Barack Obama, Narendra Modi have strong, productive relationship, says US official

Washington: US President Barack Obama and Prime Minister Narendra Modi have developed a strong and productive relationship between them, a top American climate change official has said.

"President Obama and Prime Minister Modi have a very, strong and productive relationship, not just on climate change but broadly," Todd Stern, the US Special Envoy on Climate Change said on Tuesday.

"It was a quite extraordinary fact that within the space of four months there were two head of the state visits, one first to the United States in September of 2014 and then Prime Minister Modi invited the President to India just four months later in January," the official said.

Thereafter the two leaders have been close communications with each other. "They met on the margins of the UNGA in New York and they met on the first day of the Paris meeting," Stern said.

According to Stern the meeting was a very warm and positive, cordial and detailed.

"In fact, they talked so long that they were both supposed to go — and did go finally, but they were a little bit late to the announcement of this big Mission Innovation idea on R&D that both — well, the United States, India, China, many other countries ultimately were part of," the US official said.

"So I think, that the call later, sort of more towards the end, was a check-in call to see how we were doing and to urge us all on together toward a successful conclusion. And I think it was done in that spirit, not in the spirit that there was some specific thing that had to be done before the agreement could get completed," Stern said. 

Gwadar port's development not to pose threat to India: Chinese media

As part of the Economic Corridor plan, Pakistan has officially kicked off a project last week by handing over more than 2,000 acres of land in Gwadar port on Arabian Sea to Chinese firm.

Pakistan's strategically important Gwadar port, being developed by China as part of the USD 46 billion Economic Corridor linking both the countries, will not pose any military threat to India, Chinese media said on Wednesday.

"The Western and Indian media have tended to exaggerate the threat of Gwadar port to India, pointing to its military functions and claiming that the port will be built into a military base for the Chinese navy in the Indian Ocean. Some Indian reports have even claimed that China's 'takeover' of the port could be a strategic game changer," an article in the state-run Global Times said.

As part of the Economic Corridor plan, Pakistan has officially kicked off a project last week by handing over more than 2,000 acres of land in Gwadar port on Arabian Sea to Chinese firm for 43 year lease for commercial development. The deal will turn the port into a free port similar to Hong Kong, according to Chinese media reports.

China has already taken over the port, which will be connected with its Xinjiang province through a 3,000-km long corridor through Pakistan-occupied Kashmir. India has objected to the corridor as it goes through the disputed area.

"The suspicion is partly due to the geographical significance of the port. It is situated in the southwest of Pakistan, close to the Iranian border and only 400 kilometers away from the Strait of Hormuz, the world's key oil shipping route, which accounts for more than 30 per cent of the world's seaborne oil exports," the Global Times article said.

"However, these suspicions are unnecessary. Having witnessed the gradual development of the port over the years, some more sober Indian scholars and think tanks believe that the economic function of the port is far more significant than its military potential," it said.

"The construction of the port is not targeting India militarily. As a matter of fact, it is actually good news for India. The port can help promote the economic development of the Indian region close to Pakistan and help bridge China's 'One Belt, One Road' initiative with India's Spice Route and Mausam projects," it said.

"The future of Pakistan will depend upon Gwadar to a certain extent, as the port will play a pivotal role in boosting the country's economic prosperity and development dream," the article said.

"As a mainstay of the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor plan, Gwadar port will not only cater to future trade between China and Pakistan; it will also serve as a vital regional commercial hub for South Asia, Central Asia and the Middle East, fostering regional economic development within Asia as well as economic ties beyond the region," it added.

Sexual abuse of young boys on the rise in Pakistan: watchdog

The number of young boys being sexually abused in Pakistan has increased this year, a new watchdog report said Wednesday, with more boys between the ages of six and 10 victims than girls.

In total the number of boys being abused increased by 4.3 percent in the first half of 2015 compared to the same period last year, according to the study from Sahil, a non-government organisation (NGO) working against child sex abuse.

The report said that 178 boys aged six to 10 were abused compared to 150 girls of the same ages.

"The reason for this is that more boys go out of home to play in the streets and are easily trapped," Mumtaz Gohar, a spokesman for Sahil, told AFP.

"Many families also prefer not to report offences against the girls because of defamation issues," he said.

The number of women involved in sexual assaults has increased alarmingly, with the report saying that 102 cases from January to June in 2015 involved "female abettors" -- five times as many as the same period in 2014.

The report showed a decline of 221 in overall abuse cases involving children of all ages, with roughly nine children a day being sexually abused over the first six months of 2015 in Pakistan. The figure for the first six months of 2015 was 1,565 compared with 1,786 for the same period last year.

Sex is a taboo subject in the deeply conservative Muslim-majority country. Activists working to fight child abuse have said the problem is widespread but difficult to quantify because victims are often unwilling to speak out.

Last year Sahil charted more than 3,500 registered cases in total, with a spokesman saying the true figure could be as high as 10,000.

Earlier this month Pakistan took a step towards punishing those guilty of abusing young girls with life imprisonment or even death after an influential parliamentary committee voted to amend current laws.

The amendment only appears to address the sexual abuse of girls aged under 14, not boys.

In August, a huge scandal emerged involving at least 280 children who lawyers said were filmed being sexually abused, with their parents blackmailed over the footage.

Russian plane crash: Jet split into two midair

Investigators had recovered the plane's black box and the government said its contents were being analysed to determine the cause of the incident.

The Russian Airbus that crashed killing all the 224 people aboard in Egypt on Saturday broke apart “in the air”, senior official with Russia’s Interstate Aviation Committee said Sunday.

“The disintegration happened in the air and the fragments are strewn over a large area,” committee chief Viktor Sorochenko was quoted as saying by RIA-Novosti news agency in Cairo, where he is part of an international panel of experts from Russia, Egypt, France and Ireland.

Meanwhile, the black boxes of the ill-fated plane were recovered and sent for analysis amid claims by an IS-affiliate group that it downed the jet. The group in Egypt, which is waging a deadly insurgency in the Sinai, claimed it downed the plane in the mountainous area of the Sinai Peninsula but both Cairo and Moscow rejected the claim.

Egyptian PM Sharif Ismail said experts had confirmed that the militants could not down a plane at the 30,000 feet while Russian transport minister Maxim Sokolov said the claim “cannot be considered accurate”.