Typhoon kills more than 436 in southern Philippines

 http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/12/18/us-philippines-weather-idUSTRE7BG09G20111218?feedType=RSS&feedName=worldNews&utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+reuters%2FworldNews+%28News+%2F+US+%2F+International%29

By Erik De Castro

CAGAYAN DE ORO, Philippines | Sat Dec 17, 2011 10:30pm EST

(Reuters) - More than 400 people were killed and an unknown number were missing after a typhoon struck the southern Philippines, causing flash floods and landslides and driving tens of thousands from their homes.
In a text message to Reuters, Gwendolyn Pang, secretary-general of the Philippine National Red Cross (PNRC), said the death toll of 436 was expected to rise.
"Our death toll was based on the actual number of bodies that were brought to funeral homes in the two cities that were the hardest hit by the typhoon," Pang said, adding it was difficult to estimate how many were still unaccounted for.
Typhoon Washi, with winds gusting up to 90 kmh (56 mph), barreled into the resource-rich island of Mindanao late on Friday, bringing heavy rain that also grounded some domestic flights and left wide areas without power.
Emergency workers, soldiers and police were recovering more bodies - most covered in mud - washed ashore in nearby towns.
Pang said nearly 360 bodies had been found in the cities of Cagayan de Oro and Iligan and about 50 in four other southern provinces. The government's official death toll stood only at 131 people and nearly 270 missing.
Another 21 people drowned on the central island of Negros, the PNRC said.
Hundreds were also unaccounted for, most of them from a coastal village in Iligan. Houses were swept into the sea by floodwaters while people were sleeping inside late on Friday.
The Philippines social welfare department said about 100,000 people were displaced and brought to nearly three dozen
shelters in Iligan and Cagayan de Oro.
"WE RAN FOR OUR LIVES"
Army spokesman Colonel Leopoldo Galon said search and rescue operations would continue along the shorelines in Misamis Oriental and Lanao del Norte provinces.
"I can't explain how these things happened, entire villages were swept to the sea by flash floods," Galon said.
"I have not seen anything like this before. This could be worse than Ondoy," he said, referring to a 2009 storm that inundated the capital, Manila, killing hundreds of people.
Television pictures showed bodies encased in mud, cars piled on top of each other and wrecked homes. Helicopters and boats searched the sea for survivors and victims.
"We ran for our lives when we heard a loud whistle blow and was followed by a big bang," Michael Mabaylan, 38, a carpenter, told Reuters. He said his wife and five children were all safe.
Aid worker Crislyn Felisilda cited concern about children who had became separated from their families or lost their parents. "Many children are looking for their loved ones... (and children were) crying and staring into space."
Rosal Agacac, a 40-year-old mother, was begging authorities to help find her two children after their shanty was swept to the sea. "Please President Noynoy, help me," she cried, holding a candle at a spot where their house stood before the floods, referring to President Benigno Aquino.
Aquino met with cabinet members and disaster officials to assess conditions on the main southern island and ordered a review of disaster plans to avoid a repeat of the tragedy. He is due to inspect typhoon-hit areas after Christmas.
Rescue boats pulled at least 15 people from the sea, said another army spokesman, Lieutenant Colonel Randolph Cabangbang.
Iligan City Mayor Lawrence Cruz said many people were caught by surprise when water rose one meter (three feet) high in less
than an hour, forcing people onto roofs. "Most of them were already sleeping when floodwaters entered their homes. This is the worst flooding our city has experienced in years."
The national disaster agency said it could not estimate crop and property damage because emergency workers, including soldiers and police officers, were evacuating families and recovering casualties.
Six domestic flights run by Cebu Pacific were cancelled due to the rain and near-zero visibility in the southern and central
Philippines. Ferry services were also halted, stranding hundreds of people.
An average of 20 typhoons hit the Philippines every year.
(Writing by Manny Mogato)

Burning rage and disbelief - In one week, my kids have changed

HE LOST HIS WIFE Subhashish Chakraborty, whose wife Munmun (below) died in the fire, outside AMRI Hospitals, Dhakuria, on Friday morning. Picture by Sanjoy Chattopadhyaya Subhashish Chakraborty, 42, can still hear wife Munmun’s voice over the phone — 4.21am it was, he remembers precisely to a second. He can still relate to her sense of foreboding when she told him she would die if he didn’t come and save her. He can still feel his heart pounding as he sat in the speeding taxi that appeared to him slower than anything he had boarded before. He can still see his hand shaking as his thumb searched for Munmun’s number on his cellphone keypad. He can still feel his spirit sinking as her phone continued ringing. He can still recall her incessant coughing in that last call she took. He can still hear the gasps around him as they brought her down through a broken window, lifeless. For Subhashish, unemployed since a problem in his vocal cords ended his career in music six years ago, how 36-year-old Munmun died has been more difficult to accept than her death. The couple’s 11-year-old daughter Shivamrita, a student of Class V at South Point High School, has gone into a shell. Her brother Rishiraj, 2, thinks his mother is still in hospital nursing a hip injury. On Friday, The Telegraph accompanied Subhashish back to AMRI Hospitals in Dhakuria, outside which he stood reliving the tragedy and sharing the anger that will never die down. My mind was a void as I left AMRI with my wife’s body last Friday. Munmun had been lowered by a rope from the second floor a little while ago, yet I was unable to fathom the enormity of my loss. Today, returning here after a week, there is one dominant emotion within me — anger. My wife was murdered by people who flouted every rule in the book to maximise their profits. They took a chance with the lives of so many people by trying to put out the fire by themselves. It is unforgivable. Were they insane? I keep asking myself. I am told the directors have not yet been booked for murder (they have been charged with culpable homicide not amounting to murder). I can’t understand why. If this is not murder, what is? I had filed a complaint with Lake police station, mentioning how the hospital’s negligence had claimed so many lives, including Munmun’s. They accepted the complaint but didn’t give me an FIR number because a case had already been filed against the hospital by then. I will go to court and make sure the charge against the hospital is of murder, not anything else. Today is the first time I have set foot outside my home since that incident. For the past seven days, I have not been able to think of anything other than what I saw at AMRI. I had reached the hospital by taxi at 4.36am after receiving a call from my wife. I dialled her immediately after getting off the cab and was relieved when she took the call. But she was unable to speak properly. I could mostly hear her coughing. Every time I called back after that, the phone kept ringing. I know that my wife was alive till at least 4.36am. I am also sure the fire had started around 2am. So what were the hospital staff doing for two-and-a-half hours? Wasn’t that enough time to move her and the others to safety? My nephew Niladri Shekhar Chakraborti, a footballer, was able to climb up a fire brigade ladder and reach the second floor by breaking a window. He entered my wife’s ward along with some firemen around 6.45am. Forcing open the door, they found all three patients dead. Even the railings beside their beds hadn’t been lowered. They would have had to jump from their beds to escape, but how could anyone immobile do that? I soon have to start worrying about things that my wife used to take care of. I need a job desperately, but do not even know where she kept my education certificates. My son has become very irritable. His teacher has advised me to consult a child psychologist. My daughter hardly speaks. Munmun used to do theatre with the Sangbarta group and I would often visit her at rehearsals in Chetla, where she also ran a photo studio. This evening, I have to go there to attend a condolence meeting. As told to Rith Basu

http://www.telegraphindia.com/1111217/jsp/frontpage/story_14894372.jsp

Indian media’s muted response to Ishrat Jahan’s case

Indian media’s muted response to Ishrat Jahan’s case

FRIDAY, 16 DECEMBER 2011 12:12 INAM-UL-REHMAN

“Almost two weeks after the encounter that claimed Ishrat's life, along with those of Pune resident Javed Sheikh and two Pakistani nationals,” wrote India’s respected English newspaper, ‘The Hindu on June 27, 2004’, “it is still unclear just what motivated the young college student to join the ranks of the Lashkar.”

The reporter, considered close to privy sources of intelligence and police, wrote further in his report: “That she did so, in at least some peripheral form, seems probable. Evidence has emerged that Ishrat maintained telephone contact with Javed, and that codenames entered in her diary match those in a separate register maintained by her associate” (Praveen Swami: ‘Lashkar fishes in troubled waters’ The Hindu, June 27, 2004).

That the story was concocted and canards spread were finally shown in two investigations done.

On 21 November 2011, the Special Investigation Team, constituted by the Gujarat High Court, probing the 2004 Ishrat Jehan murder case, concluded that the college girl was killed in a fake encounter.

Prior to this report, a judicial inquiry by metropolitan magistrate S P Tamang also concluded the same in his report submitted on 7 September 2009.

Her mother, Shamina, from the beginning asserted that Ishrat was murdered in a fake encounter by the Detention of Crime Branch, of Ahmadabad police in June, 2004. Following this, the Court ordered a judicial probe into the incident.

The story

On 15 June 2004, Ishrat and three others — Javed Ghulam Sheikh alias Pranesh Kumar Pillai, Amjad Ali alias Rajkumar Akbar Ali Rana and Jisan Johar Abdul Gani — were gunned down by the Gujarat police who claimed they were linked to Lashkar-e-Toiba militant outfit and were planning to ‘kill Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi’. The team was led by then Deputy Commissioner of Police, Dhananjay Vanzara, currently in jail for involvement in the murder of Sohrabuddin Sheikh.

“Little was known about the duo as no one claimed their bodies. But Monday's order established they were Indians, not Pakistanis as the Gujarat cops had claimed.” (TOI, Murdered In Cold Blood, 8 Sept 2009)

“The 2004 police encounter in which Mumbra college girl Ishrat Jahan and three others were gunned down in Ahmedabad was fake and executed in cold blood,” noted the judicial probe in its report on September 7, 2009. The panel was appointed by the Gujarat HC to investigate the encounter. The then Home Secretary of India, G K Pillai had stated that Ishrat was working in the sleeper module of LeT.

However, Magistrate S P Tamang, conducting the probe, said the four victims had no links to Lashkar. The report said the encounter was “planned” and executed “mercilessly” — the victims were shot from a “close range”. The judicial probe has stated that the senior police officers, including the then City Police Commissioner, K R Kaushik, planned the encounter to impress Modi, get promotion and secure their positions.

How Indian media covered it then

The media in India, which claims itself free from the partisan view, at that time gleefully accepted the police version. No one from the media questioned that out of supposed 42 bullets fired by the “terrorists”: Why no policemen were injured. Why no bullet holes were found in the police jeep. “No bullet marks or damages were observed on the road or the divider,” noted the People’s Union for Civil Liberties in its report. The media even remained silent why didn’t the “terrorists” tried to run?

“While members of the group,” wrote Mr Swami, who is considered close to privy sources of intelligence and police, in the sister publication of The Hindu, ‘Frontline’ a weekly newsmagazine, “did indeed plan a suicide-squad attack on Hindu fundamentalist leaders, the mission was monitored by Indian intelligence at each stage, and infiltrated from its outset. It was an intelligence coup: a fiction conceived by an Intelligence Bureau (I.B.) mole in the Lashkar, and authored by his handlers.” (The wages of hate”, July 03 – 16).

In the first report, he said that the assassinators were planning to kill only Gujarat Chief Minister, Narendra Modi, however, in this news report he changed the tone.

The same writer two years later again changed his stance. On 2 June 2006, ‘The Hindu’ carried a news report by the same writer, “Terror strike on RSS headquarters foiled” in which he goes on to add that the same four members were actually, “Seeking to assassinate the former Union Home Minister, L K Advani, and bomb the Bombay Stock Exchange.”

Two years further the same newsman in the daily ‘The Hindu’ wrote: “In June 2004, the LeT despatched two Pakistani nationals from Jammu and Kashmir to execute a fidayeen attack in Gujarat. Jishan Johar of Gujranwala in Pakistan and Amjad Ali Rana, who hailed form Sargodha, were killed in a along with SIMI activist Javed Sheikh and his friend, Ishrat Jehan Raza” (Ahmedabad blasts: the usual suspects 01 August 2008). Throughout these seven years, the media verdict was against the slain four people. Unnamed sources were used in the stories. The so-called analytical stories on them were not without bias or deliberate distortions. The Indian media blindly followed the State narrative and didn’t questioned the police version.

Muted response to SIT report

Now as the SIT report came out the Indian media didn’t give it much coverage. The prime news gathering agency of India, PTI, in his 21 November report, while describing the finding of  SIT termed it as ‘setback’ to Gujarat government! The premier satellite English news channel of India—NDTV was busy inviting ‘The Dirty Picture’ actor for various shows. Even, Editor, Indian Express, Shekhar Gupta in his ‘Walk the Talk’ show shoed away the Ishrat Jahan topic and got showy with the producer of ‘The Dirty Picture’.

There generally was muted response in print media. The daily English newspaper, ‘The Hindu’ published a banal editorially on Nov 24. Unlike the sustained reportage in the same newspaper by a particular reporter to tarnish the image of 19-year-old lady, the Hindu’s editorial was spineless. It took ‘Indian Express’ nearly two weeks to realise that SIT report is out and what did it came up with? A cautious editorial on the same report on Dec 03.

In the teenage Arushi murder case the Indian media didn’t buy the police version and in fact started parallel investigations. Same happened with the model Jessica Lal case. Both Arushi and Jessica had two things going for them: Both belonged to majority community and came from upper middle class family. Ishrat had no such tag and like millions of Indian Muslims, was vulnerable.

No newsmen thought it fit to question police verdict.  The orphan daughter ran tuition classes and undertook embroidery jobs in Mumbra to support the family income. How would a girl, who migrated from Bihar to Mumbai and was busy with many jobs throughout the day, find time to be a member of LeT? The Indian media even choose to remain silent on how Indian citizens were passed as Pakistani nationals. In fact the Indian media had delivered their verdict against Ishrat and the other three. Her fault was that she didn’t belong to ‘shining’ middle class of India. Worse, she was Muslim who was aspiring to shine in the ‘rising India’. The Muslims cannot do that. They got to die in gutters. A population of 200 million Muslims in India is a dangerous sign. Half a century ago, much less then in numbers, these four worded Muslims partitioned India. They are a nation and they must be oppressed so much that they loath themselves why they were born in India. After all, the majority community of India in 1990s coined the slogan: Babar ki santan: jao Pakistan ya Kabristan.

(Inam-ul-Rehman is a journalist based in Kashmir)

http://www.kashmirdispatch.com/others/16127367-kashmir-indian-medias-muted-response-to-ishrat-jahans-case.htm

Russia to provide additional 42 Sukhoi fighters to India

An additional 42 Sukhoi frontline fighters will be provided to India by Russia under an agreement inked between the two sides during Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's visit here.
With this pact, the total number of acquired or contracted aircraft by India in various stages of manufacture of the frontline Su-30 MKI fighters would increase to 272.
The agreement for the upgraded Sukhois was signed by Defence Secretary Shashi Kant Sharma and Russian Federal Service for Military-Technical Cooperation Director M A Dmitriev in the presence of Prime Minister Singh and President Dmitry Medvedev after their talks at the 12th annual Indo-Russian Summit at the Kremlin yesterday.
The pact, which was among the five agreements initialled between the two countries, came against the backdrop of a crash of an Indian Air Force's Sukhoi-30 near Pune.
The mishap, in which the two pilots ejected safely, raised some technical questions and also led to the grounding of the entire fleet of 120 planes pending investigations.
An Inter-Governmental Agreement (IGA) and a general contract were signed in 2000 for the manufacture of 140 Su-30 MKI aircraft by HAL. A 2007 protocol envisaged manufacture of a further 40 aircraft.
Earlier, 50 Su-30 aircraft were purchased in phases prior to signing of IGA and deliveries started in the late 90s.
The latest version is expected to include a new cockpit, an upgraded radar and certain stealth features to avoid radar detection.
Significantly, the upgraded Sukhoi-30 MKIs will be able to carry a heavier weapons load, especially the airborne version of the Brahmos cruise missile.
The first delivery of the upgraded Sukhois is expected in 2014 and the last by 2018
http://www.dnaindia.com/india/report_russia-to-provide-additional-42-sukhoi-fighters-to-india_1626984