Looking Good! See Shakira's Post-Baby Body!




Celebrity Baby Blog





02/15/2013 at 12:30 PM ET



Shakira Postpartum Barcelona
7pix/Face to Face


Caliente!


Just three weeks after welcoming son Milan Piqué Mebarak, new mom Shakira stepped out for an appointment in Barcelona, Spain Thursday looking comfy, casual — and rocking an incredible curvy figure.


With her blonde tresses tied back in a loose bun, the singer showed off her slim postpartum body in a white tee and sweats.


Following her baby boy’s Jan. 22 arrival, Shakira and her beau Gerard Piqué introduced their firstborn to the world with a sweet snapshot of father and son cuddling close.


“Thank you for sharing this unforgettable moment with us,” the couple said at the time.


More recently, Shakira, 36, took Milan to his first soccer match, posting a picture to Instagram of the two cheering on Piqué, who is a central defender for FC Barcelona.


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Wall Street dips but S&P on pace for seventh weekly gain

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Stocks edged lower on Friday as equities continued a phase of consolidation after a strong start to the year but the seven-week winning streak for the S&P 500 remained intact.


The S&P 500, up nearly 7 percent so far this year, is facing strong technical resistance near the 1,525 level. But investors, expecting the index to advance further in the quarter, have held back from locking in profits.


"It looks like a little bit of profit taking, normal consolidation after a big run and maybe we might be seeing the first signs of nervousness ahead of the sequestration debate that will most likely starting up when Congress comes back," said Fred Dickson, chief market strategist at D.A. Davidson & Co in Lake Oswego, Oregon.


The "sequestration" - automatic across-the-board spending cuts put in place as part of a larger congressional budget fight - are due to kick in March 1 unless lawmakers agree to an alternative.


Data released Friday illustrated the bumpy road the U.S. economic recovery continues to take.


The New York Federal Reserve said manufacturing in New York state expanded for the first time in seven months, while Thomson Reuters/University of Michigan's preliminary reading of consumer sentiment rose from the prior month and beat expectations.


But U.S. manufacturing fell in January after a rise in the prior month.


"We are at a point where the macro news will continue to be a two-steps forward, one-step back kind of progression, with most of the news showing a firmness, but an occasional data point that will represent a step back," Jim Russell, senior equity strategist for U.S. Bank Wealth Management in Cincinnati.


The Dow Jones industrial average <.dji> dropped 6.64 points, or 0.05 percent, to 13,966.75. The Standard & Poor's 500 Index <.spx> shed 1.35 points, or 0.09 percent, to 1,520.03. The Nasdaq Composite Index <.ixic> lost 1.77 points, or 0.06 percent, to 3,196.89.


The benchmark S&P 500 is up 0.13 percent for the week and is on track to register its seventh straight week of gains by the close of trading Friday, a feat not seen since a run of consecutive weekly gains between December 2010 and January 2011.


A surge in merger and acquisition activity, with more than $158 billion in deals announced so far in 2013, has given further support to the equity market as it points to healthy valuations and bets on the economic outlook.


Herbalife shares pared earlier gains and were up 7.1 percent to $41, a day after billionaire investor Carl Icahn said in a regulatory filing that he now owns 13 percent of Herbalife and was ready to put it in play.


MeadWestvaco Corp climbed 9.8 percent to $34.77 as the biggest percentage gainer on the S&P index after activist investor Nelson Peltz's Trian Fund Management LP said in an SEC filing it had bought about 1.6 million shares of the packaging company.


Burger King Worldwide shares gained 2.5 percent to $17 after it beat estimates with a 94 percent rise in fourth-quarter profit, thanks to new menu additions.


Oil service stocks declined, weighed by a 5.5 percent drop in shares of Transocean to $56.05, after the rig contractor reported its fleet update and Deutsche Bank cut its rating on the stock to "sell." The PHLX oil service sector <.osx> lost 1.7 percent.


(Editing by Bernadette Baum and Nick Zieminski)



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Israel Museum’s Herod Show Draws Anger Over Use of West Bank Objects


Jim Hollander/European Pressphoto Agency


The exhibition “Herod the Great: The King’s Final Journey” includes a reconstruction of his tomb, with his sarcophagus, center.







JERUSALEM — In one room sits a sarcophagus of reddish-pink limestone believed to have held the body of King Herod, painstakingly reconstructed after having been smashed to bits centuries ago. In another, there are frescoes from Herod’s elaborate underground palace, pieced together like a jigsaw puzzle. Throughout, elaborate animated videos show the king’s audacious construction — atop the desert fortress Masada; at his burial place, Herodium; and his most famous work, the Second Temple of Jerusalem.




The Israel Museum on Tuesday opened its most ambitious archaeological exhibition and the world’s first devoted to Herod, the lionized and demonized Rome-appointed king of Judea, who reigned from 37 to 4 B.C.E. and is among the most seminal and contentious figures in Jewish history. But the exhibition, which the museum director described as a “massive enterprise” that involved sifting through 30 tons of material from Herodium and reconstructing 250 artifacts, has also brought its own bit of controversy.


The Palestinian Authority says the exhibition is a violation of international law because much of its material was taken from near Bethlehem and Jericho, both in the Israeli-occupied West Bank. An Israeli group of archaeologists and activists complains that the museum, however unwittingly, is helping the Jewish settlement movement advance its contention that the West Bank should be part of Israel and not a Palestinian state.


“What the Israel Museum is doing is like coming and saying, ‘Listen, the heritage of the West Bank is part of our heritage first of all,’ ” said Yonathan Mizrachi, an archaeologist who helped found the Israeli group, Emek Shaveh, in 2009. “It’s part of the idea to create the narrative that those sites, no matter what the political solution,” are “part of the Israeli identity.”


James S. Snyder, the director of the museum, dismissed such criticism as propaganda and political opportunism. The Oslo Accords signed by the Israelis and Palestinians in the 1990s provide for Israeli involvement in archaeology in the territories until the resolution of the overall conflict, and Mr. Snyder said that at the end of the exhibition, the museum plans to return the artifacts to the West Bank, to Israel’s civil administration, which he said would arrange for their return to the sites from which they were taken or to store the material until “the site can be prepared for its care and/or display.” He noted that the museum had spent a “huge” sum — he would not specify how much — to restore and make available for public consumption artifacts that might otherwise have been lost, like many of the antiquities in Iraq and Egypt.


“We’re not about geopolitics, we’re not about minefields, we’re about trying to do the best and the right thing for the long term for material cultural heritage,” Mr. Snyder said. “Our goal was to invest in the preservation of this material and return it to the sites. We are but custodians, and we are always ready for it to be where it belongs.”


But Hamdan Taha, director of the Palestinian Authority’s department of antiquities and cultural heritage, said that while Oslo provides for Israel’s excavation in the West Bank, exhibiting the material was another story. He complained that the Palestinians were never consulted about the project, which he called “an aggression against Palestinian cultural rights in their own land,” and said it would “not help to reconstruct peace between the Palestinians and Israel.”


The exhibition is dedicated to the memory of Ehud Netzer, a Hebrew University archaeologist who spent 40 years searching for Herod’s burial place before discovering it in 2007 at Herodium. He died after being injured in a fall at the site in 2010. The tholos, a circular set of columns that topped the tomb, is partly rebuilt in the exhibition, along with the sarcophagus said to be that of Herod and two others.


The many rooms are filled with pottery, coins, busts and frescoes that illustrate the legend of Herod. The king has been admired by historians for his remarkable buildings, but condemned for the murder of his wife and children, among many others. His Judaism was questioned, and he was often denounced as a puppet of Rome, an image the exhibition does little to defy as it explores his relationships with Antony and Cleopatra, Augustus and Marcus Agrippa.


Shmuel Browns, a tour guide and expert on Herodium who helped Netzer excavate the site as a volunteer, said he was awed by the meticulous reconstruction, particularly of a large basin adorned with several heads that was found in pieces in two disparate places at the site, now an Israeli national park.


“They’ve built things from what was found that you could never imagine from what you saw at the site,” Mr. Browns said. “The message is very, very strong about who Herod is and what he did. He wasn’t intimidated by topography, he wasn’t intimidated by material, he wasn’t intimidated by lack of water.


“He’s a fascinating character,” Mr. Browns added. “He just got very, very bad press.”


This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: February 14, 2013

An earlier version of this article referred incompletely to plans for returning the items. The Oslo Accords signed by the Israelis and Palestinians in the 1990s provide for Israeli involvement in archaeology in the territories until the resolution of the overall conflict, and the museum director, James S. Snyder, said that at the end of the exhibition, it plans to return the artifacts to the West Bank, to Israel’s civil administration, which he said would arrange for their return to the sites from which they were taken or to store the material until “the site can be prepared for its care and/or display.” There are no plans to hand the items over to the Palestinians at the end of the exhibition.



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Oscar Pistorius's Nike Ad Calling Him a 'Bullet' Pulled from His Website















02/14/2013 at 01:30 PM EST







Screen grab of Nike ad on Oscar Pistorius website as of Feb. 5, 2013



A Nike ad with Olympian Oscar Pistorius in his trademark blades – and bearing the tagline "I am the bullet in the chamber" – was yanked from his personal website on Thursday.

The South African athlete's ad disappeared as he was charged with the fatal shooting of his girlfriend Reeva Steenkamp, reports the U.K.'s Mirror.

Pistorius, 26, was also featured with fellow athletes in another commercial for Nike, called "Weapon." The international sportswear and equipment company is one of Pistorius's five major sponsors, and he has appeared in a number of commercials for the brand since 2008.

In the aftermath of Pistorius's arrest, Nike SA spokeswoman Seruscka Naidoo declined comment on the Paralypian champ's future with the company.

"We're not commenting on our sponsorship or relationship," she told Agence France-Presse. "At this moment, it's a matter that's being investigated. [There is an] issue at hand here which is much bigger than a sponsorship."

The rep also said, "From Nike we extend our condolences to everyone affected by this."

Steenkamp, 30, was shot dead in Pistorius's home in Pretoria on Thursday morning. Pistorius remains in police custody and is scheduled to appear in court on Friday.

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Morning-after pill use up to 1 in 9 younger women


NEW YORK (AP) — About 1 in 9 younger women have used the morning-after pill after sex, according to the first government report to focus on emergency contraception since its approval 15 years ago.


The results come from a survey of females ages 15 to 44. Eleven percent of those who'd had sex reported using a morning-after pill. That's up from 4 percent in 2002, only a few years after the pills went on the market and adults still needed a prescription.


The increased popularity is probably because it is easier to get now and because of media coverage of controversial efforts to lift the age limit for over-the-counter sales, experts said. A prescription is still required for those younger than 17 so it is still sold from behind pharmacy counters.


In the study, half the women who used the pills said they did it because they'd had unprotected sex. Most of the rest cited a broken condom or worries that the birth control method they used had failed.


White women and more educated women use it the most, the research showed. That's not surprising, said James Trussell, a Princeton University researcher who's studied the subject.


"I don't think you can go to college in the United States and not know about emergency contraception," said Trussell, who has promoted its use and started a hot line.


One Pennsylvania college even has a vending machine dispensing the pills.


The morning-after pill is basically a high-dose version of birth control pills. It prevents ovulation and needs to be taken within a few days after sex. The morning-after pill is different from the so-called abortion pill, which is designed to terminate a pregnancy.


At least five versions of the morning-after pills are sold in the United States. They cost around $35 to $60 a dose at a pharmacy, depending on the brand.


Since it is sold over-the-counter, insurers generally only pay for it with a doctor's prescription. The new Affordable Care Act promises to cover morning-after pills, meaning no co-pays, but again only with a prescription.


The results of the study were released Thursday by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. It's based on in-person interviews of more than 12,000 women in 2006 through 2010. It was the agency's first in-depth report on that issue, said Kimberly Daniels, the study's lead author.


The study also found:


—Among different age groups, women in their early 20s were more likely to have taken a morning-after pill. About 1 in 4 did.


—About 1 in 5 never-married women had taken a morning-after pill, compared to just 1 in 20 married women.


—Of the women who used the pill, 59 percent said they had done it only once, 24 percent said twice, and 17 percent said three or more times.


A woman who uses emergency contraception multiple times "needs to be thinking about a more regular form" of birth control, noted Lawrence Finer, director of domestic research for the Guttmacher Institute, a nonprofit group that does research on reproductive health.


Also on Thursday, the CDC released a report on overall contraception use. Among its many findings, 99 percent of women who've had sex used some sort of birth control. That includes 82 percent who used birth control pills and 93 percent whose partner had used a condom.


___


Online:


CDC report: http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/


Emergency contraception info: http://ec.princeton.edu/index.html


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Wall Street flat as takeovers offset weak overseas data

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Stocks were little changed on Thursday as a flurry of merger deals and better-than-expected jobs data offset signs of economic weakness in Europe and Japan


Shares of H.J. Heinz Co jumped 20 percent to $72.51 after it said Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway and 3G Capital will buy the food company for $72.50 a share, or $28 billion including debt.


Also supporting the market was data showing the number of Americans filing new claims for unemployment benefits fell more than expected in the latest week.


Stocks fell earlier after a report the euro zone's gross domestic product contracted by the steepest amount since the first quarter of 2009. In addition, Japan's GDP shrank 0.1 percent in the fourth quarter, crushing expectations of a modest return to growth.


"The only reason a company buys another company is because they see an upside. Even though we are at multiyear highs, this kind of activity shows that there is more room for a rally, feeding optimism to the market," said Randy Frederick, director of trading and derivatives at Charles Schwab.


But Frederick added the market would have to see small corrections before breaking above current levels, where indexes have been hovering for almost two weeks. The S&P 500 is up more than 6 percent so far this year, near its highest level since November 2007.


The Dow Jones industrial average <.dji> was down 13.75 points, or 0.10 percent, at 13,969.16. The Standard & Poor's 500 Index <.spx> was down 0.45 point, or 0.03 percent, at 1,519.88. The Nasdaq Composite Index <.ixic> was down 1.35 points, or 0.04 percent, at 3,195.53.


Constellation Brands soared more than 35 percent to $43.20 after terms of its takeover of Mexican brewer Grupo Modelo were revised, granting it perpetual rights to distribute Corona and other Modelo brands in the United States. AB InBev ADRs gained 5.5 percent to $93.08.


American Airlines and US Airways Group said they plan to merge in a deal that will form the world's biggest air carrier, with an equity valuation of about $11 billion. US Airways shares fell 6.8 percent to $13.67.


Weakness in Europe contributed to a 5 percent drop in revenue from the region for Cisco Systems , which nonetheless beat estimates as it reported its results late Wednesday. The company's shares slid 1.4 percent to $20.85.


General Motors Co reported a weaker-than-expected fourth-quarter profit, also citing bigger losses in Europe alongside lower prices in its core North American market. The stock was off 1.7 percent at $28.19.


(Reporting By Angela Moon; Editing by Nick Zieminski and Kenneth Barry)



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International Military Officials Investigate Afghan Deaths





KABUL, Afghanistan — International military officials are investigating two episodes in which as many as 11 Afghan civilians may have been killed in what appeared to be American-led military actions.




In the more lethal episode, Afghan officials said 10 civilians were killed overnight in Kunar Province in eastern Afghanistan in a village where two known Taliban commanders were visiting family members.


“Ten civilians were killed last night in a joint Afghan and American operation that took place in Chogam Valley in Shigal District,” said Fazullah Wahidi, the provincial governor. He said four women, one man and five children between the ages of 8 and 13 were killed; four teenagers were wounded, three of whom were girls.


Increasingly over the last two years, foreign insurgents, sometimes with links to Al Qaeda and other non-Afghan groups, have taken refuge in Kunar and neighboring Nuristan Province. Both provinces have a long border with Pakistan, and insurgents can hide easily in the rugged and forested mountain terrain Mr. Wahidi said the target of Kunar operation was a Taliban leader named Shahpour, “a known and really dangerous Afghan Taliban commander with links to Al Qaeda operatives in Kunar” and another Taliban commander, known as “Rocketi,” a Pakistani citizen from the Northwest Frontier Province. Both men were killed in the attack.


Mr. Wahidi said that the operation was not coordinated with Afghan security forces, but that locally hired Afghan paramilitaries were involved in the raid, which included an airstrike and a ground operation. Sometimes other United States government agencies rather than the military use special commandos.


Maj. Adam Wojack, a spokesman for the International Security Assistance Force, said they had no information on the operation but “were aware of the reports” of civilian deaths and were looking into it.


Local officials in Kunar said that Shahpour was believed to have links to Al Qaeda and narrowly escaped being killed last year when the Americans attacked another Al Qaeda-linked Taliban commander known as Abu Hafez Al-Najde, who also went by the name Commander Ghani. Shahpour was the Taliban leader in charge of nearby Dangam district but was visiting relatives at the time of the raid.


People from Chogam, who brought injured from the remote village where the attack took place to the main hospital in the provincial capital of Asadabad, described a precise but damaging hit on two adjacent houses.


“Two homes were totally destroyed; air power was used during the operation,” said a man who brought a boy with cuts to the hospital for treatment, but refused to give his name. “There are still dead bodies under the rubble and human flesh scattered in the area.”


The other episode in which an Afghan civilian was killed by foreign troops occurred on Tuesday during daylight hours.


It took place as NATO-led forces were checking a stretch of heavily traveled highway between Kandahar and Spin Boldak for explosives during a road clearance mission and shot at an oncoming car that did not stop when signaled to do so, Major Wojack said.


An Afghan policeman, Taj Mohammed, the local Border Police commander, corroborated much of the ISAF account, but did not see the shooting himself. He said the car was carrying people from a wedding party.


Major Wojack said that the forces had followed standard procedure of signaling to the car to stop. After the driver stopped, he then started to accelerate toward the convoy, at which point the soldier ISAF shot at the car, Mr. Wojack said.


Reporting was contributed by Taimoor Shah in Kandahar and by an employee of The New York Times in Kunar Province.



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Ryan Reynolds Punches Costar Scott Speedman on Set of New Film















02/13/2013 at 01:50 PM EST







Ryan Reynolds and Scott Speedman


AKM-GSI


Don't mess with Ryan Reynolds!

The actor, 36, proved he knows how to pack a punch while filming a scene for Queen of the Night in Sudbury, Canada, on Tuesday.

On the receiving end of Reynolds's fist is his costar, Scott Speedman.

Directed by Atom Egoyan, the thriller is focused around a father trying to locate his kidnapped daughter.

In addition to Reynolds and Speedman, the movie also stars Rosario Dawson.

But it hasn't been all work and no play for Reynolds, who has been filming in frigid temperatures. Wife Blake Lively – donning lots of warm layers – recently joined him in Sudbury for a date at the movies.

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Wall Street rally stalls, S&P 500 skims November 2007 high

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Stocks were little changed on Wednesday amid investor caution after the S&P 500 index briefly hit its highest intraday level since November 2007.


The benchmark index got a boost from Comcast Corp , which said it will buy the rest of NBC Universal for $16.7 billion from General Electric Co .


Equities have been strong performers until recently, buoyed largely by healthy growth in corporate earnings, which helped the S&P 500 to rise 6.5 percent so far this year. The Dow industrials are about 1 percent away from an all-time intraday high, reached in October 2007.


Those gains have left the market vulnerable to a pullback as investors are likely to take profit amid a dearth of new catalysts. While analysts see an upward bias in stocks, recent daily moves have been small and trading volumes light with indexes at multi-year highs.


"I was expecting a 12-15 percent return on the S&P for the whole year of 2013, and we have done about half of that in just 5-6 weeks," said Jack De Gan, principal at Harbor Advisory in Portsmouth, New Hampshire.


"We will hit resistance, but the fundamentals and (microeconomic) picture are looking good, so if there is a correction, it's going to be a brief one."


The Dow Jones industrial average <.dji> was down 39.17 points, or 0.28 percent, at 13,979.53. The Standard & Poor's 500 Index <.spx> was up 0.80 points, or 0.05 percent, at 1,520.23. The Nasdaq Composite Index <.ixic> was up 7.01 points, or 0.22 percent, at 3,193.50.


Investors shrugged off the latest economic data, which showed that retail sales rose just 0.1 percent, as expected, in January as tax increases and higher gasoline prices restrained spending.


The S&P 500 was well above its 50-day moving average of 1,460.92, a sign the market could be overbought.


Comcast agreed late Tuesday to buy General Electric Co's remaining 49 percent stake in NBC Universal for $16.7 billion. Comcast jumped 4.4 percent to $40.70 as the S&P's top percentage gainer while Dow component GE was up 3.3 percent to $23.33.


Deere & Co reported earnings that beat expectations and raised its full-year profit outlook. After initially rallying in premarket trading, the stock fell 3 percent to $91.13.


According to the latest Thomson Reuters data, of the 353 companies in the S&P 500 that have reported results, 70.3 percent have exceeded analysts' expectations, above a 62 percent average since 1994 and 65 percent over the past four quarters.


Fourth-quarter earnings for S&P 500 companies are estimated to have risen 5.3 percent, according to the data, above a 1.9 percent forecast at the start of the earnings season.


Industrial and construction shares fell, though President Barack Obama, in his State of the Union address late Tuesday, called for $50 billion in spending to create jobs by rebuilding degraded roads and bridges.


The Dow Jones Home Construction index <.djushb> was off 0.5 percent.


(Editing by Kenneth Barry and Bernadette Baum)



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India Ink: In Kashmir, Clashes and Dwindling Supplies As Curfew Continues

The Kashmir Valley is on the fourth day of a government-imposed shutdown begun immediately after the hanging of the militant Muhammad Afzal, also known as Afzal Guru, who comes from the town of Sopore in Baramulla district.

Many residents are running out of food and milk in Srinagar, Kashmir’s summer capital. Meanwhile, dozens have been injured and at least one killed in protests against Mr. Afzal’s hanging, which happened secretly in Delhi on Saturday and was announced afterward.

Mr. Afzal, from the Jaish-e-Muhammad militant group, was convicted of conspiracy and sentenced to death by a special court in 2002 for his role in planning an attack on India’s Parliament in December 2001.

Schools, colleges and most shops in Kashmir are closed by government order, and people have been asked to stay inside their homes. Rows of shops and restaurants were shuttered.

Vehicles have been banned from the streets, cable news channels have gone dark, Internet service on cellphones has been blocked and newspapers were not being delivered. Hospitals, pharmacies and emergency services remain open.

In Srinagar, the only people in the deserted streets were security forces.

Officials in the area said they were taking preventive measures. During the past decade, many Kashmiris have opposed the death sentence for Mr. Afzal, saying he was being unfairly accused of the crime. His wife had requested a pardon from the Indian government, but her plea was denied.

Many Kashmiris were also outraged that the government letter carrying the news of execution reached Mr. Afzal’s widow in Sopore only after he died. The central government said Tuesday that Mr. Afzal’s family could visit his grave at Tihar Jail in Delhi, but a date has yet to be decided, according to the Press Trust of India.

The ban on the movement of people and vehicles was imposed under Section 144 of India’s criminal procedure code, the same section invoked after protests over the recent Delhi gang rape, which prohibits the assembly of more than four people.

It was invoked by the administration to prevent “a law and order problem,” Suresh Kumar, principal secretary in Jammu and Kashmir’s Department of Home Affairs, said in a telephone interview Tuesday. 

Mr. Afzal’s death was mourned across the valley through organized street protests that involved stone pelting, in defiance of the ban.

Three civilians have died and many have been injured over the last four days, officials said. Some news reports attributed all three deaths to protest-related activities, but Mr. Kumar said only one man died of injuries caused by the police. The other two drowned when their boat capsized, an incident unrelated to the violence, he said.

Obair Mushtaq, from the Baramulla district, died after he was shot, his relatives said. Farooq Ahmed, his uncle, said Obair was 13.

Mr. Ahmed said that on Sunday evening, a handful of children, including his nephew, were throwing stones at a passing military convoy. “It was not aggressive. We were laughing at them,” he said, crying over the phone. “We can’t understand why there is so much fighting. Why are our children dying?”

A Kashmir police official told India Ink that 60 people have been injured since Saturday in clashes between police and civilians. Forty of those were security officials and 20 were civilians, he said. He spoke on the condition of anonymity, saying that he feared for his life.

Additionally, there were about 60 incidents of stone pelting across the valley. “Most of the violence erupted in Sopore and Baramulla,” he said.

“People are not allowed to step out of their homes,” he added. Many residents described the past four days as the longest curfew since 2010, when the valley was shaken by mass pro-independence demonstrations. 

Manzoor Ahmed, who drives an auto-rickshaw, said that he hasn’t earned any money since the curfew was imposed on Saturday. “I haven’t stepped out of the house so I cannot even make the little money I do,” he said during a telephone interview. “The children cannot go to school.”

Mr. Ahmed said that his family was surviving on dal, a stew made of lentils, because there are no fresh vegetables available. “We have a backup supply of dal because we know things like this can happen,” he said.

In some areas, for a few hours in the evening, residents said they were allowed out of their homes to shop. Vegetables and milk are generally shipped into Srinagar, which is nestled in the mountains, from villages and other states during the winter months.

Mr. Mohammed, a hotel manager near the Dal Lake, who requested his first name not be used to avoid any retaliatory action, said that his hotel was running out of vegetables like peas and cauliflower, and guests were only being served beans and potatoes from storage. “The situation is quite bad,” he said.

For around two hours in the evening, a few stores selling basic groceries were open. But these shops have limited resources because the supply chain had been disrupted due to the ban on vehicles.

One businessman, who requested not be named to avoid possible retaliatory action by the police, said he hasn’t opened his crockery shop in downtown Srinagar in the past four days. “What choice do I have? They won’t let us step out,” he said. He estimated he has lost 60,000 rupees ($1,000) since Saturday.

The hanging of Mr. Afzal came as Kashmiris were planning protests to mark the death of Maqbool Bhatt, a pro-Kashmir independence leader who was hanged on Feb. 11, 1984. His death is considered the spark for two decades of unrest. Both men are buried at Tihar Jail in Delhi.

“Maqbool Bhatt inspired the insurgency while Afzal Guru was the product of it,” said Sheikh Showkat Hussain, a law professor at Kashmir University. 

He warned that Mr. Afazal’s hanging and the subsequent curfew would make the Kashmiri people’s “alienation with the government more deep rooted.”

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