Hindutva groups in India have trolled jewelry company Tanishq into withdrawing an advertisement depicting a Hindu woman married into a Muslim family, sparking a debate over censorship and religious sensitivity in the country. The video shows a baby shower hosted by a Muslim family for their Hindu daughter-in-law. Describing the idea behind the ad campaign, called Ekatvam, Tanishq said in a social media statement: “The idea behind the Ekatvam campaign is to celebrate the coming together of people from different walks of life, local communities and families during these challenging times and celebrate the beauty of oneness.” The advertisement, however,…
Author: zenger.news
Nearly 38 percent of all suicides among farmers and agricultural workers in India — totaling 10,281 in the sector in 2019 — were in the western state of Maharashtra, with the dramatic numbers prompting criticism of government policies. The data is from a recently released 2019 report on Accidental Deaths and Suicides in India by the National Crime Record Bureau. The report states that of the total 139,123 suicides recorded in the country in 2019, nearly 7.4 percent were in the farming sector, with 5,957 suicides among farmers/cultivators and 4,324 among agricultural laborers. The southern state of Karnataka had the…
The targeted shooting death of an Ahmadi professor last week is the latest incident in the long history of persecution of the minority community, declared non-Muslims under Pakistani law and denied religious rights. Following an alleged altercation over religious matters a day earlier, Naeemduddin Khattak, a faculty member at the Government Superior Science College in Peshawar, was shot dead in broad daylight in Peshawar on Oct. 5. Naeemduddin was killed in his car by two people riding a motorcycle, police said. The suspects stopped the car and fired at Naeemduddin. One suspect has been arrested and another — reportedly a…
Five men were caught trying to cross a Spanish border illegally after a police dog found them hiding among clothes. Members of the Spanish Civil Guard made the discovery during a routine stop at a port in Melilla, an autonomous Spanish city on the northwest coast of Africa, around 8:30 a.m. on Oct. 8. The officers were checking loading containers for stowaways headed from Melilla, which shares a border with Morocco, to mainland Spain. They grew suspicious of a small boat carrying a large amount of clothing in sacks and deployed a police dog to inspect. The dog, a…
The Spanish Canary Islands is the first place in Europe to ban smoking in public in effort to halt the spread of the coronavirus. The ban, which took effect on Oct. 8, aims to reduce the spread of Covid-19 in the holiday hotspot through more effective distancing measures. Europe is grappling with a marked resurgence in the number of people infected with the coronavirus. The Canary Islands is an autonomous community in the Atlantic Ocean that consists of eight main islands; the most famous holiday centers are Tenerife, Gran Canaria, Lanzarote and La Palma. (Spain currently has 861,112 cases…
An aquarium in Mexico temporarily moved its dolphins to a hotel’s swimming pool as Hurricane Delta passed over the area. Two dolphins were removed from the Cozumel Reefs National Marine Park, near the resort town of Playa del Carmen in the southeast state of Quintana Roo on Oct. 7. They were then taken to a nearby hotel for protection because their swimming areas connect to the ocean, putting them at risk of being washed out to land or sea, according to the Quintana Roo Civil Protection Agency. Footage taken during the process shows the pair, which have since been returned…
It was 2013 when my friends and I first went to Karkhano Market on the outskirts of Peshawar, bordering the then-tribal area of Khyber Agency. A sign with the warning “You are about to enter Khyber Agency,” was visibly placed. Two out of three of us were from Islamabad, while the third was from Peshawar. We crossed the border of the settled zone and stepped into the tribal area. Shops on both sides of the road had old-style scales in their glass windows. We turned to our Peshawari friend seeking some answers, and he said, “The shops sell charas (cannabis…
Two hours after the trailer for “Mirzapur”’s second season dropped online, the Hindi Amazon Prime Video show was already embroiled in controversy. Netizens took it on themselves to proliferate #BoycottMirzapur2 on social media. The vitriolic tweets were targeted at the political affiliations of two people associated with the series. Actor Ali Fazal, who plays the role of Guddu, had tweeted his support for the protests against The Citizenship (Amendment) Act, 2019 (CAA), in December 2019. His tweets have since been deleted. In the same vein, Farhan Akhtar, producer of “Mirzapur” too tweeted in support of the nationwide protests: “See you…
Kolkata, the capital of India’s eastern state of West Bengal, has been adjudged the safest metropolitan city for women in India, according to the latest National Crime Record Bureau (NCRB) data. Of the 19 metropolitan cities surveyed, the City of Joy, as Kolkata is often called, recorded the least number of alleged sexual assault cases and zero cases of sexual harassment. In the ranking of all cities, it came third after Coimbatore, a city in Tamil Nadu, and Patna, the capital of Bihar in eastern India. Kolkata registered 14 cases of sexual assault in 2019, according to the data. There…
When the late Geraldine Ferraro took her place on a vice-presidential debate stage in 1984, the United States was only a few years away from normalizing relations with the People’s Republic of China. Nine presidential elections later, Sen. Kamala Harris became the only other woman to spar with a sitting vice president on Wednesday. And China is again a political wild card. For President Donald Trump’s re-election campaign, which is running out of time to budge stubborn opinion polls, the Salt Lake City showdown was a chance for Vice President Mike Pence to project an image of strength and blamelessness.…