasons and moreover the land is stable and free from soil erosion. The team has assured for recommendation of the matter to the higher authority for early approval of the same.

Dimapur, June 7 (EMN): The officials and members of NCP Mon district in its meeting held on May 31 at Tizit town decided to resign from theactive and primary membership of NCP, non-functioning and non-cooperation of the Na-galand State Unit of NCP.

In a press release, for-mer president NCP Mon district, T. Tingsen Wangsa and ünok SN, stated that the officials and members of the NCP Mon district have resolved to join Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) under the leadership of Chingwang Konyak.

Dimapur, June 7 (EMN): A two-day workshop on ‘Use of Hindi as official language’ was concluded on June 7 at North Eastern Council (NEC), or-ganised by Ministry of Development of North Eastern Region (DoNER).

Speaking on the occasion in the inaugural session, members of the Hindi Salahkar Samity, Ministry of DoNER, Dr. Rajendra Singh Chandel, Shastri Vipan Khajuria, Dr. BalwantShastri, Dr. Lakshmi Narayan Mittal, SujayaDey and Dr.

Kshirada Kumar Saikia stressed on publication of biographies of great heroes and personalities of North Eastern Region in Hindi and other Indian languages. C.H. Kharshiing, Planning Adviser, NEC chaired the session.

The other sessions in the work-shop were coordinated by Dr. Shailen-dra Chaudhuri, S.P. Singh and Manas Ranjan Mahapatra. D. Khound, ad-viser; Gautam Chintey; adviser, Sille Anthony; Director, Edwinson Swer;

Director and DobaJini, Superintend-ing Engineer besides other officers from NEC and other organisations of the Ministry of DoNER in the North Eastern Region took part in the deliberations.

Similar workshops will be orga-nized in other states of the North Eastern Region by the Ministry of DoNER in future for discussion on problems and possibilities in use of Hindi as an official language, as stat-ed in an official statement from NEC.

Dimapur, June 7 (EMN): The Commission for Edu-cation, Diocese of Ko-hima (CEDOK) organized various competitions for students from all Catholic schools in Nagaland from June 2 to 4 at St. Joseph Higher Secondary School, Chumukedima.

Altogether 28 schools from all over the state par-ticipated in the event.

Additional Secretary & Team Leader NBDA, Peter Lichamo, NCS, graced the inaugural function as chief guest of the. Addressing the students, he exhorted the students to work hard and make best use of the

multiple talents to take over the reign of the society and government in the future. He said that competition is not to be taken negatively but as a means to choose the best. He reminded the participants to compete with true sports man spirit. He also said that what mat-ters most are the effort one put in and not the prize one get. He suggested such more competitions in days to come.

Rev. Fr. Dr. Jacob Ch-aralel, secretary CEDOK welcomed the gathering and the contingents from all the schools. He said that CEDOK coordinates the

educational ministry of the Catholic Church and orga-nises various programmes to encourage and facilitate the students from catholic schools to bring out the best in them. He said that the main purpose of the competition is to bring to-gether students from vari-ous catholic schools of the state to interact with one another and build up friendly relationship be-tween students of different tribes and regions across the state.

Competitions included drawing, prepared speech, solo and duet for seniors and juniors. The special

feature of the event was the camp fire conducted for the participants in evening, which besides relaxation and entertainment gave the participants ample op-portunities to interact with one another, learn about the different regions and cultures of the state.

Rev. Fr. ChackoKari-thayil, Director of Shalom Rehabilitation Centre and Rev. Fr. Sajan Joseph, prin-cipal of St. Joseph Higher Secondary School, gave away the prizes to the win-ners and participants. Rev. Fr. John P.M., Joint Secre-tary CEDOK proposed the vote of thanks.

Dimapur, June 7 (EMN): The Bethany 2 Youth Organization, Phek organised fete day cum sales day on June 7 at Church junction, Phek town, in aid of fund raising.

Chairman Bethany 2 colony, Chineyi Lohe inaugurated the fete day cum sales day. The programme was chaired by Vechihu Khamo, president of the youth organization while word of gratitude was delivered by vice president, Vedekho Venuh. The organising committee thanked all the participants and the well wishers for the success the programme.

Dimapur, June 7 (EMN):15 arrested for extortion: Dimapur police personnel, on May 26, arrested one Vino Awomi, son of late Vihozhe Awomi of Viyilho village, presently residing at Purana Bazaar, Dimapur, on charges of extortion after he was caught collecting illegal taxes from the com-mercial vehicles at Bamun-pukhuri area on behalf of the GPRN/NSCN.

On May 26, the AET of the Dimapur Police arrested one Inato Assumi, son of Hoito Assumi of Honito village and present resident of Thilixu village, Dimapur, while he was collecting il-legal taxes from business establishments at Dhobinal-lah area. He is reportedly a “Section Officer” of the NSCN/GPRN (IM).

On May 27, the AET of Dimapur Police arrested one person identified as Wong-kiuba Sangtam, son of Ziki-mong Sangtam of Sungrep village and present resident of Khermahal, Dimapur while he was found collect-ing illegal taxes from Auto rickshaws on behalf of the NSCN/GPRN (IM).

On May 28, the AET of the Dimapur Police ar-rested one person identified as Mughalu Aye, son of Henevi Aye of Litsami vil-lage and, present resident of Hoito village, Dimapur. The person was apphrended while collecting illegal taxes on behalf of the GDRN/NNC (NA).

On May 29, the AET of the Dimapur Police ar-rested four persons from

Urra Village, Dimapur on charges of extortion. The arrested persons were identified as Rhontho Hal-flongpar, son of Uras Hal-flongpar of Dhansiripar village and, reportedly a “Khapur” of the NSCN/GPRN (IM); Paru Halflong-par, son of Jose Halflong-per of Dhansiripar village and, reportedly a “Khapur” of NSCN/GPRN (IM); Dethar Longthasa, son of Romesh Longthasa of Dhansiripar village and, reportedly a “Khapur” of NSCN/GPRN (IM); Metseyi Tetseo, son of late ZaseyiT etseo of Thipuzu village, present resident of Bade Village, Dimapur and reportedly a “Rajapeyu” of NSCN/GPRN (IM).

On the same day, AET of the Dimapur Police ar-rested two persons from NL Road on charges of extor-tion. The arrested person were identified as Athsu Yimchunger, reportedly the “Finance Secretary” of GDRN/NNC(NA) and Apong @ Moses Tikhir, reportedly a “Leacy” of GDRN/NNC(NA).

On May 30, one Pito-vi Shohe, son of Jemiho Shohe of Kitami village and present resident of Nagar-jan, Dimapur was arrested on charges of extortion after he was found issuing work permits to the business estab-lishments on behalf of the NSCN/GPRN (IM).

On June 3, one Atovi Awomi, son of Sheyeho of Zekishe village and present resident of Netaji Colony was arrested on charges of

extortion at Railway Bazaar, Dimapur.

On June 6, one Akinoto Yethomi, son of Hozhevi of Aquba village and present resident of Riverbelt Colony, Dimapur, was arrested by the AET of Dimapur Police after he was found issuing work permits to business establishments on behalf of the NSCN/GPRN (IM).

On the same day, the AET of the Dimapur Po-lice arrested two persons on charges of extortion after they were found collect-ing illegal taxes from the auto rickshaws. The arrested persons were identified Sen-tiyanger Aier, son of late Limasunep of Sungratsu vil-lage and present resident of 5th Mile, Dimapur, report-edly an “Office Assistant” of NSCN/GPRN (IM); MedemtibaKichu, son of Imtimeren of Aliba village and reportedly, an “Assistant Section Officer” of NSCN/GPRN (IM).Four apprehended with contraband: Dimapur Po-lice intercepted one Maruti Gypsy from Chumukedima area on May 27, and seized approximately 110 kgs of contraband ganja which was concealed in the ve-hicle. In this connection, one Neikhrope Mero, son of Pfulo Mero of Elyinimi vil-lage, Phek has been arrested.

On June 6, the personnel of 9 NAP (IR) detailed un-der Dimapur Police seized 10 kgs on contraband ganja, which was detected during MVCP. One person identi-fied as Sonatam Gorain, son of late Dasrath Gorain

of Banskuli, Jharkhand has been arrested in this con-nection.

On June 7, the Mobile Units under Dimapur Po-lice, in the wee hours in-tercepted one West Bengal registered Maruti Swift at 7th Mile area, Dimapur and seized a huge consignment of illegal drugs. Approxi-mately, 23800 capsules of Spasmo Proxovon and 1500 tablets of Nitrogen were seized. Two persons identi-fied as Besil Ozhi, son of Chopfkieozho of Makhil vil-lage, Senapati and Deepak Meiti, son of Zila Meiti of Topawanglika, Imphal East has been arrested in this connection.Two car lifters arrested: On May 31, one Maruti Swift brought on hire by two unknown persons from Hojai to Dimapur was stolen after the driver was drugged and abandoned unconscious near Purana Bazaar. The AVTS of the Dimapur Po-lice was immediately activat-ed and, along with staffs of East Police Station raided a location at Toluzuma where the stolen vehicle was recov-ered. The Police Team also found various registration plates of vehicles, tires, ve-hicle parts and implements for vehicle lifting from the location. Two persons have been arrested so far and identified as ZhoveoTun-gam, son of NangpouTun-gam of Khumai village, Senapati; ShibaTungam, son of DakhoTungam of Kumai village, Senapati. Both are present resident of Toluzuma village, Dimapur.

Dimapur, June 7 (EMN): The Department of Infor-mation & Public Relations (DIPR) held a coordination meeting at IPR Officers’ Conference Hall on June 7, with attendance of officers from different sections of the department.

While addressing the officials, the Director of IPR, Limawati Ao asked the officers to be sincere in their assigned duties and ready to serve wherever they are posted. It is the duty and responsibility of the concerned officers to uplift and improve the

image of the department, he said. He also urged the officers whether be in the directorate or districts to be more responsible, proactive and perform duties even in the absence of their supe-rior officers.

The meeting also dis-cussed several issues like the journalists welfare fund besides reviewing the 1st Film Festival of Nagaland which was held recently. Senior officers shared their views and suggestions for further improvement and conducive working system of the department.

NEwS IN BRIEfDDEO Dimapur informs schoolsDeputy District Education Officer (DDEO) has remind-ed all the schools under Dimapur district to strictly follow the school calendar issued by the Directorate of School Education Nagaland, Kohima. It also informed that the department shall carry out all official programmes and engagements as per the yearly academic calendar. Informing that it has been found that, schools used to declare holidays according to their own convenient date, therefore DDEO stated that in order to have uniformity, summer vacation for hot region like Dimapur will start from July 3 to 27. This is for strict compliance by all concerned.

Phek DPDB meeting postponedDeputy Commissioner & vice chairman of DPDB Phek, Kovi Meyase has informed that DPDB monthly meet-ing has been postponed to June 9, due to unavoidable circumstances. The venue remains the same. All DPDB members have been asked to lunch at 10:30 a.m. at the Rest house, Phek and thereafter proceed to the meeting venue. All the members have been informed to attend the meeting positively.

EAC Chumu convenes meetingExtra Assistant Commissioner (EAC) of Chumukedima, Thejavizo Nakhro has convened a meeting of all villagers under Chumukedima on June 9 at 11 a.m. at Chumuked-ima Town Council Hall. All village council chairmen and head GBs have been requested to attend positively.

KUD general body meetingKewhimia Union Dimapur (KUD) has convened a gen-eral body meeting on June 9, 4 p.m. at Kudawhi Guest House, Bank colony Dimapur. All concerned KUD members have been requested to attend positively.

LLPB convenes general meetingLitsami Local Planning Board (LLPB for 5 Triennial General Conference SBAK, Aizuto has convened a gen-eral meeting on June 10, 3 p.m. at Litsami Church com-pound. All the Litsami Kuposhuklu units and concerned individual have been requested to attend the meeting.

Sumi pastors to hold meetingThe Sumi pastors comprises of all Sumi denominations will be holding a meeting from on June 20 and 21, at Sumi Baptist Church Kohima, to invoke God’s blessing for the people. Dr. Hokheto Chophi, Pastor Sumi Baptist Church Kohima and Dr. Daniel Pastor Zunheboto Town Sumi Baptist Church will be the speakers. The program will start at 4 p.m. on June 20 and culminate on June 21 at 5 p.m. All Sumi pastors irrespective of all denomina-tions have been requested to attend.

Weather forecast in other Districts Max Min DP rh rf

WoKha 26.2 18.6 22.7 90 NIL

ZBt 23.1 11.5 18.4 84 NIL

Mon 33 22.8 21.5 91 NIL

tuensanG 25 18 17.6 91 NIL

MKG 22 16.4 16.6 82 NIL

KiPhire 30.8 17.6 20.1 98 NIL

sechÜ ZuBZa 29 22 21.2 79 NIL

MeLuri - - - - -

tseMinYu 27.4 18.2 21.3 76 NIL

PheK 30.2 24.6 21.2 73 NIL

JaLuKie 30 21 24.9 78 NIL

ManGKoLeMBa 32.6 26.8 25.2 74 NIL

*Dew Point (DP) *Relative Humidity (RH) * Rainfall (RF)

Source: Department of Soil & Water Conservation, Nagaland

State BJP president, Visasalie Lhoungu inaugurating the office of BJP Tseminyu mandal on June 5.

Verification team for connection of water supply to Zisaji Presidency Government College at Phakroki River, Kiphire.

Chairman Bethany 2 colony, Chineyi Lohe with the Organising Committee members.

3STATEEastErn Mirror | Dimapur, Thursday, June 8, 2017

CM

YK

A Life Member and a former President of Nagaland Bharat Scouts & Guides (NBS&G), Nagaland Chief Minister Dr. Shürhozelie Liezietsu was inducted today as the Patron of the NBS&G at the Chief Minister’s Office at the Nagaland Civil Secretariat in Kohima town, updates on Wednesday stated.

Members of VB Infants’ Digital Home during the science programme for children.

KK Sema and members of T Khel releasing wild pigeons at the Mini Zoo in Kohima on Wednesday.

‘Climate Change, forest, wildlife conservation not foreign problems’

Our Correspondent Kohima, June 7: Marking World Environment Day, a youth organisation from Kohima village in Kohima district released a number of birds from a Mini Zoo at Gasie, below the GREF camp in the capital town on Wednesday.

Anti-corruption activ-ist Khekiye K Sema spoke at the Tsütuonuomia Youth Organisation event. The former government official talked about the importance of preserving the environment and wild-life to ensure ecological balance.

Talking about the im-portance of Global Warm-ing also, he said that the Naga people do not under-stand the global impact of such issues nor have they realized how serious en-vironmental problems are becoming a part of even the Nagas’ life. The entire universe will be in real seri-ous trouble within the span of next 100 years or so, he said.

“Man carelessness and greed have been a part of everything that has been happening around the world,” said KK Sema, a former commissioner.

Sema explained that the Naga people think is-sues such as Global Warm-ing to be problems of other countries–issues perceived to be too remote to be

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applicable to states such as Nagaland. They have failed to realize that the en-vironmental and climatic changes taking place in the universe will in one way or the other impact the Naga community as well.

“We have already be-gun to see the changes of the climate changes. The monsoon that used to come on a normal time, some year ago we had monsoon even as late as August. The regular life of our rural population is get-ting impacted because the sowing season is being put

out of gear and the harvest is out of gear.”

“Little thing like this in our little environment has become eminent, it is becoming visible and the carelessness in which we destroy our surrounding so carelessly in different ways,” said Sema.

Further, he mentioned that the Naga people have failed to realize that the forest ‘we have are a very serious part of the ecologi-cal balance that God creat-ed along with the animals.’

Lauding the owner of the mini Zoo, he said

“Everything begins small; it is the vision and com-mitment that propel us the bigger thing in life.” The social activist appreciated the owner noting that there could be a person who vol-unteered to preserve wild-life in whatever personal capacity he could muster.

Also, he lamented how animals were treated the Kohima Zoo back in 1990: due to lack of funds, the an-imals were not given prop-er food and were not able to survive. He expressed grave concern about the plight of Nagaland’s State

Bird, the Hornbill. He said that birds are already dis-appearing from the forests of the state. He has called upon the state’s forest au-thorities to exert more ef-forts to conserve wildlife.

Seeking the attention of the government, K K Sema maintained that the state should step forward to assist. He requested that the government help pri-vate entrepreneurs realize their dreams ‘more mean-ingfully’ so that the benefit of whatever they are doing receive ‘blessing for the people and the commu-nity.’ “We tend to kill and eat everything that moves but it is time to be selective and not be rampant in do-ing things that are totally careless; and do some pres-ervation,” he said.

More than 10 wild pigeons were set free by members of T Khel and KK Sema during the event.

The proprietor of the facility, Rüvuotuo Belho said to have started the mini zoo in 2004. This year, the facility completes 13 years of existence. He said there were more than 30 species of birds and animals such as the deer, porcupine, eagle owl, great barbet, and the hornbill etc., in the zoo.

The mini zoo is open to visitors every Saturday and Sunday with Rs.20 as entry fee per person.

Dimapur Pre-school organizes children science programme

Dimapur, June 7 (EMN): Members of a school insti-tution ‘VB Infants’ Digital Home’ organized a science programme for children to mark the occasion of World Environment day on June 5 with children, guardians and well-wishers.

A press release from the organisers on Tues-day offered updates about said event. “Pradhanach-arya Rose Nka motivated to guardians by experiment of some science items con-nected with little children and done by children,” the press release stated.

“Guardians appreci-

ated the experiments and happy to look their chil-dren how to learn science by experiments. Pankaj Sinha organizing secretary of Janjati Shiksha Sasmiti (Vidya Bharati) said science is important factors of hu-man being. The child is also one science. But he does not know about the behaviours of science,” it stated.

According to the press release, VB Infants’ Digital Home is a “unique educa-tional process for3+ & 4+ children.”

“Here we have been try-ing to develop of languages, good behaviours, nature,

science, mathematics, pres-ence of mind and skills of digital process through songs, music, story, experi-ments and smart classes without any book or note book,” the press release stat-ed. “There are four psycho-logical steps to learn any language. These are listen-ing, reading, speaking and writing. But today’s run-ning education firstly guides how to write. It is wrong. We have been surrounding developing of children by VB Infants’ Digital Home curriculum just like garden of children,” the note ex-plained.

Naginimora hosts awareness prog on open defecation Dimapur, June 7 (EMN): A pro-gramme seeking to spread aware-ness about the effects of open defecation on the environment was conducted at United Chris-tian Higher Secondary School in Naginimora on June 5.

The event was sponsored by the SBM through Urban Devel-opment department.

The vice principal of the Government Higher Secondary School, Sobungtula Aier deliv-ered a speech. She talked about open defection and its impact on environment. She defined open

defecation as practice in which people go to fields, forest or open spaces to defecate.

The World Health Organisa-tion had declared the year 2008 as ‘International Year of Sani-tation’ and it was here the term ‘open defection’ began to be widely published, she said.

Further, the United Na-tions also brought the world’s attention to the issue of open defecation for the first time by observing ‘World Toilet Day’ on November 19, 2013. She ap-prised the gathering about the

United Nations’ pledge to elimi-nate open defecation from the globe before 2025.

Lamenting the lack of toilets as one of the leading causes of illness and deaths among chil-dren and adults, Sobungtula Aier told the gathering that the elimination of the practice of open defecation to be an impor-tant aspect of development. She maintained that open defecation leads to the spread of harmful diseases such as diarrhoea, chol-era, and typhoid. It has further impact on the environment spe-

cifically on water, soil and air pollution.

Aier urged the community to shoulder the responsibility to work and create awareness among the people to stop the practice of open defecation.

A painting competition be-sides a plantation program and a mass cleaning work on the area were also undertaken as part of the event. In the painting com-petition, Chingyong, class-x stu-dent, emerged the winner. Pan-gloi and Henkao won the second and third prize respectively.

Dimapur, June 7 (EMN): The Agriculture depart-ment of Nagaland is gradu-ally meeting with the age of digital technology. A program launching a drive for development of mobile applications, or apps, of the National e-Governance Plan in Agriculture (NeG-PA) was held in the APC Conference hall on June 7.

YM Yolow, parliamen-tary secretary for Agricul-ture was the chief guest of the event, a press release from the department of Ag-riculture stated on Wednes-day. During the formal programme, the chief guest

declared the project for de-velopment of mobile ap-plications “open.” He said that five mobile apps meant for agriculture and allied departments that were iden-tified and recommended by the committee have been ‘officially awarded’ to the department of Information technology & Communica-tion from the day the mem-orandum of understanding was signed i.e., May 16.

Parliamentary Secre-tary Yolow said that the ‘re-cent advancement’ of tech-nology had brought people closer. However, he said that it had both ‘merit’ and

‘demerit.’ He called upon the Agriculture and allied departments to take advan-tage of the mobile apps that would now be developed.

The keynote address at the event was delivered by KD Vizo, Commissioner and Secretary. In his ad-dress, Vizo said that the Nagaland was basically an agriculture-based economy and an agriculture-based so-ciety. Through the NeGPA, the Government of India is exploring all possibili-ties to promote agriculture products by using state-of-art technology, he said. He said that any application

through the mobile phone will have enormous impact ‘as the mobile penetration in the state is fairly good.’

The official said also that the department of Ag-riculture had chosen a right platform to promote agri-culture-related activities. He mentioned that

Based on the memo-randum of understanding that was signed between the department of Agriculture and Information Technol-ogy & Communication, he said, ‘they will be develop-ing five mobile applications and the work has already been started.’

Agri launches app development drive

Kohima, June 7 (EMN): Kohima Bible College held its class-of-2017 graduation programme with founder Himalayan Good-News Networking ministry Rev. Dawa Singye Bhutia as the main speaker here today at the IG stadium in Kohima town.

In his address, Rev. Dawa Singye Bhutia said that everyone has a spe-cial purpose in their life for God and they must utilize it for God’s glory. Encouraging the graduates, he said they should be like the salt of the

world in whichever place they are. He reminded the graduating stu-dents that faithfully serving Him is more important than not then just being successful, updates from the organisers informed in a press re-lease.

During the event, various awards were given to the graduates. The Rev Neihulie Award for academic ex-cellence was bagged by Numakato Numakanta Panthi (M.Div) and Khriikiidulii Swuro (B.Th); the Rev

David Nunn award for field min-istries was awarded to Numakato Numakanta Panthi (M.Div) and William A Patton (B.Th); the Rev. CB Anderson award for practical theology and Christian maturity was bagged by Kurisiilii (M.Div) and Vizoyol Rote (B.Th); the presi-dent award for old testament bagged by Seyievituo Rote; the principal’s award in new testament was bagged by Khrieneilie and Mercy NS, the press release added.

Class of 2017 graduates from Kohima Bible College

4 REGIONEastErn Mirror | Dimapur, Thursday, June 8, 2017

Manipur CM demands to investigate poor quality belts

LPG connections for BPL families starts in Mpr

War memorial inaugurated in Arunachal

1265 APSC answer scripts seized by Dibrugarh police handed over to court

MPCC refers to high command allegations against Power minister

New outfit claiming to be GNLA floated in Tura

Arunachal Pradesh: Mere 38.83% students pass! Teachers’ crisis prompts poor result

All-party to discuss Chakma, Hajong refugee citizenship issue, AAPSU threatens agitation

Assam govt launches NE first digital archive

Dibrugarh administration set ablaze 120 houses

Manipur CM condoles late Major David Manlun

One injured in poll violence in Karbi Anglong

Rajnath Singh to hold meeting of NE CMs

Cigarettes worth Rs.30 lakh seized in Guwahati

Many BJP members will resign from party: Bachu Marak

BJP Govts in NE have no intention to impose beef ban: HimantaGuwahati, June 7 (PTI): Amid reports of unease among BJP leaders in the Northeast over the beef issue, a top party leader on Wednesday asserted that its state governments have no intention to impose any dietary restriction on people. “We are in power in Assam and people are eating beef there in day-to-day life. Where is the ban? There is no intention of the state government to impose any restriction.

“We have not done so in Arunachal Pradesh and Manipur and we are in government in both states as well,” Himanta Biswa Sarma, who is the BJP-led North-East Democratic Alliance convener, said. The NEDP is a grouping of the BJP and several regional political parties based in the

Northeast states. Sarma, who is also a minister in the Assam government, is a key party leader tasked with the responsibility of expanding the saffron outfit in the region.

Opposition parties have attacked the BJP following the Centre’s notification to ban the sale and purchase of cattle at animal markets for slaughter. Some BJP leaders in Meghalaya, which goes to polls next year, quit the party accusing it of trying to push a ban on the consumption of beef, which is eaten widely in the region.

Sarma claimed that the issue had no resonance among the masses and is being talked more in Delhi than these states. The notification is about regulating cattle trade which

Tura (Meghalaya), June 7 (PTI): Bachu Marak, who had resigned as the North Garo Hills district BJP president, today claimed that many of his supporters will resign from the party.

Bachu held a meeting with his supporters today. He claimed that many of his supporters told him that they are going to resign from the party.

“At least 4000 plus members of BJP

who had enrolled would also resign from the party membership,” Bachu claimed after the meeting.

Bachu resigned from the party yesterday over the Centre’s ban on the sale of cattle in markets for slaughter. Bachu’s resignation comes four days after West Garo Hills district president Bernard Marak made an exit from the party on the same issue.

has always been there in some form, he said. The two leaders who left the party did so due to political reasons as the party was not considering them for posts they wanted.

“Some people have made it look like that the

only issue in the Northeast is beef. It has been portrayed as if people here eat beef from morning to night and there is no other thing. People are asking for roads, rail, jobs… The beef issue has been blown out of proportion,” he told PTI.

Targeting the Congress, the main opposition to the BJP- led alliance in the region; he said it has created a “very negative impression” of the region by raking up the issue. “The Congress is trying to popularise beef eating.”

Our CorrespondentImphal, June 7 (EMN): Addressing a press conference here on Tuesday Chief Minister Nongthombam Biren Singh said directive has been given to government’s monitoring cell led by Additional Chief Secretary (Home) Dr J Suresh Babu to investigate the alleged supply of substandard belts to the state police department soon after receiving complaints on social networking sites.

Dr Suresh Babu and DGP Manipur LM Khaute along with two teams of monitoring cell conducted verification of the stocks of the central store located at 1st Battalion Manipur Rifles and Imphal West SP’s office complexes.

He said the state government has constituted an inquiry committee to probe supply of poor quality belts to Manipur police department. The committee would be headed by Additional Chief Secretary Dr Suhel Akhtar along special secretary R Sudhan and IGP (Admin) Dr S Ibocha as the members. The report is expected to submit within a month’s time.

Biren said he personally visited the stores later after the team informed him that the supplied belts were of very poor quality and inferior to the samples produced at the time of tender.

Stating that the belts recovered from these stores were of very poor quality, he said that it could be easily torn by hands without much effort. “It is unfortunate to detect such irregularities at a time when the government is putting efforts to boost the morale of the state security personnel who have been rendering service to the

society day and night,” he said. “M/s Md Gani Khan,the firm which

had supplied such sub-standard belts to the Manipur Police Department had been blacklisted and a thorough investigation would be done against the firm.”

Stating that government would never tolerate such irregularities, he assured befitting action would be taken against those who were found involved.

The present Government has no ill-feeling or enmity against anybody however it is simply trying to penalise the wrongdoers, he added.

A review meeting was held on Tuesday at CM Secretariat to ensure timely completion of various developmental projects taken up by different government departments under the 100 days action plan programme.

The meeting discussed the status and progress of the various developmental projects being undertaken by different departments under the 100 days programme of the new government.

The chief minister asked all the administrative secretaries and head of departments to submit the progress and development of works on a daily basis to CM office.

Action plan were taken up under 100 days programme which includes providing of free wi-fi in public areas, connecting district headquarters under SWAN to enable video conferencing facilities, Jeewan Praman for pensioners, launching of Manipur journalist board, medical insurance schemes for journalists of the state and so on.

Guwahati, June 7 (PTI): Assam government today launched the first digital archive of the Northeast at Jyoti Chitraban Film Studio here to preserve films, music, special events, photographs and texts. The Jyoti Chitraban Music Archive that was inaugurated by state Culture Minister Naba Kumar Doley on December 30 last year has now been renamed as Jyoti Chitraban Digital Archive, Jyoti Chitraban Chairman Pabitra Margherita said.

“I invite all the artistes, producers and even public to submit important archival materials which will be preserved for posterity at the Jyoti Chitraban Digital Archive,” he said. Several noted filmmakers and producers submitted their productions, including films and music, at the launch event.

Margherita also announced the Jyoti Chitraban hall of fame which will induct several renowned luminaries of Assam like Sangeet Acharyya, Lakshmi Ram Barua, filmmaker and lyricist Rupkonwar Jyoti Prasad Agawala, poet lyricist Parbati Prasad Baruva, Kalaguru Bishnu Prasad Rava and music legend Bhupen Hazarika. First community news portal of the Northeast was also launched as part of the digital archive which will give a platform to the youngsters and artistically enthusiastic individuals to publish news items, articles and creative writing. An official website of Jyoti Chitraban Digital Archive was also launched at the event.

Dibrugarh, June 7 (EMN): In a first of its kind, the Dibrugarh district administration set ablaze several houses of those who have encroached into the banks of Brahmaputra on Wednesday.

According to DY365 Bureau reports, the eviction was carried out in the Fulbagan area and the administration set at least 120 houses on fire who reside

nearby the Dibrugarh town protection dyke.

Notably, the administration had evicted these illegal settlers several times earlier but despite this, they encroached into the banks of the Brahmaputra.

Situation had turned tense but additional security forces were rushed in to bring the situation under control.

Itanagar, June 7 (PTI) : G e n e r a l o f f i c e r commanding of Gajraj C o r p s L t G e n e r a l Amar jee t S ingh Bedi has inaugurated a war memorial at Thembang village in Kameng district of Arunachal Pradesh.

In an event witnessed by a large gathering of locals and army personnel, the war memorial was yesterday dedicated to the nation, a Defence release said here today.

T h e m e m o r i a l , constructed by the scout battalion of the Indian Army, has been dedicated to the men of 5 Guards,

who fought during the Indo-China war in Thembang village on november 16 and 17, 1962.

The batt le brought to the fore the resolute courage and indomitable fighting spirit shown by the brave hearts of 5 Guards pitted against a numerically superior strength of the Chinese, the statement said. The valiant fight put up by the guardsmen inflicted heavy casualties on the Chinese wherein they lost over 600 men, it said.

The Guards battalion h a d l o s t 9 0 s o l d i e r s including two officers, the release added.

Shillong, June 7 (PTI): The disciplinary committee of the Meghalaya Pradesh Congress Committee has referred to the party high command the allegations against senior party leader and Power minister Sniawbhlang Dhar for his alleged anti-party activities.

“The state level disciplinary committee of the party which met yesterday will send its report to the AICC for information and necessary action against Dhar,” Meghalaya Pradesh Congress Committee president D D Lapang told PTI.

He said “The committee had thoroughly gone through the complaint lodged against

Dhar and the report will be sent in a day or two.”

The Jowai Block Congress Committee (JBCC) has demanded that Dhar be sacked from the ministry for his alleged anti party activities particularly at the constituency of Congress leader and Deputy Chief Minister R C Laloo in West Jaintia Hills district.

In his complaint to Lapang, JBCC president A A Shullai said, “This is a fit case for the party to take strong and necessary action by dropping this Minister (Dhar) immediately from the cabinet and withdrawn all party posts he is holding.”

Tura, June 7 (EMN): Criminal gangs, that had earlier haunted the entire North Garo Hills region, have once again resurfaced after confirmation from sources of a group of about 7-10 armed men were spotted around the Menadoba – Dokongsi – Kharkutta areas of the district.

The news comes after a hiatus of militancy from the district after the arrest of notorious criminal William Sangma a few months ago.

According to police sources of NGH, the group, which some say comprises of about 7-15 criminals, though sources put it at about 7, are said to have 2

AKs along with another two heavy arms and have been asserting themselves as to being a part of the Garo National Liberation Army (GNLA).

“While they c laim themselves to be GNLA our sources put it as a new faction comprising of about 7 people. The group according to our sources is being led one Mithun Sangma from the village of Menadoba in NGH,” said district police chief, Dalton Marak.

“We had information of their presence and had launched an operation. However as they were on a hilltop they were able to spot

us and make a run. We are currently on the lookout for this criminal group and hope to get a breakthrough soon.

Another police source confirmed that the group had begun to serve demand notes to a few businessmen though the amount demanded was not disclosed.

According TNT News reports, currently Garo Hills has been witnessing a period of calm with most militant outfits either disbanding or individual members surrendering to the police. The GNLA too according to sources has been on a drive of recruitment after most of the former cadres gave up arms.

Guwahati, June 7 (EMN): Sleuths of the Customs department on Wednesday seized foreign brand cigarette valued around Rs 30 lakh from the Gopalthan Transport at Lokhra in Guwahati.

Acting on a tip off, the custom officials raided the transport office and seized

32 cartons of cigarette manufactured in Myanmar.

According to DY365 Bureau reports, the consignment is suspected to have been smuggled into the country through the India-Myanmar border either in Manipur or Mizoram.

Aizawl, June 7 (PTI): Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh will hold a meeting of chief ministers of Northeast states bordering Myanmar here on Monday.

Union Minister of State for Home Kiren Rijiju and top officials of the ministry would be present at the meeting,

officials said.Chief Ministers of Mizoram,

Nagaland, Manipur and Arunachal Pradesh are expected to attend the meeting, they said. Singh would be visiting Myanmar border areas by helicopter on Tuesday, state protocol department officials said.

Dibrugarh, June 7 (EMN): D ib r ug a r h po l i c e on Wednesday handed over 1265 answer scripts to the court which were seized from the APSC office in a raid carried out a day before according to DY365 Bureau.

These include 1175 answer scripts of the year 2013 and 90 answer scripts of 2015.

Earlier the police had seized 980 answer scripts.

Besides this three ACS officers were also arrested after their answer sheets were se ized f rom the residence of Rakesh Pal.

Bhaskar Jyot i Dev Sar ma, Amri t Sar ma and Bhaskar Dutta, all appointed as circle officers, were arrested on May 3 for allegedly getting selected in the civil service by paying hefty amount of money to the then APSC chairman Rakesh Pal.

Our CorrespondentDiphu, June 7 (EMN): In a poll related matters, the violence erupted in Songron village of Thevang polling station under Deithor Police station in No.26 Duarbagori MAC constituency injuring one person on Tuesday.

Accord ing to the i n f o r m a t i o n , K a r b i

Anglong Democratic Front (KADF) meeting was held at Thevang Polling Station where candidate Richard Tokbi and Congress (I) supporters were present.

During the meeting the members unanimously resolved to support KADF candidate Richard Tokbi. However, after the meeting, c o n g r e s s ( I ) wo r k e r

Rubul Terang attacked Kendra Killing and hit with wooden on head and injured, said the report.

Ta lk ing to media over telephone after the accident, Officer in charge of Deithor Police station informed that the violence was erupted in the village itself not in the election campaign meeting.

Itanagar, June 7 (PTI): Arunachal Pradesh Chief Minister Pema Khandu has convened an all-party meeting here on June 19 to discuss the issue of granting of citizenship to Chakma and Hajong refugees, an official communique said today.

Representatives of all political parties are expected to attend the meeting and discuss at length all relevant issues pertaining to granting of citizenship rights to Chakmas and

Hajongs and arrive at a consensus, officials said.

The cabinet meeting held on August 24 last year had decided to hold an all-party meeting on the issue.

The All Arunachal Students’ Union (AAPSU) has threatened to launch an “indefinite democratic agitation” against the state government’s stand on the Centre’s decision to grant citizenship to Chakma and Hajong refugees if the government fails to

convene an all-party meet on the matter by June 10.

A A P S U, t h e a p ex students union in the state, had on May 27 resolved that all the 59 MLAs and three MPs of the state must attend the meeting.

The student body had submitted a memorandum to Khandu on May 29 asking him to convene the meeting on the citizenship issue on or before June 10.

A A P S U h a s b e e n spearheading the movement against the Chakmas and

Hajong refugees since 1990 as it fears that citizenship to the refugees would reduce the indigenous tribal communities to a minority and rob them of the opportunities they enjoy.

Chakmas and Hajongs entered India through the then Lushai Hills district of Assam (now Mizoram). While some of them stayed back with the Chakmas already residing in the district, the Centre had moved a majority of them

to the erstwhile North East Frontier Agency, now Arunachal Pradesh.

In 2015, the Supreme Court gave the Centre a dead l ine to con fe r citizenship to these refugees within three months.

T h e A r u n a c h a l gover nment then had challenged the apex court s order in vain. Minister of State for Home Kiren Rijiju had also recently raised the citizenship issue at a meet chaired by Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh.

Our CorrespondentImphal, June 7 (EMN): Two days after the formal launching of Pradhan Mantri Ujjwala Yojana, Below Poverty Line(BPL) families in Thoubal and Imphal east district have started to get Liquefied Petroleum Gas (LPG) connections on Wednesday.

According to official reports, M/s Athokpam Indane service begins to provide house to house LPG connections to beneficiaries under the central scheme i n T h o u b a l D i s t r i c t . Subscription vouchers/cus tomer ’s document was also given to the beneficiaries.

On Tuesday M/s RBD Indane Service, Lamlai completed installations of 18 connection to 18 BPL beneficiaries. RBD

Indane and Sawombung Indane at Imphal East and M/s Lambodara Indane, Mantripukhri at Heingang also began immediate LPG installations providing LPG connections to BPL families. Beneficiaries in Lamlai Sekta who never had LPG connections were given Ujjwala domestic LPG connections by RBD Indane,the report said.

The BPL beneficiaries were provided affordable stoves/burner and given demonstrations on how to use the s tove and the regulator. Safety tips were also explained and emergency number 1906 in case of leakage was written on the walls of the kitchen.

Under the scheme, the Central Government is allocating financial assistance of Rs 1,600 which

includes security deposit fee of a 14.2 kg LPG cylinder, pressure regulator, suraksha LPG hose, DGCC booklet and installation cost for the distributor.

A total of 2,43,939 beneficiaries are eligible for the scheme as per Socio-Economic Caste census (2011 census).

The total beneficiaries enrolled as on June 1, 2017 is 5,104. Ujjwala domestic LPG connections are given to women from BPL families in their own names based on their Aadhar cards and bank accounts. The objective of the Pradhan Mantri Ujjwala Yojana is to provide deposit free 5 crore cooking gas (LPG) connections to women from below-poverty-line (BPL) households over 3 years from 2016-17 to 2018-2019.

Itanagar, June 7, (EMN): One of the reasons for the dismal pass percentage of just 38.83 in the Class 12 Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) could be attributed to shortage of teachers in Arunachal Pradesh, especially for science, maths and English.

A much better performance of the government-run schools in the districts which share a long border with China-occupied Tibet could perhaps prompt authorities to take a closer look at what’s going wrong in the state.

Arunachal Pradesh does not have a state education board. This frontier north-eastern state thus follows the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) that conducts the annual Class 12 or All India Senior School Certificate Examination (AISSCE). This year’s Class 12 results in the state were declared on June 1. A mere 5,443 of the 14,016 students who appeared for the exams were successful, with the pass percentage working out to 38.83%.

The success rate of private

schools across the state’s 21 districts averaged 82.70% with East Kameng district scoring the highest of 100% and Papum Pare the lowest of 60.75%.

But government-run higher secondary (HS) schools, the performance chart revealed, located closer to the McMahon Line separating India and Tibet, did better than those farthest from it.

Arunachal Pradesh has 84 government-run higher secondary schools. Tawang district, at the core of Beijing’s claim on Arunachal Pradesh, topped the list of government schools with a success rate of 72.54%.

The district has only two such schools – one each in headquarters Tawang and Lumla and of the 244 students who appeared for the exam, 177 passed.

Government schools in Upper Siang and Kurung Kumey districts, both sharing a long border with Tibet, followed Tawang with a success rate of 68.60% and 57.14%, respectively.

Anjaw in southern Arunachal Pradesh, which bore the brunt of

the Chinese attack in 1962 along with Tawang, too put up a decent performance with 52.76%.

But the performance in government schools in more accessible districts such as Longding and East Kameng has been disappointing. The two districts averaged 17.45%.

Officials have attributed the poor performance to a combination of three factors – shortage of language, science and mathematics teachers, no-detention policy for students for up to Class 8 under the Right to Education Act, and non-creation of teachers’ post in schools upgraded to higher secondary.

“We have taken up these issues with the government. Hopefully, they will be addressed soon for improving the school results in Arunachal Pradesh, possibly the worst in the northeast,” Marken Kadu, joint director of school education, told Hindustantimes from Itanagar.

Districts sharing a long border with Tibet have been better off in terms of teachers and quality of students.

Our CorrespondentImphal, June 7 (EMN): Manipur Chief Minister Nongthombam Biren Singh has mourned the demise of late Major David Manlun, 32 of 164 infantry battalion of the Territorial Army who was killed in a gunfight with militants in Mon district Nagaland on June 6, 2017.

The incident took place when a security team led by Major David Manlun went to Tijit near interior Lappa village in Mon after receiving specific information about the presence of militants there. Others three soldiers injured.

“We are proud of the valour of Major David Manlun. He was a martyred for the country fighting with militants and his sacrifice will not go in vain,” CM said in a condolence message. “I pray that the Almighty gives his family the strength to withstand the irreparable loss.” The entire state and country share the sorrow of Major David’s family, friends and colleagues, it added.

Late Major David Manlun was originally from Churachandpur district Manipur however settled with his family in Shillong.

5StateEastErn Mirror | Dimapur, Thursday, June 8, 2017

More reports on World Environment Day

DPS:, Delhi Public School (DPS) Dimapur took the initiative of reaching out to the people with the message for positive environment ac-tion, beyond observing the significance of World Envi-ronment Day in the school.

Road shows were con-ducted at strategic locations around Super-Market area and the City Tower Junc-tion Dimapur. A skit was enacted drawing attention of the people to the concept of how all living beings are infused with the life of an all encompassing beautiful na-ture, calling for a collective effort to make a difference, a well choreographed and skillfully executed dance and song was also presented by the students.

Acting as harbingers of change, the students of DPS made a powerful statement involving the onlookers to stop, think and be enthused to act positively in order to protect the Earth that we share.Dimapur Forest Division: Dimapur Forest Division in collaboration with Aqahuto Area Students’ Union ob-served the World Environ-ment Day for the first time in Aqahuto area at Govern-ment High School Aqahuto.

On the occasion, Beizo Suokhrie, ACF in his key note address emphasised on

APPRECIATIONThe World Environment Day was observed in Nagaland along with the rest of the World on 5th June 2017. The theme for this year World Environment Day was “Connecting People with Nature”. I am deeply satisfied and appreciative of the observing of World Environment Day all over the State. The department had organized the World Environment Day 2017 celebration at the town hall Mokokchung which witnessed a massive public response with participation from as many as 60 villages and town ward representatives. I take this opportunity to sincerely thank and tender my deepest appreciation to all dignitaries, resource persons and participants who graced the occasion and to each and every officer and staff of the Department of Environment, Forest & Climate Change, Nagaland for their great effort and active participation in making the World Environment Day 2017 celebration a great success. Most importantly it is very heartening and noteworthy to see and learn that many NGO’s, Schools, Colleges, Villages, Clubs, Churches, Organizations, Eco-clubs, NSS, Town Committees, Municipalities, Wards, Associations and many others have diligently participated and observed the World Environment Day. For this noble works and good gesture, I being the Head of Forest Force cannot be a silent spectator and would be failing on my part if I do not thank each and everyone who have joined and participated in celebrating the World Environment day this year. I wish and hope that this positive trend will continue in the near future so as to save our fragile ecosystem and our environment.

With best Wishes and regards.I.PANGER JAMIR, IFS

Principal Chief Conservator of Forests& Head of Forest Force

Nagaland: Kohima

GOVERNMENT OF NAGALANDOFFICE OF THE PRINCIPAL CHIEF CONSERVATOR OF FORESTS

& HEAD OF FOREST FORCENAGALAND: KOHIMA

KG

-174

5

NO.M-239/17/2683-84 Notice is hereby given that Shri/Smti Olem Jungla -Vrs- Imnalepzuk resident of Lengrijan Town/Village in the District of Dimapur, Nagaland under Rule 50 & 51 Assam land Revenue Regulation 1886 have applied for Mutation of land described in the schedule below:-

The undersigned under Rule 52 of the said Rules do hereby invites claims/objections concerning to the said land, if any & should be submitted to this court in writing on or before 07/07/17. SCHEDULED OF LAND AND BOUNDARYName of Patta Holder: Olem JunglaVillage/Block No: 05, Patta No: 991Dag No: 1073, Area: 00-01-00

IN THE COURT OF DEPUTY COMMISSIONER DIMAPUR DISTRICTHEADQUARTER, CHUMUKEDIMA, CAMP: DIMAPUR: NAGALAND

Dt. Dimapur the 07.06.17

Sd/- Deputy CommissionerDimapur: Nagaland

NOTICE

D-4186

NO.M-340/17/2667-68 Notice is hereby given that Shri/Smti Geeta Debnath-Vrs- Omprakash Sethi resident of Jain Temple Road Town/Village in the District of Dimapur, Nagaland under Rule 50 & 51 Assam land Revenue Regulation 1886 have applied for Mutation of land described in the schedule below:-

The undersigned under Rule 52 of the said Rules do hereby invites claims/objections concerning to the said land, if any & should be submitted to this court in writing on or before 07/07/17. SCHEDULED OF LAND AND BOUNDARYName of Patta Holder: Geeta DebnathVillage/Block No: 8, Patta No: 926Dag No: 244/1030, Area: 00B.00K.15Ls

IN THE COURT OF DEPUTY COMMISSIONER DIMAPUR DISTRICTHEADQUARTER, CHUMUKEDIMA, CAMP: DIMAPUR: NAGALAND

Dt. Dimapur the 07. 06’17

Sd/- Deputy CommissionerDimapur: Nagaland

NOTICE

D-4218

KOINONIA PRAYER CENTRETSIESE BASA, KOHIMA; NAGALAND

“……..MY HOUSE SHALL BE CALLED A HOUSE OF PRAYER.” Matthew 21:13M O N T H L Y R E V I V A L P R O G R A M

DATE: 9th- 11st JUNE 2017THEME:

“..... THOSE WHO WAIT UPON THE LORD, SHALL RENEW THIER STRENGTH” John 8:31SPEAKER’S

REV. ZOTUO KIEWHUOSENIOR PASTOR, KOINONIA BAPTIST CHURCH

MRS. MODOTSEILIEÜ KIEWHUOASSOCIATE PASTOR.

MR. NEIBALIE KIEWHUOASSOCIATE PASTOR.

MR. ROKOPRA MEKROASSISTANT PASTOR.

LEADERSROKOPRA MEKRO, ASSISTANT PASTOR.

MENUOSIELIE ÜSOU, EVANGELISTPRAISE AND WORSHIP THE OASIS GROUP,

SPECIAL PRAISETHE OASIS GROUP, KOINONIA BAPTIST CHURCH

HOST: MISS. NZANBENI TSOPOECOME WITH FAITH AND RECEIVE THE BLESSING OF

SALVATION, DELIVERANCE AND HEALING.K-1190

RAINBOW COACHING CENTREMOTTO: “Learn to Lead” ESTD. 2006. Dimapur Nagaland.

Special Coaching Class For:CL-10, CL-12 (Arts & Science).

With good Hostel for Boys & Girls (Separate building).Classes Monday to Friday in all the subject.

For details contact: 03862-248524 (0) 9856857778/ 9862700227D-4215

By this deed I, the undersigned DAVID PULO KOZA (New Name) previously called “DAVID” AND “DAVID KOZA” (Old Name), doing self employed and resident of H.No: 47, N.H-29,Sodzulhou village, 6th mile, Dimapur, Nagaland solemnly declare:-

That for and on behalf of myself and my wife, children and remitter issue, I wholly renounce/1. relinquish and abandon the use of my former name “DAVID” AND “DAVID KOZA” (Old Name) and in place thereof I do hereby assume from this date the name/sure name “DAVID PULO KOZA” (New Name) so that I and my wife, children and remitter issue may hereafter be called, known and distinguished not my former name/ surname, but assume name/surname of “DAVID PULO KOZA” (New Name).That for the purpose of evidencing such my determination declare that I shall at all time herein 2. after in all records, deeds and writings and in all proceedings, dealings and transactions, pri-vate as well as upon all occasions whatsoever, use and sign the name of “DAVID PULO KOZA” (New Name) as my name/surname in place and in substitution of my former name/surname.That, I expressly authorize and request all persons in general and relatives and friends in par-3. ticular, at all times hereinafter to distinguish and address me, my wife, children and remitter issue by such assumed name/surname of “DAVID PULO KOZA” (New Name) accordingly.In witness whereof I have hereunto subscribed my former name 4. “DAVID” AND “DAVID KOZA” (Old Name) and adopted name/surname of “DAVID PULO KOZA” (New Name) and affix my signature and seal, if any this 7th day of June 2017.

Signed sealed and delivered by the above name Former name: “DAVID” AND “DAVID KOZA”

ANNEXURE’E’SPECIMEN AFFIDAVIT FOR CHANGE IN NAME

Regd No: 691/2017 Date: 07/06/2017

MAGISTRATE/ NOTARY PUBLICDIMAPUR: NAGALAND

D-4216

Deponent

NO.M-341/17/2669-70 Notice is hereby given that Shri/Smti Late Dr. Among Ao -Vrs- Imnatemsu Ao resident of Bank Colony Town/Village in the District of Dimapur, Nagaland under Rule 50 & 51 Assam land Revenue Regulation 1886 have applied for Mutation of land described in the schedule below:-

The undersigned under Rule 52 of the said Rules do hereby invites claims/objections concerning to the said land, if any & should be submitted to this court in writing on or before 07/07/17. SCHEDULED OF LAND AND BOUNDARY Name of Patta Holder: Late Dr. Among AoVillage/Block No: Purana Bazar, Patta No: 30 & 45Dag No: 282 & 357, Area: 02B.02K.10Ls & 09B-03K-00 Ls

IN THE COURT OF DEPUTY COMMISSIONER DIMAPUR DISTRICTHEADQUARTER, CHUMUKEDIMA, CAMP: DIMAPUR: NAGALAND

Dt. Dimapur the 07.06.17

Sd/- Deputy CommissionerDimapur: Nagaland

NOTICE

D-4218

ROJECTS & DEVELOPMENT INDIA LIMITED(A Govt. of India Undertaking)

PDIL Bhawan, A-14, Sector-1, Noida 201301 CIN NO.U74140UP1978GOI028629

Website: www.pdilin.com (ADVT.NO. HR/71/17/03)

PDIL, A Mini Ratna Category-I PSU, is a leading Design Engineering & Consultancy Organization in the field of Fertilizers & Allied Chemical, Refinery, Oil & Gas, Power, Petrochemical, Infrastructure etc. invites applications for the posts of Engineers and Diploma holders in Mechanical, Instrumentation, Civil, Electrical, Process, Safety, SSP Lab, Environmental Engg. and Catalyst Production discipline for posting at Project Sites all over India & any of PDIL Offices/sites located all over India as per requirement:

WALK IN INTERVIEW Date: 15.06.2017(Noida), 17.06.2017(Vadodara), 19.06.2017(Chennai)

(Reporting TIME: 9.30 A.M) PURELY ON CONTRACT BASIS FOR ONE YEAR

For complete details of the advt. and online submission of applications; please log on to Careers Section of PDIL’s web site: www.pdilin.com

Davp 02105/11/0004/1718

DP-

143

E nggof

Work tenders through E-Tende-ring System for and on behalf of the President of India are invited for the works as detailed below:

SN 01. Brief Description of Item : At Silghat town-Provision for construction of pitline, sick line with shed, water hydrant line, deep tube well , water tank,

building, approach road and boundary fencing etc. Tender Value : ` 11,58,32,733.89/-; Earnest Money: ` 7,29,170/-; Cost of tender documents: ` 10,000/-; Completion period of work : 18 Months.

SN 02. Brief Description of Item : (Balance work)-At Jagi- road (JID)-Depot supplying of 50 mm size hard durable stone machine crushed track ballast

GE-I June 2004 with upto date correction slip from private quarry, stacking properly on level surface within the depot and loading the same into hopper /wagon/truck in connection with through ballast recoupment in Narangi (NNGE)- Furkating (FKG) section under Lumding division. Tender Value : ` 16,81,93,972.51/-; Earnest Money: ` 9,90,970/-; Cost of tender documents: ` 10,000/-; Completion period of work : 18 Months.

Date & time of closing of above E-tenders : 15.00 hours of 10-07-2017.

Date & time of opening of above E-tenders :15.00 hours of 11-07-2017.

Note: The complete information with tender documents of above e-tender will be available upto 15.00 hrs. of 10-07-2017 in website http://www.ireps.gov.in. The tenderer requires to submit their e-tender on this website only.

time and date. Part-I (Technical Bid) will be opened on 11-07-2017 at 15.00 hrs. in DRM(W)/

The Opening of Part-

will be intimated later on. In case

holiday/bandh, the tender would close at the same time on the next working day.

available on the website of IREPS may be approached.

Eligibility criteria of the work will be, Item No. (1): "Any Civil Engineering works comprising steel structure Fabrication Launching works". Item No. (2) "Supply of ballast boulders, stone aggregates for concreting or protection works or road works".

Divl. Railway Manager (Works) Lumding

Serving Customers With A Smile

wards on the occasion. The LUPC of Chu-

chuyimlang has made a project for a span of three

years action plan to plant trees in all the harvested jhum paddy fields. To be-gin the action plan, LUPC

organized the programme clubbing with the pro-gramme of World Envi-ronment Day.

the theme ‘Connecting with nature’ and urged improving the environ-ment starting from the individual level.

Short speeches were delivered by Vivika Sema, Forest Range Officer and Apokla Longkumer, Head Mistress Aqahuto GHS who also presented schol-arship to eight students of the school based on their merit.

President AASU, Toka Chishi, while thanking K.Ihevi Aomi IFS, DFO Dimapur Forest Division for the initiative, urged Aqahuto Area to be the ambassador to enhance the environment.

Dimapur Forest Di-vision also distributed around 30000 tree sap-lings from May onwards to various schools, colleg-es, student unions, army camps/military stations, government departments and NGOs.YTF: Yorubami Thinkers Forum (YTF) organised tree plantation under the theme “Go Green Yoru-ba” on the World Environ-ment day by advocating environmental awareness through people’s partici-pation.

With a view to initiate plans and programmes for the development of the Yorubami and village at large, YTF was formed in 2015 by a group of educated youths to foster

any plans or programmes for development of the village.

The programme was initiative with the support-ed of Village Council and all frontal organisations. Khoyi Nyekha, a senior forum member delivered short speeches on environ-ment protection.

Volunteers from YTF members, village council members, YSU, MVYYA, mothers association and high school students par-ticipated in a plantation drive in and around the village. More than thou-sand saplings including fruit bearing trees, flow-ers and ornamental trees were planted. The forum acknowledged individuals and groups for their mate-rial and physical support and Forest departments for contributing saplings. DAN Farm Northeast-II: Devepoment Association of Nagaland (DAN)Farm Northeast-II observed world environment day under the theme “Con-necting People to Nature” at St Xavier’s Seminary Jalukie to create awarness on need to preservation of environment.

To mark the day, draw-ing competition was also conducted for four schools under peren district.

The theme speaker Dr. Patu Khate (subject matter specialist plant breeding KVK Jarnapani) address

the gatherings with ref-erence from the book of Psalms and encouraged the participants to bring nature indoor and to take up plantation to save the environment. She also challenged them to bring change and not to wait for somebody as everyone is responsible for saving his environment.

Newmai & group and Kiugiatlu presented special number and folk song. Fr. Augustine Kerketta Rector of St Xavier’s Seminary and Bony member of farm-ers club also spoke on the occasion . a total of 550 sappling was planted in 9 villages and four schools under peren district.Chuchuyimlang: Chu-chuyimlang village ob-served World Environ-ment Day on June 5, with S.T. Nokdang Longkumer, deputy director of School

Education. Speaking on the occasion, Longkumer elucidated the term en-vironment as everything surrounding a person and urged the participants to create awareness to con-serve and care the environ-ment. He also appreci-ated the Chuchuyimlang Village Council for main-taining the bio-diversity project and in conserving the environment by ban-ning hunting and fishing in the village jurisdiction. He further lauded the Land Use Planning Committee (LUPC) of Chuchuyim-lang for organizing the programme.

A tree sapling was planted by the deputy di-rector, chairman of the village council and pastor of the church.

Chuchuyimlang Bap-tist Church distributed 100 tree saplings each to all the

Delhi Public School, Dimapur.

Chuchuyimlang Village Chümoukedima Village Student’s Union Government Middle School, Botsa.DAN Farm Northeast-II

Dimapur Forest Division and Aqahuto Area Students’ Union

6

The contents of articles in this page do not necessarily reflect the Editorial view or policy of the paper.

Dimapur, THurSDay , June 8 , 2017

EastErn Mirror

Another tinderbox ?

It is indeed the biggest crises in the Middle East in years when Qatar was diplomatically cut off by five of its neighbouring Arab countries to be followed by Maldives, Mauritius, Mauritania and Libya’s eastern

government. The reason being its continued support to terrorism especially the Muslim Brotherhood, a group that is considered as a terrorist organisation. What hit the entire world was utter shock and surprise because Qatar was always thought to be a liberal and ‘liveable’ country when compared to the countries currently undergoing unrests in the Middle East. Qatar has a huge expat population from other Asian countries including India and Nepal.

Qatar gave the world Al Jazeera TV Network the news channel and Qatar Airways. Qatar Airways is one of the biggest airlines in the world and Doha the capital is a major transit point for air travellers. Therefore it is still quite puzzling for many as to why the sudden diplomatic rift, with some of the countries giving hardly two weeks time to Qatari nationals and diplomats to leave their country. Some analysts have pointed out the country’s continued closeness to Iran that many of the other neighbouring countries including Saudi Arabia considers as a threat will be one of the reasons. Moreover, though it maintains a neutral stand between Saudi Arabia and Iran, its closeness to the Shia Iran is disliked by most of its neighbours especially Saudi Arabia. On the other hand the predominantly Sunni Qatar is also accused of supporting many of the Islamists groups in Syria and Libya and it also currently hosts the spiritual leader of the Muslim brotherhood. In spite of its liberal and modern image, its foreign policy is accused of funding terror groups.

Fingers are also pointed to the visit of the US President Donald Trump just few days back to Saudi Arabia where he announced $110 billion arms deal with the Saudis. The plot thickens and the US now seems to be in the best of positions to be the mediator. In that way it will have more say in the region in it’s stand against Iran. There are already indications that the first toll will be the state owned Al Jazeera TV Network, its biggest PR campaign in the region. The US also has its own share of misadventures especially more often in the Middle East in recent times. Its policy of shock and awe did not work has backfired in many instances. One incorrect move and the current issue will cause another major unrest in the region.

It is time for the Nagas to end the internal conflicts. It is time for the Nagas to find answers to our dis-putes. It is now time for the Na-

gas to prepare ground for sustainable settlement to the protracted political issue. To this end, one of the principal methods for mitigating the acrimonies amongst ourselves is to talk honestly, to be honest to oneself and to one an-other.

Indeed, it is an accepted fact that NSCN(IM) is one of the influential groups. Unfortunately, the golden op-portunity was missed when this group opted for isolation with superiority colour. As desired, the group has dis-tanced itself from the rest of others and in all probability the dividing line will

remain.At that opportune time, had

NSCN(IM) taken all the Nagas into confidence without the modus oper-andi of pick and choose, all the conse-quences of conflicts, paper duels and acrimonies would have been avoided. The hide and seek game has compelled the general public and other NNPGs to continue contesting those points raised by NSCN(IM) from time to time which are found immature and unconvincing. Such reactions are not for mere debates but for the cause of political aspiration and therefore the reactions are natural.

Thirdly, the 16-points agreement of NPC in 1960 and the Shillong Accord of 1975 were under the constitution of India and any further debate is futile. A

part from the contents, the 3rd August, 2015 ‘Framework’ was also in the same category as it is natural and obvious that the presence of the Prime Minis-ter of India with his Home Minister in the signing ceremony would ever allow the leaders of the country to be wit-nesses to an agreement that supersedes the supremacy of Indian constitution. Therefore, the claim that the ‘Frame-work’ has restored the sovereignty of the Nagas is definitely incoherent, im-mature and deceptive. Also, the natural and international tradition goes that two sovereign nations do not co-own a single constitution or can cohabit an exclusive demarcated territory.

Fourthly, in the contemporary Naga politics, the realistic perception

and practical approaches can better bridge the gaps amongst our people rather than illusive rhetoric. What NTC appreciates is the admission of NSCN(IM) that the Nagas are eco-nomically poor and unsustainable without the generosity of India. That is the hard fact and such humility can fetch dividends.

It is observed that certain section of Nagas are fond of wasting time on non-issues which are irrelevant and anti-thesis to common interests. In fact, what substance those people can contribute to common good when they refused to uphold the quintessence of truth but preferred to subscribe to pseu-doism and skirmish politics.

Issued by: NTC Media Cell

Need for ‘Sustainable Settlement’ to Naga Political Issue - Nagaland Tribes Council

I have heard people have agreed to clean election campaign launched by NBCC and various Church organizations. At Pfutsero under

CBCC sponsored meeting, over 1,600 Church Workers and Baptist Members signed a pledge to adhere to Clean Elec-tion. Every Pastor is delivering sermon on clean election. People understand, there is a need of clean election.

However, I have heard from politi-cal workers across all 11 District that nobody believes clean election can re-ally happen. I have heard leaders from Villages - They also do not believe that either clean election or clean Electoral Roll can happen. I have heard from all sections of people including those who have signed the pledge that even after signing, they do not believe it can re-ally happen. Even the preacher himself does not believe clean election, when we talk to them outside the Church. This is the true Nagaland.

Nagas have changed from hon-est society to dishonest society. Past Naga generations have paid with their

lives to stand for honesty. They did not betray the noble political movement. The dishonest were penalised and they lived with a mark of disgrace. They lost dignity, respect and trust. Today, the environment of our society is filled with marks of corruption and bribery. People who have amassed wealth from unknown sources are respected.

How to change this corrupt envi-ronment into an honest society is the trying time for the people of Nagaland today. In my considerate view, the peo-ple of Nagaland must realise that re-ligion and administration must work together as it was in the past. In the past, Village Chiefs were the sole au-thority. The Village Chief commanded both religion and public order. Once the Village Chief spelt out, it became the forbidden law for every citizen. No one dared to violate or challenge the authority. It was peaceful within the Village.

In the past leaders were self-content and worked hard. They fed people and gave them shelter in difficult times.

They protected society and the village from enemies. Today our leaders are well dressed but without a source of in-come. They live with big designations and name plates but depend on others for their style and livelihood. We have to realise that beggars are not leaders.

In all consideration, there are four elements that need to change to give clean election and they are:

Village/Urban Local bodies, ward and polling station wise administrators

Government employeesSecurity forcesEach individual must choose the

spirit of religion to lead life, society and government.

What I want to suggest here is that, Religion and Administration must go together. Village Councils and Urban bodies must now function with religion as a moral guide.

Secondly, Government employees should not fail society any more in en-forcing election law. We want them to be strong. It is they who allow corrupt electoral practices like proxy voting,

booth capturing, unidentified voters, underage voters, etc.

Presiding officers have magisterial power and can arrest any wrong do-ers on the spot or detain any voter if so deemed. They can cancel election. Security is provided to enforce and pro-tect the law. Third, deployed security do have their own role to play without being told to do so. They should not be limited to see that people don’t fight before them. They should stop allow-ing booth capturing and proxy voters to jump the queue which disables genuine voters from voting. They should iden-tify that the person in the perimeter is a genuine voter possessing Voter Photo ID and does not have dangerous weap-ons that may distort peaceful polling.

Fourth, the Corrupt environment that covers Nagaland is a silent war that is killing the souls and future of Naga-land. It is a war within each person’s mind between evil spirits and angels.

K. TheriePresident

NPCC

Clean Election and the Four Agencies That Need Change

Shri Nitish Kumar, the Hon’ble Chief Minister of Bihar has decided to sack all the teachers of schools that have produced zero percent (0%) results in the last Higher Secondary examina-

tion; that too with the shadow of Shri Lalu Prasad looming in the background. The simple reason is that these teachers have portrayed Bihar in very poor light. It is not only the bad image to the state, but these teachers have also destroyed many generations. Now that is what leadership in the true sense is all about. Kudos to that truly Great Chief Minister and

his Government!Many government schools of Nagaland too have

produced NIL results in successive HSLC examina-tions. But no action has ever been dreamt of so far, except for the nonsensical threats issued by succes-sive impotent Governments for the past many years. We are truly Paper Tigers of the highest order. There are a few good and dedicated teachers also in those schools, but a good majority being rotten, the good deeds of these few individuals have drowned. Are we going to allow the ruination of more generations?

Perhaps the time is most opportune for the Hon’ble Chief Minister of Nagaland to shift gears and cause the pressing changes required. Let’s take a cue from that one-in-a-million individual (Nitish Kumar) and his conscientious government, who has kept society before himself. Please do something pos-itive for posterity, without fear or favour. It is time that non-productive teachers and employees are shown the door.

Prof. G.T. ThongNagaland University

Government and Poor-Performance Schools

At this most crucial junc-ture, while the Nagas are confronted by highly sensi-tive political activities and

issues, both within the home front and at the national levels, there are unfortunately some elements which are going against all governments. These over active and over reactive organizations are moving with tan-gible momentum to create nuisance which is serious in nature and abso-lutely counter-productive and non beneficial to the present Society. It is high time these organizations, ex-hibit stronger sense of discipline and positive attitudes to enable the peace-ful existence of the common people.

The Naga political movements for self determinations spanning across many decades have now reached the doorstep of its final po-litical settlement. This is what the

Nagas had longed for and had cher-ished for many anxious years. After signing the 3rd.August Framework Agreement, hope for a new era for the Nagas have appeared at the ho-rizon. However, some elements are hell bend and actively working sleep-lessly aiming to trigger maximum collateral damages to the historic political achievements and even to the extent of treacherous hijack and sabotage.

The Govt. of India, led by the dynamic Prime Minister, Mr. Naren-dra Modi, is selflessly working with commitments, to solve the protract-ed Naga Political issue. The ongoing political talks between the NSCN (representing the Nagas) and Gov-ernment of India started off after decades of blood sheds and unimagi-nable horrors throughout Nagalim. Therefore, it will be very unfortu-

nate if the ongoing political process is compelled to get derailed due to some anti peace and anti framework agents. In such circumstances, it will be interpreted as a sheer wilful act against the peaceful interests of both the Government of India and the Naga nation.

In any democratic country and nation, to raise one’s voices against the Governments, on issues of anom-alies and corruptions is acceptable as it is guaranteed by the rights to express. However, of late, some or-ganizations are rushing against the national interests to fulfil their mas-ter’s desires of reopening old Politi-cal Pandora Box at the costs of the Nagas. It is only regrettable and sad enough that, these organizations are construing their own political catas-trophes. For the progress of any race of people and nations, it requires the

contributions of all the people for which positive and constructive criti-cisms are one of the most important fabrics to harbour unity and progress. It is strange that, some organiza-tions are apparently trying to over-take other leading organizations and Governments in full throttles and in panicky by realizing the reality that, the decades old Indo – Naga Political problems is expected to be completed sooner than expected. They need to pre visualize the true pictures of the futilities and related consequences of their treacherous and destructive de-signs against the Governments.

The NSCN appeal to the people and all the organizations to come forward in safeguarding the prevail-ing peace and to strengthen the path of Peace process and honourable Po-litical settlement.

Issued by MIP

Appeal to All People and Organisations to Aid Peace Process- NSCN

ReadeRs’ Mirror Views & reViews

Grace and forgiveness are unearned gifts.

hen I look at my hands, I am reminded that I lost my wed-ding and engagement rings. I was multitasking as I packed for a trip, and I still have no idea where they ended up.

I dreaded telling my husband about my careless mistake—wor-ried how the news would affect him. But he responded with more compassion and care for me than concern over the rings. However, there are times when I still want to do something to earn his grace! He, on the contrary, doesn’t hold this episode against me.

So many times we remember our sins and feel we must do something to earn God’s forgiveness. But God has said it is by grace, not by works, that we are saved (Eph. 2:8–9). Speaking of a new covenant, God promised Israel, “I will forgive their wickedness and will remember their sins no more” (Jer. 31:34). We have a God who forgives and no longer calls to mind the wrongs we have done.

We may still feel sad about our past, but we need to trust His promise and believe His grace and forgiveness is real through faith in Jesus Christ. This news should lead us to thankfulness and the assurance faith brings. When God forgives, He forgets.Dear Lord, thank You for Your grace and Your offer of salvation and forgiveness through Christ. Thank You for this free gift that

is not based on anything I can do.

BiBle Read: Hebrews 8:6–13ThoughT foR Today:

[I] will remember their sins no more. ~ Hebrews 8:126

Rings and grace

DAILyPATH

In solemn thanksgiving to the Almighty God for His everlasting mercies, grace and faithfulness, the Longsa Baptist Church will be commemorat-ing the 50th year since the great revival at Longsa

village (Mokokchung) from June 9-11, 2017 to give thanks to God, to invoke God’s blessings once again and to renew our commitment to the Lord till His sec-ond coming.

The Longsa Baptist Church since the first coming of the gospel in the year 1916 has undergone a lot of trials and tribulations but the Lord has always been merciful towards the faithful. But the biggest trial came during the year 1956 when the Longsa villagers were living at Ungma village during the ‘Grouping’ period at the heights of the Naga political movement. The Longsa people, who deeply missed their native village, prayed intently to God and made a promise that; ‘if God allowed them to return home, then they would give up all their sinful ways and do His will’.

On their return to the Longsa village, the villagers did not forget their promise to God while at Ungma village. They rebuilt the church, and womenfolk start-ed a prayer group and God deeply spoke and moved the hearts of the villagers. During such a time, in 1965, the Longsa Baptist Church attained its 50th year, and in 1966 a missionary, Rev. Riküm (Mangmetong) ar-rived at Longsa and conducted a Bible study during which the reverend preached to the villagers to move away from the path of evil, to give up taking harmful substances and to be born again and also preached about heaven and hell.

The next year, in 1967, group of women while

working in their fields, recollected the preaching of Rev. Riküm, and resolved to walk in the path of God; also a group of men resolved to give up taking harm-ful substances, and reformed their lives. This was the beginning of the revival movement at Longsa village. But, there were many who did not accept the revival movement; however, by the power of the Holy Spirit slowly everyone came to accept the revival movement and renewed their faith in God.

After the revival movement in 1967, the Longsa Baptist Church understood that it should spread the blessings of the revival movement to other places and tribes also. Therefore, the LBC started to reach out to other tribes like Sangtam, Chang, Phom, Konyak, yimchunger, Khaimungan etc so that others can also renew their faith in God and live as born-again Chris-tians.

However, there were criticisms from many oth-er Ao Churches, but the Longsa Kosasanger Putu Menden, the church leaders and whole Longsa villag-ers in 1971 proclaimed in God’s name that ‘Longsa is a missionary land and a church dedicated to mission works’. Thereafter, on November 18, 1971, the Long-sa Baptist Church Missionary movement was started and a fund of Rs 14,807.20p was created which was used to sponsor a missionary at Ao Baptist Arogo Mungdang (ABAM) Tirap Mission (Arunachal) in 1974. The sponsorship through the Longsa Baptist Church Missionary Movement opened the eyes of other churches, touched their hearts and the Holy Spirit made them realize that the LBC revival is real and the work of God.

After that, lots of believers from other villages came to Longsa Baptist Church, got healing through the revival fire and went back to their respective vil-lages to start their own revival movement. From 1976 onward, there were revivals in many Ao churches and slowly it spread to all the Naga areas like a spiritual wildfire. Many people were blessed by the Holy Spirit, many repented their sins to God and resolved to give their life to God and serve Him only.

Now, 50 years since the first revival movement, and while introspecting and in retrospection, the Longsa Baptist Church has come to understand that the almighty God had anointed Longsa church to be a ‘spiritual pedestal, a nest for spiritual revival and a missionary church’ and give all glory to God.

As we venerate this 50th anniversary, the Longsa Baptist Church is conducting house to house coun-seling from June 6, 2017 and renowned missionaries Rev. Dr. Imchayanger and IEF president Tsüknung will be the main speakers at the three days revival pro-gramme which will be held on the theme: Oh Lord! Revive us again’.

The Longsa Baptist Church prays that God bless-es the Naga people and bring out more missionaries like He did during the past fifty years. The Longsa Baptist Church also asks all the churches to join us in our prayer for a new revival so that we can all receive God’s abundant blessings and live as God’s children for the Glory of our lord and saviour Jesus Christ.

Sd/-Longsa Baptist Church

Mokokchung

God’s Blessings: Commemorating 50th Year Since the Spark of Revival Fire at Longsa

EastErn Mirror | Dimapur, Thursday, June 8, 2017

7

Aries MAr 21 - Apr 19: You have the sensi-tivity to pick up on what’s going on in every situ-ation today, Aries. Powerful emotions may con-flict with extremely strong opinions. Welcome

to the battle between the head and the heart! On this day you may be more apt to side with the heart. Realize that this arena is heated and that the forces around you are extremely stubborn.

TAurus Apr 20 - MAy 20: The fantasy world that you’ve built for yourself is a pleasure, Taurus. People frolic in it and have a grand time. Your presence delights people. Today, however,

this world may be threatened by harsh realities that are coming in the form of electronic information. This force is powerful and apt to be erratic and spontaneous. Be pre-pared to stand your ground.

GeMini MAy 21 - Jun 21: It may be dif-ficult to stay grounded today with all the in-formation flying around and all the emotion roiling in your heart. Try not to take things

too seriously, Gemini. This is the key to maintaining a level head today. Approach the day with passion and take care of any investigative work that needs doing. There are important facts coming from unexpected sources.

CAnCer Jun 22 - Jul 22: You may be pushed around by two very powerful camps to-day, Cancer. Since you’re the kind, diplomatic, and sensitive type, you make the perfect target

for the more abrasive and opinionated. You may want to side with the cold, hard facts presented to you, although there is a great deal of emotional power working to stir up the pot. Things may not be as clear as they seem at first glance.

leo Jul 23 - AuG 22: You’re apt to feel a bit wilder today, Leo. There’s a wave of powerful energy working to strengthen your ego and self-confidence. Use this boost to the best of your

ability. You will need it. There is a strong, fact-oriented force working to combat your aims, and you will find that it’s equally powerful and stubborn. Cut through the fan-tasy and uncover the truth.

VirGo AuG 23 - sep 22: A good tactic today would be to convert your fears to motivation for positive action. You have a great deal of energy at your disposal, Virgo. Don’t waste it. Be aware

that it’s one of those situations when the smallest com-ment or insult may set off a chain reaction of misinforma-tion. People are emotionally charged, so be careful where you step.

librA sep 23 - oCT 22: You’re likely to be faced with conflicting reports today, Libra. Information may be tainted with emotion, so be careful about going with the choice that

shouts the loudest. You may get pigeonholed into a place you don’t want to be in. Heed the internal warn-ings you pick up. This is a good day to work and play with passion. Take care of any investigative work that needs to be done.

sCorpio oCT 23 - noV 21: You may be seduced by fantastic promises that offer won-derful rewards. Beware of lots of bells and whistles, Scorpio. There may be a great deal of

talk but not much to substantiate such wonderful claims. Don’t be surprised if people with intense emotions are stepping up to add their opinions about how you should run your life. Don’t forget who’s boss.

sAGiTTArius noV 22 - DeC 21: People are apt to be quite emotional when it comes to the image they wish to project today, Sagittarius. Be careful where you step. It’s your job to see

through the trendy makeup and fashion that hide the true personalities of the people who insist on wearing these masks. The key is to not be fooled by those who hide be-hind a facade built by society.

CApriCorn DeC 22 - JAn 19: Capricorn, don’t be surprised if some of your fantasies and dreams are put on trial by a harsh force that cuts right to the truth of the matter. Peo-

ple may be extra passionate, and most aren’t going to be impressed with unrealistic plans. You can try your nor-mal approach of simply ramming straight ahead with your plans, but a better approach might be to think first and be more strategic.

AquArius JAn 20 - Feb 18: You’re at an emotionally climactic point now, Aquarius, and you might find that harsh opposition is coming at you for no clear reason. There’s a stubborn,

strong force surrounding you, and you should be aware that the more rigid your viewpoint, the harder it will be for any resolution. Compromise is an essential element of the day.

pisCes Feb 19 - MAr 20: Be careful to not be too cavalier today, Pisces. It would be wise to adopt a more serious tone than usual. You might be inclined to say words carelessly, but people are

going to take you literally. Make sure you mean what you say. Your attention to fashion and pop culture may conflict with a force that’s asking you to focus on things of deeper spiritual value.

Today’s AsTro-predicTion

The contents of articles on this page do not necessarily reflect the Editoral view or policy of the paper

Swagata Yadavar | IANS

Shivshankar Menon | thewire.in

India now has the highest number of children stunted due to mal-nutrition -- 48.2 million, equiva-lent to the population of Co-

lombia, as per the latest global report on childhood. Also, 31 million of its children are a part of its workforce, the highest number in the world.

These two factors, along with early marriage and parenthood and lack of education, have pushed India to 116th position among 172 nations assessed for threats to childhood, ac-cording to the recent Stolen Child-hoods report by Save the Children, an international non-profit working for marginalised and deprived children.

Globally, 700 million children have had their childhood curtailed early, said the report which was re-leased on June 1, the eve of Interna-

tional Children’s Day.Three of India’s neighbouring

countries did better on the index -- Sri Lanka was ranked 61, Bhutan, 93 and Myanmar, 112. Nepal (134), Bangladesh (134) and Pakistan (148) fared worse than India.

The index focuses on a set of life-changing events and uses certain in-dicators to assess countries: Mortality among children under five years of age, malnutrition that stunts growth, lack of education, child labour, early marriage, adolescent births, displace-ment by conflict and child homicide.

India with the highest number of stunted children and child labourers in the world fared badly on most in-dicators.

Stunted growth is caused by chronic malnutrition in the first 1,000 days of a child’s life, from early preg-nancy to age two. India reports high-est figures for stunting and one-third

of all girls in the country suffer the condition, according to the report.

“Chronic malnutrition at this stage of life is largely irreversible, and stunted children face a lifetime of lost opportunities in education and work. They are also more likely to succumb to illness and disease, and can die as a result,” the report said.

Only one child among 10 in India gets adequate nutrition, India Spend had reported in May 2017.

As a result, mortality is high among children under five years of age. Nearly half of all deaths in chil-dren under five years of age are at-tributable to malnutrition according to United Nations International Chil-dren’s Emergency Fund. Also, one child in every 21 dies before reaching the fifth birthday in India.

For every 1,000 live births, 50 children under five die, a figure com-parable to the poorer African island

nation of Madagascar.In India, 18.6 per cent of children

are out of school in the primary and secondary age group and 47 million youth of upper secondary age are not in school, said the report.

Children who are excluded from primary education will earn signifi-cantly less over their lifetimes than their educated peers. “The economic cost of not educating these out-of-school children -- estimated at 0.3 to 15.2 per cent of GDP in these countries -- is far greater than what it would cost to achieve universal pri-mary education” the report said.

Among Indian children in the 4-14 years group, 11.8 per cent are working. That is 31 million children, the highest in the world.

Children working to support their families don’t just miss out on educa-tion, they also miss out on rest, play and recreation. They lose opportuni-

ties to engage with their community, and participate in cultural, religious and sports activities. This effectively means missing out on childhood.

Half of all children in India living on the streets or from coming from homeless families work for a living -- at construction sites, hotels -- and do not study.

In India, 21.1 per cent of all girls between 15 to 19 years are married while 103 million girls were married before they turned 18, according to the report.

Early marriage has devastating consequences for a girl’s life, effec-tively ending her childhood by forcing her into adulthood and motherhood before she is physically and mentally ready. Child brides frequently feel dis-empowered and are deprived of their rights to health, education and safety.

“Child brides are at greater risk of experiencing dangerous compli-

cations in pregnancy and childbirth, contracting HIV/AIDS and suffering domestic violence. With little access to education and economic oppor-tunities, they and their families are more likely to live in poverty,” the report said.

Further, 23.3 girls per 1,000 gave birth between ages 15 and 19, as per the report. Early childbearing im-pacts the nation’s economy and com-munities.

If adolescents in India waited till their 20s to become mothers, they would have greater economic pro-ductivity of up to $7.7 billion or Rs 49,600 crore, the report calculated.

(In arrangement with IndiaSpend.org, a data-driven, non-profit, public

interest journalism platform, with whom Swagata Yadavar is principal correspondent. The views expressed

are those of IndiaSpend. Feedback at respond@indiaspend.org)

The rise of centralising authoritarians has accentuated the fragmentation and regionalisation of world politics, diminished the capacity for compromise and made relations between competitive powers much more fraught than in the past.

As in other parts of the world, the geo-politics of southern Asia is a result of its ge-ography and history – and of its international context and domestic politics.

Interestingly, the southern Asian sub-region has a bounded geography only to the north, where the high Himalayas mark a clear geographic, cultural and political bound-ary between what lies north and south of the mountains — a barrier or boundary that has lasted over history and is only now being pierced as a result of modern technology. To the east, west and south, whether through Af-ghanistan and Iran, or Myanmar, or the Indi-an Ocean, the subcontinent has been open to influence, immigration and economic contact throughout its history. This is why the term southern Asia is better than the more limiting and artificial South Asia and when I use the term ‘South Asia’ I always do so in that larger sense.

Concentric, over-lapping circlesSouth Asia has been most open through the Indian Ocean. For the greater part of its his-tory, the prosperity and security of the sub-continent has been as dependent, maybe more so, on its maritime dimensions as on the continental order. The Indian Ocean is not a closed ocean, not landlocked like the Mediterranean, the Aegean, the Black Sea, or the seas near China around which other civilisations grew. Thanks to the predictable monsoons, the Indian Ocean did not have to wait for the age of steam to be united, unlike other oceans. Deep water sailing probably developed here first. The maritime domain, by definition, is a positive-sum one, and wa-ter transport has historically been easier and cheaper than that by land. For a great part, therefore, southern Asia is maritime.

As a consequence of this geography, throughout history, southern Asia has been an autonomous strategic unit that was also part of a larger multiverse – connected but separate from the universes of the Levant and Persian Gulf, Central Asia and Persia, the Southeast Asian maritime kingdoms and East Asia. And throughout history, southern Asia was most prosperous and stable when its ex-ternal connections to these regions flourished alongside its internal strength. This is very different from North-East Asia or northern Europe or North America, which were rela-tively isolated in history and unconnected to other regions for their security and prosperity for most of their past.

This geography means that the security of southern Asia is better thought of as a series of concentric but overlapping circles. What happens in Southeast Asia or East Asia or West Asia directly affects the security of southern Asia. And given the open geography of the Indian Ocean maritime domain, what happens in southern Asia affects the rest of Asia as well.

Nationalism is high, nationhood a work in progressThe other geopolitical consequence of our open geography is linked fates and open so-cieties within the region. Every southern Asian country has cross-border ethnicities, and shares deep religious and strong cultural affinities across state boundaries. The state boundaries are new and recently defined; the ethnicities, languages, religions and cultures are ancient. There is a shared history of open-ness to each other within southern Asia that is stronger than in many other regions of the world. Our affinities far outweigh our differ-ences. You find languages, foods, religions and ethnicities crossing all the state bounda-ries in southern Asia.

Paradoxically, this affinity across formal state boundaries is one reason why nation-alism is high but nationhood everywhere in south Asia is still a work in progress. Bhu-tan and the Maldives are the exceptions in southern Asia in their relative homogeneity in ethnic, religious and linguistic terms. India and Afghanistan are the other extreme, where every group is a minority in terms of either language, region, ethnicity, or religion, if one considers schisms like sects and castes.

India, exceptionally, chose to base her nationalism not on a common religion, eth-nicity, language or enemy, but on an idea of India. Given the plural and diverse nature of its society, India chose after independence to be a democracy, where every social segment has a say. This idea of Indian nationhood is under some political attack now, but it seems likely to hold firm as it objectively serves the interest of most of the population, and is seen to do so by most Indians. The short geopolitical point is that the very high degree of cultural and other affinities across state boundaries in the old nations but new states of south Asia make for sensitive and touchy nationalist reactions and strong defences of sovereignty by states.

The changing global contextA third major determinant of southern Asian geopolitics is the international context within which we operate and seek to develop and transform our societies. This has naturally changed over time.

During the Cold War and its bipolar world, most of us were happy to opt out of the world’s quarrels and alliances and to concentrate on our own development. Every southern Asian country was non-aligned in practice, except Pakistan. For a Pakistan with an identity deficit, and which saw itself as gaining its independence from India, joining a great power or an alliance and seeking out-side support was a way of seeking parity with a much larger India. This remains a Pakistani imperative despite fundamental changes in the international situation since the end of the Cold War.

For the rest of southern Asia, however, changes in the international situation meant that the decades after 1990 have been the best in history for their economic development, for the growth of the middle class, and for their increasing integration into the world economy. India, for instance, has steadily grown her GDP at over 6% a year for over 30 years. India is now the world’s sixth largest economy in nominal GDP and third largest in PPP terms, and her society and economy have been changed fundamentally by reform

since 1991. In the two decades of open trade and investment that followed the end of the Cold War, the acceleration of growth has been broad-based among the south Asian economies, with Sri Lanka, Bhutan, Bangladesh and others experiencing unprecedented rates of growth. Indeed southern Asia is today the fastest growing region in the world.

A less supportive worldCombined with the simultane-ous re-emergence of powers like China, Korea, Indonesia and others, and with Japan now be-having as a more normal power, geopolitics around southern Asia has become much more com-plex. Power is much more evenly distributed in the world than it was during the Cold War and im-mediately thereafter. The centre of gravity of the world economy and politics is now the Asia-Pa-cific. As a result, outside great power interest in southern Asia, which was limited in the 1980s to Afghanistan as an arena of US-Soviet ri-valry, has broadened to include its potential as a market, as a source of military power, and extends to an interest in its stability. For instance, when piracy became a prob-lem off the Malacca straits in the late ’80s and early ’90s, it was local powers, led by Singapore, with India, Malaysia and others, who dealt with the problem. When piracy off the Horn of Africa became a problem in the mid 2000s, NATO, the EU, the US and regional and local powers like India, China and others all deployed their naval assets.

Today’s world is less supportive of our region’s economic growth and offers more difficult choices than the binary ones of the Cold War. Nor does it offer the economic opportunities of the years before the world economic crisis of 2008. Both world politics and the world economy are fragmenting and becoming increasingly regional. Protection-ism has risen around the world. The rise of China, and her quest for primacy, first in Asia and then globally, and her hierarchical view of an international order centred on herself, epitomised by the Belt Road Initiative (BRI), pose a new set of questions and challenges to the established order and to western suprem-acy. China is now using economic means, such as the BRI infrastructure programme, to pursue geopolitical outcomes. In effect, economics and politics are no longer sepa-rate in today’s world, and indeed politics may now be driving economics.

Authoritarian centralisersSince 2008, the world has seen the rise to power of authoritarian centralisers in several large countries, including China, Japan, In-dia, Russia, Turkey, the UK, the US and else-where, who base their legitimacy on a height-ened appeal to nationalism or nativism. In a slowing global economy, and at a time when the capacity of their governments to deliver growth is diminishing, they promise more and more, and rely on nativist appeals – like “America first” or “the Great Rejuvenation of China”.

In southern Asia, this phenomenon takes

local forms: India is no exception to the glo-bal trend; in Pakistan, the power, influence and role of the army has been considerably enhanced at the expense of civilian govern-ments nominally in power; in Bangladesh, the centralisation of power has proved useful in fighting terrorism and extremism and deliv-ering high economic growth. Sri Lanka has gone one step further and reacted to authori-tarian centralisation after the end of the civil war by putting in place an alternative govern-ment.

The general result of the coming to pow-er of centralising authoritarians is that the fragmentation and regionalisation of world politics is accentuated. It also means that the capacity for compromise and negotiation between powers is diminished, making rela-tions between competitive powers much more fraught than in the past. Some of this dynam-ic is visible in India-Pakistan relations and in India-China relations over the last year or so. Neither relationship is as smooth or predict-able as it was a few years ago.

Less predictabilityThe 2003 ceasefire along the Line of Con-trol between India and Pakistan has broken down, and political communication between the two states is minimal. As a consequence, the SAARC summit has been postponed and cooperation in SAARC has been driven down to sub-regional levels that exclude Pakistan. Even if there were to be a warming of India-Pakistan relations, the underlying causes of the tension – cross-border terrorism from Pakistan, and Pakistan’s quest for “strategic parity” with India and for strategic depth in Afghanistan – are rooted in Pakistan’s inter-nal condition. Therefore, they are likely to re-peatedly assert themselves, and any warming is likely to be temporary. The prospect of dif-ficult India-Pakistan relations is a geopolitical fact that affects and will continue to affect the geopolitical choices of other southern Asian countries.

India-China relations, on the other hand, which have always had elements of both cooperation and competition, are also undergoing a shift, but the prospect is more positive. The older modus vivendi

from the 1980s is no longer sufficient. Un-der that modus vivendi, India and China discussed their differences, like the bound-ary question, but did not allow the absence of a settlement to inhibit other cooperation such as trade. Several signs of stress in the relationship have surfaced in the last two years, such as China’s attitude to India’s quest for membership of the Nuclear Sup-pliers Group (in contrast to her attitude in 2008 to the special exemption by the NSG for India), the listing of Masood Azhar as a terrorist in the UN, India’s attitude to the BRI and so on.

As India and China have grown, and their definitions of their own interests have expanded, they increasingly rub up against one another in the periphery that they share, whether on the southern Asian landmass, in archipelagic and mainland south-east Asia, in the Indian Ocean, or in the seas near China like the South China Sea. I sense, however, that a new strategic framework for this rela-tionship will probably be worked out by the two countries. Since both countries have oth-er domestic and international priorities, their core interests are not in fundamental conflict and their differences can be managed.

A mixed futureAll in all, therefore, the geopolitics of south-ern Asia has become more complex of late, and are now more unpredictable. Both these evolutions – of increasing outside great power involvement and interest, and of ris-ing competitive dynamics between India on the one hand and Pakistan and China on the other – change the context in which southern Asian countries seek economic development, regional and sub-regional cooperation, and security. They leave our children to face a much more uncertain and much less supportive world than my genera-tion knew.

But the future is not all gloomy. One effect of the economic growth spurt in South Asia and elsewhere in the last three decades is that we and our successors have tools and abilities that we never had before – we may have new problems but we also have new ways of deal-ing with them.

Highest Number of Stunted Children, Child Workers in India: Report

Brace Yourself, South Asia’s Geopolitics is Becoming More Complex, Less Stable

Prime Minister Narendra Modi of India, Nawaz Sharif of Pakistan and President Xi Jinping of China. Credit: Reuters

8 nationEastErn Mirror | Dimapur, Thursday, June 8, 2017

The chartered buses after being torched by the agitating farmers at Bhopal-Indore highway in Dewas district on Wednesday. PTI

Police take away the Hindu Sena activists who were raising slogans and trying to disrupt CPI(M) general secretary Sitaram Yechury’s press briefing at the party headquarters in New Delhi on Wednesday.

PTI

L.K. Advani and Murli Manohar Joshi PTI

The accused in police custody in Gurugram on Wednesday.

PTI

News iN BriefRains bring relief in Delhi and UPNew Delhi, June 7 (IANS): After a long, hot and humid spell, rains brought relief to the people in Uttar Pradesh and Delhi on Wednesday. The minimum temperature fell two notches below the season’s average and was recorded at 26 degrees Celsius in national capital. The maximum temperature in Lucknow on Tuesday was 35.3 degrees Celsius, which was five degrees less than normal, and the night temperature also plummeted to 28.4 degrees Celsius.

India, Somalia agree to transfer prisonersNew Delhi, June 7 (IANS): India and Somalia have agreed to transfer each other’s prisoners to jails in their own country. The union cabinet gave its approval for the ratification of the agreement on transfer of sentenced persons between India and Somalia. The cabinet meeting was chaired by Prime Minister Narendra Modi. India has similar bilateral agreements with several agreements including the United Kingdom, Mauritius, France, Egypt, Sri Lanka, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Bangladesh, the UAE and Australia.

8 killed in Himachal wall collapseShimla, June 7 (IANS): Eight people, including four children, were killed on Wednesday after a boundary wall of a factory collapsed amid a storm on their makeshift homes in Himachal Pradesh’s Baddi town, officials said. The 12 others who were injured have been referred to the Postgraduate Institute of Medical Education and Research (PGIMER) in Chandigarh. The eight died instantly in the disaster in Saraj Majra village, some 120 km from here. The incident took place around 1 a.m., an official told IANS.

Three children, two women drown in MaharashtraRaigad (Maharashtra), June 7 (IANS): Two women and three children (two boys aged 7 and a girl aged 11) drowned in Balganga river near Khalapur in this coastal Konkan district of Maharashtra on Wednesday, police said. According to Inspector E. Pawar, the two women along with their children had gone to the river. When the women were washing clothes, the children slipped into the river and were swept away. The women tried to save their children but they too were swept away and drowned.

8 dead, 10 injured in fire at cracker factory in MP’s BalaghatBalaghat (MP), June 7 (PTI): Eight workers were charred to death and 10 others were injured after a fire broke out in a cracker factory at Bhatan village in the district this afternoon, an official said.The blaze started around 3 pm in the factory located around 10 kms from the district headquarters in the Kotwali police station limits. “What exactly triggered the fire is not yet known. It is possible that someone might have thrown a burning beedi,” district collector Bharat Yadav said.

18 dead, 10 injured in MP firecracker factory blastBhopal, June 7 (IANS): At least 18 persons were killed and 10 others injured in a powerful explosion in a firecracker factory in Balaghat district of Madhya Pradesh on Wednesday, police said. “An explosion in the firecracker factory in Katera village in Kotwali police station jurisdiction around 3.30 p.m. was so powerful that even factory walls collapsed due to the impact,” Additional Director General of Police G. Janardan told IANS. “More bodies could be lying under the debris,” the ADGP added.

Five members of ‘Bawaria’ gang arrested in GhaziabadGhaziabad, June 7 (IANS): Ghaziabad police has arrested five members of a gang of Bawarias -- a tribal community notorious for committing robberies and other criminal activities. Acting on a tip-off, police raided the hideout of the criminals near the Hamdard factory. They recovered from their possession an expensive Ganesh idol which they had stolen from Badalpur in Gautam Budh Nagar. According to police, Rs 3,700 in cash, looted from Badalpur area, was also recovered from them.

Fresh violence in MP, farmers say police killed eight

Yechury manhandled by two Hindu Sena activists at press meet

Want cycling tracks in every city: Naidu

One arrested in Gurgaon gangrape

SC refuses to hear Justice Karnan’s plea to stay order

‘Write emails as short as skirts’, states college textbook, sparks row

NGOs asked to validate bank accounts for foreign contributions within fortnight

Mandsaur/Indore, June 7 (IANS): Fresh violence erupted in Madhya Pradesh on Wednesday as protest-ing farmers indulged in ar-son, a day after the police gunned down up to eight peasants demanding relief from debts and higher crop prices.

Hundreds defied curfew in Mandsaur where police opened fire on Tuesday at a mob of farmers, leaving five dead according to official count and eight according to farmer leaders.

And some 200 km away, a group of farmers marched to a police station in Dewas district and set fire to vehi-cles parked there.

The government of Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan tried to douse the fires by announc-ing financial compensation for those killed in the vio-lence and said he was ready for talks with farmers.

“I am a farmer and un-derstand your problems. You can be assured your government will implement all promises,” Chouhan tweeted, urging people to maintain calm and not pay heed to rumours.

In New Delhi, Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who has promised to dou-ble farmers’ income by the end of his first term in

New Delhi, June 7 (IANS): CPI-M General Secre-tary Sitaram Yechury was roughed up by two youth at a press conference here on Wednesday. The two who belong to Hindu Sena were handed over to police.

Enraged members of the Communist Party of India-Marxist pounced on them and thrashed them

before handing over the pair to police.

Yechury, who was ad-dressing a press conference on the violence in Madhya Pradesh’s Mandsaur where five protesting farmers were killed in alleged police fir-ing, described the attack on him as an attempt by the RSS “to silence the voices of dissent”.

New Delhi, June 7 (PTI): The Centre today directed 2,025 NGOs to validate their foreign contribution designated accounts with banks and inform the same to the Home Ministry within the next fortnight.

In a circular, the home min-istry said all NGOs which were registered under the Foreign Con-tribution Regulation Act (FCRA) should receive donations from abroad in a single designated bank account.

However, it is seen that a number of NGOs have not vali-dated their foreign contribution

designated accounts causing problems for the banks to comply with the FCRA provisions that they (banks) report to the central government within 48 hours of such receipt or utilisation of for-eign contribution.

“These associations are re-quired to validate their foreign designated accounts and also the utilisation accounts within 15 days and send the details, including the bank branch, code, account number, IFSC etc.,” joint secretary (foreigners) in the home ministry Mukesh Mittal said.

The home ministry also an-

nounced a list of 2,025 NGOs which have not yet validated their FCRA designated accounts.

The Modi gover nment , which has tightened the rules for NGOs, has already cancelled registration of more than 10,000 organisations in the last three years for allegedly non-filing of annual returns as mandated in the FCRA.

In addition, renewals of more than 1,300 NGOs have been de-nied or closed in recent past for allegedly violating various provi-sions of the FCRA.

Recently, the home ministry

has asked nearly 6,000 NGOs to open their accounts in banks having core banking facilities and furnish details for real time access to security agencies in case of any discrepancy.

The move was initiated after it was detected that many NGOs have their bank accounts in co-operative banks or state govern-ment owned apex banks or banks which do not have core banking facilities.

Last month, the home min-istry had directed all FCRA registered NGOs to submit their annual income and expenditure

records by June 14 failing which the registration will be cancelled.

The order came after it was found that many NGOs have not filed their annual returns for five years -- 2010-11 to 2014- 15.

In November, 2016, the gov-ernment had directed more than 11,000 NGOs to file applications for renewal of registration by February 28, 2017.

Of the above, 3,500 NGOs have filed applications for renew-al till February 2017. Registration of more than 7,000 NGOs were deemed expired due to non-filing of renewal applications.

2019, met Home Minister Rajnath Singh, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley, Ex-ternal Affairs Minister Su-shma Swaraj and Road Transport Minister Nitin Gadkari.

The Home Ministry has sent 1,100 anti-riot police to Madhya Pradesh. The extra forces would be deployed in violence-hit Ujjain, Dewas, Mandsaur, Neemuch and Sehore, an official said.

But tension was still high as angry farmers blocked roads and also at-tacked two senior officials at Mandsaur. Mobile con-nectivity has been cut and thousands of police in riot

gear were deployed.Mandsaur District Mag-

istrate Swatantra Kumar Singh and Indore Superin-tendent of Police O.P. Trip-athi were roughed up when they reached Barkheda Pant where the farmers were squatting on a road with the body of one of those killed on Tuesday.

The ruling BJP accused the Congress of inciting the violence

“The violence is very unfortunate. The Congress is trying to give it a political angle,” Union Information and Broadcasting Minister M. Venkaiah Naidu said.

The Congress and the

Left said the deaths in Mad-hya Pradesh proved that the Modi government had no strategy to help debt-ridden farmers in a drought-hit region.

Farmers in Madhya Pradesh and Maharashtra have been protesting crop prices since June 1, com-plaining that their incomes have not risen despite steady hike in agricultural produc-tion.

The demands for loan waiver gained momentum after the Uttar Pradesh government led by Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath waived off nearly Rs 36,400 crore worth of farmers’

debt.The farmers in Madhya

Pradesh have threatened to intensify their protests and accused the government of spreading lies about the number killed.

Aam Kisan Union founder Kedar Sirohi said: “By branding us anti-so-cial elements, the govern-ment is adding fuel to the fire. On the one hand the government has unleashed repression on us, and on the other it is trying to defame us.”

The Congress extend-ed support to a shutdown called by farmers in Mad-hya Pradesh on Wednesday.

“We will not be cowed down by Sangh goonda-gardi to silence us. This is a battle for the soul of India, which we will win,” he tweeted.

Upendra Kumar and Pawan Kaul were taken at Mandir Marg Police station after the incident.

The Hindu Sena activ-ists entered the CPI-M of-fice premises in Gole Mar-ket area of central Delhi while chanting ‘Bharat Mata ki Jai’ and slogans against him, a police official said.

Hindu Sena President Vishnu Gupta told IANS that their two party workers were detained by police “for staging a peaceful protest against CPI-M for their article against the Indian Army” and had done “noth-ing” but only demanded the party apologise.

Kerala HC refuses to block new law on cattle tradeKochi, June 7 (IANS): The Kerala High Court on Wednesday while ad-mitting a petition against the new central law on cattle trade and slaughter, refused to grant an interim stay on its operation. It asked the Centre to re-spond in detail.

Refusing to entertain

the demand by the peti-tioners, the court posted the matter for next hearing on July 26.

The petition was filed by Congress legislator Hibi Eden and a group of beef traders in Kozhikode. They pointed out that the law on cattle trade and slaughter was a state subject.

Moreover, the new cen-tral rule infringed on the rights of the people on what they should eat, the petitioners said. They had prayed that the new law be put on hold immediately.

The Kerala govern-ment counsel also agreed with the points raised by the petitioners.

Advani, Joshi exempt from daily appearanceLucknow, June 7 (IANS): A special CBI court on Wednesday exempted veter-an BJP leaders L.K. Advani and Murli Manohar Joshi from personal appearance during the hearing of the Babri Majid demolition case in view of their age.

Union Water Resources Minister Uma Bharti, who is also being tried for crimi-nal conspiracy, has also been granted exemption on the ground that her daily ap-pearance could hinder her official work, a court official said.

Daily hearings are on against Advani, Joshi and 12 others over the 1992 demolition of the Babri Masjid in Ayodhya in Uttar Pradesh.

Six other accused have

Mumbai, June 7 (PTI): “Life is becoming hell” in cities due to private vehi-cles, Urban Development Minister Venkaiah Naidu said today, adding every city should shift focus to non-motorised modes of transport such as cycling. “Adding vehicles is becom-ing a major problem. There are one crore vehicles in Delhi; Mumbai will not be lagging behind. Life is becoming hell,” he told reporters here yesterday.

“Focus should be on non-motorised transport. I want every city to have

cycle tracks,” the minis-ter said, adding he was amazed to see over a third of the population in Berlin, across economic strata, commuting by bicycle.

Mr Naidu said there is a change in our lifestyle where things are becom-ing more sedentary and less physical, and cycling will help keep us fit. “Our lifestyles have changed and we do not do physical work anymore. Physically there is no activity at all,” he said.

“There has to be a cy-cle track in every city. It

is mandatory especially for the cities which are ex-panding,” he said, adding pedestrian paths are also necessary. Mr Naidu said people have “successful-ly” destroyed forest cover in cities over the last few years. He said it is difficult to tell if it is possible to recover he lost forest cover.

Mr Naidu said his min-istry will launch a “liveable index” for cities that will assess the areas based on water supply, sanitation, electricity, public transport and non-motorised trans-port network.

Gurgaon, June 7 (PTI): Nine days after a woman was gangraped and her nine-month-old baby flung to the ground and killed to smother her cries, police here today arrested one of the three men allegedly responsible for the double crime.

While Yogendra was nabbed from his hideout in Gurgaon, his two accom-plices, Amit and Jaikesh, are still on the run, said Gur-gaon Police Commissioner

Sandeep Khirwar. All three had come to Gurgaon from Bulandshahr in western Ut-tar Pradesh recently.

As police pieced together the narrative behind the May 29 gangrape and murder in the industrial area of Mane-sar and admitted to lapses in the investigation, the 23-year-old woman recount-ed her four-hour horror, a short distance away from the bustling “millennium town” of Gurgaon.

New Delhi, June 7 (PTI): Calcutta High Court judge Justice C S Karnan, evading arrest since May 9, today failed to get relief from the Supreme Court, which re-fused to hear his plea seeking a stay on an order awarding him a six-month jail term for contempt of court.

Justice Karnan’s coun-sel mentioned the matter before a vacation bench comprising Justices Ashok Bhushan and Deepak Gupta, which refused to in-terfere with the order direct-ing the West Bengal police to take him into custody.

“I am seeking only a stay. I had made a request to the CJI to take up the matter. Justice Karnan, like other litigants, is enti-tled to get at least an order from the court,” advocate Mathews J Nedumpara, representing Justice Kar-nan said.

The detailed verdict of May 9 order had not been made available till date, he

pointed out.The bench, however,

said it could not hear the matter as the order was passed by a special bench of seven judges.

To this, Nedumpara said there should be at least a stay on the apex court’s order till his plea for recall of the May 9 order was taken up for a hearing.

“Nothing has happened for the past one month. You wait for three or four more weeks and go to the special bench. We cannot help you. Whatever will be done will be done by the special bench. We cannot do it,” the bench said.

The apex court had earlier refused to list and hear Justice Karnan’s plea seeking a recall of the May 9 order after it was held as “not maintainable” by the court registry.

On May 12, Justice Karnan, whom the West Bengal police is looking for, had moved the apex

court for relief, saying nei-ther high courts, nor their judges, were “subordinate” to it.

“The petitioner, a judge of the High Court of Cal-cutta, is not under any dis-ciplinary jurisdiction of either the CJI or the bench of seven judges constituted by the CJI, as in the instant case,” the plea said.

He sought a recall of the apex court order award-ing him six months’ impris-onment, saying he could not be held guilty of con-tempt of court.

Justice Karnan said the Contempt of Courts Act was a “cathartic jurispru-dence which belonged to the Dark Ages, the era of inquisition and torture, dis-tinct from the classical Ro-man Law which constitutes the foundation of modern jurisprudence”.

He also sought a stay on all “further proceed-ings” pursuant to the May 9 order.

New Delhi, June 7 (PTI): A B.Com (Honours) text-book advising students to write emails “short enough” to be “interesting like skirts” has created an outrage. The book ‘Basic Business Communication’ has been authored by CB Gupta, a former head of the commerce department of a Delhi University-affil-iated college. The textbook is widely prescribed by pro-fessors to the students of B.Com (Honours) in most DU-affiliated colleges.

The book, which has been in print for over a decade, stated, “Email messages should be like skirts--short enough to be interesting and long enough to cover all the vital points.”

A student, who did not want to be named, said, “Some students from so-cially and economically weaker sections have a ten-dency to memorise every-thing written in the text-books, without realising that such analogies may legitimise casual sexism in

our society.”“Thankfully, we are able

to realise and question the reliability of such textbooks in our course. Why didn’t anyone question this state-ment in this book which is being reprinted since years?” she asked.

Now, a septuagenar-ian, professor CB Gupta expressed regret for hurting people’s sentiments and said that the analogy was taken from an article by a foreign author. “I have already deleted the state-ment from my book. I will also advise the publisher to remove the content before publishing a latest edition,” Mr Gupta told news agency PTI.

To a question on why such an analogy was made, he said, it was a mistake on his part and he had taken the analogy from an article of a foreign author. “It was not to hurt anyone. I took the analogy from an article written by a foreign author,” Mr Gupta said.

Recently, a class XII

physical education text-book defining 36-24-36 as the “best body shape for women” had created an outrage on social media with critics demanding that it be withdrawn.

In another instance, a book which forms part of the Delhi University’s his-tory curriculum had called Bhagat Singh a “revolution-ary terrorist”, prompting the freedom fighter’s family to raise the issue with uni-versity authorities as well as the Human Resource Development ministry.

“A textbook should be neutral and provide bal-anced viewpoints and leave the rest to the student to form an opinion. Such con-troversies will create more awareness among textbook authors,” said a DU profes-sor who wished to remain anonymous.

The Madras High Court had directed the CBSE to remove alleged objection-able content in class IX so-cial science textbook about the Nadar community.

also filed application seek-ing exemption from person-al appearance but the court is yet to pronounce a verdict.

On May 30, the CBI court granted them bail on personal bonds of Rs 50,000 each but dismissed the dis-charge application when the defence counsel sought quashing of the criminal

conspiracy charge.The cour t ordered

framing of charges under 120 B of the Indian Penal Code against the accused as sought by the Central Bureau of Investigation.

The special court is con-ducting daily hearings as mandated by the Supreme Court.

9worldEastErn Mirror | Dimapur, Thursday, June 8, 2017

AP/PTI

A man hands a child to a security guard from Iran’s parliament building after an assault of several attackers, in Tehran, Iran, Wednesday, June 7, 2017. Suicide bombers and gunmen stormed into Iran’s parliament and targeted the shrine of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini on Wednesday, killing a security guard and wounding 12 other people in rare twin attacks, with the siege at the legislature still underway.

Twelve killed as IS targets Iran Parliament, Khomeini mausoleum

Bahadur Deuba sworn in as Nepal PM, forms small Cabinet

Brazil court resumes Temer, Rousseff hearing

Britain heads into final day of turbulent election campaign

UN chief warns of serious clean water shortages by 2050

Tehran, June 7 (IANS): At least 12 persons were killed on Wednesday in the first terror attack claimed by the Islamic State in Iran, with two bands of killers targeting the Parliament House and Ayatollah Khomeini’s mausoleum in the heart of Tehran.

The Islamic State, a Sunni jihad-ist group, claimed responsibility for both the attacks in the Shia major-ity nation, media reports said. The IS posted a video showing what it claimed was footage from inside the high-rise Parliament building.

Iranian officials said they foiled a third attack.

It was not clear whether the death toll of 12 included the at-tackers or whether the victims were killed in both incidents or only at the Parliament, BBC reported. At least 40 people were injured, according to Emergency Services chief Pir Hos-sein Kolivand. In the first incident, four gunmen armed with assault ri-fles forced their way into Parliament when it was in session and opened fire at security guards and visitors. Some reports said the terrorists entered through a public entrance, apparently dressed as women.

Iranian media reported that all four attackers were killed by the security forces. But by then damage had been done.

Iranian authorities denied there had been a hostage situation inside Parliament even as hundreds of security personnel, some in civilian clothes and armed with revolvers, ringed the building.

Speaker Ali Larijani downplayed

the events, describing them as a “mi-nor issue”. But a lawmaker admitted that it was a major attack.

Minutes after the Parliament attack began, terrorists opened fire at the mausoleum of Khomeini, the founder of the Islamic state.

The Governor of Tehran said one attacker detonated a suicide

vest and another had been killed by security forces, state broadcaster IRIB reported.

Images from the scene showed grenades and magazines for auto-matic weapons, recovered from the body of an attacker. The suicide at-tacker was a woman. Several visitors at the mausoleum were injured.

This was the most serious ter-rorist incident in Tehran since the early years of the Islamic revolution of 1979 led by Khomeini, the BBC reported.

The Islamic State has no follow-ing in Iran but has stepped up its Farsi language propaganda in a bid to woo the country’s Sunni minority.

Kathmandu, June 7 (IANS): Sher Bahadur Deuba was sworn in as the 40th Prime Min-ister of Nepal on Wednesday.

President Bidya Devi Bhandari admin-istered the oaths of office and secrecy to the newly-elected Prime Minister at a ceremony in the capital.

After taking the oaths, Deuba -- who is also Nepali Congress President -- adminis-tered oaths to seven new ministers -- three from the Nepali Congress (NC), three from CPN (Maoist Centre) and one from the Ne-pal Loktantrik Forum.

Deuba returned to power for the fourth time on Tuesday -- 12 years after he was re-moved by then King Gyanendra Bir Bikram Shah Dev -- with 388 votes in his favour out of 593 voters in Parliament.

As many as 558 lawmakers cast votes during the prime ministerial election, with Deuba being the lone candidate.

Gopal Man Shrestha, from the Nepali Congress, was appointed Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Education. Gy-anendra Bahadur Karki and Farmullah Mansoor, also from NC, were appointed Minister for Finance and Minister for La-

bour and Employment, respectively.Krishna Bahadur Mahara of CPN

(Maoist Centre) was appointed Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Foreign Affairs.

Similarly, CPN (MC) leader Janardan Sharma was appointed Minister for Home Affairs and Prabhu Sah of the same party was appointed as minister without portfolio.

Likewise, Nepal Loktantrik Forum Chairman Bijay Kumar Gachhadar was appointed as Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Federal Affairs and Local De-velopment.

Outgoing Prime Minister Pushpa Kamal Dahal Prachanda’s CPN (Maoist Centre), the Rastriya Prajatantra Party, Rastriya Janata Party-Nepal (RJP-N), Sanghiya Sa-majbadi Forum-Nepal, Nepal Loktantrik Forum and CPN (Samyukta), besides other fringe parties, voted for Deuba.

The RJP-N, with 25 seats in Parliament, voted for Deuba after reaching a three-point deal under which the new NC-Maoist Cen-tre government has to address the agitating party’s demand for amending the less-than-two-year-old Constitution.

Brasilia, June 7 (IANS): Brazil’s Superior Electoral Court has resumed a trial into allegations that the successful 2014 presiden-tial election campaign that took Dilma Rousseff and Michel Temer to power was financed illegally.

The President of the Court, Gilmar Mendes, on Tuesday declared the hear-ing open, in proceedings that could lead to the removal of embattled President Michel Temer from office, Efe news reported.

The trial, which began in April but had been delayed, has resumed with Temer facing separate corruption allegations.

He was also being in-vestigated by the Supreme Court for alleged crimes of passive corruption, obstruc-tion of justice and illicit as-

sociation.The trial began only

hours after Temer’s ally and former cabinet Minister Henrique Eduardo Alves was detained on suspicion of graft in connection with the 2014 World Cup.

The hearing was ex-pected to last three days, and would look into funds that Rousseff and Temer’s campaign received from companies involved in the scandals uncovered at state-owned energy giant Petrobras.

Temer and Rousseff were presenting their de-fences separately.

Former President Rous-seff was impeached in 2016 on charges of misconduct in relation to the federal budg-et, with her Vice President Michel Temer replacing her after playing a key role in her

removal from office.Both of the accused have

called for the annulment of the trial due to lack of evidence.

Temer’s lawyers have also demanded that the campaign accounts of both Rousseff and Temer be judged and investigated separately.

They claim that each was responsible for their own collection of campaign donations and funds, de-nying that there were any fraudulent donations to the current president.

Temer has promised to appeal if found guilty by the electoral court.

If Temer was removed from office, Congress would have to elect his successor within 30 days, with Speaker Rodrigo Maia taking over in the interim.

London, June 7 (PTI/AFP): Britain today headed into the final day of cam-paigning for a general elec-tion darkened by jihadist attacks in two cities, leaving forecasters struggling to pre-dict an outcome on polling day.

Police announced that a 30-year-old man had been arrested in east London fol-lowing the attack in the capi-tal on Saturday, which left seven confirmed dead and 48 injured.

They also said a body had been recovered from the Thames in the search for a missing Frenchman.

Conservative Prime Minister Theresa May and Labour leader Jeremy Cor-byn scheduled eve-of-polling whistlestop campaigns, tar-geting urban areas whose vote could be crucial.

May aimed at the high-population English Mid-lands in her final dash, while Corbyn was to attend six rallies in England, Scotland and Wales, stretching from Glasgow to London, in a gruelling last-day marathon.

The prime minister had stunned Britain on April 18 when she announced a snap election, hoping to trans-form a massive opinion-poll lead into an equally huge majority in the House of Commons where she holds a slim 17-seat advantage in the 650-member legislature.

But the political ground began to shift under her feet, moving from EU member-ship -- May’s strongest card -- to domestic policy and her own record on security, both of them favouring Corbyn.

Opinion polls -- ham-pered by a poor reputation for reliability -- predict a May win. But according to poll-ing methodology, victory could range from around 50 seats, to a small majority or even no majority at all.

May is fighting to revive her message that she is a “strong and stable” leader compared with Corbyn, able to fight Britain’s corner in Brussels, where formal Brexit talks are due to start on June 19.

“Get those negotiations wrong and the consequences will be dire,” May said today.

Corbyn made an eve-of-voting pitch on the National Health Service (NHS), a beloved institution.

“The Conservatives have spent the last seven years running down our NHS, our proudest national in-stitution. Our NHS cannot afford five more years of underfunding, understaffing and privatisation,” he said.

Despite being seen as an unlikely leader -- one who has faced off a rebellion by his own MPs -- Corbyn has gained momentum during the election campaign and regularly attracts big crowds to his rallies.

Labour gained a boost following the May 18 re-lease of the Conservatives’ manifesto, outlining elderly care costs which the tabloids dubbed the “dementia tax”.

The pledge hit the party’s core supporters and May was forced to backtrack on capping the costs, prompting further criticism that she was unreliable.

Corbyn then found a val-uable seam in attacking May on security, an area where the Conservatives tradition-ally are far stronger than Labour in voters’ minds.

A string of terror attacks have occurred since May became prime minister last

July, and she was interior minister for six years before she rose to the top job.

Corbyn attacked her for slashing police numbers dur-ing her ministerial spell, and vowed to hire more police for neighbourhood patrols, a tactic that he said would provide a grassroots shield against jihadism.

“The expectations of the opinion polls are extremely divergent,” said John Cur-tice, a professor of politics at Strathclyde University in Scotland, who said the outcome could hinge on the turnout among young voters, believed to be over-whelmingly pro-Labour.

University of London professor Eric Kaufmann agreed, but noted that tra-ditionally turnout among young people in British elec-tions was low.

“There’s no obvious reason why that would re-

bound,” he said. “I’m sort of with the general polls which suggest that the Tories will increase their majority by around 25 seats...

a good majority, not as much as it looked it could have been at one point, but I think it’s pretty solid.”

That would bring May’s majority up to around 40.

Questions are also being raised about the vaunted image of Britain’s security services. Three terror at-tacks have taken place since March, leaving 34 dead and around 200 injured, and all involved assailants who were known to the authorities.

In the most recent attack, seven people were killed on Saturday when three men aboard a hired van ploughed into pedestrians on London Bridge and went on a stab-bing spree before being shot by police.

London, June 7 (IANS): British Prime Minister Theresa May announced get-tough proposals Tues-day night on tackling ter-rorism, saying she would change human rights laws if she needed to.

May outlined her pro-posals at an election rally in Slough on what was the penultimate day of canvassing in the British general election campaign.

With Britain still reel-ing from two attacks in London and one in Man-chester, May seemed de-termined to show voters she will respond to the terror threat if she wins the election Thursday, Xinhua reported.

May said she would look at making it easier for Britain to deport foreign terror suspects.

But controversially, she also outlined increased controls on extremists who the security services think may present a threat to public safety, but where there is not enough evi-dence to prosecute them.

Following the London Bridge attack on Saturday, May said she aimed to get tough on terror with her “enough is enough” speech.

In Slough Tuesday she said her plans would mean longer prison sentences for people convicted of terror-ist offences, and making it easier for the authori-ties to deport foreign ter-ror suspects to their own countries.

May added: “And I mean doing more to re-strict the freedom and the movements of terrorist suspects when we have enough evidence to know they present a threat, but not enough evidence to prosecute them in full in court. And if human rights laws stop us from doing it, we will change those laws so we can do it.”

The Guardian newspa-per commented Tuesday night that May’s proposed measures appear to be an attempt at strengthening terrorism prevention and investigation measures rather than a complete return to control orders introduced by the last La-bour government which were repeatedly struck

down by judges in the Brit-ish courts.

The Guardian said May’s measures could involve further curfews, restrictions on association with other known extrem-ists, controls on where they can travel and limits on access to communication devices.

Political commenta-tors also said Tuesday that although May’s Conserva-tive Party says it will not to withdraw from the Euro-pean Convention on Hu-man Rights (ECHR), the party, if re-elected, could begin to try to replace or amend parts of the ECHR after Britain leaves the Eu-ropean Union.

May’s proposals, said the Guardian, follow criti-cism from Labour and other parties about her cuts to policing and approach to tackling terrorism in the Home Office, which she led for six years before becoming prime minister last year.

Labour leader Jer-emy Corbyn has accused May of cutting police numbers by 20,000 offic-ers, while London’s La-bour mayor Sadiq Khan warned the Metropolitan Police has made as many cuts as it can, adding he’s worried about the im-pact of further planned savings in the capital’s police budget by the gov-ernment.

Speaking in London, Khan said over the last seven years the Met had lost 600 million pounds ($775 million) through Conservative government cuts, with a further 400 million pounds ($517 mil-lion) in planned cuts to the Met budget. Khan claimed proposed changes to the police funding formula would take the total cuts to 1.7 billion bounds ($2.2 billion).

“All there is left to cut is the bone,” said Khan.

Corbyn, addressing a packed rally in Birming-ham defended Labour’s election manifesto saying: “It’s not a wish-list, it’s a program and we are going to carry it out. I’m deter-mined that every young-ster should get a chance to go to university so we will end student fees.”

United Nations, June 7 (PTI/AP): Secretary-General Antonio Guterres warned that by 2050 global demand for fresh water is projected to grow by more than 40 per cent and at least a quarter of the world’s population will live in countries with a “chronic or recurrent” lack of clean water.

He told the Security Council that “strains on water access are already rising in all regions,” not-ing that three- quarters of the 193 UN member states share rivers or lake basins with their neighbors.

“Water, peace and security are inextricably linked,” Guterres said. “Without effective manage-ment of our water resources, we risk intensified disputes between communities and sectors and in-creased tensions among nations.”

The secretary-general said

the United Nations is ready to engage in preventive diplomacy to keep the competition for water from sparking conflicts.

Bolivian President Evo Mo-rales, whose country currently holds the council presidency, noted that since 1947, some 37 conflicts have taken place be-tween countries related to water.

“Our planet, the human fam-ily and life in all its myriad forms on Earth are in the throes of a water crisis that will only get worse over the coming decades,” he said.

“If current patterns of con-sumption continue unabated, two-thirds of the world’s popula-tion will be facing water short-ages as a daily reality by 2025,” Morales added.

Right now, he said, more than

800 million people lack access to safe drinking water and more than 2.5 billion don’t have basic sanitation. Morales, who pre-sided over the meeting, said the limited availability of fresh water underscores the importance of tackling the issue and ensur-ing that access to clean water is shared and doesn’t become “a pretext for domestic or interna-tional conflict.” British Ambas-sador Matthew Rycroft said the world has already seen what can happen “when the waters run dry,” pointing to drought in So-malia that is driving acute food shortages and threatening famine and a lack of clean water that is exacerbating the crisis sparked by Boko Haram in northeast Nigeria and sickening thousands.

He said the world currently is

not on track to meet UN goals for 2030 calling for improved water security, access to drinking water and sanitation, as well as stronger management of water resources shared by countries.

In South Asia, Rycroft said, 1 billion people across Afghani-stan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, China, India, Nepal and Pakistan rely heavily on just three rivers, but “despite facing similar problems posed by water demand and climate change, regional collabo-ration between these countries is limited.”

Rycroft said Britain has pro-vided USD 30 million over the past five years to support a re-gional approach to “identify and resolve challenges affecting these transboundary waters.” But to tackle the problem globally, he

urged the world’s developed na-tions to also invest in delivering improved water security within and between states.

In one example of regional cooperation, Ethiopian Ambassa-dor Tekeda Alemu said that while there are differences between the six countries that are upstream and downstream on the Nile River, those nations negotiated for 13 years to produce an agreement on using its waters. It was signed by all six nations and is awaiting ratification by three of them.

“The cooperation between Ethiopia, Egypt and Sudan and the signing of the Declaration of Principles by the leaders of the three countries is also another manifestation of regional coop-eration that needs to be enhanced further,” he said.

NewS IN BrIefTrump to nominate former Assistant AG as FBI headWashington, June 7 (IANS): President Donald Trump announced on Wednesday he plans to nominate Christopher A. Wray, a former US Assistant Attorney General under President George W. Bush, to be the next FBI director. Wray, currently a litigation partner at DC-based law firm King & Spalding, would replace acting FBI Director Andrew McCabe, who took over when James Comey was fired by Trump in May, Fox News reported.“I will be nominating Christopher A. Wray, a man of impeccable credentials, to be the new Director of the FBI. Details to follow,” Trump tweeted. The announcement comes ahead of a Senate hearing where McCabe, among others, was set to testify. Fired Federal Bureau of Investigation boss James Comey also was set to testify before a Senate committee on Thursday. Wray will need Senate confirmation to take over as the FBI chief. Wray headed the Justice Department’s criminal division from 2003 to 2005 under Bush.

Myanmar military plane with 104 on board crashes Yangon, June 7 (IANS): A Myanmar military aircraft with 104 people on board went missing on Wednesday and its wreckage was found on the sea off the country’s Dawei township, authorities reported. The military said the tragedy may have occurred due to bad weather but this could be confirmed only after the black box was found, Xinhua news agency reported. The Air Force plane lost contact with the ground and went missing in the afternoon on its flight from the southern Tanintharyi region’s Myeik to Yangon. The 104 on board included 90 members of soldiers’ families and 14 crew. With a load of 2.4 tonnes, the aircraft took off from Myeik air base at 1.06 p.m. When it reached a height of 18,000 feet, it lost contact with the ground at a location 32 km west of Dawei and went missing. Two air force aircraft and four naval vessels searched for the missing plane and found the wreckage.

Suspected anthrax outbreak in Bangladesh, one deadDhaka, June 7 (IANS): At least one person died and dozens others have so far fallen ill due to suspected anthrax contracted from consuming meat of ill domestic animals in Bangladesh, media reported on Wednesday. “At least 25 residents in Pabna district are suspected to be affected with anthrax after they consumed beef from sick cows recently,” Xinhua news agency quoted a doctor as saying.He said that three patients with anthrax symptom got admitted to a hospital in Pabna on Tuesday, pushing the total number of infected people to 25 in the district since May 27. A 12-year-old boy, suspected to be affected with anthrax, died on Friday, the report said. The boy fell sick after consuming meat of a diseased cow. People who slaughtered the cows and processed their meat were also reportedly infected with anthrax. “Officials said they had already collected samples of meat of the diseased animals for tests,” it said. The health official said blood samples of the patients were sent to the country’s Institute of Epidemiology Disease Control and Research (IEDCR) in capital Dhaka for testing. “We’ve to wait a few days to get result of blood samples testing to confirm whether those people are really infected with anthrax or not.”

7 killed in Iraq suicide bombingBaghdad, June 7 (IANS): At least seven people were killed and three others wounded in a suicide bomb attack at a crowded marketplace in a town in Iraq’s western province of Anbar, a provincial security source told Xinhua. The attack occurred in the evening when a suicide bomber detonated his explosive vest at a popular market in the central town of Heet, some 160 km west of the Iraqi capital of Baghdad, the source said on condition of anonymity. The death toll could rise as ambulances, police and civilian vehicles evacuated the victims to the town’s main hospital and medical centres, the source said. No group has so far claimed responsibility for the attacks, but the Islamic State militant group, in most cases, is responsible for such suicide attacks targeting crowded areas, including markets, cafes and mosques across Iraq.Terrorist acts, violence and armed conflicts killed 345 Iraqis and wounded 446 others in May across Iraq, the United Nations Assistance Mission for Iraq said. The attack came as Iraqi security forces, backed by the anti-IS international coalition, were simultaneously conducting a major offensive to dislodge IS militants from their remaining redoubt in the western side of Mosul.

British PM May pledges tough action on terrorism

EastErn Mirror | Dimapur, Thursday, June 8, 2017

10ENTERTAINMENTMirror

Would love to work in Pakistani films, shows: Paresh RawalStressing that artistes and cricketers are

not the ones who throw bombs, actor-politician Paresh Rawal says he would love to work in Pakistani serials and films.

“Yes, I would love to work in Pakistani films and shows.

I love all Pakistani TV serials like ‘Humsafar’, the way they act, the story, the writing, the language...it’s all good. I feel our shows are boring,” Rawal told PTI.

Director-producer Karan Johar’s “Ae

Dil Hai Mushkil”, featuring Pakistani actor Fawad Khan, faced the wrath of politi-cal parties before its release last year as they demanded a ban on artistes from the neighbouring countries in the wake of the Uri terror attack in September last year.

Rawal was recently in the news for his controversial comments against author Arundhati Roy where he suggested that she should be tied to an army jeep to deter stone pelters in Kashmir. (PTI)

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3 pm, 8 pm: Wonder Woman (Eng)2D

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Black Sabbath to be crowned 2017 Golden Gods

George and Amal Clooney welcome twins

‘Bridging the Gap’ is what the world needs: Priyanka

Blink-182 issue heartfelt video for ‘Home Is Such A Lonely Place’

Dangal’s China success an exemplary story for BRICS: top CPC

Black Sabbath’s Tony Iommi will collect Metal Hammer’s most prestigious award on behalf of the band at next week’s Golden Gods event

Black Sab-bath will be crowned Golden Gods at next week’s

Metal Hammer Golden Gods Awards in associa-tion with Orange Ampli-fication.

The 15th annual event will be held at London’s IndigO2 at The O2 on Monday, June 12, which will be hosted by Fozzy

frontman and WWE megastar Chris Jericho, reports teamrock.com.

Black Sabbath guitar-ist Tony Iommi will be on hand to receive the night’s most prestigious award on behalf of the band, who brought the curtain down on their 49-year career with a pair of sold-out shows in their home town of Birming-ham in February.

Bassist Geezer Butler says: “Thank you for this award. It’s good to know that after almost 50 years Sabbath is still relevant, and has its importance in the history of music.

“I want to thank our fans who have been with us along the way, without them there would be no Sabbath.”

Metal Hammer editor Merlin Alderslade adds:

“Black Sabbath are, quite simply, the Ground Zero for metal.

“Without them, heavy music wouldn’t ex-ist as we know and love it today, and it only seems right that in a year where we’re celebrating the power of our scene, we acknowledge the influ-ence of the Mac Daddies themselves.”

Teamrock

Actress Priyanka Chopra, who has joined the likes of Wiz Khalifa, Adwoa Aboah and Maria Borges for an ad film titled “Bridging the Gap”,

says there are so many gaps in this world that need to be bridged.

“’Bridging the Gap’ is exactly what the world needs right now. There are so many gaps in this world that need to be bridged and filled. The most impor-tant one for me is empowering women, women need to be given an opportunity to stand on their feet and do the best they can for themselves,” Priyanka said in a statement.

“Bridging the Gap”, a film celebrating American optimism with Edward Ennin-ful’s directorial debut, also stars Christie Brinkley, Miles Chamley-Watson, Jonath-an Groff, Fernanda Ly, Casil Mcarthur, Lineisy Montero, Ellen Rosa, Jasmine Sanders, Yara Shahidi and Alek Wek. It has been made for American clothing brand Gap.

Enninful has also cast and styled the film in which the iconic Gap basic white T-shirt serves as a blank canvas for each of the cast to take and make their own, offering a glimpse at how their differences unite them.

“This project is about authenticity

and people living their truths,” said Enninful.

The cast sings “Sunny” by Boney M, which conveys a message of optimism, and they dance to their own rhythm dis-playing their individuality, and then come together as a symbol of unity.

Khalifa said: “To me, ‘Bridg-ing the Gap’ means making diversity more acceptable, by making it okay to look or act differ-ent. I do that by being myself.”

For Brinkley, it’s a “statement of mutual humanity and freedom”.

“Freedom for me means not being concerned what others think of or expect from me, but living my life with the inten-tion of making the world a better place for others,” Brinkley added.

IANS

George Clooney and wife Amal have wel-comed twins, a media report has confirmed.

“This (Tuesday) morning (we) welcomed Ella and Alexander Clooney into (our) lives,” the Clooneys told Page Six in a state-ment. “Ella, Alexander and Amal are all healthy, happy and doing fine.”

They jokingly added that the first-time father “is sedated and should recover in a few days”.

The pregnancy news broke in February on the TV show “The Talk,” when host Julie Chen re-vealed that Jay Z and Beyonce weren’t the only ones expecting twins and then congratulated the Clooneys.

She later revealed that the couple were expecting a boy and a girl sometime in June.

Even though the Hollywood icon, 56, told People in 2006 that he never wanted kids, he’s been in baby prep mode for months.

“I know swaddling,” he told

“Extra” in March, “I know what I’m in for.”

These are the couple’s first children.

Meanwhile, Amal, 39, a success-ful human rights lawyer, has been working throughout her pregnancy, using her platform to bring attention

to causes close to her heart, the Page Six report added.

In March, she urged the UN to prosecute Islamic State terror group for genocide.

The pair tied the knot in Italy in 2014.

IANS

Blink-182 have released a new video for their track Home Is Such A Lonely

Place.The song originally

appeared on Mark Hop-pus, Matt Skiba

and Travis Barker’s lat-

est album Cali-fornia, which launched

in 2016.

The trio say: “The video for

Home Is Such A Lonely

Place was probably the easiest we’ve ever

filmed. All we had to do was be ourselves at home with our fam-ily and friends as we

prepared to leave for tour.

“Conse-quently, it’s

also our most

personal and honest vid-

eos,

Aamir Khan-starrer Dangal, that has scripted history in

China by becoming the first top-grossing non-Hollywood film, earned rare praise today from a top Chinese leader who lauded it for being a “success story” which needs to be highlighted by the media in BRICS nations.

“If I remember it cor-rectly, there is a movie in India ‘Wrestle my father’ (Chinese name for Dan-gal), is very popular in Chi-na in a very short time,” with record revenues, raking up more revenue than Chinese movies, Liu Yunshan, a ranking leader of the ruling Communist Party of China (CPC), said while addressing partici-pants of the BRICS Media Forum being held here.

“Dangal is the most successful movie in recent years,” said Liu, who is ranked fifth in the all-pow-erful seven-member Stand-ing Committee of the CPC which rules the country.

“I think this is a very typical example of a success story. We media groups need to give it more coverage. This will serve as a good example,” he said.

For example, the Indian media should be proud of this movie be-cause it is very successful in China and very influential, he said.

“Perhaps we should take this opportunity to express our voice,” he said, adding that “we need things which are helpful, conducive and constructive for sure”.

Editors and journalists from Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa (BRICS) are attending the forum being organised by China’s Xinhua news agency ahead of this year’s BRICS Summit to be held

in the Chinese city of Xiamen in September this year.

Dangal which raked up over Rs 1,100 crores since it was released in China on May 5 has created history by becoming only the 33rd film in China’s history to cross RMB one billion. It is still continuing to play over 7,000 screens across China.

Liu, in his address, also attacked the western media, saying that it is spreading fake news in the past few years.

“There has been lot of fake news in the western media.

Like President

Vladimir Putin said some countries actually created those fake news,” he said.

“Mainstream media in BRICS countries must strengthen efforts to dis-seminate more positive news about BRICS coun-tries and we can covey more positive energy. This is our responsibility,” Liu said.

He also claimed that media in China which is state- controlled enjoys freedom.

“In China, I don’t think (there is) any problem with media freedom...China has negative news in the past,” he said.

“In the western world, there is fight against fake news,” Liu said apparently referring to the allegations by US President Donald Trump against the media.

He also said traditional media in BRICS coun-tries should catch-up with the western media and strengthen mutual benefi-cial cooperation, assistance and learning.

Liu suggested exchange of professionals, mutual interviews and technologi-cal cooperation among the BRICS countries.

Mainstream media in BRICS countries need to express common voice telling good stories from BRICS countries, he said.

The media should also fight the pessimistic outlook being spread by the western media. Also, some international rating agencies are downgrading credit ratings of the BRICS countries.

It is being done because “they believe we are not promising. Because they don’t believe in our future”.

A BRICS media joint photography exhibition has also been organised on the sidelines of the two-day forum which will conclude tomorrow.

PTI

and one of my favourites.”Last month, Blink-182

released a deluxe ver-sion of California which featured a total of 28 tracks, 11 of which were new, along with an acous-tic version of Bored To Death.

Speaking about the decision to release an expanded edition of California, drummer Barker said: “We just felt like making more music so we jumped back in the studio.

“It started out as

three or four songs – but we ended up with 12 that we were all excited about.”

Blink-182 will play 12 dates across the UK next month. Find a list of shows below.

Teamrock

11sportsEastErn Mirror | Dimapur, Thursday, June 8, 2017

Austria’s Dominic Thiem celebrates after winning his quarter final match against Serbia’s Novak Djokovic.

Shane Warne

Romelu Lukaku

India captain Virat Kohli led his side to a thumping victory against Pakistan in their first match in the ICC Champions Trophy.

Thiem stuns Djokovic, sets date with Nadal in French Open semis

Mirror Crossword 1496suD0ku 1336Every Sudoku has a unique solution that can be reached logically. Enter numbers into the blank spaces so that each row, column and 3x3 box contains the numbers 1 to 9.

solutions to CRossWoRD 1495

Across1 Ramirez of tennis5 Fishhook feature9 Bewail13 Hiss in history15 Mideast pooh-bah16 Analogy words17 Mediterranean island18 N in NB19 Use a dagger20 Geometrical solid21 Male ancestor23 Stocking stuffers25 Particular26 __ longue29 Wild Asian dog31 “To Kill a Mockingbird”

author33 Actor Silvers37 Palindromic wonan’s name38 Not so big41 Dos Passos trilogy42 Shoe part44 Appeased46 Tears49 Ate in a hurry50 Dress part53 Greek b54 Pleasing57 Dizzying pictures61 Slithered62 Dirty63 Pep pill64 “__ Man” (Estevez film)65 Israeli carrier66 Paris bisector67 Org.68 Ditto69 Hourly fee, e.g.\Down1 Accessway2 Winglike3 Wrinkly fruit4 Reveal by accident5 Hair style6 Love, to Livy

7 Beatles’ meter maid8 “Viva Zapata!” star9 Faux pas10 Port of ancient Rome11 Video game name12 Norwegian prize giver14 Name of 11 rulers of

ancient Egypt22 PC key24 Microbe26 Tobacco mouthful27 Possess

28 Kazakh-Uzbek sea29 Birthplace of Artemis and

Apollo30 High water alternative32 Feeble34 Parisian octet35 Words of comprehension36 “This Gun For Hire” star39 Hamburg’s river40 Rowdy43 Checked for fit45 Charleston dancer

47 Top of a suit48 Terminates50 Iraqi port51 Eyes amorously52 Nerds53 Ball girl55 Weapon swung by a

gaucho56 Irish writer O’Flaherty58 Samoan seaport59 Cost of occupation60 Leaves home?

solutions to suD0ku 1335

Paris, June 7 (IANS): Austrian tennis player Dominic Thiem upset de-fending champion Novak Djokovic of Serbia at the French Open, advancing to the semi-finals where he will face Rafael Nadal.

Nadal progressed after fellow Spaniard Pablo Carreno Busta retired upon injury on Wednes-day.

Seeded sixth in the tournament, 23-year-old Thiem won 7-6 (5), 6-3, 6-0 over Djokovic in two hours and 15 minutes.

Nadal won 6-2, 2-0 after Carreno Busta with-drew with abdominal pain, in 51 minutes, re-ports Efe. Nadal is bid-ding for his 10th French Open title.

Carreno Busta, a first-time Grand Slam quarter-finalist, complained of a pain in his lower abdomen and requested assistance from the physician during the first set.

The 25-year-old Span-iard finished the set by committing two consecu-tive double faults and after being taken care of on the court, left for a few minutes.

On his return his ser-vice was weakened, as it had been throughout the game and eventually he decided to retire after losing 0-2 in the second set. That helped Nadal to become the first player to enter the French Open semi-finals for the 10th time.

Kohli urges India to build on Pakistan Champions Trophy routLondon, June 7 (AFP): Virat Kohli has urged In-dia to produce a repeat of their Pakistan demolition when they face Sri Lanka in the Champions Trophy on Thursday.

Kohli's side made a memorable start to the tournament as the defend-ing champions crushed arch rivals Pakistan by 124 runs in Birmingham on Sunday.

After India piled up 319 for three in 48 overs, they turned the screw on Pakistan, dismissing them for 164 as they failed to chase down a rain-reduced target of 289.

It was the perfect re-sponse to reports of a rift between India captain Kohli and the team's coach Anil Kumble.

Kohli knows momen-tum can change quickly in one-day competitions,

especially against a desper-ate Sri Lanka team looking to bounce back from defeat to South Africa in their opener.

But Kohli hopes the confidence boost from beating Pakistan will help India secure another vic-tory in their second Group B match.

"Every game in this tournament is big, but we have a side with a few youngsters coming in and gradually getting towards strengthening their careers for India," he said.

"So I think from that, from the team's point of view, it's a massive win for us.

"Just the way we played and the confidence we showed throughout the game was something that was very pleasing to see as a captain.

"Even though we lost

The article published on Sports page 11 dated June 7 with headline 'MRH FC beat Morning FC' should be read as MRH FC beat Mustang FC and not as published.

ANNOUNCEMENT FOR SPECIAL BADMINTON COACHING PROGRAMME.

Mokokchung District Badminton Association (MDBA) in its ongoing Badminton Coaching Programme will be having renowed coach and former International player Mr. Pradip Chaliha from Assam from 15th to 30th June 2017 at Mokokchung to coach the children.

Interested children, both beginners and old from Mokokchung district are welcome to join the coaching on or before 15th of June 2017. The maximum enrollment of beginners will be 50.

The Special Coaching Programme is sponsored by Zukshishitsu Sports Yonex, Imnameren Road, Mokokchung.

For more information please contact Imosanen at 9862099572 and 8837351154. Sd/- Sd/- Toshikaba Tiakumzuk President General Secretary

OFFICE OF THEMOKOKCHUNG DISTRICT BADMINTON ASSOCIATION

MOkOkCHUNG, NAGALAND.

DP-142

CORRECTION

Angry Warne clears air on Indian coaching rumours

London, June 7 (IANS): Australian spin legend Shane Warne on Wednesday took a dig at Indian media for blowing out of proportion his comments about being ap-proached for the role of India coach.

Warne was quoted by a section of media as saying he was "too expensive" for the Board of Control of Cricket in India (BCCI)

to afford. "I am very expensive, I don't think they

can afford me," Warne was quoted as saying by a leading newspaper. "Virat Kohli and me can have a good partnership, but as I said, I am very, very expensive."

Lashing out at such remarks, Warne tweeted: "Indian coaching position. I was in a lift & was asked if I would put my hat in the ring I said: "India can't afford me" tongue in cheek!"

Warne also denied he had said anything about his partnership with India captain Virat Kohli.

"@imVkohli & I would work well to-gether as a quote, this is totally made up. I never said that to anyone, very disappoint-ing journalism," the 47-year-old further added.

Current India coach Anil Kumble's con-tract expires at the end of this month, and the BCCI advertised the post ahead of the ongoing ICC Champions Trophy.

Virender Sehwag, Tom Moody, Craig McDermott, Richard Pybus, Lalchand Ra-jput, and Dodda Ganesh are in line for the job along with Kumble who re-applied.

Star footballer Lukaku confirms he wants to exit Everton

Liverpool, June 7 (IANS): Everton's star striker Rom-elu Lukaku has asserted that staying at the city-based football club next season is not an option and he is ex-ploring possibilities to move to a more reputed club in England. "Staying at Ever-

ton is not really an option for next season. There is noth-ing concrete with another club at the moment. My agent (Mino Raiola) is busy discussing things. I'm not go-ing to make big declarations about my future," Lukaku was quoted as saying by

telegraph.co.uk on Tuesday."But I know where I

want to play, in a club which is competing in the Cham-pions League and can win titles in England," the Bel-gian international added.

Various reports have confirmed that the 24-year-old wants to return to his former club Chelsea, who sold him to Everton three years back for 28 million pound ($36.11 million).

"Staying in England is best for me. I know the com-petition, and I've almost reached 100 goals in the league, which is a milestone I want to achieve". Accord-ing to the website, Chelsea are considering the 100 mil-lion pound ($128.9 million) fee demanded by Everton as too hefty, because one of their targets, Alvaro Morata of Real Madrid, has a price-

tag of around $70 million.Lukaku hinted that if

the move to Chelsea does not materialise, he will not reject a move to Manchester United, who have confirmed their place in this season's Champions League and have already registered their interest to buy him.

"The Premier League is a dream for me, but I also want to win the Champions League, the FA Cup and other prizes. I don't want to stay at the same level. I want to improve, and I know where I want to do that," he said. "My agent is now talk-ing to a club. I know where I want to go, so I'll just stay patient. I know meetings have been arranged, so I'm just waiting for a call. We are now in discussions with the club. We'll see what happens."

New Delhi, Jun 7 (PTI): The Sports Ministry has written to the Prime Min-ister's Office, requesting Bharat Ratna for the late Dhyan Chand in what can considered be its latest push to bestow the hockey legend with India's high-est civilian honour.

Sports Minister Vi-jay Goel confirmed to PTI that he has written to Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

"Yes, we have writ-ten to the Prime Minister about Bharat Ratna for Dhyan Chand. Conferring the honour posthumously will be a fitting tribute to his exceptional service to the country," said Goel.

I t i s n o t t h e f i r s t time that the Ministry has sought Bharat Ratna for Dhyan Chand, who

helped India win three gold medals at the Olym-pics (1928, 1932, and 1936).

During the UPA rule in 2013, the Sports Minis-try had chosen the hockey wizard for the honour over cricketing great Sa-chin Tendulkar.

However in the same year, it was eventually an-nounced that Tendulkar will be the first sportsper-son to receive the award, hours after he ended his illustrious international career.

Asked whether Dhy-an Chand, who passed away in 1979, should have got Bharat Ratna before Tendulkar, Goel said: "I would not want to get into this and it is not fair to comment about sportsper-sons of such legendary

stature."You can't measure

Dhyan Chand's achieve-ments with any award. He is beyond that.

"As I said, Prime Min-ister will take the final call on this subject. He wants India to emerge as a sport-ing power and that is why he has been giving a lot of emphasis to sports.

"We want him to con-sider this. We feel Bharat Ratna to Dhyan Chand will not only give a huge boost to Indian hockey but also to other sports," said Goel.

The Ministry decided to write to the Prime Min-ister earlier this week.

Dhyan Chand's son Ashok Kumar and other former players have been demanding Bharat Ratna for their hockey hero for

years.Last year, former In-

dia captains Ashok Ku-mar, Ajit Pal Singh, Zafar Iqbal, Dilip Tirkey were among a 100 former play-ers who sat on a protest on Dhyan Chand being repeatedly ignored.

Even in 2011, govern-ment did not consider the plea of 82 members of parliament who backed Dhyan Chand for the rec-ognition.

'The Wizard' is con-sidered one of the great-est hockey players of all time and singlehandedly popularised the game in India.

His birthday, August 29, is celebrated as the Nat iona l Spor t s Day when the country's top athletes are awarded by the President of India.

the toss, guys were raring and ready to go, willing to take up the pressure.

"That gave all of us the confidence to start striking the ball well, but initially the openers gave us a good start as well.

"As I said, it's a clinical performance from us, from the team's point of view,

yes, it is indeed a very big win."

- Deflated -Kohli, with 81 not out

off 68 balls, and Yuvraj Singh, named man-of-the-match for a rapid 53, both battered the Pakistan attack after Rohit Sharma and Shikhar Dhawan laid the platform for a big total with

an opening stand of 136.A repeat of that batting

blitz against Sri Lanka at The Oval would put India on course for the semi-finals and Kohli expect Yuvraj to lead the charge again.

"After I got to 50, I wasn't able to freely play. And Yuvraj came in and just took all the pressure off me," he said.

"The way he batted was the way only he can strike the ball.

"I think that really de-flated the opposition. His innings was a difference in the game."

Beaten by 96 runs by South Africa, there is no margin for error for Sri Lanka as they try to avoid elimination.

Adding insult to injury, Sri Lanka were later found guilty of a slow over-rate offence by the ICC, with

their stand-in captain Upul Tharanga banned for their next two matches, and players fined.

Angelo Mathews is set to resume captaincy duties after returning to fitness from the calf muscle injury that ruled him out of the South Africa match.

"The whole team is re-sponsible. Whoever the captain is, we have to back him and try to support him in the field," Mathews said. "The captain has to do so many other things and stuff to work on. We have addressed in the past as well, but it cropped up again.

"It's so unfortunate to see Upul going out as he is a crucial player in our set up.

"He batted well against South Africa and it's so disappointing. This cannot happen again."

Ministry writes to PMO, wants Bharat Ratna for Dhyan Chand

12 SportSEastErn Mirror | Dimapur, Thursday, June 8, 2017

CM

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Printed and published by Vimenuo Keditsu for Nagaland Free Press Society at Eastern Publication House, Circular Road, Dimapur. Executive Editor: K.Wapong Longkumer. Tel Nos.: 246001, 225507 (Dimapur), 2291977 (Kohima). Fax: (03862) 245558 (Dimapur) email: easternmirror@gmail.com | RNI No. NAGENG/2002/07906

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Morning PreMier League

today's matchMorung United vs MRH Sunrisers

Hong Kong's Victoria Harbour is one of the world's busiest ports, but every morning daring elderly swimmers dive in to its choppy waters against a teeming backdrop of ferries, cargo ships and fishing boats.

Wesley Sneijder

Kilenmeren with archery coach, Hunezo Thisa

Thangboi Singto

Alvaro Morata

AFC urges AIFF to resolve short-term issues at the earliest Kuala Lumpur, June 7 (IANS): The Asian Football Confederation (AFC), in an all stakeholders' meeting here on Wednesday, urged the All India Football Federation (AIFF) to speed up the short-term roadmap of Indian club football.

"The AFC cannot take a call. It is the AIFF which has to do the specif-ics and AFC can only guide. AFC urged AIFF to speed up things in the short-term but did not give any time-line," a club official who was present in the meeting told IANS.

Chaired by AFC General Secre-tary Dato Windsor John, the meeting included representatives of the All India Football Federation (AIFF), the union sports ministry, all the I-League and some ISL clubs, officials of Football Players Association of India (FPAI) as well as officials from the game's world governing body FIFA, and the AFC.

The sport in the country has been grappling for a while with two leagues -- Indian Super League (ISL) and the I-League -- running one after the other and jousting for top status.

Plans of a merger have been in the pipeline for some time until recently, when the idea of running both com-petitions simultaneously was mooted.

There have been talks of three I-League heavyweights -- Bengaluru FC, Mohun Bagan and East Bengal -- joining the ISL bandwagon.

While decks have been cleared for Bengaluru to jump ship, East Bengal and Mohun Bagan have been at log-gerheads with Football Sports Devel-opment Ltd (FSDL), organisers of

ISL, over franchise fee, money from central pool and playing games out of Kolkata where ISL franchise Atletico de Kolkata (ATK) are already based.

"So as far as what will happen to the Kolkata clubs and will the two leagues run simultaneously, there was no headway made," the official said.

It was learnt that many ISL fran-chises skipped the meet.

No final decision was taken on whether an AFC slot would be award-ed to ISL, an issue which its organis-ers had raised earlier.

"We have to decide on the short-term future of the game as soon as possible," AIFF general secretary Kushal Das told the federation's of-ficial website.

The AFC said there was unanim-ity on formulating the right structure for the development of the game in the country.

"The objectives were clear -- to help provide a road map for the future development of Indian football by reaching a consensus on the way for-ward. It was a significant step forward that there was unanimous agreement that the right structure for the game should be paramount," John said after the meeting.

East Bengal, represented by as-sistant general secretary Shanti Ran-jan Dasgupta, and Mohun Bagan finance secretary Debasish Dutta, gave lengthy presentations highlight-ing their age-old legacy.

Mohun Bagan later released a statement, asserting that they have requested the AIFF to convene a meeting on June 12 as proposed by

the AFC to discuss this year's domes-tic league structure.

John further pushed the AIFF to resolve the short-term impasse as Fed-eration Cup champions Bengaluru have to take part in the AFC Cup Inter Zone semi-finals on August 23 at home against North Korean side 4.25 SC (April 25 Sports Club).

"They have to submit the squad list fifteen days prior to the match and for that they need to have a clear picture of what is happening. If there are two leagues running simultane-ously, which player is staying and who is not," the official speaking on condition of anonymity said.

FPAI, represented by its president Renedy Singh, pushed for a single long-duration league.

For the short term roadmap, the stakeholders will meet again within a period of 7-10 days, an FPAI state-ment said.

Bhaichung Bhutia, AIFF advi-sor and former FPAI president, and Renedy also pointed out that with the current format of the two leagues being played roughly for three months each, many players are remaining un-employed while some get only three months of football which posed the biggest problem for Indian football now.

The duo also pointed out that players should have long term con-tracts with the clubs which makes the player more committed. The clubs also gain on their player transfer, when a footballer, who is on a long term contract, has a good season and is in demand.

Amur Falcon dismantle Silver White 8-0

Sneijder to set Dutch appearance record on his birthdayAmsterdam, June 7 (Reu-ters): Netherlands play-maker Wesley Sneijder will break his country's appear-ance record on his birthday against Luxembourg in a World Cup qualifier on Friday after a frantic dash over the last few days to ensure he could combine the milestones.

Nether lands coach Dick Advocaat has con-firmed that Sneijder will start the match in Rotter-dam on the day he turns 33 to reach 131 caps and pass goalkeeper Edwin van der Sar's total.

Sneijder was a sec-ond-half substitute in a 2-1 friendly win in Mo-rocco last week after join-ing the squad on the eve of the game before flying back to Turkey to play for Galatasaray in their last game of the season against Konyaspor on Saturday.

He then hired a private jet to whisk him to the Netherlands after the game so he could play in the last

20 minutes of Sunday’s 5-0 friendly win over the Ivory Coast in Rotterdam, where he equalled the appearance record.

“You could assume there would be further opportunity to overtake Edwin but there is only one chance to set a record for caps on your birthday.

After so many years in the national team I think that’s tremendous, very symbolic,” Sneijder told Dutch media.

There had been some muted criticism of an un-seemly dash for caps by Sneijder but he defend-ed himself, saying: “The record is not the only rea-

son I have been travelling around, I take every chance I get to play for the national team.”

Advocaat , back in charge of the Netherlands after a season coaching in Turkey, confirmed Snei-jder would start in Friday’s Group A match where the struggling Dutch need a victory to keep up their hopes of a place at the 2018 World Cup in Russia.

They are fourth with seven points from five games, six adrift of leaders France and three behind second-placed Sweden.

“I saw almost all his matches this season. He was Galatasaray’s best player and possibly the best in the Turkish league. He will play from the start against Luxembourg,” said Advocaat, who was coach of Fenerbahce this season.

Advocaat, then in his second spell as national team boss, handed Sneijder his debut in a 1-1 draw with Portugal in 2003.

Kohima, June 7 (EMN): Amur Fal-con thrashed Silver White 8-0 at the ongoing Morning Premier League on Wednesday morning at Kohima local ground.

Mele ran riot as Amur Falcon FC registered a thumping victory over Silver White, with Mele scoring five goals and a goal each from Seyie,

Rokuo, Benlo saw Amur Falcon FC to their resounding win.

With the win, Amur Falcon (27 points) retained its 4th place on better goal difference of the Morning Pre-mier League table and moved above MRH FC who has the same point,

Both the teams kept the title chase alive as they are two points behind

the league leaders Power Comm and All Blacks who played a 2-2 draw on Monday morning with 29 points each. Silver White remained in the bottom of the league with a point.

Archer Kilenmeren to represent India at Asia CupKohima, June 7 (EMN): Archer Kilenmeren from Nagaland Archery Acad-emy, I.G. Stadium, Ko-hima will be representing India at the Asia Cup 2017 which will be held from July 3 to 7 this year at Chinese Taipei.

Kilenmeren got se-lected at the All India Se-lection after a trial match was held in Rohtak, Har-yana. The trial match was held from June 2 to 5.

The coach of Madhya Pradesh Archery Acad-emy Richhpal Singh Si-laria will be the coaching team India for the Asian Cup 2017.

The 18-year-old archer Kilenmeren is from Mop-ungchuket village under Mokokchung district. He

was inducted into the Academy through the pro-gramme of SSA Scheme by the depar tment of School Education.

Archery Coach, Hun-ezo Thisa said his passion and performances towards his career is incredible in the last 6 years of stay in the academy.

Hunezo Thisa who himself was an interna-tional Archery medallist is optimistic that Kilenmeren can go beyond Asia level and is capable of compet-ing in the world arena.

From the medals he got at the national level in different categories, Kilenmeren recently got the opportunity to train at Korea, sponsored by the Government of India.

Age is just a number for Hong Kong's harbour swimmersHong Kong, June 7 (AFP): Hong Kong's Victoria Har-bour is one of the world's busiest ports, but every morning daring elderly swimmers dive in to its chop-py waters against a teeming backdrop of ferries, cargo ships and fishing boats.

The city's older genera-tions fill public spaces as the sun rises, practising sword dancing and tai chi, or play-ing impromptu games of badminton.

On the western tip of Hong Kong Island, they choose to take a dip, rarely put off by inclement weather or imminent typhoons.

Lau Sam-lan, 74, has been swimming there daily for around 30 years, one of many regulars who have been doing so for decades.

"Swimming makes me feel healthier and relaxed," he says, goggles perched atop his head.

"I would feel uncomfort-able if I didn't come."

Known as the "Sai Wan swimming shed", with basic changing rooms and show-ers housed in corrugated iron-clad huts, it harks back to a time in the mid-20th century when there were

many others dotted around the harbour.

But with worsening pol-lution and the arrival of chlorinated public pools, the sheds fell out of fashion.

Sai Wan is the last one standing. It was built in 1988 by local residents with ap-proval from the government after one swimming shed

nearby was swept away by a typhoon and another de-molished for redevelopment.

Steep steps cut down a jungle-clad hillside alive with high-pitched cicadas to a secluded hollow.

Below the changing huts there, swimmers dive off a spindly wooden pier with the hazy city skyline in the

distance.Fast commuter ferries

ply the channel behind and rickety sampans putter past, with hulking cargo ships easing by like slow-moving buildings further out.

The swimmers are not worried about pollution -- water quality has improved recently as the government

tries to clean up the harbour, they say. There have been four drownings since the shed was built, but that has not put them off.

"I'm not scared, I've even saved two people," says reti-ree Lau. A ring attached to a rope is thrown to anyone in trouble, there is no lifeguard.

The Sai Wan swimmers pay HK$150 ($19) a month to use the shed and there are around 80 members of what has become a close-knit community, the young-est in their 50s.

Lita Wong, 62, says visit-ing gives her a moment of calm before she heads to work at a trading company. She has been swimming there for 25 years. "I know the people here and I like the environment, although there are a lot of mosquitoes," says Wong.

She comes despite hav-ing two shared pools at her apartment complex, saying she prefers salt water.

"The first day I came here I felt scared because of the stones, the waves, the fer-ries, the hydrofoils," Wong remembers.

"But time goes by and I overcome."

Lajong ends association with coach Thangboi SingtoShillong, June 7 (PTI): Shillong Lajong FC and its head coach Thangboi Singto has ended their eight-year long associa-tion after the club did not renew his contract owing to uncertainties over the I-League's future.

"Singto's contract end-ed on May 31 and the club is yet to take any decision on his future in view of the uncertainty of Indian football top league," Shil-long Lajong FC general manager Habamutlang Lyngdoh said today.

"We are yet to take a call on whether to renew the long-term contract we had with Singto depend-ing on the future of the I-league in the country," he said.

Singto had been as-sociated with Shillong Lajong FC since 2009 as

an assistant coach before taking over as the head coach in 2012 after the club sacked Desmond Bulpin.

During his stint in the first year with the club in 2009-2010, the club ended up with a runners-up tro-phy at the Federation Cup.

Their best performance came in 2011 when they reached the semi-final of the Federation Cup, the IFA Shield and the Du-rand Cup. In 2011, the club won the Independ-ence Day Celebration In-vitation Football Tourna-ment in Mizoram and also the Meghalaya Invitation Football Tournament.

Singto expressed re-gret at the non-renewal of the contract in view of the circumstances prevailing in Indian football.

"I am most thankful to P D Sawian and Lars-ing Ming Sawyan who entrusted me with the top job to take the club for-ward since 2012," he said.

"Although there were offers coming in from leading clubs in the coun-try, I am yet to decide at the moment," Singto said.

Miami, June 7 (IANS): A major hurdle in former England foot-ball star David Beckham's plans to bring a Major League Soccer (MLS) franchise to the city of Miami has been cleared with the acquisition of the remaining three acres of land that he required to build a 25,000-seat stadium.

"By purchasing the last piece of land needed for our privately-funded stadium, Miami Beckham

United (MBU) is achieving an-other major milestone on the way to Major League Soccer formally awarding Miami a franchise," the Guardian reported citing a state-ment from MBU on Tuesday.

"(The group has) assembled a world-class team of partners, presented a vision for building the premier soccer club in the Ameri-cas, and assembled the land needed to build our stadium. Now is the

time for MLS to move forward in helping us deliver the soccer club that Miami has been waiting for".

The Miami team is part of a MLS expansion plan that will in-crease the number of teams from 20 to 24 teams by 2020 and to 28 teams beyond. The other locations already granted teams are Los Angeles, Minnesota and Atlanta.

This deal represents a major breakthrough for the English foot-

ball icon's plans to bring a MLS franchise to the city of Miami, the progress of which has been very slow and arduous.

"I will tell you this is probably the best site we have found, for many respects," Beckham group at-torney Neisen Kasdin said, before listing reasons that include "the site's proximity to several modes of public transportation and the Miami River".

Beckham acquires land to build football stadium in Miami

Madrid, June 7 (IANS): English football giants Manchester United's bid of 52 mil-lion pounds ($67.6 million) for Real Madrid forward Alvaro Morata has been rejected, a media report said on Wednesday.

Sky Sports reported that United goal-keeper David de Gea was not included in the offer, while Real Madrid are thought to want in the region of 78 million pound ($100.66 million) for the 24-year-old Morata.

The Spain international has scored 20 goals in all competitions for Real last season, as the club clinched La Liga and the Cham-pions League.

Morata progressed through the Real Ma-drid academy to make his first team debut in December 2010, before exiting for Juventus

in the summer of 2014. Morata has won two Serie A titles, two

Coppa Italia titles and was part of a run to the 2015 Champions League final, scoring as Juventus lost 1-3 to Barcelona in his two seasons with the record Serie A champions.

Later in June 2016, Real Madrid exer-cised on a buy-back clause to bring Morata back from Juventus for around $34 million. From then the Spamish forward has emerged as a key player of Zinedine Zidane's La Liga squad.

It is learnt that if Manchester United fail to agree a deal for Morata they will try to sign Italian striker Andrea Belotti from Tori-no, who has a 100 million euro ($112.66m) release clause in his contract.

Man Utd's bid for Real forward Morata rejected

Paris, June 7 (IANS): Indian star Ro-han Bopanna and his Canadian partner Gabriela Dabrowski registered a straight sets victory to enter the final of the mixed doubles category at the French Open ten-nis tournament here on Wednesday.

The Indo-Canadian pair sent France's Edouard Roger-Vasselin and Andrea Hla-vackova of Czech Republic crashing out

with a 7-5, 6-3 verdict in the semi-finals. Bopanna and Dabrowski survived a

tough challenge from Hlavackova and Ed-ouard in the opening set before dominating the second set to earn a shot at the title.

The seventh seeded Indo-Canadian combination will meet the unseeded pair of Anna-Lena Groenefeld of Germany and Robert Farah in the final.

Bopanna-Dabrowski enter French Open final