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Apple is not only major horticulture produce of Kashmir but is also the backbone of the rural economy across the Valley, Jammu and Kashmir. It is the highest employment generator in Kashmir. Kashmir produces about 20 lakh metric tons of apples annually and contributes 10 per cent to the state's economy.

In the last few years, the horticulture area under apple crop has increased from 81,116 hectares in 2001 to 146,016 hectares in 2018 in Kashmir and production has also inclined from 894,019 metric tons to 18,60,663 metric tons.

Kashmir not only has the best weather conditions to produce apples, but apples from Kashmir are also preferred in the local and international market for its taste, colour and quality. The farmers believe apples are the best cash crop.
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But 2019 has not been so fruitful for apple farmers in Kashmir after the abrogation of provisions under Article 370. In last one week, three attacks have taken place on apple traders.

The attacks on a truck driver and two apple traders from Punjab in south Kashmir's Shopian district has left apple farmers and traders in panic and fear. Due to the emerging situation, no outside apple traders are returning to area which is resulting in less purchase price for apples to the farmers.

Speaking to Mail Today, Muzafar Ahmad said, "Last year, I sold my apples at Rs 700 per basket (22 kg). This year, the local traders are not even ready to pay Rs 400 per basket."

When Mail Today asked one of the local apple traders, Mohammed Amin for the decline in apple prices, he said, "We are facing a lot of problems in transportation of apples to the fruit markets or outside the state. Truck drivers or other transporters charge 50 per cent more as they transport the produce on risk."

"They feel that they can be targeted by the militants after the recent attack on a driver in Shopian. The government announced that they will buy apples but they are at different offices. How we can put our lives at risk and go to them with apples? If the government wants to but our crop, why do not they directly come to our orchards and purchase the crop," Mohammed Amin said.

Clinton exchanged more than 60,000 emails on a private email account hosted on a server that she kept at her residence in New York. She emailed frequently with longtime aides Huma Abedin, Cheryl Mills, Jake Sullivan, and an outside adviser, Sidney Blumenthal.

The FBI investigated whether Clinton mishandled classified information by using the server. Former FBI Director James Comey announced July 5, 2016, that he would not be recommending charges against Clinton over the server, though he did say she was "extremely careless" in using an off-the-books email system.

State Department investigators reviewed all of Clinton's emails, obtained hundreds of statements, and conducted dozens of in-person interviews with current and former State Department officials, according to the report.

Investigators determined personal email use to conduct official State Department business "represented an increased risk of unauthorized disclosure." Clinton's use of the private server "added an increased degree of risk of compromise as a private system lacks the network monitoring and intrusion detection capabilities of State Department networks," the report stated.

Investigators said there was "no persuasive evidence" of "systemic, deliberate mishandling of classified information."

One reason that investigators were unable to assign culpability in the 497 incidents was because of the duration of the investigation. Many of the subjects of the probe, including Clinton and her circle of aides, has left the State Department by the time the investigation began.

State Department report on ... by Chuck Ross on Scribd

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According to the SANA news agency, the group of transport trucks, accompanied by military vehicles, is heading for the Syrian city of Qamishli to complete the evacuation of US bases from Syria.

The news comes after on Thursday, Washington and Ankara agreed to suspend Turkish military operation in northeastern Syria for 120 hours and withdraw Kurdish forces from the 30-kilometre (18 miles) buffer zone on the Turkish-Syrian border. Despite the ceasefire, there were reports of continued fighting.

Commenting on the situation in the region, US Defense Secretary Mark Esper said that the United States would pull out an approximate 1,000 troops from the northern part of Syria after the start of the Turkish offensive.

© REUTERS / TURKISH DEFENCE MINISTRY
Turkish and U.S. military vehicles are seen on the Syrian-Turkish border during a joint U.S.- Turkey patrol near Tel Abyad, Syria, September 8, 2019

Ankara launched the Operation Peace Spring on 9 October, saying that the military action aimed to create a safe zone near the Syrian-Turkish border after multiple fruitless discussions between Turkey and the US.

The territory on the Syrian side of the border is currently controlled by the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces, which used to be a US ally but regarded by Ankara as affiliated with the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), which is blacklisted in Turkey.

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By postponing a vote on Boris Johnson's Brexit deal, MPs have only complicated Britain's divorce from the EU, and in the case of Labour, stacked their own "electoral funeral pyres," former parliamentarian George Galloway told RT.

Opposition MPs and protesters in the streets of London celebrated the passing of the so-called Letwin amendment earlier on Saturday. The amendment to Prime Minister Boris Johnson's Brexit deal requires Johnson to seek an extension to the October 31 Brexit deadline from the EU, so that formal ratification legislation can be debated and passed in both Houses of Parliament.

For the 322 MPs who voted in favour of Letwin, their victory was "pyrrhic," Galloway told RT. The former lawmaker called the amendment a "childish, schoolboy jape" aimed at "frustrating the will of the British people," who simply want Britain's exit from the EU to be over and done with.

For Labour too, the decision to back an amendment authored by Tory MP Sir Oliver Letwin - an architect of Margaret Thatcher's much-maligned Poll Tax in the 1980s - "is now very clear for everyone to see," he continued.
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"They said that Johnson wanted no deal, and then he got a deal," the former Scottish lawmaker said, referring to Remainers in parliament. "They said that they were holding out, because they could not countenance for a moment the threat to peace in Ireland, and then Ireland got behind the deal."

"Indeed, but for the backwoodsmen of the DUP, every party - including SInn Fein - are now fully behind the deal. Brussels and the EU are behind the deal."

With the tides in Johnson's favor, Galloway sees the British Parliament finding a way to pass the deal before October 31. Failing that, Remainers could be faced with the ironic result of leaving without a deal at all, "the very thing that today's parliamentary opposition always claimed they wanted least of all."

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