A view of Katchatheevu in Sri Lanka.
| Photo Credit: L. BalachandarL

Government to record parents’ religion to register births

When registering the birth of a child, parents will now be required to separately record the religion of both the child’s father and mother, according to Model Rules drafted by the Union Ministry of Home Affairs. These Rules will have to be adopted and notified by State governments before they are implemented.

Will build presence in the South: Nitin Gadkari

The Congress is synonymous with corruption and scandals, while the BJP epitomises development, administration and good governance, Union Minister Nitin Gadkari said.

In an interview with The Hindu, Mr. Gadkari said the BJP remains united in its ideological commitment, with no discord between the party and the RSS.

No need for talks with India on ‘resolved’ Katchatheevu issue, says Sri Lankan Foreign Minister

Sri Lanka sees no reason for re-opening talks on Katchatheevu that India gave up 50 years ago, Sri Lanka’s Foreign Minister Ali Sabry has said, in the first official reaction yet to the recent remarks of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar on the island.

India urges Israel to ensure safety and well-being of Indian workers

India has urged Israel to ensure the safety and security of Indian citizens who are being flown to the conflict-hit nation under a government-to-government (G2G) agreement to work as blue-collar workers, Ministry of External Affairs spokesperson Randhir Jaiswal said on April 4.

Biden tells Netanyahu that U.S. support depends on protecting Gaza civilians

President Joe Biden warned Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on April 4 that U.S. policy on Israel depends on the protection of civilians in Gaza, in his strongest hint yet of possible conditions on military aid after an Israeli strike killed seven aid workers.

Pappu Yadav files nomination from Purnea as Independent

Former MP Rajesh Ranjan, alias Pappu Yadav, filed his nomination papers from Bihar’s Purnea Lok Sabha seat on Thursday as an Independent candidate.

His move comes days after the Congress denied him ticket for the seat. He had merged his Jan Adhikar Party (Loktantrik) with the Congress in March reportedly on the sole condition that the latter would be field him from Purnea. However, the seat was allotted to the Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) under the seat-sharing arrangement of the grand alliance. The RJD-led Mahagathbandhan comprises the Congress and the Left parties.

Sandeshkhali violence | ‘Highly shameful’ even if only 1% of claims true: Calcutta HC to Bengal govt.

Observing that it would be “highly shameful” if even one percent of the allegations of sexual assault in Sandeshkhali were found to be true, the Calcutta High Court on April 4 said that West Bengal’s image as the safest State for women will fall.

No sanctions against India for purchasing, refining Russian oil: U.S. Treasury officials

Striking a conciliatory note on India’s imports of Russian oil, U.S. Treasury department officials visiting Delhi said on April 4 that the aim of U.S. sanctions and the oil “price cap” was not to limit the purchase of Russian ‘Ural’ oil, but to limit the revenues made by the “Kremlin”.

CPI(M) promises law on hate speech, scrapping of CAA

Terming the huge increase in unemployment the biggest failure of the Modi government, the CPI(M), in its manifesto released on Thursday at the party headquarters in Delhi, called for inclusion of “right to work” as a constitutional right.

Median age for cancer diagnosis lower in India, says study

The median age for cancer diagnosis in India is lower when compared to the U.S., U.K., and China, said a report released by Apollo Hospitals. According to the hospital’s data, the average age of diagnosis of breast cancer in India is 52 against 63 in the U.S. and UK, while for lung cancer it is 59 years as opposed to around 70 in the West.

IPL-17, GT vs PBKS | Shashank’s swashbuckling knock helps PBKS pips GT in a thriller

In last December’s IPL auction, Punjab Kings bought Shashank Singh under confusing circumstances. There were two Shashanks in the pool and for a fleeting moment, PBKS thought it had bought the wrong player, tried to take back the bid before accepting him as one of its own.

Palestinians line up for a free meal in Rafah, Gaza Strip.
| Photo Credit: Reuters

It’s not just Israeli bombs that have killed children in war-ravaged Gaza — now some are dying of hunger.

Officials have been warning for months that Israel’s siege and offensive were pushing the Palestinian territory into famine.

Hunger is most acute in northern Gaza, which has been isolated by Israeli forces and has suffered long cutoffs of food supplies. At least 20 people have died from malnutrition and dehydration at the north’s Kamal Adwan and Shifa hospitals, according to the Health Ministry. Most of the dead are children.

Particularly vulnerable children are also beginning to succumb in the south, where access to aid is more regular.

At the Emirati Hospital in Rafah, 16 premature babies have died of malnutrition-related causes over the past five weeks, one of the senior doctors said.

“The child deaths we feared are here,” Adele Khodr, UNICEF’s Middle East chief, said in a statement earlier this week.

Israel’s bombardment and ground assaults have already wreaked a high toll among children, who along with women make up three-quarters of the more than 30,800 Palestinians killed, according to the Gaza Health Ministry.

Malnutrition is generally slow to bring death, striking children and the elderly first. Underfed mothers have difficulty breastfeeding children. Diarrheal diseases, rampant in Gaza due to lack of clean water and sanitation, leave many unable to retain any of the calories they ingest, said Anuradha Narayan, a UNICEF child nutrition expert. Malnutrition weakens immune systems, sometimes leading to death from other diseases.

Israel largely shut off entry of food, water, medicine and other supplies after launching its assault on Gaza following Hamas’ October 7 attack on southern Israel. It has allowed only a trickle of aid trucks through two crossings in the south.

Israel has blamed the burgeoning hunger in Gaza on U.N. agencies, saying they fail to distribute supplies piling up at Gaza crossings. UNRWA, the largest U.N. agency in Gaza, says Israel restricts some goods and imposes cumbersome inspections that slow entry.

U.N. officials said aids are snatched off trucks by hungry Palestinians on route to drop-off points.

With alarm growing, Israel bent to the U.S. and international pressure, saying this week it will open crossings for aid directly into northern Gaza and allow sea shipments.

Conditions in the north, largely under Israeli control for months, have become desperate.

Meat, milk, vegetables and fruit are nearly impossible to find, said the residents. The few items in shops are random and sold at hugely inflated prices.

Most people eat a weed that crops up in empty lots, known as “khubaiza.” Fatima Shaheen, a 70-year-old who lives with her two sons and their children in northern Gaza, said boiled khubaiza is their main meal, and her family has also ground up food meant for rabbits to use as flour.

“We are dying for a piece of bread,” she said.

Helping hand: Omar Abu Kuwaik with his aunt, Maha Abu Kuwaik, at Shriners Children’s Hospital in Philadelphia on February 28, 2024.
| Photo Credit: AP

Omar Abu Kuwaik is far from his home in Gaza. The four-year-old’s parents and sister were killed by an Israeli airstrike, when he lost part of his arm.

He’s one of the ‘lucky’ ones.

Through the efforts of family and strangers, Omar was brought out of Gaza and to the U.S., where he received treatment, including a prosthetic arm. He spent his days in a house run by a medical charity in New York City, accompanied by his aunt.

It was a small measure of grace in a sea of turmoil for him and his aunt, Maha Abu Kuwaik, as they looked to an uncertain future. The grief and despair for those still trapped in Gaza is never far away.

Ms. Abu Kuwaik is glad she could do this for her beloved brother’s son, whom she now considers her fourth child.

Difficult choice

But it was a terrible choice. Going with Omar meant leaving her husband and three teenage children behind in a sprawling tent camp in Gaza’s southernmost city of Rafah. With Israel carrying out strikes in areas where it told civilians to take shelter, including Rafah, Ms. Abu Kuwaik knows she might never see her family again.

“My kids love Omar so much,” she said. “They told me, ‘We are not children anymore. Go, let Omar get treated. It’s what is best for him. It’s his only chance.’” Omar was an outgoing boy, she said, and he is clever like his late father, an engineer. Now he is often withdrawn and breaks into tears easily. Ask Omar a question, and he covers his ears with his right hand and the stump of his left arm, declaring, “I don’t want to talk.”

“Kindergarten was nice,” he eventually admits, “and I was happy on the first day.” He started school just weeks before the war. But he does not want to go to kindergarten anymore. He is afraid to leave his aunt’s side.

Flying to New York may have given him a new dream, though. “When I grow up, I want to be pilot,” Omar said, “so I can bring people places.”

Two weeks into the war, Omar and Ms. Abu Kuwaik narrowly escaped death. The two families evacuated their Gaza City apartments just before Israeli airstrikes flattened the buildings.

With only the clothes on their backs, the families split up to stay with different relatives.

On December 6, two Israeli airstrikes slammed into Omar’s grandparents’ home in the Nuseirat refugee camp. The explosion peeled the skin from his face. His left arm could not be saved below the elbow. He had burns on his leg and torso. His parents, six-year-old sister, grandparents, two aunts and a cousin were killed.

‘Anywhere is better’

Omar was pinned beneath the rubble. Rescuers dug until they found his little body, still warm, bleeding but somehow alive. “Our view was, anywhere is better for him than being in Gaza,” said Adib Chouiki, vice president of Rahma Worldwide, a U.S.-based charity, who heard about Omar from the group’s team in Gaza.

Israel and Egypt tightly restrict movement of people out of Gaza, allowing just a few hundred to exit each day, mostly those with foreign citizenship. The World Health Organization says 2,293 patients — 1,498 wounded and 795 ill — have left Gaza for medical treatment alongside 1,625 companions. Yet roughly 8,000 patients remain on a waiting list to go abroad, according to the UN refugee agency.

Mr. Chouiki began reaching out to contacts in the Palestinian, Israeli and Egyptian governments. He got new passports for Omar and Ms. Abu Kuwaik, and Israeli security clearance for them to travel to Egypt. An ambulance brought them to the border, where an Egyptian ambulance whisked them across the Sinai desert.

Inside an Egyptian military hospital, Omar and his aunt waited for weeks until U.S. Customs and Border Protection gave them the green light to fly to New York on January 17.

At Shriners Children’s Hospital in Philadelphia, Omar had skin graft surgery for the burn on his leg. He was eager to get his new prosthetic arm on Wednesday, smiling mischievously as he reached out to touch it. “My arm is nice.”

Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi during an interview with the Qatari state-owned news television network Al-Jazeera in Tehran on October 28, 2023.
| Photo Credit: AFP

Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi on Sunday said Israel’s ongoing bombardment of Gaza “may force everyone” to act in the latest warning issued by the Islamic republic since the start of the Israel-Hamas conflict.

Israel has been intensifying strikes on the tiny Palestinian territory since Hamas gunmen stormed across the border on October 7 and, according to Israeli officials, killed more than 1,400 people, most of them civilians.

Since then, more than 8,000 people have been killed, half of them children, according to the Health Ministry in Hamas-run Gaza, an impoverished strip of land which is home to 2.4 million people.

“The crimes of the Zionist regime have crossed the red lines, and this may force everyone to take action,” Mr. Raisi said on X, formerly Twitter, on Sunday.

“Washington asks us to not do anything, but they keep giving widespread support to Israel,” he said.

“The U.S. sent messages to the Axis of Resistance but received a clear response on the battlefield,” he said, using a term often used by Iranian officials to refer to the Islamic republic and its allies like Lebanon’s Hezbollah, Yemen’s Huthis and other Shiite forces in Iraq and Syria.

Although it was not immediately clear what he was referring to, there have been a string of attacks on U.S. forces in Iraq and Syria as well as increasing exchanges of fire between Hezbollah and Israeli forces on the Lebanon border since the Gaza conflict began.

Iran, which financially and militarily backs Hamas, hailed the October 7 attacks as a “success”.

But it has insisted it was not involved in the onslaught, during which 230 people were also taken hostage, according to Israeli authorities.

“Iran considers it its duty to support the resistance groups, but … the resistance groups are independent in their opinion, decision, and action,” the Iranian president said in an interview with Al Jazeera on Saturday, according to excerpts released by state news agency IRNA.

“The United States knows very well our current capabilities and knows that they are impossible to overcome,” he said.