Pak warned against ‘executing’ Jadhav
Blast kills 4 children
NEW DELHI, April 11, (Agencies): India on Tuesday warned Pakistan of serious consequences for their bilateral relationship if it executes a retired Indian naval officer convicted of espionage and sabotage.
External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj told agitated lawmakers in Parliament that India would take up the issue with Pakistan at the highest level to ensure that justice was done to Kulbhushan Jadhav. He was arrested by Pakistan last year and convicted by a Pakistani military tribunal this week.
Pakistan alleges that Jadhav was an Indian intelligence official who aided and financed terrorist activities in the southwestern province of Baluchistan and the port city of Karachi. Swaraj dismissed Jadhav’s trial as a farce and said Pakistan had ignored 13 separate requests in the past year to be permitted to offer him consular services.
“The government and people of India would view very seriously the possibility that an innocent Indian citizen is facing death sentence in Pakistan without due process and in violation of basic norms, law, justice and international relations,” she said.
Swaraj warned “the Pakistan government to consider the consequences for our bilateral relationship if they proceed on this matter.”
Lawmakers from opposition Congress and other parties asked the government to put international pressure on Pakistan to free Jadhav and return him to India.
Jadhav
Malala receives highest UN honor:
United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres appointed Nobel laureate Malala Yousafzai a UN Messenger of Peace on Monday to promote girls education, more than four years after a Taliban gunman shot her in the head on her school bus in 2012.
At 19, Yousafzai is the youngest Messenger of Peace, the highest honor given by the United Nations for an initial period of two years. She was also the youngest person to win the Nobel peace prize in 2014 when she was 17.
“You are not only a hero, but you are a very committed and generous person,” Guterres told Yousafzai.
Other current Messengers of Peace include actor Leonardo di Caprio, for climate change, actor Charlize Theron, whose focus is prevention of HIV and elimination of violence against women, and actor Michael Douglas, whose focus is disarmament. (RTRS)
Maryland soldier killed in Afghanistan:
The Pentagon has identified the soldier who was killed over the weekend while conducting an operation against Islamic State militants in Afghanistan.
Military officials said in a news release Monday that 37-year-old Staff Sgt. Mark De Alencar of Edgewood, Maryland, died Saturday of wounds sustained when his unit encountered enemy small arms fire in Afghanistan’s Nangarhar Province.
De Alencar was assigned to 1st Battalion, 7th Special Forces Group (Airborne), Eglin Air Force Base, Florida.
Unexploded mortar round kills 4:
An Afghan official says a group of children were playing with an unexploded mortar round when it blew up, killing four of them.
Police spokesman Mafuz Akbari says the deaths took place Monday in a remote district controlled by the Taliban in the northern Kunduz province. He says another six children were wounded and brought to a hospital in the provincial capital.
Afghanistan is littered with unexploded munitions left over from decades of war, which along with roadside bombs kill or wound an estimated 140 people every month.