US President Barack Obama pardons the National Thanksgiving Turkey during the 68th annual presentation of the turkey in the Rose Garden of the White House in Washington November 25, 2015. Reuters President Barack Obama sought to reassure Americans they were safe as millions of travelers set off for the long Thanksgiving weekend on Wednesday and authorities stepped up security at airports in response to the attacks in Paris two weeks ago. In New York City, record-breaking crowds were expected on Thursday for the annual Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade, and Police Commissioner William Bratton said the city was deploying more officers at the annual event than ever before. “Right now, we know of no specific and credible intelligence indicating a plot on the homeland,”

Obama told reporters at the White House, two weeks after suspected Islamist militants killed 130 people in a series of coordinated attacks in the French capital. “We are taking every possible step to keep our homeland safe,” he said, flanked by his FBI director and other top security officials on the day before Thanksgiving, when many Americans travel to be with their extended families for a traditional turkey dinner. Nearly 46.9 million Americans will travel over the long Thanksgiving weekend – the busiest US travel holiday of the year – with 3.6 million going by plane, according to the AAA, a motorist advocacy group. Most US airports reported flights delays of less than 15 minutes, according to tracking websites. Passengers at airports from Washington to New York said they saw heavier than normal security, but that travel was flowing smoothly. Americans have become more concerned about threats since the Paris attacks and now identify terrorism as the most important problem facing the nation, Reuters-Ipsos polling shows. “We have to live our lives right? We’re having a good time. We did a cruise and now we’re doing New York City,” said Karen Damaschino, 47, of San Francisco after landing at John F. Kennedy International Airport to spend the holiday in New York. The US response to Islamic State has become a top issue in the race to succeed Obama in the November 2016 presidential election.

In his statement, Obama tried to allay Americans’ concerns. “I know that families have discussed their fears about the threat of terrorism around the dinner table, many for the first time since September 11th,” he said, referring to the 2001 attacks by al Qaeda on New York and Washington. But he told Americans they should “go about their usual Thanksgiving weekend activities” while remaining vigilant to any suspicious activities. New York Mayor Bill de Blasio echoed that sentiment at a news conference on Manhattan’s Upper West Side, where crews were inflating the giant balloons that highlight the Macy’s parade, the traditional start to the holiday shopping season. “One thing I always say, there are some people trying to intimidate New Yorkers. Well, New Yorkers don’t get intimidated,” he said. “They’ll be out tomorrow in droves.” Stay vigilant To underscore Obama’s message, his Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson held a photo op at Washington’s Union Station just before boarding an Amtrak train to Newark, NJ, on the heavily traveled Northeast corridor, en route home for the holiday “It should be obvious to the public that there is a heightened presence” of law enforcement officers at train stations, airports and other public places, Johnson said.

“We are working overtime to protect the homeland.” Some travel analysts expected airport delays as a result of heightened security. But at Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport, one of the country’s busiest, Kirsten Bohling, 27, said she was pleasantly surprised by how painless her check-in went. “Lines are way shorter than I thought they would be and moving 10 times faster than I thought,” she said. “I think they were really really prepared.” The FBI sent a bulletin earlier this week to police departments across the country warning of possible copycat incidents after the Nov. 13 Paris attacks and sharing intelligence on how the attacks were carried out. The US State Department also issued a worldwide travel alert on Monday warning American travelers to remain vigilant, particularly when visiting foreign countries. As many as 3.5 million people were expected to line the 2.5-mile (4 km) route of the Macy’s parade in New York, according to organizers. City officials have made numerous public appearances in recent days seeking to reassure New Yorkers and tourists.

Mumbai, Nov 26 (IANS) The heroes and victims of the 26/11 terror attacks that left 166 people, including 28 foreigners, dead were solemnly remembered at various commemorative events held here on Thursday. Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis led the main commemoration at the 26/11 memorial in the Police Gymkhana on Thursday morning, along with his cabinet colleagues and senior police officers. He paid homage to the policemen who lost their lives during the 60-hour long operation that began on the night of November 26, 2008 when 10 Pakistani gunmen laid siege to south Mumbai. Besides Fadnavis, DGP Pravin Dixit, Mumbai Police Commissioner Ahmad Javed and other police officials, families of the martyrs and others who were killed in action were present.

Similar memorial services are being held during the day at the Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus (CST), the Hotel Taj Mahal Palace, Cama Hospital and at Girgaum Chowpatty where braveheart Tukaram Ombale was killed while helping nab one of the terrorists – M. Ajmal Kasab – alive early on November 27. To mark the seventh anniversary, Mumbai Congress president and a local municipal corporator named a square after home guards officer, Mukesh Jadhav, who fell to a terrorist’s bullet near St. George Hospital on 26/11. Jadhav, 23, was on patrol duty between the main and local railway lines at CST when he suddenly came face-to-face with one of the terrorists who shot him in the chest. Despite being shot, he stumbled to inform the police about the attacks which resulted in saving lives of hundreds of unaware commuters.

On Wednesday evening, as part of the Global Peace Initiative, celebrities joined a Walk For Peace along with children in central Mumbai and paid homage to the heroes and victims of the 26/11 attacks. Ten Pakistani terrorists sneaked into Mumbai from the Arabian Sea late evening on November 26, 2008 and targeted 12-odd prime locations in south Mumbai spread barely over a five-km area and created mayhem for 60 hours. The targets were: Colaba, CST, Leopold Cafe, Chabad House, Hotel Taj Mahal Palace, Hotel Trident Oberoi, near Metro Cinema, Cama and Albless Hospital, behind the BMC headquarters, Mazagaon Docks area, a taxi bomb near Vile Parle, and at Girgaum Chowpatty. Among the security officials martyred in gunfights with the terrorists included then ATS chief Hemant Karkare, shootout specialist Vijay Salaskar, Additional Police Commissioner Ashok Kamte, API Tukaram Ombale, Senior Inspector Shashank Shinde, commandos Major Sanjeep Unnikrishnan and Gajendra Singh, a trooper, both of the elite NSG.

Now Mumbai Police act 1951 section 110 has been abolished. The Mumbai police which had come into heavy controversy where under moral policing they had made random raids at Madh islands in a hotel. In a major embarrassment they has lined up 40 couples from the hotel.

Couples moving around isolated areas have been harassed many time by Mumbai cops. It is the right of any citizen to move around anywhere provided he does not create public nuisance.

The ex commissioner of Police Mr. Rakesh Maria had issued a strict orders to not punish people in public places. In spite of this order the raids continued and young couple were paranoid with such acts of the Police.

A teenage girl who ran away from her Vienna home to join Isis in Syria has reportedly been beaten to death by the group after trying to escape.

Samra Kesinovic, 17, travelled to Syria last year with her friend Sabina Selimovic, 15.

The two became a ‘poster girl’ for Isis, also known as Islamic State, appearing on social media websites in images showing them carrying Kalashnikovs and surrounded by armed men.

But by October that year there were reports quoting friends of the two women saying Ms Kesinovic had been sickened by the killings she witnessed and wanted to come home.

According to local Austrian media Ms Kesinovic was murdered by the group as she tried to flee the Isis stronghold of Raqqa.

One report quotes an “insider”, an unnamed Tunisian woman who reportedly also travelled to Syria to join Isis lived with the two girls while in Raqqa, but later returned home.

The Austrian foreign and interiror ministries declined to confirm the reports.

A report last year by David Scharia, a UN counter-terrorism expert, that a 15-year-old girl of Bosnian origin from Austria who had joined Isis had “disappeared” is now thought to refer to Ms Kesinovic.

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Mr Scharia said: “We received information just recently about two 15-year-old girls, of Bosnian origin, who left Austria, where they had been living in recent years …one was killed in the fighting in Syria, the other has disappeared.”

Both Ms Kesinovic and Ms Selimovic were children of Bosnian refugees who fled to Austria in the nineties to escape the war in their country.

In April 2014 the two travelled, via Turkey, to Syria where it is believed they both married Jihadists.

The Austrian authorities have accused a Vienna-based Bosnian Islamic preacher known as Abu Tejda – named as Mirsad O under Austrian privacy laws – of recruiting the woman.

He denies the accusation.

Patriotism paradox: NRIs chasing wealth abroad are heroes, Indians fleeing hate are traitors
It’s okay for the prime minister to be celebrated by a stadium full of British citizens who believe India is too filthy and corrupt to live in. It isn’t okay for an Indian to say that his family feels vulnerable as a religious minority.

Aamir Khan and his wife, Kiran Rao are not the only ones to have wondered if they should leave the country because they feel vulnerable and worried for their child’s future, because of the religious nationalism and the bigotry that attends it. But they are perhaps the only ones with a public profile to say this out loud.

Over the last two decades, cycles of communal violence and freely expressed religious chauvinism have made many people wonder the same thing. Since the early 1990s, I have seen friends and acquaintances deal with this dilemma: should they stay in India which is home or should they up sticks, and try and make good in a foreign country so their children do not have to live surrounded by suspicion and hate?

The decision not to leave home has meant that over the last 20 years families have had to protect their children from a society that is increasingly divided and strident with its prejudices, without letting them lose their sense of belonging in their own country because they feel vulnerable as members of a religious minority.

From explaining why prospective landlords refuse to rent once they find out the family is Muslim, battling school teachers (even at some of Delhi’s poshest schools) who assume that a child supports terrorism and the Pakistan cricket team because she is a Muslim, attacks on meat shops and meat eaters, to politicians who assert that India is a Hindu nation, there is a minefield of prejudice that parents have to teach their children to negotiate.

Skipping out

Unlike the Indians who contemplate leaving because they are made to feel vulnerable by prejudice fed on an ideology of religious nationalism, folk from Gujarat and Punjab have been fleeing the country for decades, by means fair or foul. India, they say, is not worth living in and does not offer them opportunities to fulfill their potential. People are so desperate to leave these two very prosperous states that families voluntarily suffer long-term separations or bankruptcy in the hope that eventually an entire extended family will be able to immigrate to the US, Canada, the UK or just anywhere in Europe.

On a flight out of the country earlier this year, the soft-spoken gent in the seat next to mine with a perfectly tied turban turned out to be a recently retired Indian army soldier en route to Canada where he hoped to make a new life. He was travelling on a three-month tourist visa leaving behind a wife and school going children, and agricultural land in Punjab. His plan was to overstay his visa firm in the belief that in a couple of years Canada would magnanimously convert him from illegal immigrant to valued citizen and reunite him with his family. The risk that this might not happen was one he felt was worth taking to secure his children’s future outside India. Many who hope to make this journey in Punjab have stickers on their cars of aircraft in flight with an arrow pointing to Toronto or Vancouver.

In London, I frequently met Gujaratis, some of them distant kinsman from Gujarat’s prosperous Kheda region, who had arrived leaving not unhappy situations. These were people of means – with homes or irrigated agricultural land or assets in other forms. They usually had some education and had been employed. The ones who had not got visas, had borrowed cast sums to pay human traffickers to transport them via four or five different countries on boats, trucks and aircraft. They said that a few years of working on low wages under the radar would give them and their children a better life.

Wembley jamboree

These former Indians, who have fled the country in search of greater prosperity, are lionised. No one questions their love for the country. They are “overseas citizens of India”. Many of them will have been in Wembley stadium on November 13 to cheer Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

Aamir Khan and his wife also want a better life for their child. The difference is that, for them, a better life means not feeling vulnerable as a religious or cultural minority. People, politicians and fellow actors unhappy with what Aamir Khan has said have asked him to stay and fight to prove that he is a true patriot, accused him of being part of a conspiracy against the nation or to go to Saudi Arabia

What Aamir Khan’s critics are saying is that it’s okay for the prime minister to celebrate and be celebrated by a stadium full of British citizens who believe India is too filthy, corrupt and poor to live in, but that it’s not okay for an Indian to say that he and his family feel vulnerable as a religious or cultural minority. That it’s okay to want more money, or other forms of fulfillment with citizenship of another country, but its not okay for an Indian to wonder, in desperation, if he should leave because he wants a life for his child that’s free of fear and religious hate.

Their message is simple: It is laudable to want to prosper materially, but it is un-Indian and anti-national to want your child not to live with religious bigotry and cultural violence.

By: Anjali Mody