24 MARCH 2016

Ø  Two suicide bombers who carried out the deadly attacks on Tuesday in Brussels have been identified as brothers with criminal records, Belgian officials said on Wednesday. The toll from the assaults, at the city’s main airport and at a subway station in central Brussels, stood at 31 dead and 270 injured. Ibrahim el-Bakraoui, 30, and Khalid el-Bakraoui, 27, were both Belgian and had a criminal history, but they had no known links to terrorism until the authorities conducted a raid on March 15 on an apartment in the Forest district of Brussels as part of the investigation into the November 13 attacks in Paris. Ibrahim el-Bakraoui and another man blew themselves up at the airport at 7.58 a.m. — in two explosions, nine seconds apart — and then Khalid el-Bakraoui carried out a suicide attack at the Maelbeek subway station, an hour later, Fr?d?ric Van Leeuw, Belgian federal prosecutor, said. It was not immediately clear whether Khalid el-Bakraoui had also participated in the airport attacks. An intensive hunt continued for a man recorded by a security camera alongside Ibrahim el-Bakraoui at the airport. The police raided a building in the Anderlecht neighbourhood of Brussels on Wednesday and reportedly made an arrest. — New York Times News Service.

Ø  This time it is Brussels. The bomb attacks that have killed at least 31 people at the airport and a metro station in the Belgian capital demonstrate that jihadists remain a serious security threat to European societies despite a massive security crackdown since the November 2015 Paris attacks. Brussels, which hosts key European Union institutions, is the de facto capital of Europe. By striking in the city four days after Salah Abdeslam, thought to be the lone remaining perpetrator of the Paris attacks, was caught, the terrorists have sent a strong message not just to the Belgian government but to the entire European establishment. The Belgian government woke up to the terrorist threat it faces only after the Paris attacks that killed at least 130 people. Several of the attackers came from the Brussels neighbourhood of Molenbeek. Security forces had carried out a massive combing operation in the neighbourhoods and even locked down the capital city for days. But still it took more than four months for the Belgian authorities to track down and arrest Abdeslam, who was reportedly planning more attacks in Europe. What is more tragic and surprising is that the authorities still could not stop the attack. Belgian Prime Minister Charles Michel’s words that “what we feared has happened”, bluntly point to the failure of the intelligence and security establishment.

Ø  Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Wednesday set a 60-day deadline for government departments to resolve public grievances, saying redressing such complaints is the “biggest aspect of democracy.” Reiterating his directive for top officers, the Prime Minister called for a focused action plan over the next one month to ensure that only exceptional cases take more than two months to address. Mr. Modi revealed the plan while speaking to secretaries at the central government and chief secretaries of States at a review meeting under the PRAGATI (Pro-Active Governance and Timely Implementation), an ICT-based, multi-modal mechanism to track key projects and policy outcomes. Following the PM’s directive to improve the resolution of public grievances at a meeting in January, the Cabinet Secretariat asked top officials in all ministries having substantial public interface to personally resolve 10 to 30 grievances every week. At Wednesday’s meeting, Mr. Modi reviewed the progress on this initiative and urged officers to speed up the pace of work, according to a statement issued by the Prime Minister’s Office. The PM also asked officials to integrate all land records, presently being digitised, with Aadhaar ‘at the earliest’ and stressed that this is ‘extremely important to monitor successful implementation” of the government’s new crop insurance scheme.

Ø  India and France have signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) for construction of six nuclear reactors at Jaitapur in Maharashtra, two months after the two countries decided to conclude the techno-commercial negotiations for the project by the year end.

Ø  The MEA faced an embarrassing situation due to a no-show by Gen. (retired) V.K. Singh, Minister of State for External Affairs, at an event to mark the national day of Tunisia celebrated. Gen. Singh, who was supposed to represent the government at the event as chief guest, failed to turn up while a large diplomatic crowd starring high power diplomats stationed in the capital waited till late evening. What disturbed the hosts was that the Tunisian embassy was not informed about the Minister’s unavailability and was told at the last moment, causing embarrassment to senior Tunisian diplomats. “Gen. Singh has apologised for not being present,” said a diplomatic source associated with the event, suggesting that the chapter is now closed.