India set to accept first Taliban official to expand ties with Kabul

India is likely to bring in its first Taliban representative at its consulate in Mumbai, according to reports, in its push for talks with the former insurgent group since they claimed power in Kabul.

The Taliban have proposed the name of Ikramuddin Kamil as the Afghanistan representative at the country’s consulate in Mumbai, reported The Sunday Guardian. His name has been proposed for second secretary at Afghanistan consulate in Mumbai, the report added.

An official at the consulate confirmed to The Independent that Mr Kamil is visiting New Delhi and is yet to officially take charge as the consul general at the Mumbai consulate. According to the Guardian, he entered India on a standard passport and is likely to be issued a diplomatic passport soon.

If formalised by Delhi, Mr Kamil will be the first official to represent the hardline Islamist regime in India. The Taliban has been seeking international recognition and increased engagement with its Asian allies, including China and Pakistan.

The move of bringing in the Taliban officials in India is also seen as Delhi’s bid to expand diplomatic relationship and have an open communication channel with Afghanistan as terrorism concerns surge in the region.

Additionally, three more representatives of the Taliban are set to be introduced at the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan embassy in New Delhi, reported the Afghanistan International on Monday.

These three representatives include Najeeb Shaheen, son of Sohail Shaheen, the head of the Taliban’s political office in Qatar, who has been introduced as the charge d’affaires of the Afghan embassy in India, the report added. The Independent has not confirmed the reports.

The flurry of appointments come within a week of senior India’s foreign ministry official JP Singh meeting with the Taliban’s acting defence minister Mullah Mohammad Yaqoob as the two sat down in Kabul to expand the bilateral relations.

The meeting has been termed as a significant development as Mr Yaqoob, the son of the Taliban’s founder and late supreme leader Mullah Omar, has not publicly interacted with India’s interlocutors in the past, reported Indian daily Hindustan Times, citing people familiar with the matter.

Mr Singh, who is a joint secretary in India’s external affairs minister’s office and was on an unannounced visit to Kabul, also met with the Taliban’s acting foreign minister Amir Khan Muttaqi and former president Hamid Karzai, the report added.

The ministry of external affairs has not issued a comment or statement about the meeting.

Dozens dead as car ploughs into crowd at China sports centre

At least 35 people were killed and 43 others sustained injuries after a man rammed his car into people at a sports centre in the southern Chinese city of Zhuhai which is hosting the country’s biggest annual air show this week.

Police detained a 62-year-old man suspected of hitting the joggers and speeding off on Monday evening, according to the state media. The alleged driver, identified as Mr Fan, drove his SUV through a barrier at Zhuhai Sports Centre in what local police say was a “serious and vicious attack”. He is in a coma and being treated for wounds thought to be self-inflicted.

Initial investigations suggested the attack had been triggered by unhappiness over a divorce property settlement, police said. Because he is still in a coma, he has yet to be questioned.

Chinese president Xi Jinping on Tuesday urged all-out efforts to treat those injured in the ramming incident. “All localities and relevant departments should make effort to ensure the safety of people’s lives and social stability,” he said according to the state media.

Mr Xi also called for the “strict” punishment of the perpetrator.

Videos from the incident showed a firefighter performing CPR on a person, as people were told to leave the scene. Other videos shared on X (Twitter) by blogger and dissident Li Ying, who is better known as Teacher Li, showed injured people scattered on the road in a pool of blood.

In one, a woman says “My foot is broken.”

Most of the injured people were wearing the same clothes and were reportedly part of a group of middle-aged and elderly people exercising on the track.

By Tuesday morning, searches for the incident on Chinese social media were heavily censored and searches on Weibo for the sports centre only turned up a few posts.

The sports centre for the city district of Xiangzhou regularly attracts hundreds of residents, where they can run on the track, play football and dance. Following the incident, the centre announced it would be closed until further notice.

Zhuhai is hosting China’s biggest annual air show this week where a new stealth jet fighter, the J-35A, will be on display for the first time.

The aircraft adds to the airpower of the world’s fastest-growing military and is part of an effort by Beijing to match America’s military capabilities as it modernises its armed forces.

Violent crime is rare in China due to tight security and strict gun laws. However, a rise in reports of knife attacks in large cities has drawn public attention to safety in public spaces.

In October, a man was detained after he allegedly attacked children with a knife at a school in Beijing. Five people were wounded. In September, three people were killed in a knife attack in a Shanghai supermarket, and another 15 were injured. Police said at the time that the suspect had personal financial disputes and came to Shanghai to “vent his anger.” In May, two people were killed and 21 injured in a knife attack in a hospital in Yunnan province.

Vietnam arrests pro-democracy activist for ‘anti-state’ activity

Police in Vietnam have arrested a pro-democracy activist for alleged anti-state activity in the latest incident of crackdown on political dissent in the communist nation.

Tran Khac Duc, 29, was arrested by Ho Chi Minh Police for “creating, storing, distributing or disseminating information, documents and items” in an alleged effort to oppose the Vietnamese government.

Police said he was part of an “exiled reactionary organisation” and had been warned several times.

Mr Duc was arrested in September this year but the authorities announced of his arrest through a state-run newspaper over this weekend.

He was reportedly affiliated with the Assembly for Democracy and Pluralism organisation (ADP), which aims to establish a “multi-party democratic system” in the one-party nation.

The Vietnamese government has escalated its clampdown on dissent by arresting activists, journalists, lawyers and critics with large followings on social media.

According to reports, the government adopted a more hardline approach in throttling dissent after Nguyen Phu Trong was re-elected as the Communist Party chief.

The authorities said despite warnings, Mr Duc continued to “contact and receive instructions from the leaders of the organisations” and allegedly carried out activities such as “managing” the group’s website and drafting and sharing articles “with content insulting great people”.

It added that Mr Duc sought, connected and allegedly developed domestic forces for the pro-democracy organisation. “This is a very dangerous act, directly violating national security and the political security situation in Ho Chi Minh City,” the state media report stated.

The ADP was founded in 1982 and led by Nguyen Gia Kieng, a former official of the US-allied South Vietnamese government and now exiled in France.

Nguyen Gia Kieng told Radio Free Asia on Saturday that ADP members had been repeatedly harassed and beaten up by police but the arrest was “unusual”.

In June, Vietnamese authorities charged journalist and historian Truong Huy San with violating a national security law because of his post on Facebook.

Reporters Without Borders ranked Vietnam 174th out of 180 countries and territories in their 2024 World Press Freedom.

Japan clarifies why PM Ishiba was spotted ‘sleeping’ in parliament

Shigeru Ishiba, president of Japan’s ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), was seen dozing off in parliament on Monday where he was reelected as the prime minister.

Video footage showed Mr Shigeru briefly closing his eyes during a plenary session of the House of Representatives as the votes were being counted, leading to social media comments criticising his apparent drowsiness.

Late on Monday, the government’s top spokesman addressed a news conference to respond to questions about the prime minister’s health.

“The prime minister has been extremely busy working until late into the night, and I understand that he had a cold today and was taking cold medicine,” Yoshimasa Hayashi, the chief cabinet secretary, said. He said that besides the cold “there are no problems with his health”.

Some lawmakers, including a member of the opposition, criticised Mr Shigeru’s behaviour, suggesting it showed a lack of urgency. “If he was really asleep, that shows his marked lack of tension,” the unidentified lawmaker was quoted as saying by Kyodo News.

In the viral video, Mr Hayashi was seen looking at the prime minister with concern during the session on Monday.

In a closely watched parliamentary vote on Monday, Mr Shigeru was confirmed as prime minister, successfully clearing one of the initial challenges for his new administration. This comes after his LDP and its coalition partner Komeito failed to secure a majority in the recent Lower House election.

However, the video of him with his head down and eyes closed quickly overshadowed news of his confirmation, The Japan Times reported, as the clip went viral on the X, attracting numerous critical comments under the hashtag “#Ishibashushonoinemuri” or “#PMIshibaSnoozing”.

Nobuyuki Baba, leader of the Japan Innovation Party (or Nippon Ishin no Kai) said that while he believed Mr Shigeru was undoubtedly tired, his actions were “inappropriate” for the occasion.

“We were holding an election to decide the head of one of the three branches of government, so I think it would be inappropriate for one to take a rest during such an election,” he said.

Why the world’s most populous country is running low on bodies

When GN Saibaba, a university professor who had spent years in prison for his impassioned activism in India, died last month, his final act of service was an unexpected one: his body became a teaching tool, donated by his family to the Gandhi Medical College in Hyderabad for academic and research purposes.

Saibaba’s wife Vasantha and their daughter Manjira had only a short window in the hours after his death to consider whether to go ahead with the donation, and decided it would be a fitting send-off, embodying the late teacher’s lifelong belief in “education as a tool for liberation”.

His was one of the most high-profile body donations in recent memory in a country where such sacrifices are rare. The previous month, the family of the veteran Communist Party leader Sitaram Yechury also made national headlines for donating his body for teaching and research purposes.

The donations, while primarily intended to honour the legacies of the two public figures, have also cast a spotlight on a wider and growing problem in the world’s most populous nation: an acute shortage of cadavers for medical education and research.

For a country with one of the largest healthcare systems and a rising number of medical students, the supply of cadavers is alarmingly low, and the situation risks harming the quality of medical training, professionals and activists tell The Independent.

The federal health ministry doesn’t keep a public database of body donations, but the seriousness of the problem can be gauged from an appeal it made to the health secretaries of states and union territories earlier this year.

The Hindu reported in July that the director general of health services, Atul Goel, had told the regional bureaucrats: “We have a shortage of human cadavers required for teaching in the country.” He urged them to encourage families to donate the bodies of their departed loved ones instead of just the organs. “This will go a long way in offsetting the shortage of human cadavers in medical institutions,” he said.

Dr Vaishaly Bharambe, anatomist and cadaver donation advocate, says that India needs people to come forward with bodies “more than ever to meet the growing demands of medical education”, but the donation system “has not kept pace”.

“The shortage means many students are forced to rely on anatomical models or digital simulations, which cannot fully replicate the experience of real dissections,” she says.

Instead of one cadaver for 10 medical students – the required rate, Bharambe says – India likely only has one for every 50 students in some colleges. This is leaving a generation of aspiring doctors without critical practical training, profoundly affecting the quality of care they can provide.

At the heart of the cadaver shortage is a lack of systemic support for body donation, compounded by cultural, religious and logistical hurdles and a lack of awareness, activists and doctors tell The Independent.

“Around 2017, we were receiving numerous calls asking how and where to donate,” says Sunayna Singh, chief executive of Organ India, an NGO supporting organ and cadaver donation, noting the absence of accessible information for potential donors and their families.

In response, her team undertook a year-long project to create an online directory. “We contacted medical colleges across India, so now, if, say, you are in Karnataka, you can visit our site, select your state and city, and see a list of colleges with their contact details. We wanted to simplify the process so people wouldn’t have to search endlessly for information.”

The NGO has a team of people to help donors and coordinate with medical colleges to ensure that the donation process goes smoothly. But sometimes, their best efforts aren’t enough.

Singh describes an incident that took place during the Hindu festival of Dussehra in October. “We got a call from Hyderabad, and they said a family member had died and they wanted to make the donation,” she recalls. “They were very specific about the college they wanted to donate to. I wanted to get it to the college, but it was the Dussehra weekend. Everyone had gone home.

“Basically, we tried – we really tried hard. We also tried to speak to other nearby colleges. But it did not happen, because it was, you know, a holiday weekend,” she adds, disappointment ringing in her voice, as she calls for better-organised support from hospitals and from state and federal governments.

“If the colleges could have somebody standing by 24/7, even during holidays, to make sure it’s coordinated and done efficiently; if the ambulance is sent to the person’s house. It is a big deal for people to donate their bodies. And death doesn’t come on weekdays and from 9 to 5,” she says.

For families like Akhil Wagh’s, body donation is a profound final act of giving. His father, Jayaprakash Wagh, wanted to donate his body when he died, and Akhil’s mother, Mamata Wagh, decided to do the same. “After all, what use is a body if it’s simply burned? This way, it lives on, helping students learn, maybe even saving lives one day,” Wagh, who lives in Chicago, recalls her saying.

The family initially registered for body donation at an ayurvedic hospital in Pune, the western Indian city where his parents lived. The hospital, however, made it the family’s responsibility to transport the bodies. So they approached a private hospital instead, which agreed to take care of transportation and documentation.

When Wagh’s father died last year, the family’s commitment was put to the test. He was expected to be discharged from a Pune hospital when he suffered a sudden heart attack. Wagh was away in the US, and it was left to his mother to ensure that her husband’s last wish was honoured.

“My mother handled it all,” Wagh says. “She had to manage the doctor’s certificate, the death certificate, and coordinate with the hospital. And she did it alone, with incredible strength.”

This is not easy for a family member to do in that moment. “We do not give credit that the moment they lose their family member, they have to make that call. Instead of grieving, they have to make that call to a medical college,” Bharambe says.

“They are looking at a six-hour window in which they have to complete all the paperwork and the body donation,” she adds. “For a country as warm as ours, one should make the donation within six hours of the person passing away. The idea is that the donor and his family should have minimum pain when the donor dies and his body begins to degenerate at the end of six hours.”

But the process is arduous.

“First, a family member needs to provide an Aadhaar card to identify the body and confirm the donor’s identity,” Bharambe says, referring to India’s national digital ID card system. “There is always a risk that someone might attempt to pass off a body as their relative’s to cover up a crime, so this verification step is crucial.”

Medical documentation is also required, including a certificate specifying the cause of death. “In some states, it’s also mandatory to register the death with the municipal corporation before moving forward with the donation,” she says.

Completing all this paperwork can take time, especially if the death occurs late at night.

“Imagine someone dies at midnight,” Bharambe says. “Finding a doctor to issue a death certificate in the next couple of hours is challenging, and that delay can make the entire process more difficult for the family.”

There are also legal restrictions that further narrow the pool of potential donors. Bodies that undergo post-mortem exams, belong to accident victims, or come from patients with diseases such as Aids or tuberculosis, cannot be used in educational dissections, says Bharambe.

She explains the procedure for handling and preserving a donated body on its arrival at a medical college. “Once the body reaches the college, it undergoes a wash and is then injected with embalming fluids. These fluids act as preservatives, preventing decomposition and allowing the body to be used for medical education. The body is placed in an embalming loop to ensure that it stays intact and suitable for use over time,” she says.

“Throughout the next year, students will dissect and study the body in stages, learning and understanding the intricacies of human anatomy. The medical student actually studies with the feel of a cadaver when it reaches the surgery department. He is much more aware of what a muscle feels like. He is not dependent on his imagination, because it comes to him naturally.”

Advances in technology mean that medical students can now use virtual human cadavers for their studies, but Bharambe says it isn’t the same.

“You wear your goggles, and what you see in front of you is a cadaver. You can remove muscles, put them back. It’s a study in three dimensions,” she says. “Will [virtual bodies] replace cadavers? It cannot ever replace the feel of a real human being.”

There is no technology, she says, “that will allow you to imagine what different organs inside a person feel like. You have to have a cadaver.”

Religious and cultural beliefs around death and the afterlife further complicate the picture. Many families like to perform religious rites soon after death, and they may hesitate to disrupt these rituals by donating the body to science, or fear being denied a moment of closure.

“People fear they won’t be able to complete these important ceremonies,” Bharambe says. “Sometimes families ask if they can receive any part of the body for closure, but the law in India strictly prohibits this,” she adds. “While there is ongoing research on ways to help families feel a sense of closure, current law provides no options for returning remains to loved ones.”

Once a donated cadaver has served its teaching purpose, government regulations require it to be incinerated. “Hospitals either have their own burial grounds or partner with biological incinerators, so religious rituals are not involved at this stage,” says Bharambe.

Saibaba’s wife is still grieving the loss of her “childhood friend, lover, and partner”, but she finds solace in the knowledge that his final act aligned with his belief system. “This is the least we could do to honour him,” she says. “He always wanted to teach, to impart knowledge.”

Reflecting on the emotional challenges of giving your loved one’s body away, Vasantha says: “The college said we could visit him any time. But he’s in my heart, in my eyes and in my thoughts. Seeing him again would change nothing. He’s already here with me. His body now serves students who can learn from it, just as he always wanted. I have given them the responsibility.”

A few weeks after his father’s death, Wagh returned to India and went to the private hospital the body had been donated to. He says he felt a sense of peace. “I didn’t need to see him one last time. I just needed to know that he was where he wanted to be, fulfilling his purpose. It’s comforting to know that his body will serve others, that his life continues in a way.”

New Zealand delivers historic apology to victims abused in state care

New Zealand prime minister Christopher Luxon on Tuesday made a “formal and unreserved” apology in parliament for decades of abuse and torture of thousands of children and vulnerable adults in the state’s care.

An independent inquiry in July found that the country’s state agencies and churches failed to prevent, stop or admit the “unimaginable” abuse of at least 200,000 people, many of them Maori, between the 1950s and 2019.

“It was horrific. It was heartbreaking. It was wrong. And it should never have happened,” Mr Luxon addressed the parliament in Wellington and a public gallery packed with about 200 survivors.

“Today I am apologising on behalf of the government to everyone who suffered abuse, harm and neglect while in care,” he said as he apologised to all the survivors on behalf of the country’s previous governments as well.

Mr Luxon said the vulnerable people “should have been safe and treated with respect, dignity and compassion” in foster and church care along with state-run institutions such as hospitals and residential schools. “But instead, you were subjected to horrific abuse and neglect and in some cases torture,” he added.

The findings by the Royal Commission – the highest level of inquiry that can be undertaken in New Zealand – capped a six-year investigation that followed two decades of similar probes around the world amid a public outcry for nations to reckon with authorities’ transgressions against children placed in care.

The inquiry found the results to be a “national disgrace”.

Of 650,000 children and vulnerable adults in state, foster, and church care between 1950 and 2019, nearly a third endured abuse, while many more were exploited or neglected. The inquiry detailed a litany of abuses, including rape, sterilisation and use of electric shocks, which peaked in the 1970s.

Children were removed arbitrarily and unfairly from their families and the majority of New Zealand’s criminal gang members and prisoners are believed to have spent time in care, the injury found.

The report singled out churches, particularly the Catholic Church, stating that as many as 42 per cent of those in faith-based care by all denominations were abused.

The Catholic Church said in a 2020 briefing to the commission that accusations had been made against 14 per cent of its New Zealand clergy during the time covered by the inquiry.

“For many of you it changed the course of your life, and for that, the government must take responsibility,” Mr Luxon said on Tuesday.

“These gross violations occurred at the same time as Aotearoa New Zealand was promoting itself, internationally and domestically, as a bastion of human rights and as a safe, fair country in which to grow up as a child in a loving family,” the inquiry heads wrote, using the country’s Maori and English names.

“If this injustice is not addressed, it will remain as a stain on our national character forever,” they wrote.

Mr Luxon said his government had completed or started work on 28 recommendations from the inquiry and will provide its full response early next year.

He said a National Remembrance Day would take place on 12 November next year and work will begin to remove memorials like street names, public amenities, and other public honours of proven perpetrators.

Instead, the country would honour the victims, many of whom were buried in unmarked graves at psychiatric and other sites that were places of care in New Zealand.

Additional reporting by agencies

Netflix announces new family drama ‘Asura’ helmed by Hirokazu Kore-eda

Netflix has teamed up with Palme d’Or-winning Japanese auteur Hirokazu Kore-eda, who is writing and directing a classic Japanese family drama series.

Titled Asura, the series will be a modern take on Ashura no Gotoku, a 1979 family drama series which in turn was based on a Mukoda Kuniko novel of the same title.

Asura will tell the story of four sisters: Ikebana teacher Tsunako (Miyazawa), housewife Makiko (Ono), librarian Takiko (Aoi) and waitress Sakiko (Hirose). Takiko’s suspicion that their father is having an affair leads to different conflicts and reveals secrets in each woman’s life. Just like the “asura,” demigods in Buddhist cosmology, the women “embody a whirlwind of emotions, clashing fiercely yet sharing moments of profound connection”.

The original 1979 series aired on public broadcaster NHK in Japan, and went on to inspire several other Japanese family drama series, and even a feature film adaptation in 2003.

Starring Rie Miyazawa, Machiko Ono, Yu Aoi, and Suzu Hirose, the show is already in advanced post production.

According to the streaming giant, Kore-eda’s approach to Asura will serve as a tribute to the screenwriter and novelist Mukoda, who was behind several scripts for popular Japanese dramas.

“With great respect for Mukoda and her influence on his career, Kore-eda infuses Asura with his unique vision, highlighting the independence and complexity of women,” Netflix said in a statement.

“What makes Kuniko Mukoda’s dramas so rich are the superficial poison exchanged in conversation and the love hidden behind those cruel words. The four actors playing the sisters understand this well, so the series was very enjoyable to shoot,” said Kore-eda.

The series has been developed and produced by Yasuo Yagi, who worked previously with Mukoda before her tragic death from a plane crash in 1981.

“Before the 40th year since her passing, I revisited her works and realised that Like Asura was central to her legacy,” said Yagi. “We focused on casting the best actors for the sisters, and with Kore-eda as director, I believe we’ve created a quintessential drama.

Oscar nominee Kore-eda won the Jury Prize for Like Father, Like Son in 2013 and the Palme d’Or at Cannes for Shoplifters in 2018, and has also written and directed the 2023 miniseries The Makanai: Cooking for the Maiko House for Netflix.

Asura will be released on Netflix on 9 January 2025.

Man convicted for abandoning wife in Sudan for ‘exit trafficking’

An Australian man has been sentenced to four and a half years in jail for leaving her wife stranded in Sudan without a passport.

Mohamed Ahmed Omer, 52, a Sudanese-born Australian citizen has been found guilty of “exit trafficking” in a first such case in Victoria.

Exit trafficking is a form of human trafficking where individuals are coerced or deceived to leave a country against their will.

The man, who is an Australian citizen, pleaded not guilty to the charge of abandoning her wife in Sudan under the guise of a holiday where she was forced to spend more than a year.

In June 2014, Omer secretly withdrew support from the visa of his then wife and made claims that she abused their two children, aged six months and two.

Three months later he took a holiday from Melbourne to Sudan with his wife and the children. Unbeknownst to his wife, he boarded a plane back to Australia with the children after stealing her passport and identity documents.

Judge Frank Gucciardo said what Omer did “required a degree of planning”.

“You treated her as a chattel that could be simply discarded,” he said. “She was grief-stricken and traumatised by the departure of her children with you.”

The County Court was told that it took her more than a year to have her visa reinstated and return to Australia. She was then reunited with her children.

“Your deception was intentional and resulted in [the woman’s] compliance in the exit from Australia,” Judge Frank Gucciardo said on Tuesday.

“At all times you had reassured her that she would be able to return to Australia.”

She returned to Australia after 16 months of struggle but her husband continued to keep her children. She was later reunited with the children after a legal battle.

The court found him guilty in April after a month-long trial.

The couple were wedded in an arranged match by their families in 2010 in Sudan. The woman moved to Australia in April 2012 on a partner visa and the two had their first child in 2014.

The husband had a PhD in applied chemistry and was an expert in food security and agriculture.

The judge said he received an impressive character references from his former friends and colleagues who said he was a person committed to humanitarian work in home country.

However, it was in contrast to the allegations against him which included his aggressive and threatening behaviour towards his wife during their marriage.

He was also accused of controlling the woman’s phone usage as well as her bank accounts, the court heard.

“I can see little evidence of contrition or remorse for your conduct,” Judge Gucciardo said.