Many feared dead in gun attack on tourists in Indian-administered Kashmir

Many feared dead in gun attack on tourists in Indian-administered Kashmir
An Indian paramilitary personnel stands guard following an attack by a gunman near Pahalgam, south of Srinagar, on April 22, 2025. (AFP)
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Updated 22 April 2025
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Many feared dead in gun attack on tourists in Indian-administered Kashmir

Many feared dead in gun attack on tourists in Indian-administered Kashmir
  • Initial reports say shots fired at mostly Indian tourists visiting Baisaran meadow
  • Attack much larger than anything directed at civilians in recent years, says official

SRINAGAR, India: Many people are feared to have died after gunmen indiscriminately fired at tourists in Indian-controlled Kashmir on Tuesday, officials said.

Police have described the incident as a “terror attack” and blamed militants fighting against Indian rule.

“This attack is much larger than anything we’ve seen directed at civilians in recent years,” Omar Abdullah, the region’s top elected official, wrote on social media.

“The death toll is still being ascertained so I don’t want to get into those details,” he said.

Initial reports said shots were fired at mostly Indian tourists visiting Baisaran meadow, some 5 kilometers (3 miles) from the disputed region’s resort town of Pahalgam.

Police and officials said tourists with gunshot wounds were evacuated to local hospitals.

The scene of the attack was cordoned off as police launched an operation to track down the attackers.

India’s home minister, Amit Shah, is heading to Srinagar, the main city in Indian-controlled Kashmir, where he said he would review the situation. Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who is on an official visit in Saudi Arabia, has been briefed about the incident, Shah said.

“We will come down heavily on the perpetrators with the harshest consequences,” Shah wrote in a post on the X social media platform.

Mirwaiz Umar Farooq, a key Kashmiri resistance leader, condemned what he described as a “cowardly attack on tourists.”

“Such violence is unacceptable and against the ethos of Kashmir which welcomes visitors with love and warmth. Condemn it strongly,” he wrote on X.

The attack coincided with the visit to India of US Vice President JD Vance, who is on a largely personal four-day visit.

The meadow in Pahalgam is a popular sightseeing destination, surrounded by snow-capped mountains and dotted with pine forests. It is visited by hundreds of tourists every day.

Nuclear-armed rivals India and Pakistan each administer part of Kashmir, but both claim the territory in its entirety.

Tuesday’s attack seems to be a major shift in the regional conflict where tourists for many years have largely been spared from violence despite a spate of targeted killings of Hindus, including immigrant workers from Indian states, after New Delhi ended the region’s semi-autonomy in 2019 and drastically curbed dissent, civil liberties and media freedoms.

Tensions have been simmering ever since as India has intensified its counterinsurgency operations.

The region, known for rolling Himalayan foothills, exquisitely decorated houseboats and pristine meadows, has also become a major domestic tourist destination, with hotels booked out for months. Kashmir has also drawn millions of visitors, who enjoy a strange peace kept by ubiquitous security checkpoints, armored vehicles and patrolling soldiers.

Although violence has ebbed in recent times in Kashmir Valley, the heart of anti-India rebellion, fighting between government forces and rebels has largely shifted to remote areas of Jammu region including Rajouri, Poonch and Kathua, where Indian troops have faced deadly attacks.

Militants in the Indian-controlled portion of Kashmir have been fighting New Delhi’s rule since 1989. Many Muslim Kashmiris support the rebels’ goal of uniting the territory, either under Pakistani rule or as an independent country.

India insists the Kashmir militancy is Pakistan-sponsored “terrorism.” Pakistan denies the charge, and many Kashmiris consider it a legitimate freedom struggle. Tens of thousands of civilians, rebels and government forces have been killed in the conflict.


Trump says will double steel, aluminum tariffs to 50 percent

Trump says will double steel, aluminum tariffs to 50 percent
Updated 14 sec ago
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Trump says will double steel, aluminum tariffs to 50 percent

Trump says will double steel, aluminum tariffs to 50 percent

WEST MIFFLIN, US: US President Donald Trump said Friday that he would double steel and aluminum import tariffs to 50 percent from next week, the latest salvo in his trade wars aimed at protecting domestic industries.
“We’re going to bring it from 25 percent to 50 percent, the tariffs on steel into the United States of America,” he said while addressing workers at a US Steel plant in Pennsylvania.
“Nobody’s going to get around that,” he added in the speech before blue-collar workers in the battleground state that helped deliver his election victory last year.
Shortly after, Trump wrote in a Truth Social post that the elevated rate would also apply to aluminum, with the new tariffs “effective Wednesday, June 4th.”
Since returning to the presidency in January, Trump has imposed sweeping tariffs on allies and adversaries alike in moves that have rocked the world trade order and roiled financial markets.
He has also issued sector-specific levies that affect goods such as automobiles.
On Friday, he defended his trade policies, arguing that tariffs helped protect US industry.
He added that the steel facility he was speaking in would not exist if he had not also imposed duties on metals imports during his first administration.
On Friday, Trump touted a planned partnership between US Steel and Japan’s Nippon Steel, but offered few new details on a deal that earlier faced bipartisan opposition.
He stressed that despite a recently announced planned partnership between the American steelmaker and Nippon Steel, “US Steel will continue to be controlled by the USA.”
He added that there would be no layoffs or outsourcing of jobs by the company.
Last week, Trump said that US Steel would remain in America with its headquarters to stay in Pittsburgh, adding that the arrangement with Nippon would create at least 70,000 jobs and add $14 billion to the US economy.
On Friday, he said that as part of its commitment, Nippon would invest $2.2 billion to boost steel production in the Mon Valley Works-Irvin plant where he was speaking.
Another $7 billion would go toward modernizing steel mills, expanding ore mining and building facilities in places including Indiana and Minnesota.
A proposed $14.9 billion sale of US Steel to Nippon Steel had previously drawn political opposition from both sides of the aisle. Former president Joe Biden blocked the deal on national security grounds shortly before leaving office.
There remain lingering concerns over the new partnership.
The United Steelworkers union  which represents thousands of hourly workers at US Steel facilities said after Trump’s speech that it had not participated in discussions involving Nippon Steel and the Trump administration, “nor were we consulted.”
“We cannot speculate about the meaning of the ‘planned partnership,’” said USW International President David McCall in a statement.
“Whatever the deal structure, our primary concern remains with the impact that this merger of US Steel into a foreign competitor will have on national security, our members and the communities where we live and work,” McCall said.
“The devil is always in the details,” he added.
Trump had opposed Nippon Steel’s takeover plan while on the election campaign trail. But since returning to the presidency, he signaled that he would be open to some form of investment after all.


Trump vowed to remake aid. Is Gaza the future?

Trump vowed to remake aid. Is Gaza the future?
Updated 9 min 48 sec ago
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Trump vowed to remake aid. Is Gaza the future?

Trump vowed to remake aid. Is Gaza the future?

WASHINGTON: President Donald Trump has slashed US aid and vowed a major rethink on helping the world. A controversial effort to bring food to Gaza may offer clues on what’s to come.
Administered by contracted US security with Israeli troops at the perimeter, the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation  is distributing food through several hubs in the war-ravaged Gaza Strip.
An officially private effort with opaque funding, the GHF began operations on May 26 after Israel completely cut off supplies into Gaza for over two months, sparking warnings of mass famine.
The organization said it had distributed 2.1 million meals as of Friday.
The initiative excludes the UN, which has long coordinated aid distribution in the war-ravaged territory and has infrastructure and systems in place to deliver assistance on a large scale.
The UN and other major aid groups have refused to cooperate with GHF, saying it violates basic humanitarian principles, and appears crafted to cater to Israeli military objectives.
“What we have seen is chaotic, it’s tragic and it’s resulted in hundreds of thousands of people scrambling in an incredibly undignified and unsafe way to access a tiny trickle of aid,” said Ciaran Donnelly, senior vice president of international programs at the International Rescue Committee .
Jan Egeland, head of the Norwegian Refugee Council, said his aid group stopped work in Gaza in 2015 when Hamas militants invaded its office and that it refused to cooperate in Syria when former strongman Bashar Assad was pressuring opposition-held areas by withholding food.
“Why on earth would we be willing to let the Israeli military decide how, where and to whom we give our aid as part of their military strategy to herd people around Gaza?” said Egeland.
“It’s a violation of everything we stand for. It is the biggest and reddest line there is that we cannot cross.”
The UN said that 47 people were injured Tuesday when hungry and desperate crowds rushed a GHF site — most of them by Israeli gunfire — while a Palestinian medical source said at least one person had died.
The Israeli military denied its soldiers fired on civilians and the GHF denied any injuries or deaths.
Israel has relentlessly attacked Gaza since Hamas’s unprecedented attack on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023.
Israel has vowed to sideline the UN agency for Palestinian refugees UNRWA, accusing it of bias and of harboring Hamas militants.
UNRWA said that nine out of thousands of staff may have been involved in the October 7 attack and dismissed them, but accuses Israel of trying to throw a distraction.
John Hannah, a former senior US policymaker who led a study last year that gave birth to the concepts behind the GHF, said the UN seemed to be “completely lacking in self-reflection” on the need for a new approach to aid after Hamas built a “terror kingdom.”
“I fear that people could be on the brink of letting the perfect be the enemy of the good instead of figuring out how do we take part in this effort, improve it, make it better, scale it up,” said Hannah, who is not involved in implementing the GHF.
Hannah, a senior fellow at the Jewish Institute for National Security of America, defended the use of private contractors, saying that many had extensive Middle East experience from the US-led “war on terror.”
“We would have been happy if there were volunteers from  capable and trusted national forces... but the fact is, nobody’s volunteering,” he said.
He said he would rather that aid workers coordinate with Israel than Hamas.
“Inevitably, any humanitarian effort in a war zone has to make some compromises with a ruling authority that carries the guns,” he said.
Hannah’s study had discouraged a major Israeli role in humanitarian work in Gaza, urging instead involvement by Arab states to bring greater legitimacy.
Arab states have balked at supporting US efforts as Israel pounds Gaza and after Trump mused about forcibly displacing the whole Gaza population and constructing luxury hotels.
Israel and Hamas are negotiating a new Gaza ceasefire that could see a resumption of UN-backed efforts.
Aid groups say they have vast amounts of aid ready for Gaza that remain blocked.
Donnelly said the IRC had 27 tons of supplies waiting to enter Gaza, faulting the GHF for distributing items like pasta and tinned fish that require cooking supplies — not therapeutic food and treatment for malnourished children.
He called for distributing relief in communities where people need it, instead of through militarized hubs.
“If anyone really cares about distributing aid in a transparent, accountable, effective way, the way to do that is to use the expertise and infrastructure of aid organizations that have been doing this for decades,” Donnelly said.
 


Hegseth says US will stand by Indo-Pacific allies against ‘imminent’ threat of China

Hegseth says US will stand by Indo-Pacific allies against ‘imminent’ threat of China
Updated 26 min 7 sec ago
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Hegseth says US will stand by Indo-Pacific allies against ‘imminent’ threat of China

Hegseth says US will stand by Indo-Pacific allies against ‘imminent’ threat of China
  • Hegseth also called out China for its ambitions in Latin America, particularly its efforts to increase its influence over the Panama Canal

SINGAPORE: US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth reassured allies in the Indo-Pacific on Saturday that they will not be left alone to face increasing military and economic pressures from China.
He said Washington will bolster its defenses overseas to counter what the Pentagon sees as rapidly developing threats by Beijing, particularly in its aggressive stance toward Taiwan. China has conducted numerous exercises to test what a blockade would look like of the self-governing island, which Beijing claims as its own and the US has pledged to defend.
China’s army “is rehearsing for the real deal,” Hegseth said in a keynote speech at a security conference in Singapore. “We are not going to sugarcoat it — the threat China poses is real. And it could be imminent.”
China has a stated goal of having its military be able to take Taiwan by force if necessary by 2027, a deadline that is seen by experts as more of an aspirational goal than a hard war deadline.
But China also has developed sophisticated man-made islands in the South China Sea to support new military outposts and built up highly advanced hypersonic and space capabilities, which are driving the US to create its own space-based “Golden Dome” missile defenses.
Speaking at the Shangri-La Dialogue, a global security conference hosted by the International Institute for Security Studies, Hegseth said China is no longer just building up its military forces to take Taiwan, it’s “actively training for it, every day.”
Hegseth also called out China for its ambitions in Latin America, particularly its efforts to increase its influence over the Panama Canal.
He repeated a pledge made by previous administrations to bolster US military capabilities in the region to provide a more robust deterrent. While both the Obama and Biden administrations had also committed to pivoting to the Pacific — and even established new military agreements throughout the region — a full shift has never been realized.
Instead, US military resources from the Indo-Pacific have been regularly pulled to support military needs in the Middle East and Europe, especially since the wars in Ukraine and Gaza. In the first few months of President Donald Trump’s second term, that’s also been the case.
The Indo-Pacific nations caught in between have tried to balance relations with both the US and China over the years. Beijing is the primary trading partner for many, but is also feared as a regional bully, in part due to its increasingly aggressive claims on natural resources such as critical fisheries.
Hegseth cautioned that playing both sides, seeking US military support and Chinese economic support, carries risk.
“Beware the leverage the CCP  seeks with that entanglement,” Hegseth said.
China usually sends its own defense minister to this conference — but in a snub this year to the US and the erratic tariff war Trump has ignited with Beijing, its minister Dong Jun did not attend, something the US delegation said it intended to capitalize on.
“We are here this morning. And somebody else isn’t,” Hegseth said.
He urged countries in the region to increase defense spending to levels similar to the 5 percent of their gross domestic product European nations are now pressed to contribute.
“We must all do our part,” Hegseth said.
It’s not clear if the US can or wants to supplant China as the region’s primary economic driver. But Hegseth’s push follows Trump’s visit to the Middle East, which resulted in billions of dollars in new defense agreements.
Hegseth said committing US support for Indo-Pacific nations would not be based on any conditions on local governments aligning their cultural or climate issues with the West.


Homeland Security chief said an immigrant threatened to kill Trump. The story quickly fell apart

Homeland Security chief said an immigrant threatened to kill Trump. The story quickly fell apart
Updated 31 May 2025
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Homeland Security chief said an immigrant threatened to kill Trump. The story quickly fell apart

Homeland Security chief said an immigrant threatened to kill Trump. The story quickly fell apart
  • Law enforcement officials believe the man, Ramon Morales Reyes, never wrote a letter that Noem and her department shared on social media
  • Probers found that the hand-writing in the letter was different from the man's handwriting sample, and that he did not know how to speak English

A claim by Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem that an immigrant threatened the life of President Donald Trump has begun to unravel.
Noem announced an arrest of a 54-year-old man who was living in the US illegally, saying he had written a letter threatening to kill Trump and would then return to Mexico. The story received a flood of media attention and was highlighted by the White House and Trump’s allies.
But investigators actually believe the man may have been framed so that he would get arrested and be deported from the US before he got a chance to testify in a trial as a victim of assault, a person familiar with the matter told The Associated Press. The person could not publicly discuss details of the investigation and spoke to the AP on condition of anonymity.

Law enforcement officials believe the man, Ramon Morales Reyes, never wrote a letter that Noem and her department shared with a message written in light blue ink expressing anger over Trump’s deportations and threatening to shoot him in the head with a rifle at a rally. Noem also shared the letter on X along with a photo of Morales Reyes, and the White House also shared it on its social media accounts. The letter was mailed to an Immigration and Customs Enforcement office along with the FBI and other agencies, the person said.

This image provided by the Department of Homeland Security shows a handwritten letter that Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem claimed an immigrant threatened the life of President Donald Trump. (AP)

As part of the investigation, officials had contacted Morales Reyes and asked for a handwriting sample and concluded his handwriting and the threatening letter didn’t match and that the threat was not credible, the person said. It’s not clear why Homeland Security officials still decided to send a release making that claim.
In an emailed statement asking for information about the letter and the new information about Morales Reyes, the Department of Homeland Security said “the investigation into the threat is ongoing. Over the course of the investigation, this individual was determined to be in the country illegally and that he had a criminal record. He will remain in custody.”
His attorneys said he was not facing current charges and they did not have any information about convictions in his record.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s records show Morales Reyes is being held at a county jail in Juneau, Wisconsin, northwest of Milwaukee. The Milwaukee-based immigrant rights group Voces de la Frontera, which is advocating for his release, said he was arrested May 21. Attorney Cain Oulahan, who was hired to fight against his deportation, said he has a hearing in a Chicago immigration court next week and is hoping he is released on bond.
Morales Reyes had been a victim in a case of another man who is awaiting trial on assault charges in Wisconsin, the person familiar with the matter said. The trial is scheduled for July.
Morales Reyes works as a dishwasher in Milwaukee, where he lives with his wife and three children. He had recently applied for a U visa, which is carved out for people in the country illegally who become victims of serious crimes, said attorney Kime Abduli, who filed that application.
The Milwaukee Police Department said it is investigating an identity theft and victim intimidation incident related to this matter and the county district attorney’s office said the investigation was ongoing. Milwaukee police said no one has been criminally charged at this time.
Abduli, Morales Reyes’ attorney, says he could not have written the letter, saying he did not receive formal education and can’t write in Spanish and doesn’t know how to speak English. She said it was not clear whether he was arrested because of the letters.
“There is really no way that it could be even remotely true,” Abduli said. “We’re asking for a clarification and a correction from DHS to clear Ramon’s name of anything having to do with this.”


The world’s most unpopular president? Peru’s leader clings to power

The world’s most unpopular president? Peru’s leader clings to power
Updated 31 May 2025
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The world’s most unpopular president? Peru’s leader clings to power

The world’s most unpopular president? Peru’s leader clings to power
  • The Ipsos polling agency found Dina Boluarte had a two-percent approval rating, down from 21 percent when she took office
  • The 63-year-old is the target of a dozen probes, including for her alleged failure to declare gifts of luxury jewels and watches

LIMA: With an approval rating of just two percent, Peru’s President Dina Boluarte may be the world’s most unpopular leader, according to pollsters.
Protests greeted her rise to power 29 months ago, and have marked her entire term — joined by assorted scandals, investigations, controversies and a surge in gang violence.
The 63-year-old is the target of a dozen probes, including for her alleged failure to declare gifts of luxury jewels and watches, a scandal inevitably dubbed “Rolexgate.”
She is also under the microscope for a two-week undeclared absence for nose surgery — which she insists was medical, not cosmetic — and is being investigated for her role in a police crackdown that caused the deaths of 50 protesters.
Against that bleak backdrop, Boluarte’s never-high popularity hit rock bottom this month.
The Ipsos polling agency found she had a two-percent approval rating, down from 21 percent when she took office.
“We might be talking about a world record of sustained presidential disapproval,” Ipsos Peru president Alfredo Torres told AFP.
It is the lowest score Ipsos has measured in any of the other 90 countries it surveys, Torres said.
Yet as far as recent Peruvian presidents go, she is not just a survivor, but positively an elder stateswoman.
The South American nation has had six presidents in eight years and if Boluarte lasts to the end of her term next year, she would be the longest-serving of them all.

Backed by corrupt majority rightwing parties
Despite not having a party in Congress, she has managed to stay in power with the backing of Peru’s majority right-wing parties.
Analysts say voter lethargy and political expediency have so far helped Boluarte buck the trend of prematurely ousted Peruvian leaders.
“In Peru, there is a political paradox: Boluarte is the weakest president of the last decade,” political analyst Augusto Alvarez of the University of the Pacific told AFP.
But her weakness is “also her strength,” he said, explaining that a lame-duck president is politically useful for Congress.
“It is a great business to have a fragile president whom they (lawmakers) use” to entrench their own power and pass laws beneficial to allies and backers, said Alvarez.
Transparency International’s Peruvian chapter Proetica has cited Congress for “counter-reforms, setbacks in anti-corruption instruments... and shielding of members of Congress who are ethically questioned.”
Boluarte has other factors counting in her favor.
Congress is seemingly keeping her around for lack of a better, consensus, candidate.
Another plus for Boluarte: Peru’s economy has been performing well, with GDP growing 3.3 percent last year and 3.9 percent in the first quarter of 2025 — a steep improvement from the 2020 recession blamed on Covid pandemic lockdowns.
Peru’s inflation rate is one of the lowest in the region.
“The economy continues to function, there is enormous resilience, and the population’s income is growing,” said Alvarez.
But this may have little to do with policy, observers say, and more with external factors such as rising copper prices. Peru is one of the top producers of the metal.

Little love for her from the street
On the street, there is little love for Boluarte, as Peru battles a surge in gang violence characterized by a wave of killings linked to extortion rackets.
Boluarte “has no empathy, she is an incapable president, she does not solve the security problem,” Saturnino Conde, a 63-year-old teacher, told AFP.
At frequent marches against the president, the catchphrase: “Dina, Asesina!” (Dina, Murderer!) has become a popular refrain.
But a full-out rebellion appears unlikely, say analysts.
Peruvians “feel it’s not worth it: if she resigns or is dismissed, she would be replaced by a member of Congress, but Congress also has a terrible image,” said Ipsos manager Torres.
In addition, “there is no other candidate that captivates, which is why people are not in a hurry to remove her from power.”