India's largest selling Urdu weekly, now also in English
The Congress on Wednesday appointed former Union Minister and Lok Sabha MP Mullappally Ramachandran as the President of party’s Kerala unit, replacing M.M. Hassan.
The party also announced the appointments of K. Sudhakaran, M.I. Shanawaz and K. Suresh as working presidents and K. Murleedharan as the chairman of campaign committee for its Kerala unit.
(IANS)
Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister N. Chandrababu Naidu, against whom a non-bailable arrest warrant was issued by a Maharashtra court last week in a 2010 case, will not attend the court on September 21.
Naidu, who is also the President of Telugu Desam Party (TDP), on Wednesday decided to send his lawyer to file a petition in Dharmabad court to recall the Non-Bailable Arrest Warrant (NBW).
The decision was taken after the TDP chief held series of consultations with legal experts, officials and top leaders of his party here.
Judicial Magistrate First Class, Dharmabad Court (Nanded) N.R. Gajbhiye on September had 13 issued the NBWs against Naidu and 14 others including his two cabinet colleagues.
The police were ordered to arrest and produce them before the court at the next hearing on September 21.
Maharashtra police had registered a case against Naidu and others when the TDP organised massive protests over what it termed the “illegal constructions” of the Babli Barrage project by the Maharashtra government allegedly to divert Godavari River waters from Telangana region of the then undivided Andhra Pradesh.
At that time Naidu was the Leader of Opposition in the state and along with 40 legislators, he had entered the barrage vicinity flouting prohibition orders clamped there.
The TDP has alleged that BJP is behind the revival of eight-year-old case. It termed the NBW as an act of vengeance by Narendra Modi government against the TDP for pulling out of NDA.
Bharatiya Janata Party President Amit Shah, while addressing a news conference in Hyderabad on September 15, denied the allegation and pointed out that the case was booked when Congress was in power in Maharashtra.
He also claimed that the court had issued 25 summons against Naidu but he did not respond to any summon.
Reacting to Shah’s claim, Chandrababu Naidu informed the Andhra Pradesh Assembly that he had not received summons from the court before the NBW was issued.
“I verified with my office. Not even a single summon was received,” the Chief Minister said.
(IANS)
Tripunithura (Kerala) The Kerala Police on Thursday began questioning Bishop Franco Mulakkal accused of raping a nun for the second consecutive day.
On Wednesday, the bishop of the Roman Catholic Diocese in Jalandhar, Punjab, was questioned for seven hours near here at the Crime Branch office. He was asked to return on Thursday for further questioning.
Accompanied by his counsel and a few priests, Mulakkal arrived at the Crime Branch office around 11 a.m., even as demands for his arrest grew. Nuns have been protesting in Kochi for 13 days.
The bishop spent the night at a plush hotel in Kochi.
He dodged a large media contingent waiting outside the hotel as he slipped away in a different car while the vehicle used on Wednesday was kept parked outside the hotel.
Like on Wednesday, Inspector General Vijay Sakhre, Kottayam Superintendent Harishankar and his deputy K. Subhash held a meeting at the IG office in Kochi ahead of the interrogation.
The Kerala High Court has already agreed to hear Mulakkal’s anticipatory bail plea on September 25.
A Kerala nun has accused Mulakkal of repeatedly sexually abusing her between 2014 and 2016.
An FIR was registered against the bishop and a 114-page detailed statement was taken from the nun and other inmates of the convent.
Mulakkal was questioned by the police team led by Subhash in August at his Jalandhar office and has denied all the charges levelled against him by the nun.
(IANS)
India has strongly protested the brutal killing of a BSF soldier by Pakistani troopers along the International Border near Jammu on Tuesday.
Sources in the security establishments said the killing of BSF trooper has been taken “very seriously” by the government.
They said India strongly raised the issue at the Directorate General of Military Operations (DGMO)-level talks held on Tuesday.
India’s protest come after the mutilated body of Border Security Force’s (BSF) Head constable Narendra Singh was found hours after an unprovoked firing was started by Pakistan in Ramgarh sector of Jammu on the patrolling party which went ahead of fence for clearing elephant grass or ‘Sarkanda’.
The BSF in its statement said that while such groups are routinely sent to remove wild growth to clear the view along the border, on Tuesday there was unprovoked firing from Pakistan side.
“The firing from Pakistan side was retaliated by the patrol and they tactically extricated themselves. The patrol found one of their members missing,” the BSF said.
The BSF said that with the reinforcement from the company, the complete area was sanitized first and then the search started for the missing trooper.
The area between fence and International Boundary is “undulating, marshy and has thick elephant grass”, growth of which made the search “difficult”.
“With much effort, the body of missing trooper was found with multiple bullet injuries on his torso including neck,” it said.
It said that the BSF has lodged a strong complaint with the Pakistan Rangers.
(IANS)
The CCTV recordings of late Tamil Nadu Chief Minister J. Jayalalithaa’s stay in the hospital has been overwritten several times automatically, Apollo Hospitals has told the Justice A. Arumughaswamy Commission.
The Commission is probing the circumstances leading to hospitalization of Jayalalithaa on September 22, 2016 and the treatment provided to her till her death December 5, 2016.
“The CCTV recordings get overwritten automatically after 30 days. This information was shared with the Commission on September 11,” Maimoona Badsha, counsel for Apollo Hospitals, told IANS on Wednesday.
The hospital has informed the Commission that it is unable to submit the requested footage as it pertains to the period when Jayalalithaa was in the hospital – between September 22, 2016 to December 5, 2016.
The Commission had earlier asked the Apollo Hospital to submit the CCTV footages of certain areas within the hospital.
Badsha said it has been the procedure at the hospital to store the CCTV footages for 30 days after which new images are recorded.
When asked about Apollo Hospitals Executive Chairman Prathap C Reddy’s earlier statement that the CCTV cameras were switched off, Badsha said “that is a different issue.”
(IANS)
The number of deaths and attacks attributed to terrorism significantly decreased in 2017, according to a new report by the US State Department.
“The total number of terrorist attacks worldwide in 2017 decreased by 23 per cent” compared to 2016, while “the total deaths due to terrorist attacks decreased by 27 per cent”, CNN quoted the Department’s Coordinator for Counterterrorism, Nathan Sales, as saying on Wednesday.
Sales said the “overall trend was largely due to dramatically fewer attacks and deaths in Iraq”, where a US-led military coalition has helped eject the Islamic State (IS) terror group from much of the country.
However, despite these battlefield successes, US officials have warned that the IS was still well positioned to make a comeback in the region.
The report also warned that terror groups were beginning to become more “dispersed and clandestine” and have made themselves “less susceptible to conventional military action”.
While Sales said that some 100 countries experienced terrorism in 2017, the vast majority of those attacks took place in a relatively small number of nations.
“Fifty-nine per cent of all attacks took place in five countries. Those are Afghanistan, India, Iraq, Pakistan and the Philippines,” Sales said while adding that “Seventy per cent of all deaths due to terrorist attacks took place” in Afghanistan, Iraq, Nigeria, Somalia and Syria.
The annual congressionally-mandated report once again labels Iran as the lead state sponsor of terrorism, with Sales saying that Iranian-backed Lebanese Hezbollah has been linked to attacks and weapons stockpiles in Europe and South America, reports CNN.
The report also said that in 2017 Pakistan had not done enough to curb terrorism, saying that Islamabad “did not restrict the Afghan Taliban” and other affiliated terrorist groups like the Haqqani Network “from operating in Pakistan-based safe havens and threatening US and Afghan forces in Afghanistan”.
It said the Pakistani government also “failed to significantly limit” two other terrorist organisations, Lashkar e-Taiba and Jaish-e-Mohammad, “from openly raising money, recruiting and training in Pakistan”.
(IANS)
Saudi-led coalition involved in a war in Yemen announced on Wednesday the interception of a missile shot towards border city Jazan.
The coalition spokesperson, Col. Turki Al Maliki, said in a statement on Saudi Press Agency that with the fresh attack, the number of missiles shot by Houthis militias towards the kingdom reached 198. Most of those missiles targeted the cities on the south border of Saudi Arabia, Xinhua reported.
He said that the Saudi air forces intercepted and destroyed the missile that was shot from Saada governorate in Yemen without reporting any injuries. He renewed his accusations of the involvement of Iran in such attacks by supplying the Houthi rebels with weapons and missiles.
(IANS)
At least 30 passengers on a Jet Airways Mumbai-Jaipur flight suffered ear and nose bleeding due to low cabin pressure during the ascent here on Thursday, an official said.
The flight 9W-697 with 166 passengers and five crew, was forced to return back to Mumbai shortly after take-off, said a Jet Airways spokesperson.
Several passengers complained of severe headaches and at least 30 reported bleeding from nose and ears and were immediately administered first-aid by a team of doctors at the airport.
Airline sources said that the incident may have happened after the crew reportedly missed activating what is called a ‘bleed switch’ before take-off, leading to the disturbance in the cabin pressure with oxygen masks getting deployed.
The Jet Airways said it has taken the concerned crew off-duty pending a probe into the incident. An investigation by the Directorate-General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) was also launched.
(IANS)
Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe won the ruling Liberal Democratic Partys (LDP) leadership election on Thursday, securing a historic third term that will effectively extend his time in power by another three years.
Abe comfortably beat his only contender, former Defence Minister Shigeru Ishiba, by securing 553 out of a total 807 votes, reports The Japan Times.
He won 329 out of the 402 valid ballots cast by LDP MPs and 224 out of the remaining 405 votes allocated to party branches in each prefecture based on the number of members age 18 or older who have paid party fees.
His extended term in office signals the possibility that Abe, who has already been at the helm of the world’s third-largest economy for nearly six years in his second stint as Prime Minister, may become the longest-serving premier in Japanese history.
With his renewed leadership, Abe is likely to reshuffle his Cabinet in the coming weeks, reportedly as soon as early October.
Abe has credited himself with “restoring a decent economy” under his Abenomics policy and taking the Japan-US alliance to a stronger level.
He also repeated that it’s the “responsibility of the LDP” to revise the war-renouncing Article 9 of the Constitution to formalise the ambiguous status of the Self-Defense Forces – the nation’s de facto military – which he said “protects the peace and independence of Japan”.
(IANS)
A man attacked his daughter and son-in-law with a machete and baldy injured them here on Wednesday, in another case of assault for family honour.
Madhavi, 22, was battling for life while her husband Sandeep, 24, too suffered grievous injuries in the attack by Manoharachary. The incident occurred in the busy SR Nagar area, police said.
Manoharachary, who was opposed to the marriage because Sandeep comes from another caste, had called the couple to meet and give them some presents. As soon as they reached the meeting point, he took out a machete from his bag and attacked them.
The assailant first targeted his son-in-law and when the latter fell to the ground, he attacked his daughter. Madhavi too collapsed and bled profusely. They were shifted to a hospital, where the condition of Madhavi is stated to be critical. She suffered deep cuts on the neck and a hand.
According to police, Madhavi and Sandeep were in love for last five years and wanted to marry. However, her upper caste family opposed it. Manoharachary wanted her to marry his sister’s son but she refused and had come to Sandeep’s house a few days ago. They went to Arya Samaj and married some 10 days ago.
The girl’s family refused to accept the marriage but at the counselling conducted by the police they agreed to accept it. Manoharachary later conveyed to her daughter that he wants to meet them at a location in S. R. Nagar and buy some clothes for them. When they reached there, he attacked them.
The attacker later went to police station and surrendered.
The incident came close on the heels of killing of a Dalit youth by his father-in-law in Miryalguda town of Telangana’s Nalgonda district. Pranay Kumar was hacked to death when he was coming out of a hospital with his wife Amrutha Varshini on September 14.
Police have arrested seven accused including the girl’s father Maruthi Rao, who had struck Rs.1 crore deal for the contract killing.
(IANS)