Mirwaiz Umar Farooq-led Hurriyat Conference faction has termed PM Manmohan Singh’s statement that the situation in Kashmir was better now and that the government continued to pursue its policy of “zero tolerance” for human rights violations in the state as “misleading, a claptrap and a deliberate attempt to hoodwink the world

A suspected militant shot himself dead inside a mosque in the north-western Kashmir town of Sopore to evade arrest by security personnel on Wednesday, the first incident of its kind in Kashmir’s 23-year-old insurgency.

As many as 25,956 devotees embarked on arduous journey through rugged mountains to pay obeisance to Shivlingam at the 12,729-foot-high Amarnath cave-shrine on the first day of the two-and-half-month long yatra on Wednesday.

A major tragedy was averted on Thursday in the Jammu and Kashmir summer capital when a powerful improvised explosive device (IED) was detected and defused by the police.

“I would rather short-circuit the public meeting and leave rather than promise a new district where I can’t give one in the short-term,” tweeted J&K chief minister Omar Abdullah as he left halfway a rally his National Conference (NC) had organised at Beeru, a town outside Srinagar, on Tuesday.

Thousands of pilgrims reached the Amarnath cave shrine in Jammu and Kashmir on Wednesday afternoon, where special prayers were held, an official said.

Former Pakistan Prime Minister and Leader of Opposition PML-N Nawaz Sharif on Tuesday telephoned hardline separatist leader Syed Ali Shah Geelani from PoK to reassure him of his party’s “unconditional support” to the Kashmiri “freedom” cause. Mr Sharif is currently on an election tour of the held-territory.

A group of Kashmiri expatriates from both halves of the divided state living in Britain has cautioned that the upcoming elections in PoK are meant only to elect a local government and will have no bearing on the political status of the territory or the state of J&K as a whole.

Union Home Minister P. Chidambaram was today forced to change his helicopter while on way to Gurez from Pahalgam in Kashmir Valley following a 'deviation' in the chopper's flight parameter.

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Union home minister P. Chidambaram was on Wednesday forced to change his helicopter while on way to Gurez from Pahalgam in Kashmir Valley following a problem in one of the two engines of the BSF chopper, 20 minutes after take off.