JAMMU: A fresh batch of 1,786 pilgrims on Monday left for the Amarnath cave shrine in south Kashmir Himalayas amid tight security following clashes in the Valley.
“A fresh batch of 1,786 pilgrims – 1,388 men, 347 women and 51 ‘sadhus’ – in over 53 vehicles left the Jammu base camp towards Kashmir on Monday morning to perform the pilgrimage to the holy cave shrine,” a police officer said.
The Yatra resumed on Saturday.
It was initially suspended on July 9 following violent protests in the Valley over the killing of Hizbul Mujahideen commander Burhan Wani. It was again stopped five days later.
Violent protests have rocked Kashmir Valley after security forces gunned down Wani in an encounter in south Kashmir on July 8. Several people have lost their lives in the unrest.
Yesterday, 4,510 yatris paid their obeisance at the holy cave. Since the beginning of the Yatra 1,72,851 pilgrims had darshan at the holy cave.

Rolling Stones rocker Mick Jagger is going to be a father again and is expecting a baby with his 29-year-old girlfriend Melanie Hamrick.

The 72-year-old musician, who is already a father to seven kids, is excited to have a baby with Hamrick whom he’s been dating for two years, reported Us Weekly.

“This is great news. It will be Mick’s eighth child and nothing fazes him. He’s been incredibly supportive,” a source said.

This will be Hamrick’s first child.

Prior to dating Hamrick, Jagger was married to Bianca Jagger and was in long-term relationships with Jerry Hall and late L’Wren Scott.

The latter committed suicide back in March 2014 and was found hanged in her New York apartment.

The Rolling Stones rocker is already father to seven children – daughters Karis, Jade, Elizabeth and Georgia, and sons James, Gabriel and Lucas – with the oldest kid being 45-year-old while the youngest is 17.

The pregnancy news comes just a little over a month after Jagger’s bandmate Ronnie Wood welcomed twin girls with his wife, Sally.

Fearing large scale violence after Friday prayers, authorities clamped curfew in all the 10 districts of the Valley as the situation continued to be tense following the widespread protests over the death of Hizbul militant Burhan Wani.
So far, 36 persons, including 35 civilian protesters and a local policeman have reportedly died in clashes between security forces and unruly mobs those hit the roads.
For the last six days, mobile phone operations and internet connectivity had been suspended in South Kashmir districts of Anantnag, Shopian, Khugam and Pulwama to prevent the spread of passion-stoking rumours and posts on social media by anti-social elements.
Official sources, however, said, limited mobile phone connectivity will continue on phones of one service provider in the Valley.
This has been done because all state government officials have been provided mobile phones of a particular company and their operations is important to coordinate the law and order maintenance during the day.
Mobs on Thursday torched the house in Bamdora village where Wani was killed by security forces. Eight other houses in the village were also torched by the mobs.
Sporadic clashes continued at over a dozen places on Thursday when curfew defying stone-pelters engaged with security forces. No fresh incident of firing was reported from anywhere in the valley on Thursday.
All senior separatist leaders have been placed under prevented detention by police in Srinagar.
Additional paramilitary troops have been rushed by the centre to assess the state to come out of the ongoing cycle of violence that has deeply affected normal life in the state.PTI

The first Indian Airforce flight C-17 carrying 156 persons, who were evacuated from war-torn South Sudan’s capital city Juba, arrived in Thiruvananthapuram on Friday.
The evacuees also included two Nepali citizens, besides nine women and three children.
The passengers from Kerala and some from Tamil Nadu disembarked after a brief halt in Thiruvananthapuram before leaving for Delhi.
Minister of State for External Affairs, V K Singh, who accompanied the passengers, told reporters at the airport that 156 persons have been evacuated, of whom two are from Nepal.
There are over 550 Indians at Juba and another 150 in areas where the oil wells are located.
“When we landed, 156 came out with us. There were 30-40 people who had already booked their tickets when the commercial flights started and 300 people did not want to be evacuated due to their business concerns and other activities. There are 9 women and three children among those evacuated,” Singh said.
On those who turned down the government’s plea to be evacuated, Singh said, “we tried to convince them. I suppose business comes first, life comes later (for them)..”
“After fighting broke out in Juba and its outskirts, our aim was to evacuate our people who were in danger. As per our information, there were 550 plus people in Juba itself with another 150 indians in areas where the oil wells are there..,” he added.
The evacuation exercise faced a hurdle when several Indians, after registering with the External Affairs Ministry for leaving South Sudan, refused to return, despite an appeal by External affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj on Twitter asking them to move out.
Singh said he had met Vice President of Sudan who spoke of the situation out there.
The C-17 aircraft was brought via Uganda and the minister also met the Ugandan Prime minister Ruhakana Rugunda who on his part assured of all help.
South Sudan is witnessing heavy fighting between former rebels and government soldiers in several parts of the city.
State Power minister, Kadakkampally Surendran, Thiruvananthapuram district collector, Biju Prabhakar, were among those who received the travel weary passengers when they arrivedin Thiruvananthapuram.

Athens – The bodies of four migrants – including two children – were pulled from the Aegean Sea on Wednesday after their boat sank off the Greek island of Lesbos, port police said.

Coastguard rescuers saved six other migrants, while another person is still missing from the group of 11 that set off for Greece from the Turkish coast.
The dead included “a four-year-old girl and boy of an unknown age, as well as a man and woman,” a police official told AFP.

Though some migrants continue to arrive by sea, a controversial deal between the European Union and Turkey that came into force in March has largely halted the influx of people fleeing war and poverty, mainly from the Middle East and Africa.

Lesbos and other eastern Aegean islands last year were the gateway into Europe for a migration wave unseen since World War II.

Some 2,900 migrants have died or gone missing in the Mediterranean since the start of the year, compared with about 1,900 for the same period in 2015, according to International Organization for Migration figures.

More than two dozen people were sickened in an apparent mass drug overdose on a New York City street corner, sparking warnings from police and health officials about the dangers of using K2, also known as synthetic marijuana.

Calls started coming in Tuesday morning that numerous people appeared to be overdosing in the Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood of Brooklyn. Witnesses reported seeing victims lying on the sidewalk, shaking and leaning against trees and fire hydrants.

Thirty-three people were taken to area hospitals with non-life-threatening injuries, police said. It was not immediately clear what drugs the victims had ingested, but police said some of the victims had been smoking K2.

Dennis Gonzalez of Bushwick told WNBC-TV that K2 use in that part of Brooklyn is out of control.

“It’s gotten out of hand,” Gonzalez said. “They even sleep in the street, we have to walk around them. It’s just too much to keep under control.”

The Health Department issued a statement Tuesday saying it “recorded a spike in K2-related emergency room visits” connected to the incident in Brooklyn. The department said it’s investigating and monitoring emergency rooms across the city.

“We remind New Yorkers that K2 is extremely dangerous,” the Health Department said in its statement. “The city’s public awareness efforts and aggressive enforcement actions over the past year have contributed to a significant decline in ER visits related to K2.”

Though K2 affects the same area of the brain as marijuana, it contains chemicals made in laboratories and sprayed onto dry leaves. These chemicals are not derived from the marijuana plant, according to the Health Department.

K2 can cause extreme anxiety, confusion, paranoia, hallucinations, rapid heart rate, vomiting, fainting, kidney failure and reduced blood supply to the heart.

The production and sale of the drug was outlawed in New York City in October 2015.

The Jammu and Kashmir government has sought services of eye surgeons for treating dozens of youth who are in danger of losing their eyesight after getting hit by pellets during protests over the past five days in the Valley.
“A specialised team of surgeons from New Delhi and other parts of the country are being rushed to Kashmir to take care of the persons injured in ongoing law and order situation and needing super-specialty care,” an official spokesman said.
He said Chief Minister Mehbooba Mufti spoke to Health Minister J P Nadda this morning and requested him to send a specialised team of doctors, including retina surgeons, to Kashmir to take care of the injured who have suffered ophthalmic and other trauma.
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“We are expecting these specialised doctors to arrive here today and get down to the job immediately,” the spokesman said.
He said on the instructions of the Chief Minister, the government is also facilitating shifting of any injured person outside the state, who needs super-specialised treatment in case it is not available locally.
The SMHS hospital here alone has received more than 100 cases of eye injuries due to pellet guns fired by security forces in the clashes following killing of Hibzul Mujahideen commander Burhan Wani in an encounter last Friday.
According to doctors at SMHS hospital, 107 cases of eye injuries have been reported since Saturday at the hospital.
“As many as 87 surgeries have been carried out on these patients. Out of these, eyesight of 40 patients has been restored while we are monitoring other patients,” a doctor said.
He said three of the injured persons have lost their eyesight due to pellet injuries and among the injured are three girls, including a nine-year-old. PTI