Pakistan missile misfires became routine
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New Delhi: A major disaster was averted on Saturday when a missile fired by Pakistan Army missed its intended target and landed near a Gurudwara in a civilian-populated area of Jammu and Kashmir.No one was injured in the blast that shattered window panes and caused panic among the Sikh community. Officials said the missile could have caused mass casualties had it struck during prayer hours."This isn't an isolated case. Pakistan's missile system has a long record of poor targeting and guidance failure," said an official.Earlier on Saturday, a Pakistani missile was intercepted over Haryana's Sirsa. "Fateh-1 missile has proven to be a complete disaster. It has failed multiple times-crashing, veering off course, or simply failing to launch," the official said.The missile's failure highlights the sham of Pakistan's so-called indigenous capability, as per officials.Pakistan targeted 26 locations in India on Friday, using Chinese SH-15 artillery, Turkish drones and Fatah-2 missiles, along with F-16 and JF-17 aircraft, officials said.Meanwhile, the Border Security Force on Saturday said it has "completely destroyed" a terrorist launchpad opposite Akhnoor in Jammu in response to unprovoked firing from the other side of the international border.The base was located at Looni in Pakistan's Sialkot district, a BSF spokesperson said. This came after Pakistan initiated "unprovoked" firing on BSF posts in Jammu sector from 9 pm on Friday. The BSF responded in a commensurate manner, causing widespread damage to the posts and assets of Pakistan Rangers, the spokesperson said.
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Hindustan Times
an hour ago
- Hindustan Times
A lost ledger of Delhi's history of diplomacy
On a December afternoon in 1955, Soong Ching-ling – known better as the 'Mother of Modern China' – stood beneath the high grand Victorian Edwardian-style arches of Chandni Chowk's Town Hall, bathed in the warmth of applause. The Town Hall's visitors' book with the signature of Queen Elizabeth. 'India, China. Two nations resurgent. Peking, New Delhi. The new Asia arising. Peace, Friendship. One Billion Pairs of hands. Your protectors! Hindi-Chini Bhai Bhai. Hindi-Chini Bhai,' she wrote in the Town Hall's visitors' book in Chinese, sealing the moment with the optimism of the short-lived Hindi-Chini friendship of the 1950s. Soong, an honorary president of the People's Republic of China and a revolutionary figure in her own right, had come to New Delhi in the dawn years of India's independence. Back then, Delhi's Town Hall was more than a civic building – it was the city's diplomatic salon. Under its colonnades, mayors welcomed presidents, poets, and heads of state. Civic receptions were staged with the gravity of statecraft: symbolic keys to the city exchanged hands, garlands draped over shoulders, abhinandan patra (formal letters of congratulations) read aloud as cameras clicked. For decades, those encounters seemed to live only in fading photographs, and in the faint memories of dignitaries and of the officials who were part of these meetings. Marshal Tito of Yugoslavia, in the centre, flanked by DMC president Ram Niwas Agarwal on right and Jawaharlal Nehru on left, in Delhi in November 1956. (Photo courtesy: Mahika Agarwal) Then, during a routine record room cleanup last year, a municipal heritage team stumbled upon a piece of history. A battered, leather-bound visitors' book. Its spine cracked, its pages foxed and crumbling, the ledger held in its hand-inked lines the ghost of an era — signatures, messages, and sketches from foreign dignitaries who passed through Delhi from the 1950s to the 1980s. 'It's a treasure,' said a senior official from the Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Arts (IGNCA), which is now restoring the book. 'Every page tells you what the world thought of India in those formative years, and how Delhi presented itself to that world.' The first pages record Soong Ching-ling's flourish in 1955, followed by a neat November 1956 note from Zhou Enlai, China's premier. He wished for the 'peaceful construction' and 'long friendship' of two nations, ending with 'Hindi Chini Bhai Bhai' in carefully brushed Chinese characters — hope inked just years before the 1962 border war would shatter it. Two lines down, a royal signature: Haile Selassie, the Ethiopian emperor whose reign bridged the colonial and post-colonial worlds. His 1956 visit was steeped in solidarity. Ethiopia still remembered India's support during Italy's brutal occupation two decades earlier. Selassie came to speak with then Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru about African and Asian decolonisation, Delhi at that moment being the nerve centre of what is now known as the Global South. On India's foreign policy through the 1950s and '60s, the Indian Council for World Affairs (Sapru House) publication on '75 years of Indian foreign policy' writes: 'The colonial experience also helped India in that sense to develop an independent approach to international relations. And the significance that was attached, for example, to anti-racial campaigns, anticolonial campaigns, anti-apartheid, those struggles, and, of course, the complete focus on decolonisation..' These grand gestures often unfolded under the watch of Ram Niwas Agarwal, president of the Delhi Municipal Committee from 1954 until 1958, just before the creation of the unified Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD). His granddaughter, Mahika Agarwal, has preserved photographs in a family album she calls Bauji's Delhi: her grandfather alongside Nehru and Marshal Tito of Yugoslavia; her grandmother welcoming Soraya, the Empress of Iran, in February 1956; her grandfather greeting Queen Elizabeth. Also among these photographs are of Zhou signing the book, flanked by Nehru and a young Dalai Lama in 1956 – three years before the Tibetan leader fled to India and sought refuge. In the visitors' book, Tito's own words appear – a typewritten note from November 15, 1956, during the UNESCO General Conference held in Delhi: 'The days which we spend in New Delhi will remain as an unforgettable memory in our minds. The warm and cordial reception given to our delegation by the citizens of this beautiful and blooming city has left a deep and pleasant impression on us.' DMC president Ram Niwas Agarwal greets Soraya, the Empress of Iran, in Delhi in February 1956. (Photo courtesy: Mahika Agarwal) The 1956 UNESCO conference, which was the first to be held east of the Mediterranean, transformed Delhi into a diplomatic amphitheatre. For a month, global faces, ministers and intellectuals debated science, education, and culture even as the Suez Crisis and Hungarian Revolution shook the world. Tito's friendship with India would later be immortalised in the naming of Josip Broz Tito Marg in south Delhi. The ledger, which became a chronicler of that historic summit, reads like a roll call of mid-century history. There is Nehru's own signature in 1955, then President Rajendra Prasad's in the same year, Japanese PM Nobusuke Kishi in 1957, Harold Macmillan and his wife in 1958, New Zealand's PM Keith Holyoake, and Mohammad Zahir Shah, the last king of Afghanistan, in February 1958. In 1959, Edwina Mountbatten – the last Vicereine of India – signed her name during a visit from then Burma, a reminder of the colonial past still within living memory. The Town Hall's embrace was not limited to politics. On November 21, 1957, Marian Anderson – the celebrated African American contralto whose voice became a weapon against segregation – is found mentioned as well. Anderson was a poignant figure in American civil rights movement. Two decades earlier, barred from performing before an integrated audience in Washington, Anderson had sung instead on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in a concert arranged by Eleanor Roosevelt. By 1957, she was a goodwill ambassador for the US State Department, touring Asia. In Delhi, under the gaze of Gandhi's statue behind Town Hall, she performed 'Lead Kindly Light' – the first Westerner to sing at his memorial. Archival footage shows Delhiites in woollen shawls, rapt and still as her voice rose into the winter air. Some entries, meanwhile, are more surprising, especially in hindsight. In 1974, a young Saddam Hussein – the then deputy leader of Iraq's Revolutionary Command Council – filled half a page in Arabic, praising 'shared experiences and historic relationships' between the two nations. At that moment, he was a rising regional figure; decades later, his name would be synonymous with war and dictatorship. By the late 1970s, the tone of the book changes. Many entries are signed not by presidents and premiers but by committee members, bureaucrats, and cultural delegations. Pages are missing, torn, or water-damaged. Officials suspect the gaps conceal other major visits – or perhaps that they were lost during Delhi's political upheavals in the 1980s and '90s, when the municipal corporation itself was suspended for years. Today, about 140 pages have been painstakingly restored. Conservators humidify the brittle paper, flatten creases, and reinforce torn corners with Japanese tissue. The fragile handwriting – from elegant calligraphy to hurried scrawls to foreign scripts – is being digitised, each name cross-referenced with municipal archives, newspaper clippings, and family collections. Photographs and, where possible, film footage are being sourced to accompany the book in a planned municipal museum gallery. Saroj Kumar Pandey, a conservator working on the conservation project, said that such brittle papers with handwritten notes using ink require extra care. 'Paper has not strengthened and torn pages are are filled in with Japanese rice paper. We use gluten-free starch as an adhesive. Each paper is tested through bleeding test and ink signatures are stabilised using chemicals after removing stains.' Since then, the visitors book has been sent back to the MCD. 'This was a time when the city, through its mayor, was part of international diplomacy,' said a municipal heritage official. 'Receptions were held not just in Town Hall, but at Ram Lila grounds, even at the Red Fort. These events were grand, with schoolchildren, music, and pageantry – they were meant to tell the world what Delhi stood for.' In Chandni Chowk, Town Hall stands restored on the outside, its mustard-yellow façade bright against the jostle of traders and rickshaws. Inside, the council chambers are silent. But in the ledger's pages, Delhi's voice is vivid – hopeful, confident, eager to be seen. The rediscovered visitors' book is more than civic memorabilia. It is an atlas of mid-century diplomacy mapped onto one city's address book. And in that sense, the book is not only a record of who came to Delhi, but of how Delhi imagined itself – as a Capital not just of India, but the epicentre of the post-colonial world.
NDTV
an hour ago
- NDTV
As Trade Tensions Escalate, China Files WTO Complaint Over Canada Steel Duties
China filed a complaint with the World Trade Organisation (WTO) over Canadian steel import restrictions on Friday, the commerce ministry said, escalating simmering trade tensions between Beijing and Ottawa. Economic and political relations between China and Canada have been testy in recent years, with trade ties deteriorating even as both countries are targeted by US President Donald Trump's tariff blitz. Last month, Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney announced an additional 25 per cent tariff on steel imports that contain steel melted and poured in China. He said the move was needed to protect the domestic industry after the United States increased import duties on steel to 50 per cent, prompting fears that firms would divert exports and dump steel in Canada. China's commerce ministry said in a statement that it had filed a complaint against the Canadian measures on Friday, labelling them "discriminatory" and saying they "disregarded WTO rules". "Such actions are typical unilateral and protectionist measures that undermine China's legitimate rights and interests and disrupt the stability of global industrial and supply chains for steel," it added. The WTO complaint comes days after Beijing announced new temporary duties on Canadian imports of canola and preliminary levies on halogenated butyl rubber -- a material used for tyre linings and hoses -- as well as an anti-dumping probe into Canadian pea starch imports. Canada said on Tuesday it was "deeply disappointed" with the move to impose duties on canola. Beijing had already slapped a 100 per cent surcharge on various Canadian agricultural products in March, in what it said was a response to Ottawa's decision last year to place 100 per cent tariffs on Chinese electric vehicles.
Time of India
3 hours ago
- Time of India
Pakistan's Ayub Khan sought US help to annexe Kashmir after Indus Treaty in 1960
A new book reveals Ayub Khan's attempt to gain US support for capturing Kashmir after the Indus Waters Treaty. Khan linked water rights to territorial claims. He warned that US aid to India would be wasted without resolving the Kashmir issue. Kennedy offered a compromise, but Khan insisted on securing water resources. Tired of too many ads? Remove Ads Tired of too many ads? Remove Ads Following the signing of the Indus Waters Treaty in 1960, the then Pakistani President Ayub Khan sought US President John F Kennedy 's support to capture Kashmir from India, a new book on the treaty has 'Trial by Water: Indus Basin and India-Pakistan Relations ', author Uttam Sinha, an expert on international water issues and IDSA senior fellow, recounts how, in July 1961-months after signing the Indus Waters Treaty (IWT)-Khan arrived in Washington, already bristling over America's generous aid to a reception in his honour at Mount Vernon, tastefully arranged by First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy, Ayub's displeasure was clear. In protest, he had suspended CIA's covert flights from airbases in East Pakistan, which supported Tibetan rebels, as well as U-2 flights over China from West Pakistan.A private garden walk with Kennedy thawed the frost. Ayub agreed to reopen the airbases; Kennedy, in turn, promised that the US will not supply any military equipment to India, according to the later in the Oval Office, Ayub, like a campaign general, spread out maps to press Pakistan's security concerns. The first showed Indian troop deployment-of the 1.5 million soldiers, only 15% faced China, while 85% were positioned against Pakistan. The second detailed 80,000-90,000 Afghan troops on the western border, armed with Soviet-supplied equipment. The third mapped Pakistan's thin defences against both neighbours. Throughout, Ayub insisted that without Kashmir, "Pakistan would be up the gum tree" if attacked from India or Afghanistan, Sinha pointed out in his and his advisers doubted the alarmism but recognised Kashmir as the litmus test of Indo-Pak peace. Kennedy proposed a compromise that the then Indian Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru might accept. Ayub's answer was calculated. India could keep Jammu, but Pakistan needed "some miles" across the Chenab to secure water resources . His logic was simple-if the Indus Treaty gave Pakistan rights to the western rivers, and those rivers flowed from Kashmir, adjoining territories should belong to suggested Nehru, politically spent and out of touch with Kashmiris, was now ready for settlement. Without resolving Kashmir, he warned, US aid to India was wasted. Kennedy countered that US assistance was aimed at keeping India free from communist influence, not to buy loyalty, Sinha pointed out in his the meeting closed, Ayub made one final ask-if Kennedy's effort to sway Nehru during the latter's planned November 1961 Washington visit failed, and Pakistan returned to the UN over Kashmir, would the US back it?"Yes," Kennedy replied - an episode that, as the book makes clear, showed how deeply water and territory were entwined during the Cold War era's South Asian book also recalls how Nehru faced internal criticism over the IWT. He was described as an umpire in a cricket match-was how one MP described the PM during a fiery Lok Sabha debate on the treaty in November and December 1960. The charge, recorded in the book, captured the frustration of parliamentarians who believed India was giving away too much, too the treaty was signed on September 19, 1960, and debated in the House on November 30, the mood was anything but celebratory. Criticism came from across the political spectrum, including even the Congress benches. Ashok Mehta of the Praja Socialist Party famously called it a "second partition."
