हिंदू थे शेख अबदुल्ला के पूर्वज, परदादा का नाम था बालमुकुंद कौल

श्रीनगर। मुस्लिम कांफ्रेंस (नेशनल कांफ्रेंस) के संस्थापक शेख अबदुल्ला कश्मीर को भारत में विलय से पहले एक मुस्लिम देश बनाना चाहते थे। शेख अबदुल्ला के पूर्वज हिंदू (कश्मीरी पंडित) थे। शेख अबदुल्ला ने अपनी आत्मकथा को जो किताबी रूप दिया है उसमें उन्होंने इस बारे विस्तार से बताया है।

            आजाद कश्मीर का सपना देखने वाले शेख अब्दुल्ला ने स्वयं अपनी आत्मकथा ‘आतिशे चीनार’ में स्वीकार किया है कि कश्मीरी मुसलमानों के पूर्वज हिंदू थे। उनके पूर्वज कश्मीरी पंडित थे और  परदादा का नाम बालमुकुंद कौल था। इसके बावजूद भारत के प्रति शेख अब्दुल्ला का रवैया भारत विरोधी कैसे हो गया यह बात समझ से परे है। शेख अबदुल्ला के पुत्र डा. फारुख अबदुल्ला स्वयं कई बार कश्मीर के बाहर दिए गए साक्षात्कार और भाषणों में अपने पूर्वजों के हिंदू होने का जिक्र कर चुके हैं। उन्हे कई बार मंदिरों में पूजा करते हुए भी देखा गया है।

काशी के बाद कश्मीर

नीलमत पुराण में कश्मीर किस तरह बसा, उसका उल्लेख है। कश्यप मुनि को इस भूमि का निर्माता माना जाता है। उनके पुत्र नील इस प्रदेश के पहले राजा थे। चौदहवीं सदी तक बौद्ध और शैव मत यहां पर बढ़ते गए। काशी के बाद कश्मीर को ज्ञान की नगरी के नाम से जाना जाता था।  जब अरबों की सिंध पर विजय हुई तो सिंध के राजा दाहिर के पुत्र राजकुमार जयसिंह ने कश्मीर में शरण ली थी। राजकुमार के साथ सीरिया निवासी उसका मित्र हमीम भी था। कश्मीर की धरती पर पाव रखने वाला पहला मुस्लिम यही था। अंतिम हिंदू शासिका कोटारानी के आत्म बलिदान के बाद पर्शिया से आए मुस्लिम मत प्रचारक शाहमीर ने राजकाज संभाला और यहीं से दारूल हरब को दारूल इस्लाम में तब्दील करने का सिलसिला चल पड़ा।


Original post found here:

 http://www.bhaskar.com/news/JK-JAM-hindu-ancestry-sheikh-abdullah-4821250-PHO.html

New cheque rules: 5 things to know

The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) recently changed cheque-rules to tackle the rise in cheque-related fraud cases. It asked banks to put preventive measures in place and follow them meticulously. It also issued some other guidelines in this regard. Here is what you need to know:

1) SMS alerts: The RBI asked banks to send an SMS alert to both payer and drawer when the cheque is received for clearing. Till now, SMS alerts were compulsory only for debit/credit card transactions. While dealing with suspicious or cheques of high value, banks have been asked to alert the customer by a phone call and obtain confirmation from both the parties involved in the transaction. The account holder’s bank branch must also be contacted.

2) Examination of cheques: Besides sending alerts, banks have been asked to examine cheques under UV lamp. This is applicable if the cheque amount goes over Rs 2 lakh. Also, a mechanism must be put in place to ensure multi-level checking of cheques for amount over Rs 5 lakh. Banks are also required to closely monitor how money is deposited or moved out from newly opened transaction accounts.

3) KYC compliance:  Whenever you open a new bank account, you are supposed to go through a process called Know Your Customer or KYC. This is a must. It ensures that the bank verifies information about you, thus limiting fraud cases. So, it goes without saying that the person writing the cheque will be compliant with KYC rules. The RBI now states that even the recipient should be KYC compliant.

4) CTS-2010 cheques: The RBI asked banks to ensure the use of 100% CTS-2010 compliant cheques. As part of the Cheque Truncation System (CTS), an electronic image of the cheque is transmitted to the cheque-writer’s bank branch through the clearing house, along with other relevant information. It helps eliminate the need for physical movement of the cheque for verification. Thus the scope for fraud is reduced.
Many times, even though the original cheques were held by the account holder, fraudsters enchased cheques with the same number. So, banks have been advised to take appropriate precautionary measures to ensure that confidential information like customer name, account number, signature, cheque serial numbers and other information are verified and not misused in any way.

5) Cheque-handling infrastructure: Among other preventive measures, RBI stated that high quality of equipment and personnel must be ensured for CTS-based clearing. Banks should not look at it as a mere mechanical process, but consider it as an important part of cheque-handling.

Original post found here :

https://in.finance.yahoo.com/news/new-cheque-rules--5-things-to-know-050356051.html

How China's shadowy agency is working to absorb Taiwan

TAIPEI/HONG KONG: Ever since a civil war split the two sides more than 60 years ago, China has viewed Taiwan as a renegade province that needs to be absorbed into the mainland. To that end, the legion of Taiwanese businessmen working in China is a beachhead.

In June, hundreds of those businessmen gathered in a hotel ballroom in the southern Chinese city of Shenzhen. They were there to toast the new head of a local Taiwan merchants' association. They sipped baijiu liquor and ate seafood as a troupe performed a traditional lion dance for good luck. An honored guest, senior Communist Party official Li Jiafan, stood to deliver congratulations and a message.

"I urge our Taiwanese friends to continue to work hard in your fields to contribute to the realization of the Chinese dream as soon as possible," said Li, using a nationalist slogan President Xi Jinping has popularized. "The Chinese dream is also the dream of the people on both sides of the Taiwan Strait — our dream of reunification."

Li, who ended his speech to beating drums and loud applause, is a department chief in the Shenzhen arm of the United Front Work Department, an organ of the Communist Party's Central Committee. Its mission: to spread China's influence by ultimately gaining control over a range of groups not affiliated with the party and that are often outside the mainland.

United Front documents reviewed by Reuters, including annual reports, instructional handbooks and internal newsletters, as well as interviews with Chinese and Taiwanese officials reveal the extent to which the agency is engaged in a concerted campaign to thwart any move toward greater independence by Taiwan and ultimately swallow up the self-ruled island of 23 million.

The United Front's 2013 annual work report for the Chinese province of Zhejiang, for instance, includes the number of Taiwanese living in the province, the number of businesses they run as well as an entry on background checks that have been conducted on the Taiwanese community in the province, an entrepreneurial hub near Shanghai.

The United Front hasn't confined itself to the mainland. It is targeting academics, students, war veterans, doctors and local leaders in Taiwan in an attempt to soften opposition to the Communist Party and ultimately build support for unification. The 2013 work report, reviewed by Reuters, includes details of a program to bring Taiwanese students and military veterans on visits to the mainland.

Influencing politics

Through the United Front and other Chinese state bodies like the Taiwan Affairs Office, which is responsible for implementing policies toward Taiwan on issues including trade and transport, Beijing has also tried to influence politics on the island, in part by helping mobilize Taiwanese businessmen on the mainland.

Many of them are heading back home this weekend to vote in mayoral elections that are being viewed as a barometer of support for Taiwan's ruling Nationalist Party, or Kuomintang (KMT), which favors closer ties with China than does the pro-independence Democratic Progressive Party (DPP). A large number of those businessmen, who a senior KMT source said will largely vote for the party, will be flying on deeply discounted airfares being offered by Chinese and Taiwanese airline companies.

"The goal is simple - peaceful unification," said a person with ties to the Chinese leadership in Beijing. ,Soft power, not armed force, is the strategy. "To attack the heart is the best. To attack a [walled] city is the worst," the source said, quoting Sun Tzu's "Art of War."

Questions sent by fax to the Beijing office of the United Front Work Department were not answered. The Chinese government's Taiwan Affairs Office referred Reuters to a statement on its website saying it does not comment on elections on "the island."

What's happening in Taiwan is part of a broader effort by Beijing to bolster its control over restive territories on its periphery.

The United Front has long been active in Hong Kong, which is ruled under the "one country, two systems" model that enshrines a wide range of personal freedoms for its residents and which China's leaders have proposed as a model for Taiwan. Reuters reported in July that United Front operations in Hong Kong had shifted from the backroom courting of academics and businessmen to the streets, where new groups of pro-Beijing agitators were attempting to silence critics of China.

"What the United Front is doing to Taiwan now is the same as what it has been doing in Hong Kong since the 1980s - a quiet, slow but extensive penetration," said Sonny Lo, a professor at the Hong Kong Institute of Education and author of a book on China's covert control of the city.

Unlike Hong Kong, Taiwan is a fully democratic entity. It has an army but does not have membership in the United Nations, and China has refused to rule out the use of force to gain control of the island.

Since the KMT won the presidential election in 2008, cross-Strait ties have been warmer than ever. More than 20 trade deals, including the establishment of the first direct flights between Taiwan and the mainland, have been inked. No trade agreements were signed under the previous DPP-led administration. Earlier this year, Chinese and Taiwanese officials held their first official meeting since 1949.

Taiwan's economy has become increasingly intertwined with China's. About 40 percent of Taiwan's exports are to China and some key sectors like technology have much of their manufacturing on the mainland. The world's biggest electronic components maker, Foxconn Technology Group ,, which assembles Apple Inc's iPhones, has many of its plants in China.

Taiwan presidential spokesperson Ma Weikuo said Taiwanese heading home to vote were exercising their right as citizens. "It is normal that Taiwanese businessmen living in Hong Kong, Macau, mainland China, Europe, Japan and other parts of the world want to return to Taiwan to vote," she said.

Original post found here:

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/world/china/How-Chinas-shadowy-agency-is-working-to-absorb-Taiwan/articleshow/45293845.cms

Suicide bomber kills 45 at volleyball match in Afghanistan

KABUL, Afghanistan: A suicide bomber blew himself up at a volleyball tournament in eastern Afghanistan on Sunday, killing at least 45 people in the country's deadliest terrorist attack this year, officials said.
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The bloodshed came just hours after Parliament approved agreements allowing US and NATO troops to remain in the country past the end of the year.

Dozens more were wounded, many critically, said Mokhlis Afghan, spokesman for the governor of Paktika province. He said the bomber was mingling with the large crowd at the sporting event in Yahyakhail district when he set off the explosives.

"There were too many people gathered in the one place to watch the game," Afghan said.

Naseeb Ahmad, a doctor at Sharan Hospital in Paktika's capital, said the hospital received about 80 wounded people, 20 of them children. Officials said people of all ages were watching the adult-league inter-district tournament.

Volleyball is a popular sport in Afghanistan, played across the country, and the attacker is likely to have targeted the event to ensure maximum casualties. It is also possible that the presence of local police in the crowd made it an attractive target, as security forces are regularly attacked by insurgents.

No one claimed responsibility, and the Taliban's spokesman could not be reached by telephone.

Children being treated at Paktika hospital after suicide attack in the Yahyakhail district of Paktika province east of Kabul, Afghanistan. (AP Photo)



Paktika, bordering Pakistan, is one of Afghanistan's most volatile regions, a place where Taliban and affiliated insurgent groups like the Haqqani network are waging an intensifying war against the government in Kabul.

Sunday's attack was characteristic of Haqqani operations, as the group regularly sends young men to carry out suicide attacks on high-profile targets.

Attacks that kill women and children cause particular outrage, and the Taliban have been known to avoid claiming responsibility or to blame deaths on security forces.





Earlier this year, a suicide bomber blew up a car packed with explosives near a busy market and a mosque in Paktika'sUrgun district. The death toll was originally thought to have been close to 90, but was later revised down to 43. That attack was, until Sunday, Afghanistan's worst for 2014.

Attacks across the country have escalated this year amid a contentious election and President Ashraf Ghani's inauguration in September. The insurgents use their attacks to make clear their opposition to Ghani's administration, as well as his support for a security agreement with the US, which he signed immediately after taking office.

Afghanistan's parliament approved the agreement on Sunday with the US and another with Nato allowing 12,000 international troops to remain in the country past the end of this year.

US President Barack Obama has approved an expanded combat mission authorizing American troops to engage Taliban fighters, not just al-Qaida terrorists. Obama's decision also means the US can provide air support when needed.

The decision to expand the military's authority does not affect the overall number of US troops who will remain in Afghanistan. Earlier this year, Obama ordered the American force be reduced to 9,800 by the end of this year, a figure expected to be cut in half by the end of 2015.

The troops were supposed to remain in a training and support capacity after ceding the leading role in the anti-insurgent war to Afghan security forces in the middle of last year. But the Afghans have suffered record casualties, stirring concerns that international troops are essential if the war is to be won.

Afghanistan's first deputy president, Abdul Rashid Dostum, welcomed Obama's decision, saying Sunday: "The United States knows that the Afghan army needs more equipment, that the army are being killed in Taliban attacks."

Obama wants all US troops to be out of Afghanistan by the end of 2016, as his presidency draws to a close.    

CORRECTED - Under Modi, Israel and India forge deeper business ties

By Tova Cohen and Ari Rabinovitch

At the UN General Assembly in New York last September, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu set aside time for a critical meeting. But it wasn't President Barack Obama he was keen to see. It was Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
Since Modi came to power in May, ties between Israel and India have been in overdrive, with the two signing a series of defence and technology deals that have underscored their burgeoning commercial and political relationship.
The same month as the UN meeting, Modi's cabinet cleared a long-delayed purchase of Israeli missiles for its navy. In October, India closed a $520 million deal to buy Israeli anti-tank missiles. And last week, a jointly developed aerial defence system passed a major trial, which India called a "milestone".
"There is great momentum in cooperation, on both the defence and economic sides," Naftali Bennett, Israel's economy minister and a member of Netanyahu's inner cabinet, told Reuters.
India is now the largest buyer of Israeli military equipment, while Israel is India's largest customer after Russia. In the first nine months of 2014, bilateral trade reached $3.4 billion, on target for a record this year.
While that may not be vast in global terms, it has helped push Asia to the brink of overtaking the United States as Israel's largest export market after the European Union.
India is steadily catching up with China as it buys more Israeli defence and cyber-security technology, an area where China is limited since the United States frowns on Israel dealing too freely with Beijing in defence matters.
The roots of the Israel relationship go back to 2006, when Modi was chief minister of Gujarat and visited the region to explore new ideas in irrigation, an area of Israeli expertise.
As a result, India started buying drip-feed technology, said Amnon Ofen, a friend of Modi's and chairman of NaanDanJain Irrigation, formed after India's Jain Irrigation acquired a firm created by two Israeli collective farms.
Under Modi's predecessor, Manmohan Singh, India kept its relationship with Israel under wraps, in part so as not to upset its Muslim minority, said C. Raja Mohan, head of strategic studies at the Observer Research Foundation in New Delhi.
"Cynics in Israel would point out that Delhi was treating Tel Aviv like a mistress - engage in private but refuse to be seen with in public," said Mohan. "The Modi government is having none of that."
The question is where the relationship goes from here. Strategically, Israel is glad to have a rising Asian power as an ally. But for both the focus is really on business.
Israel Ports Co. is partnering India's Cargo Motors to build a deepwater port in Gujarat, and Israel's TowerJazz is teaming up with India's Jaiprakash Associates and IBM with plans to build a $5.6 billion chip plant near Delhi.
At a security conference in Tel Aviv last week, executives from top Indian firms were shopping for systems to secure their pipelines, refineries and other infrastructure.
All the activity has lead to expectations that Israel and India will finalise a free trade agreement in the next year.

"That means trade will double or triple," said Anat Bernstein-Reich, who chairs the Israel-India Chamber of Commerce, an office hoping and preparing for a boom.

Original post found here

https://in.finance.yahoo.com/news/corrected-under-modi-israel-india-forge-deeper-business-152440329--finance.html

कश्मीर बदल रहा है,  और बदलेगा भी। इसकी पहली झलक शनिवार को किश्तवाड़ में देखने मिल गई। अब से कुछ महीने पहले जिस चौगान मैदान पर भारत विरोधी नारे तो लगते ही थे साथ ही अलगाववादियों का प्रमुख अड्डा भी यहीं मैदान हुआ करता था। जगह तो वही थी पर नजारा कुछ बदला हुआ था प्रधानमंत्री नरेन्द्र मोदी की सभा के दौरान यहां जमकर भारत माता की जय के नारे कश्मीरियों ने लगाए।