All we are sayyyyying…is give peas a chance:

A thousand Indian troops withdrew from the disputed territory of Kashmir yesterday in a goodwill gesture aimed at fostering a new peace in the province.

The move was timed to coincide with a visit to Kashmir by Dr Manmohan Singh, India’s prime minister, and is the latest in a series of confidence-building initiatives between India and Pakistan.

Through a bullet-proof screen in Srinagar, India’s PM stated that he “extended the hand of friendship” to Pakistan.

…Last month Pakistan’s president Gen Pervaiz Musharraf seized the initiative on Kashmir by floating a plan to divide and demilitarise the region, calling on both sides to take radical steps towards a settlement.

Initially India responded coolly, but has reciprocated in kind with a symbolic reduction in troop numbers.

via the telegraph

In a horrifying court case being tried across the pond, three men, Kenneth Regan, William Horncy and Peter Rees are accused of murdering an entire family because they wanted to steal their Southall-based freight business, to use for smuggling narcotics.

Describing the deaths of Amarjit Chohan, 45, Nancy Chohan, 24, Devinder, 18 months, Ravinder, eight weeks old and Charanjit Kaur, 51, Richard Horwell, prosecuting, said: “Some crimes are beyond belief and on any view these horrific murders fall into that category.”

He said: “Three generations of a family were executed, deliberately killed, because of the greed of these three defendants.” He told the court that Regan lured Chohan to a meeting in Stonehenge on February 13, 2003, ostensibly to meet a potential buyer for his fruit freight business, CIBA Freight.

“Mr Chohan walked into a trap. Thereafter he was used and controlled by the defendants and held against his will for several days before being murdered. To make his disappearance appear genuine it was, or became, necessary for his family also to be murdered.

…The bodies were initially buried on farmland near Tiverton, Devon…When (Regan) realised police were closing in to exhume them he and Horncy bought a boat which was used to dump the family in the sea on Easter Sunday last year.

Two days later, Chohan’s body was found near Bournemouth pier. In July, Mrs Chohan was found in a fisherman’s net between Dorset and the Isle of Wight. In November, Mrs Kaur’s remains were washed up on the Isle of Wight. The boys have never been found.

Businessman Chohan had previously served time in prison for tax evasion, and this allowed his alleged murderer to craft a suitable lie in an attempt to cover his tracks; he tried to make it seem as if Chohan wanted to avoid his business partners and the government by taking his family to hide abroad. If it weren’t for Nancy Chohan’s skeptical brother, Regan and his accomplices might have gotten away with murder.

Nepalese authorities have thwarted serial killer Charles Sobhraj’s plan to escape from jail. Sobhraj, who had already spent two decades in Indian prisons, was sentenced to life after being convicted of the murder of a female tourist from the US.

Officials say they seized several phones and other electronic devices from his cell …details of the plan are yet to emerge because experts are examining the electronic devices and phone sets that Sobhraj was found to be using.

Sobhraj escaped from a maximum-security prison in the Indian capital Delhi in 1986 but was recaptured soon after.

I love how he’s in jail with a bunch of phones and helpful equipment.

Sobhraj, a.k.a “The Serpent” (because he’s great at disguises…wait, wouldn’t “The Chameleon” be more appropriate then?…Ah, forget it.) or “The Bikini Killer” (because he killed “western” women at a Thai beach resort) was never convicted of any of the 20 murders that he was linked to in the 1970s. “The Serpent” is half-Indian and half-Vietnamese, for those of you who are keen to know such things.

via the beeb

Ever since last month, when the taking of two French hostages in Iraq “had (the) unintended consequence” of uniting France in favour of the headscarf ban, i’ve been following how this affected le brown, specifically French Sikhs. here‘s an update:

A French administrative court has ruled on an appeal brought by three Sikh boys who have been excluded from classes for wearing the under-turban.

However, it referred the matter back to the boys’ school, and said the issue should be resolved by further mediation between the school and its pupils.

The court recommended mediation in order to prevent setting a legal precedent that Muslim students could use.

France introduced its new law banning the wearing of all religious symbols from state schools from September.

France’s small Sikh community says the under-turban is a valid compromise.

…The French authorities admit that when the law was drafted, nobody consulted France’s small Sikh community.

This lack of planning has resulted in significant confusion, since some schools accept the “under-turban”, while others refuse to appear hypocritical, since the ban affects ALL religions, not just Muslims. Yarmulkes and large crosses are also not allowed, though fear about increasing Islamic Fundamentalism among French youth is what inspired the law in the first place.

India’s most famous tourist attraction turns 350 this year, and quite understandably, it’s tired:

Earlier this month, two Indian historians warned the Taj Mahal may already be tilting and could crumble or sink if the government did not pay immediate attention to its ecological setting.

“Dangerous tilts in its minarets, first noticed in 1942 and mentioned in various reports, have continued to increase over the years,” Ram Nath, a former head of history at Rajasthan University, told the Hindustan Times.

“They are caused by the dry river bed.”

Another historian, Agam Prasad Mathur, said the dry Yamuna river bed must once again be filled if the monument was to be saved.

“Yamuna used to be full of water to maintain the monument’s balance and absorb tectonic shocks. Now that the river bed is dry, the Taj is exposed to the elements,” he said.

Mughal emperor Shah Jahan constructed the Taj in memory of his favourite wife, Mumtaz Mahal, who died during childbirth. According to the BBC article that was linked above, this threatened “symbol of love” attracted over three million tourists to Agra last year.