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At least 70 paramilitary police have been killed in an attack by Maoist rebels in India. A police patrol was ambushed by several hundred Maoist rebels in the central state of Chhattisgarh. Dozens of other paramilitary police sent to retrieve the injured were also attacked and an armoured vehicle was destroyed. The casualties were taken to hospital by helicopter. The Maoist rebels are demanding the overthrow of the Indian government and are active in up to 20 states across the country. Violence has escalated in the past two months, in response to a government offensive. Indian Home Affairs Minister P...

More F-16s Little Help To Taiwan By Greg Grant Wednesday, March 17th, 2010 2:45 pm Posted in Air, International Last week, Taiwan stepped up pressure on the Obama administration to sell it new, upgraded F-16s, something this administration, like the Bush administration before it, refuses to do. The latest Taiwanese move came from its defense ministry, which released a report saying that China’s continued modernization of its fighter fleet has shifted the cross-strait military balance decidedly in China’s favor. The report says Taiwan’s ageing fleet of some 400 locally built fighters, French made Mirage 2000s, and 146 F-16A/Bs, are outmatched...

The head of the UN's climate change panel - Dr Rajendra Pachauri - is accused of making a fortune from his links with 'carbon trading' companies, Christopher Booker and Richard North write. No one in the world exercised more influence on the events leading up to the Copenhagen conference on global warming than Dr Rajendra Pachauri, chairman of the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and mastermind of its latest report in 2007. Although Dr Pachauri is often presented as a scientist (he was even once described by the BBC as “the world’s top climate scientist”), as a former...

Convictions Few in Anti-Christian Violence in Orissa, India Violence devastated Kandhamal district, Orissa state in August-September 2008. BJP legislator, a key suspect in Kandhamal violence, acquitted again and out on bail. NEW DELHI, November 11 (CDN) — Following six acquittals last week in trials for those accused of the 2008 anti-Christian violence in India’s Orissa state and the release on bail of a key suspect, Christians are losing heart to strive for justice, according to a prosecuting attorney. The acquittal of six suspects last week raises the total to 121, with just 27 convicted in the Orissa violence by Hindu...

Note: Photos included with the article. Note: The following text is a quote: Monday, December 8, 2008 Terrorism in Mumbai Bringing Attention to Long-Term Problems in India Gospel for Asia For Immediate Release Many churches and homes were reduced to piles of rubble by anti-Christian extremists in Orissa, India. INDIA (ANS) -- The world’s eyes have been focused on Mumbai, India, during the last few weeks. The news was filled with frightening images of the carnage from a well-planned terrorist attack in which nearly 200 people died. But the attacks in Mumbai aren’t the only terroristic activities occurring in India—they...

New Delhi (AsiaNews) – A representative of the local government in Orissa estimated that more than 500 people died as a consequence of the anti-Christian pogrom launched by Hindu fundamentalists. He said he personally authorised the cremation of at least 200 bodies....

WASHINGTON: Another of President-elect Barack Obama’s appointments has been greeted with disbelief by Pakistani-Americans and liberal members of the Indian community because Sonal Shah, the adviser picked up by Obama for his transition team, is known for her links to communal Hindu organisations. Vishwa Hari Parishad (VHP) and its student wing Bajrang Dal are believed to have been involved in the massacre of over 2,000 Muslims in Gujarat and for the last three months have been carrying out a sustained campaign against Indian Christians in Orissa.

Three Christians, including a priest, were attacked on Monday by members of the VHP and Veer Sarvarkar Yuva Morcha at Choela Buttuwala village nearby on charges of allegedly trying to convert local residents. Witnesses said nearly 50 members of both outfits reached the village around 9 am and started gathering the literature kept at a makeshift church. “The VHP and Morcha workers then had a quarrel with priest Hemant Guru and his two associates, Suraj Kumar and Suresh Kumar. They beat up all three,” said Neeraj Thapa, a local resident. The scared trio somehow managed to escape. The angry mob...

BANGALORE, India (CNS) -- Father Bernard Digal, the Bhubaneswar archdiocesan procurator who survived an attack by Hindu extremists and had been hospitalized for a month, died of dengue fever Oct. 28. "We are saddened by Father Bernard's untimely demise," Archbishop Raphael Cheenath of Cuttack-Bhubaneswar told Catholic News Service. "He was a dedicated priest at the service of the people," Archbishop Cheenath said of the 46-year-old priest from the Kandhamal district in Orissa state. Father Digal was beaten by Hindu extremists and left to die in the jungle Aug. 26 before he was moved to a local government hospital. On Aug....

A Christian organisation in the US has urged the Bush administration not to start implementing the civilian nuclear agreement with India unless the violence against the community in Orissa stops. Jim Jacobson, President of the Christian Freedom International has called for an immediate action by the House of Representatives to pass Concurrent 'Resolution HR-434' that condemns the recent religious violence in India and asking the Government of India to stop the violence and address its root causes. Fanatics in Orissa are launching attacks against Christian homes and churches, setting fire to everything in their path and viciously beating, or even...

Further vitiating the already surcharged atmosphere in Orissa's Kandhamal district, hundreds of women of the Rashtra Sevika Samiti - an outfit affiliated to the Sangh Parivar - on Tuesday demonstrated here demanding the arrest of a nun who was raped during the violence that erupted in the area in August. "The allegations made by the nun appear to be baseless because she is not coming forward to identify the people already arrested," the organisation's zonal organising secretaty Suchitra Mohapatra said. "If she was raped she should come forward and identify the culprits. The state government has already announced to extend...

The government of Orissa is even closing the refugee camps, and thousands of people have nowhere to go. An appeal to the UN, that it grant Indian Christians the status of refugees, protect them, and send them the food and shelter that India is denying them. New Delhi (AsiaNews) - The government of Orissa is closing the refugee camps and driving out thousands of Christians, without food or shelter. In the meantime, the violence continues, denounced as a genocide to the United Nations, which is being asked for immediate intervention.Fr. Manoj Digal of the archdiocesan social service center tells AsiaNews,...

FBI Warns of Potential Terror Attacks The FBI and Department of Homeland Security today issued an analytical "note" to U.S. law-enforcement officials cautioning that al-Qaida terrorists have in the past expressed interest in attacking public buildings using a dozen suicide bombers each carrying 20 kilograms of explosives. Authors with the U.S. Office of Intelligence and Analysis added that they have "no credible or specific information that terrorists are planning operations against public buildings in the United States." The FBI and DHS analysts said they were releasing the note because "it is important for local authorities and building owners and...

Thousands of Christians in the Indian state of Orissa have fled their homes beacuse of ongoing religious violence. The unrest between Hindus and Christians began in August sparked by the murder of a Hindu leader. Chris Morris reports.

BHUBANESWAR, India (UCAN) -- Christian leaders in Orissa have jointly dismissed as "cooked up" a document released by a Hindu group claiming that Christians conspired to kill a Hindu religious leader. The release of "a forged and fabricated document by the Hindu fundamentalist organization was made with a purpose of maligning the Christians," said a Church press statement issued Oct. 9 at a press conference. Catholic and Protestant leaders jointly conducted the event in Bhubaneswar, the state capital, 1,745 kilometers southeast of New Delhi.Their press conference followed an Oct. 6 press statement from Hindu Jagaran Manch (front to awaken Hindus). The statement...

A Maoist leader has again claimed responsibility for the death of Swami Laxmanananda Saraswati, whose assassination unleashed the pogrom against Christians in Orissa.He affirms that the authors of the killing left two letters at the scene of the crime, but the government kept them quiet in order to blame the Christians and allow them to be killed "for electoral purposes." ...

Days after he fled his home, there was something that stood between Hari Chand Digal and his home, his paddy field, two cows and 15 goats. He had to give up his faith if he wanted his home. So one morning 15 days ago, Digal, 42, finally gave in and lowered his head. A barber shaved off his hair, holy water was sprinkled on him, and in a chatter of mantras, he was made a Hindu again. He could now have his life back, village leaders said. Mobs of hundreds of Hindu chauvinists have ravaged villages in Orissa’s hilly central...

INDIA Carmelite convent attacked in Madya Pradesh. Figures on the violence against Christians Nirmala Carvalho Mumbai (AsiaNews) - The guard at the Carmelite convent in Banduha (Ujjain, Madya Pradesh) has been wounded while trying to protect the sisters; in Karnataka, the Syro-Catholic church of St George in Ujire was devastated and burned; a statue of Our Lady of Lourdes was destroyed in Kolar. This is some of the new violence against Christians recorded today. All of these attacks took place overnight, or in the early morning. The wave of violence, which began in Orissa three weeks ago, has so far...

Father Ranjit Tigga has spent most of his life as a Jesuit missionary in rural India working with poor tribal villagers near the state of Orissa, southeast of Calcutta near the Bay of Bengal. Father Francis Ezhakunnel, another Jesuit missionary, was the director of a leprosy center in the state of Jharkhand, just north of Orissa. And Father Nicolas Santos teaches college in western India. All three Indian priests are now at Marquette University studying for advanced degrees in business administration and communications, so they can return to India and aid in the advancement of those they serve. Although immersed...

Pentagon Makes Fighting Extremism Top Priority Seven years after the Sept. 11 attacks, the Pentagon on Thursday officially named "the long war" against global extremism as its top priority and pledged to avert any conventional military threat from China or Russia through dialogue. The Defense Department, in a new national defense strategy, also emphasized the need to subordinate military operations to "soft power" initiatives to undermine Islamist militancy by promoting economic, political and social development in vulnerable corners of the world. Defense Secretary Robert Gates said he hoped the change would help establish permanent institutional support for counterinsurgency skills...