التصنيف: estaql

Nepal has registered its first-ever same-sex marriage, becoming the first South Asian country to do so.

Ram Bahadur (Maya) Gurung, a 36-year-old transgender female who has not changed her gender on official documents, and Surendra Pandey, 26, who was born and identifies as male, had their marriage certified at the Dordi rural municipality office in west Nepal on Wednesday.

It is a landmark moment in a largely conservative country which earlier this year cleared the way for the legalisation of gay marriages.

The couple have been in a relationship for nine years and were wedded according to Hindu rituals in 2016 in the capital Kathmandu – but had no certificate to show for it.

Officials had initially refused to register their marriage and consequent court cases which they filed with Kathmandu’s District and High Courts were dismissed.

However, the country’s Home Ministry made changes this week enabling all local administration offices to register same-sex marriages, according to Sunil Pant, an openly gay former parliamentarian and leading LGBTQ+ rights activist.

Mr Pant hailed the registration as a “historic achievement” calling it a victory for sexual and gender minorities who have yearned for equal rights.

He said: “After 23 years of struggle we got this historic achievement, and finally Maya and Surendra got their marriage registered at the local administration office.

“It was quite unexpected and it was a positive breeze for us.”

After the registration, Mr Pandey said: “We are both very happy. Like us, all others in our community are happy too.”

Mr Pant said the newlyweds would be “like just any other couple” as they would be able to jointly open bank accounts, and own and transfer property.

Read more:
India’s Supreme Court refuses to legalise same-sex marriage
TikTok banned by Nepal over allegations it disrupts ‘social harmony’

Nepal has become increasingly progressive since a decade-long Maoist insurgency ended in 2006, leading to more emphasis on its government to accommodate LGBT people with its laws.

Now, people who don’t identify as male or female can choose “third gender” on their passports and other official documents.

Taiwan is the only other Asian country to legalise same-sex marriage.

According to Shane MacGowan, the seeds of Fairytale Of New York were sown when Elvis Costello bet him he couldn’t write a yuletide hit without selling out.

Appropriately for a song that centres around a quarrel there are differing accounts of the origins, but MacGowan – although on occasion something of an unreliable narrator – always maintained this version.

Joining the likes of Slade, Band Aid, Bing Crosby and Wham! might have seemed an unlikely feat but The Pogues frontman and banjo player Jem Finer rose to the challenge, creating an antithesis to festive cheer in their bitter, drunken tale of hard times and broken dreams.

Latest: ‘The most beautiful soul’ – Shane MacGowan tributes

The huge success of the duet with the late Kirsty MacColl eventually played a part in the band’s downfall, and MacGowan would say he grew sick of hearing it and talking about it in later years.

But in Fairytale, he created the anti-Christmas song that became, to many, the ultimate Christmas song – a legacy meaning that now after his death, he will forever be remembered at that time of year.

Born in Kent to Irish parents on Christmas Day in 1957, perhaps it was always meant to be.

After finding success with Celtic punk band The Pogues, MacGowan would become almost as famous for his excessive drinking and drug-taking – and the toll it took on his already irregular teeth – as he was for his music. But it was in his childhood years, at the young age of about four or five, that he said he first developed a taste for alcohol.

His reputation belied his talents and intellect. The singer was a gifted storyteller from a young age, winning a Daily Mirror literary prize when he was 13, and a scholarship to the posh Westminster School for his essays. “I didn’t last there very long,” he said in a 2013 interview. “I got nicked for smoking a joint and was kicked out.”

Shane O’Hooligan, The Nips, and Pogue Mahone

It was in London that he discovered punk and rechristened himself Shane O’Hooligan, joining his first band Nipple Erectors – which became The Nips in 1976 – and supporting the likes of The Clash and The Jam.

He also played guitar with The Millwall Chainsaws, the prototype for the band that would become Pogue Mahone (Irish slang for “kiss my arse”) and eventually The Pogues.

The band’s debut album, Red Roses For Me, came out in 1984, followed by Rum Sodomy & the Lash the following year. Their singles included Dark Streets Of London, A Pair Of Brown Eyes, Sally MacLennane, Dirty Old Town and The Irish Rover.

Fairytale Of New York was released at the end of November 1987. Like many Christmas songs that came to be festive classics – such as Wham!’s Last Christmas and Mariah Carey’s All I Want For Christmas Is You – it was kept off the number one spot, with the accolade that year going to the Pet Shop Boys’ cover of Always On My Mind.

But Fairytale has endured; in December 2022, the song was certified quintuple platinum in the UK for three million combined sales, and it is often voted the nation’s favourite festive single.

As The Pogues gained commercial success, fame, touring and the chaotic lifestyle took a toll and MacGowan was eventually sacked from the band for unprofessional behaviour in 1991.

He went on to form Shane MacGowan And The Popes, before reforming with The Pogues for a sell-out tour in 2001.

Together, the band released five albums between 1984 and 1990, while MacGowan released two with The Popes in 1994 and 1997.

Awards, books, and ‘spit, snot and tears’

As a solo artist, he recorded a version of Louis Armstrong’s Wonderful World with Nick Cave, and in 1996 he became an unlikely voice for Nike when his version of My Way was used in an advertising campaign.

The following year he appeared alongside Lou Reed and stars such as David Bowie, Elton John, Bono, Heather Small and Tom Jones on Reed’s number one song Perfect Day for Children In Need. He also performed with acts including the late Sinead O’Connor, The Jesus And Mary Chain, and his good friend Johnny Depp throughout his career.

Read more:
Sinead O’Connor: A rise to unwanted stardom
Tributes for The Pogues bassist Darryl Hunt

While the singer hadn’t released his own new music for years, in 2018 he was honoured with the Ivor Novello Inspiration Award for songwriting, and in 2021 he recorded songs with Irish band Cronin – described as “raw, vital, exactly what you want from MacGowan” by music journalist Will Hodgkinson in The Times.

The following year, he published The Eternal Buzz And The Crock Of Gold, a collection of his drawings, lyrics, essays and photographs, described as the “spit, snot and tears” of his art.

MacGowan married his long-term partner, journalist Victoria Mary Clarke, at a ceremony in Copenhagen in 2018, with Depp playing guitar at their wedding.

Writing for the Irish Independent ahead of their nuptials, about the first time she met him at the age of 16, Clarke said she was “awe-struck”, before detailing a complicated relationship that “makes the Fairytale Of New York couple from Shane’s Christmas song seem tame and orderly”.

New teeth – and pranks at Bono’s house

For the ceremony, he was able to deliver a perfect smile, having received a full set of pristine dentures – plus one gold tooth – a few years earlier. This was documented in a Christmas special, Shane MacGowan: A Wreck Reborn in 2015, with the feat to restore his gnashers described as the “Everest of dentistry” by the surgeon; the “wreck” in the title was apparently the singer’s own idea.

After the story of his teeth came the story of his life and career, as told in the 2021 documentary Crock Of Gold: A Few Rounds With Shane MacGowan. “The lyrics are all about fighting, drinking, dying… you know, the things that everybody does,” he said of his music.

Read more:
‘I dreaded getting my teeth fixed’
Fairytale Of New York to be edited for Radio 1

He gave interviews to a few publications at the time, but clearly wasn’t a huge fan of answering questions about himself, especially the song he is most known for.

To the Guardian, when asked after a few silences and curt answers if there was any subject he did want to talk about, he replied: “Not really, no.”

On Fairytale, he simply said: “It p****s me off when people always talk about it.”

But he could also be outrageously indiscreet – such as when talking about the time he lived in a house owned by U2 frontman Bono on the Dublin coast, next to a railway line. “Bono put in a glass roof and wall, ” he told The Times. “I used to wave my willy at the train as it passed and hope that they thought it was Bono’s.”

How Fairytale became ‘boring’ – and the controversy ‘ridiculous’

Addressing Fairytale, he said it became “boring” once the song became such a hit. “You’re walking out on stage and they’re applauding like mad before you’ve done anything, yeah? It gets frightening.”

But in an interview with The Sun a few years earlier, his stance was softer when he hailed the track as “a great performance”, albeit of “the nastiest Christmas single ever”.

To Vice, he described Christmas as “gross” and said he was “bored” of hearing the song, before conceding: “It’s nice to hear Kirsty sing… It’s a great record – I can be objective enough to hear that it’s a great record. We all know that we made a great record. We were a great band.”

Fairytale Of New York appealed because no matter who you were, where you were from, most could relate to it in some way. “I could have been someone,” MacGowan famously snarls at MacColl. “Well, so could anyone,” she retorts; four words that sum up perfectly the loss of childhood dreams felt by us all at some stage.

Of the controversy that came to surround the song in later years, with derogatory terms for gender and sexuality edited by some radio stations, MacGowan explained that the language fitted the characters, and that they were not supposed to be “nice” or “wholesome”. In interviews, he described the criticism as “ridiculous”.

In his later years, suffering from periods of ill health, the singer communicated with fans through social media, even joining TikTok in 2022. He and Clarke shared updates and information about his book, as well as pictures with celebrities including Kate Moss and Bruce Springsteen. The singer, it seems, didn’t mind the spotlight so much when he did things his way.

Of Creating the Crock Of Gold film about MacGowan, director Julien Temple would say afterwards it was like David Attenborough tracking down an elusive snow leopard.

But the filmmaker knew well before he started the project that he was dealing with a difficult character. He was a one-off, Temple said. “I guess that’s what makes him great.”

Musician and singer Shane MacGowan, best known as the frontman of The Pogues, has died at the age of 65.

His wife Victoria Mary Clarke shared the news in a post on Instagram, saying: “Shane will always be the light that I hold before me and the measure of my dreams and the love of my life.”

MacGowan had suffered from several health issues in recent years and was treated in St Vincent’s Hospital in Dublin for an infection earlier this month. He was released from hospital last week ahead of his upcoming birthday on Christmas Day, with his former bandmates Spider Stacy and Terry Woods among those who visisted him.

In her tribute, Clarke said MacGowan “gone to be with Jesus and Mary and his beautiful mother Therese”.

She continued: “I am blessed beyond words to have met him and to have loved him and to have been so endlessly and unconditionally loved by him and to have had so many years of life and love and joy and fun and laughter and so many adventures.

“There’s no way to describe the loss that I am feeling and the longing for just one more of his smiles that lit up my world,” Clarke said in her tribute. “You will live in my heart forever. Rave on in the garden all wet with rain that you loved so much. You meant the world to me.”

Born in Kent on 25 December 1957, the Irish star will forever be associated with the festive period thanks to The Pogues’ 1987 hit, Fairytale Of New York, featuring the late Kirsty MacColl.

Throughout the 1980s and early ’90s, the band also had hits including Dirty Old Town, The Irish Rover, A Pair Of Brown Eyes and A Rainy Night In Soho.

MacGowan was a punk rebel, almost as famous for his drinking and drug taking – and for the toll it took on his teeth – as he was for his music.

But he was a gifted storyteller from a young age, winning a Daily Mirror literary prize when he was 13, and a scholarship to Westminster School for his essays.

“I didn’t last there very long,” he told the Guardian in a 2013 interview. “I got nicked for smoking a joint and was kicked out.”

He had been unwell in recent years, receiving treatment in hospital for encephalitis in December 2022, and spending time in intensive care in the summer.

MacGowan had also used a wheelchair since 2015 following several falls, breaking his pelvis and then his right knee.

The singer married his long-term partner, journalist Victoria Mary Clarke, at a ceremony in Copenhagen in 2018, with his friend Johnny Depp playing guitar at their wedding.

Writing for the Irish Independent ahead of their nuptials, about the first time she met MacGowan at the age of 16, Clarke said she was “awe-struck”, before going on to detail a complicated relationship that “makes the Fairytale Of New York couple from Shane’s Christmas song seem tame and orderly”.

She said: “When you meet ‘The One’, you have a choice. You can dive in, marry them while you are infatuated with each other and hope for the best. Or you can wait until you are sure that the honeymoon phase has worn off and you are seeing each other in the light of having lived, no longer young, beautiful and indestructible.”

The United States Department of Justice has announced charges against an Indian man accusing him of working for the Indian government to carry out the planned assassination of a Sikh separatist leader in New York.

The formal allegations on Wednesday, linking the government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi to the attempted killing of US citizen Gurpatwant Singh Pannun, follow drips of leaks to newspapers referring to the case.

The suggestions from US officials that India might have been involved in an attempt at an extrajudicial killing on the soil of a friendly nation come six months after Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau accused New Delhi of involvement in the assassination of another Sikh separatist leader, Hardeep Singh Nijjar, near Vancouver.

Here is all you need to know about the latest allegations.

What does the US indictment say?

The US Justice Department announced murder-for-hire and conspiracy charges against Indian national Nikhil Gupta, 52. Gupta is believed to be a resident of India.

Federal prosecutors describe Gupta as an associate of an Indian government agency employee identified only as “CC-1”. The employee, CC-1, has previously described himself as a senior field officer who works with security management and intelligence. CC-1, according to the indictment, previously worked with the Central Reserve Police Force, a leading Indian government paramilitary force.

The indictment alleges that CC-1 directed the murder plan from India and recruited Gupta around May 2023 to coordinate it.

CC-1 directed Gupta to contact a criminal associate to execute the murder. Gupta contacted someone he believed to be a criminal associate. But in reality, according to the Justice Department, the person Gupta hired was — unknown to him — a source working confidentially for US law enforcement. This source in turn connected him to a “hitman” who was actually an undercover law enforcement officer, working for the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA).

Gupta agreed to pay the hitman $100,000 for the job, paying him an advance of $15,000 in cash in Manhattan around June 9.

Gupta was arrested and jailed by Czech authorities on June 30 and is awaiting extradition. If convicted, he can face a maximum sentence of 20 years. The federal district court will determine the sentence.

Justice Department Announces Charges in Connection with Foiled Plot to Assassinate U.S. Citizen in New York City

Indian Government Employee Directed a Plot from India to Murder U.S.-Based Leader of Sikh Separatist Movementhttps://t.co/v1IDJXy46P pic.twitter.com/dxDmarrjH4

— National Security Division, U.S. Dept of Justice (@DOJNatSec) November 29, 2023

What has the Indian government said?

India’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesperson Arindam Bagchi on Thursday said it was “contrary to government policy” to pursue extraterritorial assassinations.

On Wednesday, the Indian government said it would formally investigate the concerns and take necessary action on the findings of a panel set up on November 18. Bagchi did not elaborate on this investigation.

“We will continue to expect accountability from the government of India based on the results of their investigations,” said Adrienne Watson, spokesperson for the White House National Security Council.

Who is Pannun?

This indictment comes a week after reports first emerged that US authorities had thwarted a plot to kill a Sikh separatist leader in the US on November 22. This leader was identified as Gurpatwant Singh Pannun.

Pannun is an immigration lawyer and a dual citizen of the US and Canada. He is known for his social media advocacy through videos described as threatening towards Indian leaders or the government.

He has been charged with terrorism and conspiracy in India for being part of the movement that advocates for a separatist Sikh state. New Delhi listed him as an “individual terrorist” in 2020. In January 2021, during the farmers’ protest, India’s counterterrorism agency registered a case against him for inciting violence.

More recently, he released a threatening video warning people to stay away from Air India flights starting November 19. A plane from India’s national flag carrier was blown up midair by alleged Sikh separatists in 1985 while flying from Canada to India, killing more than 300 people.

On Wednesday, Pannun released a statement accusing Modi’s government of trying to kill him because he is organising a referendum among diaspora Sikhs on Khalistan, inviting the community worldwide to vote on whether Punjab should be independent. “If death is the cost for running the Khalistan Referendum, I am willing to pay that price,” he said.

“If Death Is The cost For Running the Khalistan Referendum, I Am Willing To Pay That Price”.

The assassination attempt on my life by India cannot deter me from organizing the voting for the independence referendum and I am moving forward with organizing the American Phase of… pic.twitter.com/5HjELsK53o

— Gurpatwant Singh Pannun (@SFJGenCounsel) November 29, 2023

What is the Khalistan movement?

The Khalistan movement seeks to establish a separate Sikh state comprising Indian-held Punjab and other Punjabi-speaking regions in northern India. Khalistan is the name proposed for the state.

After gaining initial momentum in the 1970s, the movement died down in India after a brutal crackdown in the 1980s and 90s. However, the idea of a separate Sikh nation still enjoys some support among sections of Sikh diaspora communities, particularly in Canada, the US, the United Kingdom and Australia.

In recent months, prominent activists associated with the movement have died in Canada, the UK and Pakistan.

Is this connected to the Nijjar murder?

Sikh separatist leader Hardeep Singh Nijjar was shot outside a Sikh temple in Canada on June 18. He was also declared a terrorist by India three years ago.

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau accused India of potential involvement in the killing of Nijjar, 45, sparking a diplomatic spat between Ottawa and New Delhi.

The indictment says that a day after Nijjar’s murder, Gupta told the undercover DEA agent that Nijjar was also a target, adding, “we have so many targets”.

Will the accusations affect India-US relations?

US President Joe Biden has already spoken to Modi about the allegations and top American diplomats and intelligence chiefs have discussed the case with their Indian counterparts.

The case in the US is expected to inject some tension into bilateral ties, but the fact that the Justice Department has not — so far at least — charged CC-1 or any other Indian government official will come as a relief to New Delhi.

The US views India as a vital bulwark in a coalition of democracies in the Indo-Pacific region that it hopes will allow it to challenge China’s rise.

Tea and cheese sandwiches are on the breakfast menu for Taghrid al-Najjar’s children. It should be an everyday moment, but their home in Gaza is now mostly rubble.

The walls have collapsed, with furniture and appliances buried under concrete.

Until the war, the 46-year-old mother had never left her farming village along the border with Israel in the southeast of the Strip.

Since Friday a truce has paused the fighting between Israel and Hamas, allowing them to return to a neighbourhood in ruins.

“It is only here that I feel good,” she said.

Al-Najjar fled when Israeli bombardments started on October 7 in response to an attack by Hamas that killed 1,200 Israelis. For weeks she lived with nine members of her family in a Khan Younis school converted into a makeshift camp for displaced people.

At least 15,000 people, mostly civilians, have been killed in Israel’s war in Gaza, and al-Najjar said dozens of people in her wider extended family have died.

As soon as the truce went into effect on Friday, she began making her way home to Abasan on foot.

“I discovered that my house had been completely destroyed – 27 years of my life to build it and everything is gone!” she said.

“For two days I couldn’t eat, then I told myself that I had to continue living.

“My house is destroyed but my children are alive, so we will rebuild. We have already done it once, we can do it again.”

Each night the family squeezes through a window to sleep in the only room where the walls have not entirely crumpled.

Once there is a permanent ceasefire, Najjar said, they will pitch a tent, but only for “long enough to rebuild the house”.

Her 64-year-old neighbour Jamil Abu Azra’s main concern was his four young grandchildren.

“They can sleep anywhere, the problem is that they are afraid and they are traumatised,” he said. “Even us adults are afraid, but we pretend in front of the little ones.”

‘The war really scared us’

Across the street, Bassem Abu Taaima contemplated the destroyed building where his family and his four brothers’ families had lived.

“We are all farmers or taxi drivers. We really have nothing to do with the resistance,” he said, “so we don’t understand why all this is happening to us.”

Wearing a jacket given to him by a neighbour, and shorts despite the biting cold, he said he would wait for the war to end before setting up a tent and starting to clear and rebuild. He has scoured the debris for warm clothes, although everything he has found has been burned or torn.

Nearby, Naim Taaimat, 46, was building a shelter for his family from wood, some fabric and a few nails.

“This is where I will live with my wife, our seven children and my mother after the war,” he said.

More tents will be needed as his brothers – each has seven children – “have also lost their homes”, he added.

The brothers “shed blood” to build the houses where the families’ possessions are now buried under rubble.

Taaimat’s priority was to find his daughter Nivine’s trousseau, as she had been due to get married next week. He used a hammer to try to break up the concrete blocks before rummaging around with his bare hands.

“Now she’s lost her house and her fiance also lost his house. So I have to find something so that she can still be a little happy.”

Twelve-year-old Abdessamad interrupted, running in shouting: “We found an electric lamp and we have logs for the fire!”

Sitting with his friends on a dirt floor near the United Nations school where he used to study, now partly wrecked by Israeli bombing, he laughed, sang and joked.

“The war really scared us and it was horrible, but there is good news,” said his friend Nabil, aged eight.

Laughing, and hoping his parents couldn’t overhear him, he explained: “The school’s destroyed and we won’t be able to go back for a while.”