India announces new visa rules to boost tourism numbers

NEW DELHI: Tourists travelling to India from 43 countries including the US will no longer have to queue at their local consulates to obtain visas after New Delhi announced Thursday a long-awaited easing of border controls.

Tourists from countries including Australia, Brasil, Germany and Japan will now be able to apply online and then receive the green light within four days, before getting their visa at an airport on arrival.

Most foreigners currently have to wait several weeks before learning whether they will be allowed to enter India after submitting their applications at visa processing centres, a major deterrent for potential visitors.

“This scheme ... is a dream come true for the entire tourism industry of India and is bound to positively impact the economy,” tourism minister Mahesh Sharma said in a statement.

“The government's objective is to boost tourism and this scheme's implementation will send out a clear message that India is serious about making travel to the country easy.”

Plans for the overhaul were announced by the previous left-leaning Congress government which was thrown from office at elections in May.

The minister said the scheme would eventually be expanded from the list of 43 countries that also includes Russia, Singapore and South Korea.

Britain, India's former colonial master, is not included on the new list. Under the old scheme, citizens of 12 countries were eligible for a visa on arrival.

Despite its cultural attractions, beaches and mountains, India attracts relatively few holidaymakers — 6.58 million in 2012, a fraction of those who go to popular Asian destinations like Malaysia and Thailand.

India came 65 out of 140 countries in a World Economic Forum ranking on travel and tourism competitiveness conducted in 2013.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi's right-wing government has pledged to boost tourism numbers since his party stormed to office on a pledge to create jobs and revive the economy.

Under the scheme, tourists will be able to pick up their visas from nine Indian airports. Tourists can apply twice a year for 30-day visas which cannot be extended. Tourists must also have a return ticket.

“The facility is available to foreigners whose sole objective of visiting India is recreation, sightseeing, short duration medical treatment, casual business visit ... and not valid for any other purpose, activities,” a tourism ministry statement said.

A new plan to revive Germany Europe

NOT much gets Europeans excited these days. When challenges emerge — at least on the foreign policy front — the reaction seems to be almost always the same. Problems with Russia? Let’s expand sanctions. Iran? Let’s keep sanctions. Islamic State? Let’s impose sanctions although just how and on whom is not clear.

But suddenly, out of the blue, there is a bit of a buzz in the winter air. Europeans woke up on Nov 26 with a new “hero”: European Commission President Jean Claude Juncker who strode on to centre stage to promise peace — or at least jobs — in our time.

It was a seminal moment. For Juncker and Europe.

The former Luxembourg prime minister is facing allegations that hundreds of multi-national firms were reportedly attracted to Luxembourg in legal tax avoidance schemes. Juncker was prime minister at the time but denies wrongdoing. The new plan has the advantage of taking the almost-scandal off the media radar.

For Europe, the plan could be the answer to its dreams of revival. The 28-nation bloc is still struggling to climb out of a long and painful Eurozone crisis. Growth rates are low, unemployment is tragically high, especially among young people. People are downbeat and dejected. Even the German economy is beginning to flag.

To top it all, making pessimists even more downbeat, in a speech to the European Parliament last week, Pope Francis likened Europe to a grandmother, “no longer fertile and vibrant”. (I’m not sure he’s talking about the lively grannies I know though…)

Anti-granny remarks aside, the pontiff’s remarks do resonate for many. Europe is getting a tad worn out, depressed and haggard. A shot of vitamins is badly needed.

Enter Juncker with a magic bullet: a 315 billion euro plan to spend EU money on new infrastructure projects as part of an initiative to revive granny and help Europe grow and thrive again.

Only, there is no magic involved. There will be hardly any new money — only €21bn in EU funds as a guarantee to raise private cash in the capital markets — with the rest of the money expected to come from private sources.

EU policymakers say they will be looking for funds wherever they can. Chinese investments will be sought out avidly. Middle East investors will be welcome.

“I often hear we need so-called fresh money. But we need a fresh start and fresh investment,” Juncker told the European Parliament this week. “We will not betray our children and grandchildren by writing cheques they ultimately will have to pay.”

With one eye on developments across the Atlantic, the Commission chief moaned that “While investment is taking off in the US, Europe is lagging behind. Why? Because investors lack confidence, credibility and trust.”

The Commission is making up for the lack of solid details on the plan by upping the hype. Juncker says the initiative represents a cornerstone of efforts to revive an ailing economy.

Others have called it a historic moment, a make-or-break initiative, a European “New Deal” to get Europeans working again.

Certainly, the timing is right. Many European economists have been saying for some time Europe needs to move from the current focus on austerity to programmes which bring back growth.

And the best way to do so is to start investing again — especially in infrastructure.

The Commission believes it could create up to 1.3 million jobs with investment in broadband, energy networks and transport infrastructure, as well as education and research.

National governments could contribute to the fund if they wished and would be asked to come up with a list of projects with “high socio-economic returns” that could kick-off between 2015 and 2017.

With a nod to Martin Luther King, Juncker added that he had a dream. He wanted to see schoolchildren walking into a brand new classroom equipped with computers in the Greek city of Thessaloniki, European hospitals saving lives with state of the art medical equipment and French commuters charging electric cars on motorways.

The good news is that pro-austerity Germany — the bane of countries like France and Italy which want the EU to start spending itself out of economic stagnation — is in favour of the plan.

But EU officials admit the initiative will not fill the gap in the amount of investments needed, especially in infrastructure across Europe. There is also concern that there will not be enough credible projects around for investors to put their money into.

The European Investment Bank will be the “prime mover” in delivering seed money for those investments over the next three years. The plan will now be discussed by the 28 EU leaders at the Dec 18-19 summit.

Juncker’s shift from austerity and cutting debt to investment is not going to be the botox shot needed to transform “Granny Europe” into a vibrant young woman. But it is a start.

Cameroon battles to keep youths out of Boko Haram

MAROUA (Cameroon): As the West fights to keep its youth from the grip of jihadists, Cameroon’s Muslim leaders are struggling to respond to a recruitment drive by Nigeria’s Boko Haram.

In this remote north-east corner of Cameroon, some 450 young locals from the town of Kolofata alone joined up over the course of two months, deputy Prime Minister Amadou Ali said in August.

“No to Boko Haram,” say signs posted across the region as Muslim authorities seek to keep a closer eye on preaching and teaching in mosques and religious schools.

“We’re raising awareness in our mosques through Friday prayers,” says Imam Malloum Baba while chatting with residents in Kourgui, about 20 kilometres (12 miles) from the border with Nigeria.

“We’re urging people to try to understand true Islam and to not fall into the trap set by these terrorists,” he added.

The Islamist fighters of Boko Haram sowing terror in northern Nigeria have stepped up their increasingly sophisticated attacks in Cameroon in their bid to establish an Islamic state.

‘The problem is ignorance’

“Boko Haram claims to preach Islam, but they don’t know anything about Islam,” said Baba, the Muslim leader. “The problem here is ignorance. People don’t necessarily understand our message fully.” Yet communicating is just one obstacle in the region, which has a whopping 65 per cent poverty rate.

There are few opportunities in life here for young people with little or no schooling apart from farming a plot of land that provides a meagre living, a local chief — known as a “lamido” — said on condition of anonymity.

“People are stuck in the system because they didn’t go to school and can’t get a job. That’s the crowd we need to pay attention to,” said the leader, a well-known member of north Cameroon’s Muslim intellectual elite.

Two months ago shopkeeper Amadou Bachirou, who lives in the far northern town of Maroua, saw his childhood friend join Boko Haram.

“He was very poor and he heard Boko Haram paid well. He told me, ‘If you want, we can go together.’ But I can’t go. I know he is now sending money to his family,” said Bachirou.

Hiring bonus

Boko Haram pays a “hiring bonus” of up to 500,000 Francs CFA (about 760 euros) and a monthly salary of 100,000 Francs CFA (about €150), according to intelligence sources.

This amounts to a fortune for young people who, if lucky enough to have an income, don’t make more than €60 per month.

Muslim leaders on the front line of this struggle for young people’s allegiance face dire choices as Boko Haram attacks multiply.

“At first we encouraged imams to directly denounce Boko Haram in their sermons, but many preachers and teachers had their throats slit, so we’ve had to come back to a more general message about peace and tolerance to keep them safe,” a Maroua religious leader said.

He added: “These barbarians have nothing to do with our tolerant Islam.”

Many people fall into the trap of the simplistic idea that religious school is a gateway to Boko Haram.

National leaders too insist that Islam in Cameroon is moderate and tolerant. “Imams even go to churches for ecumenical prayers, that’s Islam in Cameroon,” said government spokesman Issa Tchiroma Bakary. “It’s our society’s model and we aren’t ready to give it up for anything.”

It seems there are plenty in Cameroon who would agree, with villagers gathering intelligence and even confronting Boko Haram themselves.“There have been some cases where guys from Boko Haram were attacked with machetes,” by locals, an unnamed Cameroonian military officer said.

Nepal's religious mass animal slaughter under way

BARIYAPUR: Hordes of Hindu worshippers were on Friday slaughtering thousands of animals in a remote corner of Nepal to honour their goddess of power, defying a chorus of protests from rights activists.

Sword-wielding devotees have poured into the village of Bariyapur near the Indian border which will become the world’s largest abattoir during the two-day festival, with animals ranging from buffaloes to rats butchered.

“It is very festive here, everyone is excited,” said head priest Mangal Chaudhary at the slaughter site near a temple devoted to Hindu goddess Gadhimai.

Animal carcasses and severed heads were piling up in a large field near the village where thousands of devotees were carrying out the sacrifices, eyewitnesses said.

“It is very bloody... you can hear the animals moaning,” said Rameshwor Mehta, 50, who was waiting to offer his prayers.

Worshippers on the first day were sacrificing mainly buffaloes, thousands of which have been coralled into holding pens in the field, before moving on to other animals.

Sita Ram Yadav, a 55-year-old farmer who had travelled three hours to attend the festival, said the atmosphere was “like a carnival” with devotees packing the area.

“I am offering a goat to Gadhimai to keep my family safe. If you believe in her, she grants your wishes,” Yadav said.

Worshippers from Nepal and neighbouring India have spent days sleeping out in the open and offering prayers to the goddess at a temple decked with flowers in preparation.The festival kicked off at midnight amid tight security, with the ceremonial killing of a goat, rat, chicken, pig and a pigeon.

Some 1,200 police personnel were patrolling the village and the field where sacrifices were taking place to control crowds gathered to watch.

Magna Carta story illuminate by discovery of medieval poem

A little-known mediaeval poem written almost 800 years ago by Scottish borders monks was revealed on Thursday as the earliest independent account of one of the single most important events in English history: the sealing of the Magna Carta.

Curators at the British Library have been researching all aspects of the Magna Carta for an exhibition marking its 800th anniversary next year.

But even they, said the library’s chief executive Roly Keating, were surprised by what they found in the Melrose Chronicle , written in the 13th century by worldly Cistercian monks. “It is unmistakably an account of what happened,” Keating said. “It is a measure of how, even after 800 years, the plot continues to thicken around Magna Carta.”

At Runnymede, beside the Thames, King John on June 15, 1215 met aggrieved English barons who had backed his failed war with the French. They demanded change and got it with the Magna Carta, a document that established a new relationship between a king and his subjects.

Since then it has been interpreted and misinterpreted endlessly but — with its clause “to no one will we sell, to no one deny or delay right or justice” — remains a touchstone for civil liberties.

The Melrose poem, written in Latin, is remarkably clear. It begins: “A new state of things begun in England; such a strange affair as had never been heard; for the body wishes to rule the head, and the people desired to be masters over the king.”

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The Melrose Chronicle, written in Latin almost 800 years ago, is an account of events at Runnymede

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It goes on to explain the anger at King John. “The king, it is true, had perverted the excellent institutions of the realm, and had mismanaged its laws and customs, and misgoverned his subjects. His inclination became his law; he oppressed his own subjects; he placed over them foreign mercenary soldiers, and he put to death the lawful heirs, of whom he had obtained possession as his hostages, while an alien seized their lands.”

The library’s curator of mediaeval manuscripts, Julian Harrison, who made the discovery, said the Melrose Chronicle had simply never figured on anyone’s radar.

“It does set out in quite precise terms the sequence of events at Runnymede for negotiations between the king and the barons. There is no official report of what happened. We don’t actually know who was present. This is sufficiently detailed to suggest that the person was present or knew somebody who was present.”

Harrison’s hunch is that it may have been someone in the retinue of Alan of Galloway, a Scottish nobleman who is known to have been at Runnymede, who imparted the information. A scenario can be imagined of Alan and his men heading home and stopping off at Melrose rest and telling the monks of the strange events in England.

Whatever the true story, the chronicle will be an important part of next year’s Magna Carta Show, to be sponsored by Linklaters, which will be the largest of the celebrations throughout Britain. It will include, said Keating, “some of the most precious loan items we’ve ever brought under the roof here” — not least from the US, the Delaware copy of the Bill of Rights and Thomas Jefferson’s handwritten copy of the Declaration of Independence.

There will be artefacts and letters from across the centuries exploring the enduring potency of the Magna Carta including one from a British civil servant in 1947 detailing a decision not to endorse a plan for a Magna Carta celebration in Commonwealth countries. The reason? It might inspire “uncritical enthusiasm” for the Magna Carta among “ill-disposed colonial politicians” in their struggle to acquire greater freedom for their peoples.

As well as the exhibition the library has commissioned a work from artist Cornelia Parker which responds to the legacy of Magna Carta in the digital era.

Parker plans to create a 13-metre long tapestry replicating the Magna Carta’s Wikipedia page as it appeared in June this year. It will be stitched by over 200 people who have an association with Magna Carta including lawyers, prisoners, civil rights campaigners, politicians and barons. Jimmy Wales, the founder of Wikipedia, has also agreed to do some stitching.

Parker said she wanted to echo the communal activity that resulted in the Bayeaux Tapestry “but on this occasion placing more emphasis on the word rather than the image”.

Phil Hughes: A country boy who chased Baggy Green Dreams

For such a young man, Phillip Hughes saw clearly the road he wanted to travel.

In cricket terms, it began with the Pacific Highway that runs right through his home town of Macksville and crosses the adjacent Nambucca River marking the mid-point of the journey between Sydney and Brisbane.

As a hugely talented and even more highly driven 17-year-old, Hughes saw that road stretching from his family’s banana property to the opportunities afforded by the city.

And despite his innate shyness and a country boy’s love of the bucolic life he gave up his other boyhood love – rugby league – and took his cricket kit to Sydney.

He was chasing a dream born around the time he first turned out for the Macksville RSL Cricket Club’s A-grade team against some combative and vastly more seasoned country cricketers – at the impressionable age of 12.

From the moment he moved into a small apartment close to his batting coach’s academy – the same address that had previously hosted another of shared mentor Neil D’Costa’s pupils, Michael Clarke – nobody who knew Phillip Hughes doubted that road would take him further.

To the Sydney Cricket Ground, where he played his first match for New South Wales 10 days before his 19th birthday, making him the youngest to don the baggy blue cap since Clarke eight years earlier, another link in the chain of friendship that bound the pair.

To Lord’s, cricket’s revered spiritual home where he represented its local county team Middlesex for a stint as a 20-year-old.

And, ultimately, to the Australian team at venues as deified and diverse as Wanderers in Johannesburg – where he became a Test cricketer in 2009 – Colombo, Delhi and the Melbourne Cricket Ground on Boxing Day.

But even while charting a path through the fraught and often frustrating landscape of professional cricket, Hughes lifted his eyes to a more distant horizon as he reiterated during the Australian team’s one-day series in Zimbabwe last August.

That triangular tournament which also featured South Africa and the home nation, provided a thumbnail sketch of the lot Hughes came to bear as Australian cricket’s perennial ‘next man in line’.

Publicly anointed as the preferred opening option should injury sideline Clarke from the series’ first game, Hughes's name was then conspicuously absent when the team sheet was finalised on match morning and he was, instead, once more assigned the job of 12th man.

That trip had already given rise to frustration and grumpiness among members of the Australian touring party who felt a sense of confinement in their Harare hotel.

But Hughes was never one to be consumed by misfortunes dealt, or outcomes beyond his control.

“I've been in and out of the national side probably four or five times now,” he told cricket.com.au during winter training in Brisbane earlier this year.

“I don't like to dwell on what's happened.

“If you don't pick yourself up and keep moving forward you're going to be left right back in the pack.

“That's something I've always looked to do, stay really positive in my mindset and pick myself up and look to get better every time I train.

“It's about getting out of bed in the morning and becoming a better player, that's my mindset because I suppose I’ve had a few kicks over the past few years.”

In the game’s parlance, he learned to focus on the next delivery and the infinite possibilities it presented.

And that vision extended far beyond cricket.

Over coffee in the lounge lobby of Harare’s charmingly chaotic Rainbow Towers Hotel, Hughes’s eyes sparkled beneath his ever-affixed cap as he detailed the passion that occupied his hours away from training sessions and team meetings.

The Angus cattle buying and breeding program he established with his father, Greg, which not only gave him a focus and a purpose beyond the vicissitudes of competitive cricket but was to be his lifeblood when his sporting journey concluded.

“Not a chance,” he replied in a flash, with that endearing half-smile that so infuriated bowlers trying to get him out, when asked if he saw his future in cricket once his playing days were done.

“The day I play my last game I’m heading straight up to the property, I’ll tell you that right now.”

He then went into exhaustively fascinating detail about the methodology behind the selection of breed animals, what to look for when considering a purchase, and the respective merits of the competing beef brands.

To illustrate his presentation he laid down a mobile phone and trawled through a limitless catalogue of bulls and steers, cows and heifers stopping here and there to explain the attributes of a particularly striking specimen.

No trite selfies or self-important snaps of last night’s entrée for Phillip Hughes.

But it was when he unveiled his own branding exercise – the logo he helped to design for the joint enterprise with his dad, Four O Eight Angus (408 being his Australian Test cap number) – that the genuine excitement about his post-cricket career became palpable.

For a fleeting moment.

“I’m no designer,” he said animatedly, before catching himself and leaning back in his chair as he flicked the phone back to images of cattle.

“But I still reckon it’s pretty cool.”

Unassuming as much as he was forever undaunted, Hughes had initially organised to return to the family property for the duration of Australia’s three-week series in Zimbabwe because he did not expect to be named in the touring party.

But when told he had indeed made muster, he simply swapped his stockman’s hat for the cricket variety, changed his travel arrangements to instead squeeze in a few days at the farm on his way back to his new home in Adelaide from Harare, and got on with it.

Like so many from a bush background, Hughes comfortably married professionalism with pragmatism – but admitted he had trouble resisting the call of Nambucca Shire.

“I spent six to eight weeks after the last Shield season with my family back home in the country which was awesome really,” he said recently.

“Just to get away from cricket, spend some real quality time with my mum (Virginia) and dad (Greg) and my sister (Megan) and brother (Jason) back home at the farm, which is something I really love doing.

“I love getting out there and getting me hands dirty and on the tractors with Dad and moving the cattle around and doing some real cattle work.

“It's something I've always been into from a small age.

“It's totally different to playing cricket. It really relaxes me.”

In essence, it’s this grounding that helped to explain why the plight that Hughes so lucklessly and undeservedly found himself in touched the hearts of so many.

Teammates past and present, greats of the game, fellow sportsmen and women, friends, casual acquaintances and so many fans who simply enjoyed watching him go about his work for whatever team, in whatever format.

His innate competitiveness and unclouded vision of where he wanted to get to meant he – and, by osmosis, his team – was so often able to find a way to succeed regardless of opposition attempts to quell him.

But his hunger to score runs and to constantly identify and eradicate flaws in his game came wrapped in a quiet humility and a genuineness that meant teammates gravitated to him, and opponents respected him without grudge.

Hughes, who would have turned 26 on Sunday, happily acknowledged that as a batsman – who fashioned his own unorthodox technique in backyard matches against his dad and brother, Jason, at Macksville – he was no aesthete.

When he arrived on the international scene he was denounced by some for his almost exclusive reliance on off-side scoring shots, a legacy of his developmental years where anything hit with force towards leg was bound for the windows overlooking the back porch.

So Hughes applied the work ethic that successfully took him from high school to Sydney, from junior cricket to Test matches, from solid first-class opener to explosive Twenty20 hitter, and willed himself back into the Australian selectors’ notebooks by scoring heavily and repeatedly.

In many ways, his home-spun batting method was his point of difference.

It meant he was able to hit the ball to parts of the field that rival captains and bowlers figured were unreachable and were therefore left unprotected, as he showed earlier this year when he became the first Australian man to score a double-century in a List-A 50-over match.

That innings helped pave the road back to the Australian one-day squad that went to Zimbabwe, then to the Test squad that travelled to the UAE a month later, and ultimately to the cusp of that recall to the Australian XI that had driven him ever onward.

Because, as he once conveyed when asked – prior to a meaningless county fixture towards the end of a disappointing Ashes tour on which he’d lost his Test berth – what motivated him to go out and succeed with no tangible incentive, it was his nature.

"Every time I bat I aim to get runs, I just love being in the middle," Hughes said recently.

"But I like to keep things fairly simple.

“I love playing cricket and that's hopefully what I will continue to do.”

It was a clear, pure vision that carried Phillip Hughes to the upper-most echelon, as a cricketer and as a man.

Suicide bombers gunman kill 64 at prominent Nigeria Mosque

KANO: At least 64 people were killed and 126 injured on Friday when two suicide bombers blew themselves up and gunmen opened fire during weekly prayers at a mosque of one of Nigeria's top Islamic leaders.

The attack at the Grand Mosque in Kano, the biggest city in the mainly Muslim north of the country, came just as Friday prayers had got under way.

The mosque is attached to the palace of the Emir of Kano Muhammad Sanusi II, Nigeria's second most senior Muslim cleric, who just last week urged civilians to take up arms against Boko Haram.

The blasts came after a bomb attack was foiled against a mosque in the northeastern city of Maiduguri earlier on Friday, five days after two female suicide bombers killed over 45 people in the city.

National police spokesman Emmanuel Ojukwu told AFP that the bombers blew themselves up in quick succession then “gunmen opened fire on those who were trying to escape”.

Ojukwu said he did not know whether the suicide bombers were male or female, after a spate of attacks by women in recent months, and did not give an exact figure on the number of gunmen.

But he said an angry mob killed four of the shooters in the chaotic aftermath.

Influential figure

Worshipper Aminu Abdullahi and local resident Hajara Tukur both said that there were two explosions in quick succession and a third in a nearby road.

A senior rescue official said 64 bodies had been brought to just one Kano area hospital, while 126 people had been admitted with injuries at three facilities.

“Those figures are going to climb,” he said on condition of anonymity, as he was not authorised to speak to the media.

The Emir of Kano last week told worshippers at the same mosque that northerners should take up arms against Boko Haram, which has been fighting for a hardline Islamic state since 2009.

He also cast doubt on Nigerian troops' ability to protect civilians and end the insurgency, in rare public comments by a cleric on political and military affairs.

The emir, who is currently thought to be out of the country, is a hugely influential figure in Nigeria, which is home to more than 80 million Muslims, most of whom live in the north.

Officially the emir is the country's number two cleric, behind the Sultan of Sokoto, and any attack could inflame tensions in Nigeria's second city, which is an ancient seat of Islamic study.

Sanusi was named emir earlier this year and is a prominent figure in his own right, having previously served as the governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria.

During his time in charge of the CBN, he spoke out against massive government fraud and was suspended from his post in February just as his term of office was drawing to a close.

Boko Haram has repeatedly attacked Kano before. On November 14, a suicide bomb attack at a petrol station killed six people, including three police.

The militants have a record of attacking prominent clerics and in July 2012, a suicide bomber killed five people leaving Friday prayers at the home of the Shehu of Borno in Maiduguri.

The Shehu is Nigeria's number three Islamic leader.

Boko Haram threatened Sanusi's predecessor and the Sultan of Sokoto for allegedly betraying the faith by submitting to the authority of the secular government in Abuja.

In early 2013, the convoy of Sanusi's predecessor was also attacked.

Andrew Noakes, co-ordinator of the Nigeria Security Network of security analysts, said the attack fitted a pattern of violence targeting religious and traditional leaders seen as “allies” of the state.

He said it was possible that the group carried out the attack as a direct response to Sanusi's comments last week, although it may have been planned beforehand.

“Whatever the case, the group has sent a message to northern leaders that crossing them will have consequences,” Noakes said in an email exchange.

Boko Haram attacks in recent months have ranged from the far northeast of Nigeria, across the wider north and northwest, using hit-and-run tactics, suicide bombings and car bombs.

The authorities in Cameroon, Chad and Niger have all expressed concern about Boko Haram's ability to conduct cross-border strikes, particularly as the dry season approaches.

The group's use of female suicide bombers, which dates back to June and saw four women blow themselves in Kano in a week in July, has been seen as a tactic to sow wider fear and panic.