South Asia Newsline - Nov 18, 2021 News Bulletin :
- India's Punjab Chief Minister visits Sikh shrine in Pakistan as Kartarpur corridor reopens
- Pakistan, Taliban violators of religious freedom, says U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken
- Nepal launches e-passport service replacing Machine Readable ones
Chief Minister of India's northern Punjab state, Charanjit Singh Channi, along with a delegation on Thursday visited a revered Sikh shrine in Pakistan via the Kartarpur corridor, a day after the cross-border route reopened. The visa-free pilgrim corridor was closed in March 2020 owing to Covid-19 pandemic.: Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Thursday urged all democratic nations to work together to ensure cryptocurrencies do not end up in wrong hands, cautioning that it can spoil the youth. The United States has re-designated Pakistan as a country of particular concern for violating religious freedom and also rebranded the Afghan Taliban as an entity of particular concern.The U.N. envoy to Afghanistan Deborah Lyons on Wednesday delivered a bleak assessment of the situation following the Taliban takeover, saying that an affiliate of the Islamic State group has grown and now appears present in nearly all 34 provinces.Bangladesh this week began administering COVID-19 vaccines to slum dwellers in capital Dhaka. In a significant development, Nepal for the first time rolled out a new generation electronic passport. The sky in India’s northern Varanasi city is filled with colours as scores of people are enjoying rides during an ongoing hot-air balloon festival.
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