Mohammad Ramzan Itoo, a 54-year-old in Indian administered Kashmir pushed his bicycle cart every day, selling hot served masaal tchott --boiled chickpeas served with bread.

He has been doing this for the last 28 years. On World Food Day on Oct. 16, Anadolu Agency took a peek into the unique street foods of Kashmir.

Itoo said preparation for making masaal begins during the night or early hours of the morning.

Then different kinds of chutney, or sauces, are prepared. “It mostly goes with radish chutney mixed with fresh curd, green chili, coriander, pepper and salt, and lastly soft bread, locally called ‘Lavasa,’ is used for the wrapping,” he said.

It is served almost everywhere in the region. But Itoo said the capital city of Srinagar has the major base for this street food.

“For this food, you have customers everywhere. It has no chemicals or preservatives. It just comes from our home kitchen,” he said.

Shrines and food

The Kashmir region is also known as Pir Vaer, or Land of Saints, and has a number of revered shrines and mosques scattered across the regional landscape that holds an epitome of respect and reverence among residents.

But the places of worship offer a glimpse of varying foods that hold a unique position in Kashmiri culture and traditions.

Zeabah Akhtar- a woman in her mid-50s sits at the main gate entering Dargah Shareef -- a shrine in Srinagar that houses holy relics of Prophet Muhammad.

The shrine is on the left bank of Dal Lake and is considered one of the holiest places in the region.

Akhtar said it is her favorite place to be. “I feel peace here. Besides I’m earning my livelihood,” she told Anadolu Agency.

Wearing a long traditional cloak, called pheran, with a white scarf around her head, she smiles and greets every customer asking for mongh masala -- a steamed black gram dish that has basic ingredients like red chili and salt.

It is usually brought in a big wooden basket and served hot to customers and devotees visiting the shrine.

“By God’s grace, I earn well. I am a hundred times grateful to my God that I am earning with my own hands and I am not a burden on anyone,” Akhtar says.

Other unique foods

In the vicinity of the Hazratbal shrine, several vendors were seen selling various fried snacks.

Abdul Aziz Dar was busy marinating small fish, lotus stems in flour added with some salt.

Monji gaade, or fish snack and nadir monji -- lotus stem snack -- are famous snacks that are particularly unique to Kashmir. There are other varieties like potato snacks, dried pea snacks called til kar that is prepared and relished with different chutneys.

Dar not only fries the snacks, but he also makes halwa sooji (semolina) and paratha -- huge bread fried in hot oil.

He said during the Urs, or revered days, there is a huge rush of customers and people love to take the delicacies home.

The tasty candies

As one starts chewing khand gazri -- cylindrical candies made from flour dough and ghee-dipped in sugar syrup, it is all good for the taste buds.

The same goes with colored puffs made from rice, sugar and food color. As soon as you put it into your mouth it dissolves and leaves behind a mild sugary taste.

Other sweet foods include Besrakh -- sweet round candy balls sprinkled with dry fruits, and lal shangram – a delicacy made by mixing flour, sooji (semolina) and sugar that is deep-fried in ghee.​​​​​​​/aa

On a bright Monday, a dozen smartly dressed blind students slowly walked to their classroom after the morning assembly.

The students hand their canes on hooks outside a doorway to their classroom then adeptly touch wooden desks to identify their assigned spots.

These visually-impaired students at DCT-Mvumi secondary school located 36 kilometers (22 miles) from Tanzania’s capital, Dodoma City, seem to take advantage of the facilities, including braille textbooks perched on shelves and tablets loaded with specially designed apps to help those with partial blindness to see what is on the board.

Mvumi is the only school in Tanzania with requisite teaching materials and equipment for visually impaired students, thanks to the Lutheran Church’s Central Diocese.

At the school, visually impaired students can be spotted decoding texts on Braille machines or taking notes with the help of fellow students.

While the state-of-the-art facilities are cause for celebration for these students, it is a far cry for their counterparts elsewhere in Tanzania whose academic future is increasingly becoming bleak.

Shortage of special teachers

As nations mark White Cane Day, blind and visually impaired students in the East African country have been pushed on the wobbly edge of survival due to a shortage of teachers with special skills and requisite learning materials.

While children are entitled to better education, blind students in Tanzania face many hurdles due to deeply rooted and unfounded beliefs that being blind is a curse.

“We don’t have teachers with special skills to understand the needs of blind children,” said Lilian Ntunge, a visually impaired student at Nkuhungu secondary school in Dodoma.

A recent study by HakiElimu, a Tanzanian nonprofit education organization, found that even in schools deemed “inclusive,” the environment was not very friendly for students with visual impairment. Very few schools exist in Tanzania specifically for people with disabilities of any kind.

The report revealed that many students still face unqualified, incompetent teachers and inadequate teaching materials for visually-impaired learners.

The country joined a global movement to create inclusive, quality education for diverse learners, including students with disabilities. In 2004, it introduced a national disability policy emphasizing the need for a conducive learning environment for people with special needs, and the country’s Ministry of Education adopted it in 2009.

Yet, schools still face several challenges in terms of inclusive, quality education.

Cognitive skills

While special education activists in Tanzania call for inclusive mainstream education, some teachers for the blind who spoke with the Anadolu Agency are touting special classes to sharpen cognitive skills to understand teachers' instructions and control body movement to interact in the physical world.

“Blind children must learn how to use other sensory skills such as touch, smell and taste to understand classroom lessons,” said Mary Mokiwa, a special needs teacher.

She said classroom lessons are focused on developing a set of skills and the use of tools adapted for blindness.

“Verbal lessons on how to maneuver using a cane can greatly help break barriers of isolation for the blind,” Mokiwa told Anadolu Agency.

She said teachers need to work with parents to understand students' learning patterns.

Salome Lembeli, a 15-year-old student at Nkuhungu secondary school who was born blind, said she is disappointed by the learning condition at her school where students with special needs like her do not get the attention they deserve.

“I don’t like to be in a mixed classroom, because often teachers ignore us,” she told Anadolu Agency.

For 15-year-old Khalfan Ahmed, a visually impaired student at Dodoma Secondary School, following daily lessons is a constant struggle.

On cloudy days, it gets a little harder.

With the aid of a cane, he routinely walks to the front of the dimly lit classroom and peers intently at the blackboard, to read what his science teacher has written.

“When the writing is too small. I don’t see them no matter how close I am to the blackboard,” he said.

Ahmed, who was diagnosed with congenital glaucoma -- a condition making him unable to see in dim light, wears heavy eyeglasses which he said makes him dizzy at times.

He reads a book by holding it inches from his eyes./aa

The Daesh/ISIS terror group claimed responsibility late Friday for a deadly mosque attack in Afghanistan that killed at least 47 people and wounded dozens in the southern province of Kandahar. 

The attack on the Fatimiya mosque was carried out by two suicide bombers, according to a statement circulated by the terror group on social media.

It came one week after a bombing, claimed by the local Daesh affiliate, killed 46 at a Shia mosque in the northern Afghanistan province of Kunduz./aa

Following victory during last year's Karabakh War, Azerbaijan prevented drug trafficking from Iran to Armenia, and further to the European countries, Azerbaijan’s president said Friday. 

"Over the past year, after Azerbaijan had regained control over the 130-kilometer (81-mile) section of the state border with Iran, which was under the control of Armenia for about 30 years, and thereby blocked a drug trafficking route from Iran through the Jabrayil district of Azerbaijan to Armenia and further to Europe, the volume of heroin we have seized in other sections of the Azerbaijan-Iran border has doubled compared to the same period of previous years. This suggests that for about 30 years, Armenia, in collusion with Iran, used the occupied territories of Azerbaijan to carry out drug trafficking to Europe," Ilham Aliyev said while addressing the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) Heads of State Council's session via videoconference.

Aliyev emphasized that during the years of occupation by Armenian forces, he repeatedly said the occupied territories were being used "for drug trafficking and training of international terrorists."

"It is a proven fact today," he said.

Touching on the so-called “Armenian prisoners of war," Aliyev said his country handed over all prisoners of war who were detained during the war "earlier than Armenia handed over Azerbaijani prisoners of war" to Baku. "More than two weeks after the signing of the Trilateral Statement (between Moscow, Baku and Yerevan), in late November last year, a sabotage group of 62 people infiltrated the rear of the Azerbaijani Armed Forces in the already liberated territories from the Shirak region of Armenia to commit subversions. It was disarmed and captured by Azerbaijani servicemen. In accordance with international conventions, these saboteurs cannot be considered prisoners of war," he said.

He said the war and conflict "belong to the past," and Azerbaijan is ready to start negotiations with Armenia on the delimitation of the border on the condition of mutual recognition of territorial integrity.

"We are also ready to launch negotiations on a peace agreement with Armenia. Azerbaijan, as a victorious country, is ready to normalize relations. We do hope that the Armenian leadership will not pass up on this historic opportunity," he said.  

Mine clearance

Aliyev highlighted primary problems Azerbaijan is facing are related to the clearance of mines in liberated territories and the restoration of destroyed infrastructure, buildings, houses and historical sites of Azerbaijanis.

"Since the war ended, more than 150 Azerbaijani citizens have been killed or seriously injured by landmines. Armenia refuses to provide us with complete maps of the minefields. The few such maps that have been given to Azerbaijan have an accuracy of about 25%," he said.

The president said that almost all buildings and historical sites in the liberated territories have been destroyed in almost 30 years of occupation.

"Of the 67 mosques in liberated territories, 65 have been completely destroyed. The remaining two, both in run-down condition, were used by the occupiers to keep pigs and cows, thus deliberately insulting the feelings of Muslims."

He underlined that in Shusha -- known as the pearl of Karabakh -- Armenia destroyed 16 of 17 mosques that were there before the occupation.

"One mosque was left to demonstrate 'tolerance,' and there was an attempt to portray it as Persian with complicity from so-called specialists from Iran," he said.

"Houses and public buildings were taken down brick by brick and sold to Armenia and Iran. This is the legacy of Armenian vandalism perpetrated in the territories of Azerbaijan," said Aliyev.

The Azerbaijani leader also noted that "immense damage" has been caused to nature as around 60,000 hectares of forests have been "cut down, sawn and sold to Armenia and Iran."

Illegal exploitation was carried out on Azerbaijan’s gold deposits and other natural resources, he said. 

Liberation of Karabakh

Relations between the former Soviet republics of Armenia and Azerbaijan have been tense since 1991 when the Armenian military occupied Nagorno-Karabakh, also known as Upper Karabakh, a territory internationally recognized as part of Azerbaijan, and seven adjacent regions.

New clashes erupted Sept. 27 last year that saw Armenia launch attacks on civilians and Azerbaijani forces and violate several humanitarian cease-fire agreements.

During the 44-day conflict, Azerbaijan liberated several cities and nearly 300 settlements and villages that were occupied for nearly three decades.

A Nov. 10, 2020, cease-fire deal mediated by Russia also included future efforts for a comprehensive resolution to the dispute.

The cease-fire is seen as a victory for Azerbaijan and a defeat for Armenia, whose armed forces withdrew in line with the agreement.

Before the victory, about 20% of Azerbaijan’s territory had been under illegal occupation.

On Jan. 11, Russia, Azerbaijan and Armenia leaders signed a pact to develop economic ties and infrastructure to benefit the entire region. It also included the establishment of a trilateral working group on Karabakh./aa

China said the Evergrande Group’s issues constitute an individual case and it sees the real estate developer's spillover risks as manageable, according to an official Friday.

The indebtedness of the Evergrande Group is an individual case in China's real estate sector, which is generally sound, Zou Lan, an official with the People's Bank of China, said at a news conference.

The majority of Chinese real estate businesses are running steadily with positive financial performance, he said, according to state-run Xinhua news agency.

"Instead of operating prudently in response to market changes, Evergrande stuck to reckless expansion into multiple sectors in recent years. The poor management has worsened the developer's financial conditions, leading to the final outbreak of risks, according to Zou," Xinhua reported.

"The financial liabilities are less than one-third of the developer's total liabilities,” Zou said, stressing that “spillover risks on financial institutions are overall controllable," it added.

"Related authorities and local governments are mitigating the risks in a law-based and market-oriented manner and urging Evergrande to accelerate the disposal of assets and the resumption of halted construction projects,” said Zou, according to the report.

The Evergrande Group has $300 billion in liabilities that could default on its debt and cause millions of customers to lose deposits.

Investors have been worried whether Evergrande would default, which could then spill over to other Asian financial and real estate markets before turning to a global event, just like the US subprime mortgage crisis in 2007 led to a global financial meltdown one year after.

Evergrande most recently missed another payment on Oct. 11./agencies

Victims paid a total of $590 million to their attackers for ransomware in the first six months of this year, according to a report released by the US Treasury Department on Friday.

The value of ransomware-related suspicious activity reports (SARs) exceeds the value reported for the entirety of 2020, which was $416 million, the Treasury Department's Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) reported.

"Ransomware is an increasing threat to the US financial sector, businesses, and the public," said the report titled "Financial Trend Analysis: Ransomware Trends in Bank Secrecy Act Data Between January 2021 and June 2021".

There were 635 SARs filed and 458 transactions reported between in first six month of 2021 -- up 30% from the total of 487 SARs filed for the entire 2020 calendar year, it said.

One of the recent incidents of ransomware came in May 2021 when hackers attacked Colonial Pipeline to extort millions of dollars, which disrupted crude oil carried to the US eastern states, it added.

FinCEN said it identified 68 ransomware variants, most commonly were REvil/Sodinokibi, Conti, DarkSide, Avaddon, and Phobos.

The Treasury Department said in a statement as ransomware attacks have increased in recent years, so has the number of ransomware payments, which have been typically paid through virtual currency.

"Ransomware actors are criminals who are enabled by gaps in compliance regimes across the global virtual currency ecosystem," Deputy Secretary of the Treasury Wally Adeyemo said in the statement.

The Treasury said its Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) also issued a brochure to promote sanctions compliance in the virtual currency industry, and warned that failure to comply would have same civil and criminal penalties as they do to traditional financial institutions.

"The virtual currency industry plays an increasingly critical role in preventing sanctioned persons from exploiting virtual currencies," the statement said./aa

An advisory committee to the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) voted on Friday to recommend booster shots for Johnson & Johnson's COVID-19 vaccine.

The FDA's Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee's unanimous 19-0 vote was in favor of booster shots for anyone aged 18 and above receiving a second booster shot of the vaccine at least two months after receiving the first dose.

The committee's non-binding advice will now be weighed by the FDA, which will separately determine whether or not it will follow suit.

Johnson & Johnson submitted data to the FDA on Oct. 5 in support of the agency signing-off on boosters for adults. At the time, the company said a booster administered six months after an initial dose prompted antibody levels to increase nine-fold one week after the shot was administered.

Levels jumped twelve-fold a month after the second shot was administered, according to Johnson & Johnson.

Overall, protection from COVID-19 jumped to 94%, the company added.

The FDA has already signed-off on boosters for Pfizer-BioNTech's coronavirus vaccine for individuals aged 65 and older, and adults who are at high-risk for COVID-19 either because of pre-existing conditions or because of their occupation.

The agency is also currently weighing approval of Moderna boosters./aa

The death toll from a bomb blast that hit a Shia mosque in Afghanistan's southern Kandahar province during Friday prayers rose to 47, according to local officials.

Murtaza Zarifi, a security officer at the Fatimiya mosque, claimed the attack was carried out by two suicide bombers.

The attack also left at least 47 killed while many more wounded according to local officials.

Taliban forces have blocked all roads leading to the mosque where the attack took place.

The spokesman of the Interior Ministry under the Taliban administration, Saeed Khosti, earlier Friday confirmed the incident, announcing in a statement that an investigation has been launched.

The explosion comes days after a suicide bomb attack claimed by the Daesh/ISIS terror group on a Shia mosque in the northern city of Kunduz, which killed 46 people./aa

The volcanic eruption on the Spanish island of La Palma has unleashed what scientists described as a “lava tsunami” as the eruption continued to intensify on Friday.

After spilling out from the main volcanic cone on Thursday, the lava started moving at speeds unseen since the eruption began, flowing like a powerful river down the mountain.

Scientists at the Canary Islands Volcanology Institute caught the event on film and called it an “authentic lava tsunami.”

By afternoon, Spain’s National Geographic Institute had already detected 30 separate earthquakes on the island since the day began. Three of them were of at least 4.0 magnitude, making them some of the strongest quakes since the eruption began nearly a month ago.

So far, around 8% of the small island’s landmass has been overtaken by lava. According to the latest Copernicus Satellite data, it has destroyed more than 1,400 buildings.

In recent days, hundreds of more people were evacuated from their homes, bringing the total number of people forced to seek shelter elsewhere to around 6,800.

Despite the damage caused by the eruption, no deaths or serious injuries have been reported.

However, one dramatic rescue mission is underway as a local drone company prepares to rescue four dogs that have been trapped in an area between two lava flows.

The increased intensity of the volcano is colliding with an “unfavorable” change in weather that could see the island also suffering from dangerously poor air quality.

“By the end of the weekend, the concentrations of nitrogen dioxide, sulfur dioxide and carbon monoxide could skyrocket,” said Miguel Angel Morcuende, head of the government emergency panel Pevolca, advising residents to use masks or stay indoors./aa

With the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic still reverberating around the world and expected to last longer, the UN Food and Agriculture Organization's (FAO) basic commitments to end hunger, malnutrition, and poverty by 2030 have become more challenging, a top official told Anadolu Agency.

The coronavirus added its own dynamics besides exacerbating the impacts of drivers behind hunger, malnutrition, and food insecurity, and worsened the current situation, Viorel Gutu, FAO representative in Turkey’s capital Ankara, said ahead of World Food Day observed on Oct. 16.

Citing a joint report by various UN bodies titled The State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World 2021 (SOFI 2021), Gutu said conflicts, climate variability and extremes, economic instabilities, and high-income inequality are the major drivers of hunger, malnutrition, and food insecurity.

SOFI 2021 was jointly prepared by the FAO, the International Fund for Agricultural Development, the World Food Program, the World Health Organization, and UNICEF to inform the public on progress towards ending hunger, achieving food security, and improving nutrition.

Response to the challenges, Gutu said, requires a systems-based approach to produce more food with greater socio-economic benefits and less impact on the environment.

"This can be achieved through green and climate-resilient approaches including technological innovation, digital solutions, and indigenous and traditional knowledge."

He underlined that green and climate-resilient agriculture can provide nutritious food with a low carbon footprint to help achieve healthy ecosystems and healthy diets for present and future generations.

"With this, four dimensions of food security and nutrition – food availability, access, utilization, and stability – can be addressed, especially for least developed countries, land-locked developing countries, and small island developing states," Gutu argued.

How food is produced affects the entire planet, natural resources, the climate, and the way animals live, he said, adding: "Agrifood systems are responsible for one-third of carbon emissions that cause the greenhouse effect and climate change."

Food processing is a way to limit food waste, but when it becomes excessive and chemical preservatives are used, the food loses nutritional properties, he warned.

Two billion people are severely overweight or suffer from obesity while malnutrition, which includes not only hunger but obesity as well, affects more than 3 billion people in the world.

"The FAO is working with countries to reduce this figure to zero. But what can be done?" Gutu said.

He suggested that governments should be persuaded to encourage the sustainable production of affordable and nutritious food through providing incentives for environmentally friendly behavior and helping small-scale farms, which, the UN official said, produce 33% of the world’s food and often do not earn enough.

As agrifood systems are linked to health, education, and even finance, the private sector has to make responsible investments, he stressed.

It has to fund sustainable projects and innovation in the search for new and more eco-friendly ways of crop farming, fishing and animal farming," he stated.

Gutu stressed the importance of collaborative action to change the way food is produced and consumed in order to reach the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals.

"There are four key steps. We have to be committed to better production, better nutrition, a better environment, and a better life for all," he said.

Responding to a question on the goal of zero hunger, Gutu said: "We are not on track to achieve the targets for any of the nutrition indicators by 2030 and face a systemic threat that needs to be tackled immediately and in a holistic manner. Otherwise, at least 660 million people will still face hunger in 2030."

The SOFI 2021 report pointed out that the prevalence of undernourishment globally has reached 9.9%, up 1.5% from 2020.

Some 720 million to 811 million people faced hunger in 2020, a rise of 118 million compared to 2019, the report revealed.

The number of moderate and severely food insecure people skyrocketed in 2020, with nearly one in three people worldwide (around 2.37 billion) food insecure.

Rising food insecurity has also widened the gender gap, it said, showing that food insecurity has hit women harder than men throughout the COVID-19 pandemic.

Highlighting that malnutrition remains a challenge and affects mostly children, the report revealed that at least 149 million children under 5 years of age were affected by stunting, 45 million suffered from wasting, and almost 39 million were overweight.

"The SOFI report identifies six pathways towards agri-food systems transformation. These pathways focus on conflict-ridden areas, climate extremes, the most vulnerable groups, the cost of nutritious foods, structural inequality, and food environments and dietary patterns," Gutu said.

He underlined that the COVID-19 pandemic is a warning sign of the insufficiency of the current agri-food systems and provides the motivation to change the current course in the sector./agencies