On this day in 2007, the bomb blasts in Samjhauta Express killed 68 people including 44 Pakistanis. The immediate investigations revealed irrefutable evidence about the masterminds. In this thread, I would share some Indian newspaper clips which covered the investigations.

1. Lt Col Prasad Purohit, a serving Indian army officer, was arrested for terror conspiracy in the Malegaon blast case. He was the co founder of Abhinav Bharat, a right wing Hindu organisation. He admitted that he was the mastermind.

(The Times of India, Pune, 7 November 2008)

2. Lt Col Purohit met Pragya Thakur on 5 Oct 2008 to tell her that "Our People" had carried out the killings in Orissa, burnt down two churches and also carried out the Malegaon blast.

(The Indian Express, Pune, 24 Nov 2008)

Ironically, Pragya is BJP's MP today.

3. During his narco analysis test, Lt Col Purohit told officers that Praveen Togadia was responsible for the “Samjhauta Express Blasts”. He asked me to find out from Dr Dev, how much RDX was remaining after the blast.

(Pune Mirror, 19 Nov 2008)

4. In his narco analysis test, Lt Col Purohit gave sensational information that he supplied explosives for Ajmer and Malegaon blasts at the instance of Mahant Dayanand Pandey.

(Sakal, Pune and Pudhari, Pune, both of 15 Nov 2008)

Welcome to a new Legislative Day in the Senate of the Federal Republic of Nigeria!

Senate President, @DrAhmadLawan leads the Principal Officers into the Chambers, takes the official prayers and begin the day's proceedings at 10:40am.

#TodayInSenatePlenary

Senator Ibrahim Oloriegbe moves for the adoption of Votes and Proceedings for Tuesday, 15th February, 2021.

Senator Ezenwa Onyewuchi seconds.

#TodayInSenatePlenary

Senator Ayo Akinyelure presents18 petitions from the Office of the President of the Senate to the floor of the Senate.

Petitions are laid and referred to the Committee on Ethics, Privileges and Public Petitions and to report back in six weeks.

#TodayInSenatePlenary

Senator Solomon Adeola {@YAYIAdeola} cites Order 43 to inform the Senate on the demise of Alhaji Lateef Kayode Jakande, the first civilian Governor of Lagos State.

BRITSH ARMY HEADCOUNT REDUCTION (Thread)
Looking back at personnel cuts made in 2010, a reduced Army of 82,000 didn’t help Britain regain its financial strength, it simply signified a hollowing-out of our ability to defend ourselves.
(1 of 25)

It destroyed the credibility of David Cameron’s Coalition Government then and even more so in hindsight. It was military illiteracy on a grand scale. The problem wasn’t so much the reduction itself, but the fact that there was no real strategy behind it, no future plan.
(2 of 25)

Back in 2010, the UK's involvement Iraq and Afghanistan didn’t really serve our national interests (See Ben Barry’s book). If these conflicts were sub-optimal uses of the Army, they raised the important question of what the Army’s underlying raison d’être should be.
(3 of 25)

We hope the Integrated Review will provide a concrete response to this. In the meantime, the Integrated Operating Concept has been much talked about, but we have been left in the dark about what it signifies in terms of strategic priorities and a reconfigured force.
(4 of 25)

The resulting strategy will obviously be threat-driven with Russia, China, North Korea and Iran representing near-peer threats and Islamic terror groups in Africa and the Middle East posing an asymmetric threat. This suggests a mix of high-end and light forces.
(5 of 25)

There hv been concerted efforts by members of the Oyo APC to rewrite history. They repeat so often the lie that Ibadan was a peaceful place bfr Seyi Makinde took over office on May 29, 2019. It has become a case of, repeat a lie often enough, & it begins to sound like the truth.

Immediately after he took over the government in May 2011, a violent clash erupted. The bloody clash described as "a recurring decimal" in the state saw one dead and about 10 injured.

By June 2012, there was another clash. This time between the NURTW and the PDP. The story was that the NURTW were angry that PDP members were singing Arikesola's praises. You can read the report for yourself.

May 2013 - Violence erupted on Thursday in Ibadan, the Oyo State capital, when known members of the ACN and the NURTW made to disrupt a political gathering put together by the leader of Accord Party, Senator Rashidi Ladoja.

August 2013- No fewer than eleven herdsmen have been killed in the last six weeks in some parts of Oke Ogun area; Otu, Ikomu, Igbo-Ora, Iwere-Ile, Iganna, Ilaju and Ado-Awaye.

Iranian Reformist Front (Jebheye Eslathalabane Iran) was officially founded yesterday in Jamaran, Khomeini's historic house near Tehran.

The founding meeting elected Behzad Nabavi as an interim head since he is oldest.

And also 5 people as a committee to draft the IRF's by-laws

The five are:

1- Outspoken Tehran MP @mah_sadeghi
2- Faraj Komijani, politician with a base in an official teachers union
3- Ali Bagheri (low-key politician)
4- @MansooriAzar , noted reformist politician
5- Rouhani's ex-VP @mowlaverdi

Some more pictures of the meeting.

The next meeting of the group is on Wednesday and will be held virtually.

The top question remains whether and who (and how many candidates) to run for the coming #IranElections2021

The founding statement says the reformists will run a single candidate agreed by all reformist parties but only if elections are to be "free, legal, competitive, just and constitutional"... which is obviously not what's going to happen!

The founding statement also includes big demands like call for a referendum to revise the constitution. But as usual these big words aren't followed by any actions.

In what was United Bengal (modern day West Bengal+Bangladesh) back in 1941, Muslims were 56% of the population, and today they are approximately about 67% of the population. If you go back to the early 20th century or the late 19th century, Muslims weren't even a majority.

This

example of Bengal is what has been happening across the whole of the Indian sub-continent, albeit at a slower or faster pace as the case may be region to region, but the fact remains that the change has been unidirectional= As time goes by, the proportion of Muslims increases in

a given region and the proportion of Hindus goes down. Project the numbers out into 50 or 60 years and you have multiple states/regions of India with a Muslim plurality or outright majority. Project the numbers out to a century or so and it's difficult to argue how Hindus can

maintain cultural/political dominance in the long run. Some people like to say, "Oh well so what. Numbers don't matter, what have you achieved at 80% of the population which you're going to achieve at 90%!".

This is faulty thinking, because the direction of change itself is

the demgoraphic sense is quite critical of whether you are expanding or retreating civilisation. The more people you have relative to the enemy, the more the chances that you will adamant about taking over more territory. The less people you have relative to the enemy, the more

THREAD #Serbian #Orthodox #Church bishops start Conclave (#Sabor-Holy Assembly in #SPC parlance) to elect new #Patriarch, 3 months after previous died of #Covid. Election much more about politics than religion, mainly #Serbia #Kosovo relations but also #Russia Orthodox Church /2

2/ vs. #Ecumenical Patriarch of #Constantinople. Most of numerous traditional cleavages within SPC (Young Lions vs. Old Guards); Serbians vs. TransDrinians; ecumenicals vs. hardline Orthodox etc. will be irrelevant with only the split between Russian vs. Greek students, roughly/3

3/corresponding with main division: support for whatever "solution" President Vucic might propose to satisfy int'l demand to at least de facto recognize Kosovo vs. stubborn refusal to accept anything not in line with current Serbian constitution that says #KosovoJeSrbija. /4

4/Due to 3 decades of heavy politicking under 1 weak Patriarch (Pavle) & his insipid successor (Irinej), those who’d otherwise be God-obeying “good guys” are staunchly in Kosovo Status Quo camp, refusing any deal. Those bishops who were in bed with politicians & secret services/5

5/ now support “accommodation” with Kosovo. Voting system is peculiar: Conclave picks 3 eligible bishops (each needs to obtain simple majority of votes i.e. 23); names of top 3 are sealed & 1 is drawn. System was designed in Communist times to prevent manipulation. Both sides /6

Today the Plateau State Contributory Health Care Management Agency PLASCHEMA paid an advocacy/sensitization visit to the University community.

THREAD!

Vice Chancellor, Prof. Yohana Daniel Izam led management staff, principal officers and other staff of the University to receive the PLASCHEMA team in the 600 capacity University Auditorium

The VC told the gathering that the health of every member of the university community is of paramount importance to him. He therefore welcomed the idea of a Health Insurance scheme advocated by the agency

Director general of the Plateau State Contributory Health Care Management Agency, Dr Fabong Jemchang highlighted the benefits of health insurance to members of the University community saying it will end the out-of-pocket expenditure on HealthCare.

He said the Plateau state Contributory Health Care Management Agency is poised to strengthen health financing by pooling resources and through strategic purchasing mitigating high out-of-pocket expenditure

Today Vice President @ProfOsinbajo presided over a meeting of the National Economic Council (NEC), to critically review the security situation in the country. Council recommitted to the following principles:

#NECBrief
#AsoVillaToday
#Thread

The Council recommitted to the following principles:

1. The protection of all residents of all States, including non-indigenous communities and religious and ethnic minorities within State jurisdictions;

2. The arrest and prosecution of all perpetrators of crime;

3. In collaboration with federal authorities, the reconstruction of destroyed homes and payment of compensation where appropriate by State authorities for damage to property and livelihoods sustained during targeted attacks on communities within their jurisdictions;

4. Ensuring that deceased victims of such violence are duly accorded dignified burial rites;

5. The immediate public and unequivocal condemnation of all manifestations of hatred, targeted violence, and other hate crimes against ethnic, religious, and minority groups;

6. Ensuring that local security initiatives—whether State Govt law enforcement agencies/local vigilante groups/ @PoliceNG Community Policing programme—are inclusive & composed with due consideration given to adequate representation of non-indigenous/minority resident communities;

Israel and Russia held intensive contacts in last few days over humanitarian issues related to Syria. Via ⁦@WallaNews⁩

2-Over last two days, talks between Netayahu and Putin, Israeli DM Gantz and Russian DM, Israeli FM Ashkenazi and Russian FM Sergey Lavrov. Israeli DM team says Gantz spoke to counterpart about "advancing humanitarian issues in the area."

3-Israel and Russia held intensive talks on Syria in last few days

4-Last Wednesday, on day of call between Gantz and Russian DM, Israeli ambassador to Russia Alex Ben Tzvi met w/Russian FM, Putin's Syria envoy Mikhail Bogdanov. IDF attache in Moscow attended. Russian MoD confirmed meeting in statement. Bogdanov and Ben Tzvi met again today

5-Meanwhile, Israeli cabinet convened today at 6:00 PM Israel time. Senior officials called meeting "urgent" to deal w/issue defined as "security-related and classified."

Why should we be careful when talking about a “jobs bounce-back” in South Africa? - A THREAD.

You don’t get better labour market economists in South Africa than the @NIDS_CRAM team, but the main finding of an “employment bounce-back” seems counterintuitive. What’s going on? 1/n

NIDS-CRAM does NOT show a rebound to pre-COVID employment levels. They report 700,000 job lost between Feb and Oct 2020, this is massive = 3.85% fall (broad definition). The authors of the employment paper say this could be as high as 5.3% or 960,000 jobs.

The authors @joshbudlender @ihsaanbassier (+ Rocco) also show that Oct employment is normally higher than Feb employment, super roughly Oct is plausibly around 102% of Feb. This means it’s plausible 360,000 jobs would have been gained between Feb-Oct *anyway*.

This would mean - within the study parameters - it’s possible COVID has caused up to (an outer outer limit) of 1.32 million job losses when comparing Oct 2020 with what we would have expected it to be in normal times. This is a total disaster in the context of the SA economy.

This is roughly what we should expect from the StatsSA QLFS. This showed 2.2 million jobs lost in first half of 2020, and 543,000 regained in Q3, meaning a loss of just under 1.7 million jobs in first 9 months. We’d definitely expect some more jobs regained in Oct-Dec.

As witch-hunt #3 gets underway by @BeatriceJanzon
@sverigesradio @sr_ekot against me, Keith Begg, a citizen of Ireland and Sweden and no doubt some members of the FB Group I would like to post some questions to the above:
🆘Is it ethical, that the tactics and antics of a state

media station, paid for with taxpayers money, can infiltrate a Private FB group and try to discredit them? This is done in the most authoritarian of states.
🆘Is it ethical that the Honorable David Nabarro from @WHO had to issue a press release due to being deliberately

misquoting in Swedish media?
🆘Are these headlines reflective of what you would see in free media in a democracy, when the rest of the world was posting quite opposite headlines about Sweden?
🆘Does the deliberate distortion of information on Swedish TV constitute any

breaches of trust? Why was it done? After all when the government changed its C19 strategy on the Gov website, they deemed it a mistake?
🆘Not to mind the Italian embassy having to issue three statements over false claims by Tegnell

which were picked up by the media. Do I as a private citizen think that @RSF_en made a big mistake by recognizing Sweden as #4 in terms of Freedom of the Press? ABSOLUTELY. We want to know what they based their decisions on. Because it is clear to many