KATHMANDU, 08 August 2021, (TON): The government has been working to provide land ownership to landless people by removing procedural, legal and technical shortcomings that surfaced in the dissolved land-related problem solving commission.

Minister for Home Affairs Bal Krishna Khand said "there were some procedural, legal and technical drawbacks on the commission formed by erstwhile government. We want to improve the process to transfer land ownership to the landless squatters."

He further said "the government has taken the issue seriously so that those entitled are not left behind. The government wishes that the problem of landless squatters will be genuinely resolved".

The Home Minister pledged to address the concerns of the citizens in a constitutional and procedural manner as the main law of the land has guaranteed these issues as fundamental rights of landless and Dalit.

"We request all the stakeholders that no one should be impatient to the agenda of resolving the problem related to landless. It should not be made a subject of politicization."

He added that the Constitution itself has prepared a base for arranging land and shelter once for landless and Dalit people as well as making arrangements of shelter to all those needy.

NAYPYITAW, 08 August 2021, (TON): The Brunei diplomat appointed by a Southeast Asian regional bloc as its special envoy to Myanmar yesterday said “he should be given full access to all parties when he visits the strife-torn country, where the military overthrew an elected government.”

Speaking days after his appointment by the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean), Erywan Yusof gave no date for his visit to Myanmar, whose civilian leader Aung San Suu Kyi and other officials have been detained since the Feb. 1 coup.

LONDON, 08 August 2021, (TON): Britain has warned all UK nationals in Afghanistan to leave the country immediately due to the "worsening security situation" as fighting intensifies.

The Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office updated its website to advise against all travel to Afghanistan.

It said "all British nationals in Afghanistan are advised to leave now by commercial means. If you are still in Afghanistan, you are advised to leave now by commercial means because of the worsening security situation."

The foreign office warned Britons not to rely on it for emergency evacuation, saying the assistance it could provide was extremely limited.

The warning comes after the Taliban launched a major offensive to coincide with the withdrawal of US-led foreign forces after nearly two decades of conflict.

The foreign office said "Terrorists are very likely to try to carry out attacks in Afghanistan. Specific methods of attack are evolving and increasing in sophistication."

The Taliban now control vast swathes of rural Afghanistan and are challenging government forces in several cities, including Herat, near the western border with Iran, and Lashkar Gah and Kandahar in the south.

The militants captured their first provincial capital since stepping up their offensive in May.

 KABUL, 08 August 2021, (TON): The Taliban has captured Sheberghan city in Jawzjan, the second Afghan provincial capital to fall to the armed group in less than 24 hours.

The deputy governor of Sheberghan said that government forces and officials had retreated to the airport on the outskirts of the northern Afghan city, where they were preparing to defend themselves.

Qader Malia told media “the city has unfortunately fallen completely,”

“The government forces and officials have retreated to the airport.” Provincial councillor Bismillah Sahil said the Taliban fighters had taken over key buildings such as the governor’s office, the police headquarters and the central prison in the city.

However, the pro-government forces were still holding some areas inside the city such as the airport and an army brigade, according to Mohammad Karim Jawzjani, a parliamentarian who represents Jawzjan. The city is home to notorious strongman Abdul Rashid Dostum, who only returned to Afghanistan this week after medical treatment in Turkey.

Dostum has overseen one of the largest militias in the north, which garnered a fearsome reputation in its fight against the Taliban in the 1990s – along with accusations that his forces massacred thousands of prisoners of war.

The Taliban has gained vast parts of rural Afghanistan since launching a series of offensives in May to coincide with the start of the final withdrawal of foreign troops.

A rout or retreat of Dostum’s fighters would dent the Kabul government’s recent hopes that armed groups could help bolster the country’s overstretched military. On Friday, Zaranj city in Nimroz fell to the Taliban “without a fight”, according to its deputy governor, becoming the first provincial capital to be taken by the armed group.

The Taliban is saying they have control of all the main government buildings, the governor’s compound, of the police and intelligence headquarters.

ISLAMABAD, 08 August 2021, (TON): Pakistan welcomed the UN's reiteration that its position on Indian occupied Kashmir remained unchanged and it continued to see the valley as disputed territory, according to a statement issued by the Foreign Office (FO).

The statement came days after UN Secretary General Spokesperson Stephane Dujarric clarified during a news briefing in New York that the UN's "position on Kashmir is well established and has not changed".

The clarification followed a claim by India’s UN Ambassador TS Tirmurti that the disputed state was now an integral part of India.

Appreciating the UN's stance, the FO, in a statement, said “Pakistan welcomes the reiteration of the position of UN on the Jammu and Kashmir dispute by the spokesperson of the UN secretary-general. The statement reaffirms that [the] UN position on the Jammu and Kashmir dispute is well-established and has not changed."

The FO appreciated the timing of the UN statement, which coincided with the completion of two years of "India’s illegal and unilateral actions of August 5, 2019 in the Indian Illegally Occupied Jammu and Kashmir (IIOJK)."

On August 5, 2019, India's ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) had revoke occupied Kashmir's special status by repealing Article 370 of the constitution. The move allowed people from the rest of India to have the right to acquire property in occupied Kashmir and settle there permanently.

NEW DELHI, 08 August 2021, (TON):  Indian government said that India and China have pulled back troops from a flashpoint zone on their disputed border where they fought a deadly battle last year.

The world’s two most populous nations had poured tens of thousands of extra troops into the high-altitude and disputed Ladakh region after the clash last year.

But the Indian Army said that following talks, rival troops in the Gogra area had moved back in a “phased, coordinated and verified manner” over the last two days.

The statement said “the troops in this area have been in a face-off situation since May last year,”

Indian and Chinese troops fought a hand-to-hand battle in the nearby Galwan valley on June 15 last year that left at least 20 Indians and an unspecified number of Chinese personnel dead.

The increased tensions caused a nosedive in relations between the countries.

India and China, who fought a full-scale border war in 1962, have long accused each other of trying to take territory along their unofficial border known as the Line of Actual Control (LAC).

While sending in the huge reinforcements, the two countries have held multiple rounds of military and diplomatic talks. The last talks were held last Saturday.

The Indian Army said “all temporary structures set up in the Gogra area by both sides had been dismantled.”

ISLAMABAD, 08 August 2021, (TON): The United Nations Security Council (UNSC) president for the month of August, for denying Pakistan an opportunity to address the council as a neighbouring country with a direct stake in peace in Afghanistan.

The council had convened an emergency meeting to discuss rising violence in Afghanistan. The meeting was called after Afghan Foreign Minister Haneef Atmar spoke to India’s External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar in the wake of Taliban’s assault on major cities and an attack on the residence of Defence Minister Bismillah Mohammadi in Kabul.

“We made a formal request for participation but it was denied,” Pakistan's ambassador to the UN Munir Akram told a press conference in New York hours after the UNSC discussed the situation in the war-torn country.

“Obviously, we do not expect fairness from the Indian presidency for Pakistan.”

Pakistan's UN envoy also strongly deplored allegations made by the Afghan and Indian diplomats that terrorists use Pakistan’s territory as a safe haven. He said that the country’s border with Afghanistan had been fenced and there was no free flow of people.

Akram said “we would never allow our soil to be used to destabilise Afghanistan and expect the same from Afghanistan.”

ISLAMABAD, 07 August 2021, (TON): According to a statement issued by the PAF spokesperson “a Pakistan Air Force (PAF) fighter trainer aircraft crashed near Attock during a routine training mission on Friday.”

The spokesperson said both the pilots ejected from the jet successfully and no loss of life or property was reported on the ground.

He added "a Board of Inquiry has been ordered to investigate the cause of the accident."

At least five similar incidents were reported last year, with four PAF jets crashing during training missions and one while rehearsing for the March 23 parade.

The first incident had taken place in January 2020, when an aircraft of the PAF had crashed while on a routine operational training mission near Mianwali. Both pilots, Squadron Leader Haris bin Khalid and Flying Officer Ibaadur Rehman, aboard the PAF FT-7 aircraft had lost their lives in the crash.

It was followed by another accident in February when a PAF Mirage aircraft crashed while on a routine operational training mission near Shorkot city in Punjab. A statement issued by the PAF spokesperson at the time had said the pilot safely ejected and no loss of life or property had been reported on the ground.

A PAF trainer aircraft had crashed the same month while on a routine training mission near Takht Bhai in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa's Mardan district. The pilot had been ejected safely before the crash.

ATHENS, 07 August 2021, (TON):  Thousands left their homes near the Greek capital, which is cloaked in acrid smoke, and 600 fled Evia by boat.

Health officials said “a man was killed by a falling electricity pylon near Athens.”

Firefighters from France, Switzerland, Sweden, Cyprus and Romania have been deployed to assist Greece.

Gale-force winds are forecast to fan the many blazes.

Residents of Marathon, north-east of Athens, were told to head to the coast on Friday as wildfires spread along several fronts.

Dozens of homes have been destroyed or damaged, and several dozen injured people are in hospital.

Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis said "if some people still doubt if climate change is real, let them come and see the intensity of phenomena here."

ADDIS ABABA, 07 August 2021, (TON): From time to time, a body floating down the river separating Ethiopia’s troubled Tigray region from Sudan was a silent reminder of a war conducted in the shadows. But in recent days, the corpses became a flow.

Bloated, drained of color from their journey, the bodies were often mutilated, Genitals severed, eyes gouged, a missing limb. The Sudanese fishermen who spotted them, and the refugees from Tigray who helped pull them to shore, found many corpses’ hands bound. Some of them had been shot.

The Associated Press reported dozens of bodies floating down the Tekeze River earlier this week and saw six of the graves on Wednesday, marking the first time any reporters could reach the scene. Doctors who saw the bodies said one was tattooed with a common name in the Tigrinya language and others had the facial markings common among Tigrayans, raising fresh alarm about atrocities in the least-known area of the Tigray war.

Garey Youhanis said “they are from Tigray, a Tigrayan who helped bury several bodies found on Sunday. With a piece of red cord, he demonstrated how their hands were tied behind their backs. He squatted on the rock-strewn shore, crossed himself and prayed.

The deaths are the latest massacre in a nine-month war that has killed thousands of civilians and is now spilling into other regions of Ethiopia, Africa’s second-most populous country and the anchor of the often-volatile Horn of Africa.