ISLAMABAD (Dispatches) – Pakistan’s new army chief General Syed Asim Munir says his military is ready to defend “every inch of our motherland” if attacked by India. He made the remarks while visiting the Line of Control (LoC) that divides the disputed Kashmir region. “We have noticed highly irresponsible statements from Indian leadership on Gilgit Baltistan and Jammu and Kashmir recently,” he said. “Let me make it categorically clear, Pakistan’s armed forces are ever ready, not only to defend every inch of our motherland but to take the fight back to the enemy, if ever, war is imposed on us.”  India has not responded to his statement yet. On November 22, India’s northern army commander Lt general Upendra Dwivedi said, “As far as the Indian army is concerned, it will carry out any order given by the government of India. Whenever such orders are given, we will always be ready for it.” The highly disputed LoC, a 740-km (460-mile) de facto border that cuts Kashmir region into two, is claimed by India and Pakistan, both of which are nuclear armed superpowers. The LoC, that is not considered as a legally recognized international boundary, was established as a part of the Shimla Agreement at the end of the Indo-Pakistani war of 1971.

 

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MOSCOW (AP) – About 1,700 seals have been found dead on the Caspian Sea coast in southern Russia, officials said Sunday. The authorities in the Russian province of Dagestan said that it’s still unclear what caused the animals’ deaths, but they likely died of natural reasons. Regional officials initially said Saturday that 700 dead seals were found on the coast, but on Sunday Zaur Gapizov, head of the Caspian Environmental Protection Center, said according to the state RIA Novosti news agency that after a broader inspection of the coast the number of dead animals was 1,700. Gapizov said the seals likely died a couple of weeks ago. He added that there was no sign that they were killed by poachers. Experts of the Federal Fisheries Agency and prosecutors inspected the coastline and collected data for laboratory research, which didn’t immediately spot any pollutants. Several previous incidents of mass deaths of seals were attributed to natural causes.

 

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SAN SALVADOR (AP) – The government of El Salvador sent 10,000 soldiers and police to seal off a town on the outskirts of the nation’s capital Saturday to search for gang members. The operation was one of the largest mobilizations yet in President Nayib Bukele’s nine-month-old crackdown on street gangs that long extorted money from businesses and ruled many neighborhoods of the capital, San Salvador. The troops blocked roads going in and out of the township of Soyapango, checking people’s documents. Special teams went into the town looking for gang suspects. “Starting now, the township of Soyapango is completely surrounded,” Bukele wrote in his Twitter account. He posted videos showing ranks of rifle-toting soldiers. More than 58,000 people have been jailed since a state of emergency was declared following a wave of homicides in late March. Rights groups have criticized the mass roundups, saying they often sweep up young men based on their appearance or where they live.

 

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WASHINGTON (The Hill) – Former U.S. president Donald Trump called for the termination of the Constitution’s rules regarding elections to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election following the release of more detailed information about Twitter’s role in suppressing a story about Hunter Biden.  “A Massive Fraud of this type and magnitude allows for the termination of all rules, regulations, and articles, even those found in the Constitution,” Trump said in a Truth Social post. “Our great ‘Founders’ did not want, and would not condone, False & Fraudulent Elections!” he continued. Deputy White House Press Secretary Andrew Bates disagreed with this call to terminate Constitutional rules, saying, “Attacking the Constitution and all it stands for is anathema to soul of our nation, and should be universally condemned.” Trump’s post comes after the first of the “Twitter files” on “free speech suppression” were posted on Twitter on Friday. The posts focused on the controversy surrounding President Biden’s son Hunter Biden and Twitter’s reaction limiting the spread of posts about it. 

 

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KYIV (AFP) – More than 500 Ukrainian localities remained without power Sunday following weeks of Russian airstrikes on the electric grid, an interior ministry official said. “The enemy continues to attack the country’s essential infrastructure. Currently, 507 localities in eight regions of our country are cut off from electricity supplies,” deputy interior minister Yevgueny Yenin told Ukrainian television. “The Kharkiv region is the worst hit with 112 isolated villages,” Yenin added. Another 90 villages were cut off in the Donetsk and Kherson regions, he said, with others in the regions of Mykolaiv, Zaporizhzhia and Lugansk. On Saturday, Ukrainian authorities -- including Mykolaiv region governor Vitali Kim -- had once again urged civilians to bear up in the face of continually deteriorating early winter conditions and regular power outages. Repeated daily power cuts have left millions of people without heat or lighting while outside temperatures have dropped below zero Celsius (32 Fahrenheit) in recent days. With further strikes on the network widely expected, Ukrainians fear a difficult prolonged winter as well as a flood of departures by refugees from a war now into a tenth month. 

 

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BOGOTA (AFP) – Colombian President Gustavo Petro says the ELN rebel group has agreed to allow a displaced indigenous community to return to its lands in the west of the nation, the first significant achievement in 12 days of peace talks. The ELN, or National Liberation Army, is the sole leftist insurgency yet to lay down weapons in Colombia. “The first point of agreement that we reached with the ELN -- in barely a week of these dialogues -- is the return of the indigenous Embera people ... to their reservations,” Petro said in a public appearance in Dabeiba, a town in northwestern Colombia. Petro did not say when the Embera would return to their lands in the departments of Choco and Risaralda. They had fled violence between drug gangs, outlawed right-wing militias and the ELN. Many of the displaced Embera now live in Colombia’s capital and hold highly visible protests in parks, clashing frequently with police.