Six In The Morning Saturday April 25

Nepal quake: 7.9 magnitude tremor hits near Kathmandu

Worst tremor in Himalayan nation in more than 80 years brings down buildings and is felt in India and Pakistan, according to early reports

Associated Press in Kathmandu

Saturday 25 April 2015 09.42 BST

A powerful magnitude-7.9 earthquake hit near Nepal’s capital of Kathmandu before noon on Saturday, causing extensive damage with toppled walls and collapsed buildings, officials said.

Nepal’s information minister, Minendra Rijal, told India’s NDTV station that there are reports of damage in and around Kathmandu but no immediate word on casualties. He said rescue teams were on the scene.

It is the worst tremor in the Himalayan nation in over 80 years.

The epicentre was50 miles (80km) north-west of Kathmandu, he said. The Kathmandu valley is densely populated with nearly 2.5 million people, with the quality of buildings often poor.

Human rights activist Sabeen Mahmud shot dead in Pakistan

Human rights activist Sabeen Mahmud has been shot dead in Pakistan shortly after attending a meeting on abuses in Baluchistan province. Her mother was critically injured.

Pakistan rights activist Sabeen Mahmud was on her way home in Karachi on Friday night with her mother when unidentified gunmen attacked their car. Mahmud was shot five times and died at the scene. Her mother is in critical condition.

The 40-year-old civil liberties activist and social worker was director of The Second Floor (T2F), a community space for open dialogue. On Friday T2F had organized a talk: ‘Unsilencing Balochistan Take 2' featuring two prominent Baluch rights activists, Mama Abdul Qadeer and Farzana Baluch, which Mahmud had announced on her Twitter page:

Mahmud had just left the building when her car was attacked. A spokesman for Sindh police said: "A woman died in the shooting and another woman was injured in the firing incident."

Are the Taliban and their leader becoming yesterday's men?

April 25, 2015 - 4:52PM

Paul McGeough

Chief foreign correspondent

 If you are in the killing business, you understand that proof of life counts for something.

But it's been more than 14 years since we clapped eyes on Mullah Mohammad Omar, the spectral leader of the Afghan Taliban, and stubbornly, he still refuses to emerge from hiding – or even to send a verifiable message.

Despite restlessness and infighting on the fringes of some of the 20-odd militias that coalesce under the banner of the Taliban, and a belittling questioning of his spiritual and jihadist credentials by the leadership of the so-called Islamic State, the one-eyed Omar sits tight, fuelling speculation in some quarters that perhaps he is dead or that his activity is constrained by his likely hosts - Pakistan's military intelligence agency, the ISI.

Charity gives hope in face of xenophobic despair

24 APR 2015 00:00 FATIMA ASMAL

The recent xenophobic violence has brought out the worst – and the best – in South Africans.

These are people with lives but they have been put on hold. And, although things are said to have calmed down considerably since xenophobic violence erupted in KwaZulu-Natal three weeks ago, these thousands of foreigners face an uncertain fate. With seven people killed at the height of the violence, they still fear for their lives.

They are housed in four camps in the province – in Chatsworth, Phoenix, Isipingo Beach and Pietermaritzburg – which together ACCOMMODATE ABOUT 5 000 people. The camps are situated on grounds that were not intended for habitation and, as a result, sanitation is a problem.

But, amid the overcrowding, litter and puddles, the spirit of hope remains alive. It is there in the actions of hundreds of volunteers who have made these camps their second home. It is in the eyes of foreigners, who sit patiently at makeshift home affairs desks, repatriation papers in hand, waiting to go home. You find it in the generosity of South Africans from various communities who come by with items or time to donate.

A Big Deal: China Reveals Its South China Sea Strategy

Bonnie S. Glaser

April 24, 2015

Growing international criticism of China’s land reclamation in the South China Sea and the publication of detailed images of China’s dredging and construction activities prompted the Chinese government to explain in greater detail than ever before the purpose of these activities. In response to U.S. Defense Secretary Ashton Carter’s charge that China has “intensified the militarization in the islands and reefs in the South China Sea and escalated regional tension,” and the release of a series of satellite photos by CSIS of recent dredging and construction activities on Mischief Reef, Chinese Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Hua Chunying issued a lengthy statement on April 9. In addition to repeating prior positions that China has “indisputable sovereignty” over the Spratly Islands and adjacent waters, and that China’s construction is “fair, reasonable, and lawful,” Hua stated that China’s activities aremainly for civilian purposes, but also are intended to serve “necessary military defense requirements.”

Victim of Extremists Comes to Understand the Siren Song of ISIS

APRIL 24, 2015

AARHUS, Denmark — FROM his earliest years, Ahmad Walid Rashidi says he harbored a seething hatred against the Taliban, the extremist Sunni group that dominated Afghanistan before 2001 and the United States invasion.

In 1997, when he was 5, he says he lost his leg, and almost his life, in a bomb explosion; a doctor initially pronounced him dead and covered him with a shroud. While he recovered from his injury, he says the Talibankilled his father, a Communist, and an older brother, leaving his mother to take care of him and his six remaining siblings.

As much as he hated the Taliban, he says he never got an opportunity to exact revenge. His mother, a university lecturer in Kabul, moved the family to Tehran and, when he was 10, to Denmark.