Nasheman News :  The number of people killed in a gas pipeline explosion in the Mexican state of Hidalgo last Friday increased to 93, the Minister of Health Jorge Alcocer said on Tuesday.

The number of the dead grew due to the severity of burns suffered by the individuals, Alcocer said at a press conference, which was also attended by Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador.

Another 46 people remain hospitalised including one who is “very grave with a bad prognosis,” the minister said, reports Xinhua news agency.

There have been changes in the hospitals and on Monday one more patient was transferred to a specialised burn hospital in Galveston, Texas in the US, Alcocer said.

The explosion and an ensuing blaze occurred at a pipeline spot in the community of San Primitivo in the municipality of Tlahuelilpan at around 7:00 p.m. local time (0100 GMT) on Friday.

According to the local government, between 600 and 800 people gathered at the site to collect leaked fuel with containers when the explosion took place.

Lopez Obrador said the country’s Attorney General (FGR) will be the one handling the investigation into finding those responsible and arresting them.

The accident is one of the worst tragedies caused by pipeline explosions in Mexico in recent years.

In December 2010, 30 people were killed and 52 others injured in a series of explosions at two oil pipelines in the central state of Puebla.

 Nasheman News : An Indian-origin man has been jailed for four months over 2004 hoax call about a bomb at the house of late founding Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew.

Ganesan Singaravel, now 61, was sentenced on Monday after he pleaded guilty to an offence under the Telecommunications Act, The New newspaper reported on Tuesday.

A court here was told that Singaravel went to a popular spot in Orchard Tower on Singapore’s hotel belt of Orchard Road around midnight on November 13, 2004, and drank alcohol until about 4 a.m. Later, the police said they received a call from Singaravel, who made references to a bomb at Lee’s house.

Deputy Public Prosecutor Benjamin Samynathan said: “The call was made by the accused from a public phone located next to the Thai embassy. The call’s message was clearly false and the accused knew that the text of the call was false.

“A patrol car was sent to Orchard Towers to interview and arrest the accused. The accused was coherent during his interactions with the officers at the scene. Meanwhile, the officers who were already stationed at Oxley Road were told to step up patrols and be alert and vigilant,” he added.

Singaravel was charged on November 16, 2004, but while out on bail, he fled Singapore about two months later. He was caught overstaying in the US last year and told the authorities there that he wanted to return to Singapore. He was detained when he came back here on July 15 last year.

Defence lawyers said in their mitigation plea that their client was drunk when he committed the offence.

WNasheman News :Two years after taking the oath of office, US President Donald Trump has made 8,158 false or misleading claims, according to The Washington Post’s database.

The daily’s Fact Checker’s database analyses, categorises and tracks every suspect statement uttered by the President, it said in the report on Monday.

In 2018, he made an “astonishing” 6,000-plus such claims.

The President averaged nearly 5.9 false or misleading claims a day in his first year in office, but he hit nearly 16.5 a day in his second year, almost triple the pace.

The Washington Post started the Fact Checker online project as part of its coverage of the President’s first 100 days, “largely because we could not possibly keep up with the pace and volume of the President’s misstatements”. 

The project’s interactive graphic displays a running list of every false or misleading statement made by Trump. A reader can also search for specific claims or obtain monthly or daily totals.

According to Fact Checker, the President in his first 100 days made 492 unsupported claims. 

He managed to top that number just in the first three weeks of 2019. 

Before the midterm elections in October, he made more than 1,200 false or misleading claims.

The biggest source of misleading claims is immigration, with a tally that has grown with the addition of 300 immigration claims in the past three weeks, for a total of 1,433, the Fact Checker said.

In the President’s immigration address on January 19, the last day of his second year in office, there were 12 false or misleading claims.

According to Fact Checker, there were only 82 days or about 11 per cent of the time that there were recorded no claims. 

“These were often days when the President golfed,” it added.

Nasheman News :  Democrat Kamala Harris, the first Indian-American to serve in the US Senate, launched her campaign for the White House on Monday while appearing on ABC’s Good Morning America.

In a brief video from her campaign that was released on the social media at the same time she appeared on the show, Harris called on her supporters to join with her to “claim our future”. She made the announcement on Monday — America’s Martin Luther King Jr Day holiday — to honour the legacy of her hero.

The 54-year-old portrayed herself as a fighter for justice, decency and equality in the video. 

“They’re the values we as Americans cherish, and they’re all on the line now,” Harris said.

“The future of our country depends on you and millions of others lifting our voices to fight for our American values… That’s why I’m running for President of the US. I’m running to lift those voices, to bring our voices together.”

Harris’ announcement followed the entrance of her fellow senators Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts and Kirsten Gillibrand of New York in the presidential race. 

She is the daughter of an Indian mother and Jamaican father who met in Berkeley, California, at the height of the civil rights movement.

Harris said the time had come to fight against what she called “the injustices of the past two years of the Donald Trump presidency”. She has accused Trump of stoking racist and xenophobic rhetoric, while aligning his administration with white supremacists at home, and cozying up to dictators abroad.

She said that the needs of the middle class had been ignored, citing the federal shutdown over the President’s “vanity project” — a border wall — as the latest example.

The Senator had earlier turned up the heat on the President by blasting his insistence on holding out for funding for his border wall before reopening the government — comparing his behaviour to how her 11-year-old godson might have behaved with his toy train.

Harris’ campaign will be headquartered in Baltimore – giving aides an East Coast hub in a racially diverse city that has struggled with wide income disparities – and Oakland, where Harris was born to immigrant parents who came to the US to advance their academic careers, CNN reported.

She began her career as a deputy district attorney in Alameda county, California, before becoming District Attorney of San Francisco, where she focused on crime prevention. 

In 2010, she narrowly beat her Republican opponent to become California’s Attorney General. Six years later, she was elected to the Senate, where she became the second black woman ever to serve in the chamber.

Nasheman News : The border guards of India and Bangladesh are likely to hold a meeting on Monday over the 31 stranded Rohingya Muslims, stuck for the past 2 days at the zero line on Tripura frontier, a BSF official said.

“A meeting between the sector commanders of BSF (Border Security Force) and BGB (Border Guards Bangladesh) is likely to be held tomorrow (Monday) over the 31 Rohingya Muslims,” Deputy Inspector General of BSF Brajesh Kumar told the media late on Sunday.

The BSF has been providing food to the six male, nine women and 16 children on humanitarian ground.

Kumar said that already two meetings were held between the nodal officers of BSF and BGB but the issue remained inconclusive.

According to him, the Rohingyas were now staying behind the India-Bangladesh fencing at Rayermura (under Amtali police station in Sepahijala District), about 20 km south of Agartala.

The Bangladeshi media said that the BGB Commanding Officer, who is the commandant of 25 Battalion of the BGB, has alleged that the BSF have been pushing Rohingyas into Bangladeshi territory.

The BSF on Saturday had strongly refuted “unfounded allegation” claimed by BGB that the BSF have been pushing Rohingyas into Bangladeshi territory.

“On Friday night, BGB’s Lt Col Gomal Kabir informed BSF Commandant Ratnesh Kumar over phone that they have detained the 31 Rohingyas along the International Border. The BGB insisted with the BSF to take them inside the India-Bangladesh Border Fencing,” the BSF release had said.

“BSF commandant firmly denied any such attempt and refuted the allegation as published in Bangladesh media,” the release added.

It also said that during the search of the area and spot verification, there were no signs of any illegal crossing of Rohingyas from the Indian territory to Bangladesh.

Another senior BSF official said that during the past one year, 62 Rohingya Muslims had entered India (Tripura and a few other northeastern states) via Bangladesh in search of jobs and temporary works. 

However, they were pushed back following legal and security formalities.

Over 700,000 Rohingyas have fled Myanmar’s Rakhine state since August 2017 after a wave of persecution and violence that the UN described as an attempt at “ethnic cleansing”. Efforts are on to repatriate them.

Tripura shares an 856-km border with Bangladesh, most of which is fenced except a stretch of nearly 20 km.

[Nasheman news] Kathmandu Nepal’s central bank has announced the ban of Indian currency notes with denominations above Rs 100.

The Nepal Rastra Bank (NRB) on Sunday issued a circular for the institutions licensed by it notifying them about the ban, reports Xinhua news agency. 

Nepal’s cabinet in December had decided to ban the use of these currency notes. 

The decision to ban these notes has come a time when the NRB has requested the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) arequesting the latter to allow Nepal to use currency notes with all denominations.

Currently, only the notes with a denomination of Rs 100 and below are freely exchangeable in Nepal.

New Delhi, Jan 18 (IANS) Sri Lanka wants to take back all Sri Lankan Tamil refugees who are now in India, country’s High Commissioner to India Austin Fernando said on Friday.

“With around 5,000 of these refugees having already returned, we now want to take the rest of them back to their original places,” Fernando said while delivering a speech on “Post 2015: Reconciliation Milestones in Sri Lanka”, organised by the Foreign Correspondents’ Club here.

According to Fernando, who took charge as the new Sri Lankan High Commissioner in November last year, there are around 100,000 of these refugees who had come to India during the civil war in the Indian Ocean island nation that ended in 2009.

He said that while some 20 to 30 per cent of these people would like to stay on in India, the rest would like to go back, adding that he would soon be going to south India to meet them.

“We will tell them that we will look after them,” the High Commissioner said.

“They need a roof over their head, they should be safe, their children should get education,” he stated.

“They must also get employment after returning.”

Asked whether Colombo has a deadline to take back these people, Fernando said there is no time frame as such but “we would like to take them at the earliest”.

“There are many logistical problems as well,” he said.

Stating that the Sri Lankan Deputy High Commissioner is in close touch with these people, he said that Colombo and New Delhi need to have a serious dialogue on this issue.

Fernando also assured that immigration will not be a problem for those who are returning.

B

[Nasheman news] Washington US President Donald Trump has promised a “major announcement” about the ongoing government shutdown as it entered its 29th day on Saturday, while Democrats hope to increase pressure on his presidency by pursuing allegations by his former lawyer that Trump had made him lie to Congress.

Trump tweeted on Friday night that he will make the announcement at 3 p.m. on Saturday from the White House “concerning the Humanitarian Crisis on our Southern Border and the Shutdown”.

While he left the nation in suspense about his plans, there was a small sign of progress in finding a solution to the shutdown with the Democrats offering to add $1.87 billion to the budget for border security, but not for the wall. 

Trump has been adamant about getting $5.7 billion in the budget to build the wall along the Mexican border, which the Democrats have refused with equal vehemence. 

Because of their disagreement there is no budget and all but the essential government operations have been shutdown temporarily because there is no money to pay for them.

About 800,000 workers are off work because of the shutdown and most, including those working, haven’t been paid since January 11.

At the border with Mexico, about 7,000 Central Americans who came in a caravan hoping to enter the US are camped out there in make-shift shelter and some have been repelled by the border patrol with teargas when they tried to crash the border. Another caravan of thousands is on its way. 

Meanwhile, Democrats have found a new avenue to go after Trump from a report in the BuzzFeed News website that the President’s former personal attorney , Michael Cohen, had told investigators looking into allegations of Russian interference into the elections that Trump had asked him to lie to Congress about negotiations for a hotel in Moscow.

If the website’s report based on two unidentified sources from investigation is true, he could be guilty of crimes that could be grounds for impeachment.

Democrat Senator Ralph Blumenthal demanded that the Senate Judiciary Committee ask Cohen to testify. 

He said that if the reports the reports were true, Trump would be guilty of obstruction of justice, suborning perjury, and conspiracy to violate laws prohibiting false statements to Congress.

Cohen is scheduled to testify before a House committee on February 7.

His credibility, though, is at risk because he has admitted in court in November that he had lied to Congressional committees investigating the Russian links about the Trump Organization’s plans for building a hotel in Moscow.

After being convicted, he was sentenced to three years in prison for that and other offences and Trump pounced on it. Cohen is “lying to reduce his jail time,” Trump tweeted.

Robert Mueller, a former Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) Director, was appointed in 2017 to probe allegations of Russian involvement in the 2016 election as well as collusion by Trump or his campaign with Moscow. 

After 20 months of investigations he has not come up publicly with any direct Russian connections to Trump and Cohen’s allegations, if proved true, will give Democrats the anti-Trump ammunition they have been seeking.

The standoff over the budget has descended into cheap drama with Speaker Nancy Pelosi blocking Trump from delivering the annual State of the Union Address to a joint session of the Congress and the president retaliating by refusing to let her use a government plane to visit US troops in Afghanistan.

The Democrat’s offer of additional money for border security is an attempt to show both that they are willing to make some compromise and to make clear that the mainstream of the party is against open borders and unchecked immigration, which some in the party advocate.

Trump’s planned speech on Saturday will come after a nation-wide Women’s March starting that morning to protest his policies considered detrimental to women, demand the preservation of abortion rights and to promote their rights, as well as those of minorities and immigrants.

The March has been an annual event after the first massive event held in 2017 in Washington the day after Trump’s swearing-in. Drawing abut 500,000 participants it is considered to be among the biggest demonstrations held in the nation’s capital.

Reflecting the nation’s deep polarisation, an anti-abortion rally was held in Washington on Friday with thousands participating. Trump sent a prerecorded message of support to the rally and Vice President Mike Pence attended it personally, telling them: “We will stand with you until that great day comes where we restore the sanctity of life to the centre of American law.” 

Unlike in India, abortion continues to be a live issue with political conservatives, mostly in the Republican Party, constantly vowing to criminalise it – a position supported by Trump – making it a symbol of the nation’s political divide.

Nasheman News :  Justice Asif Saeed Khan Khosa took oath as the 26th Chief Justice of Pakistan at a ceremony here on Friday.

Chief Justice Khosa is scheduled to retire on December 21, 2019, Dawn news reports.

President Arif Alvi administered the oath to Justice Khosa before an audience of top government and military officials, Supreme Court judges, senior lawyers and dignitaries at the Aiwan-i-Sadr (Presidential Palace).

Justice Khosa has, over the course of his nearly two decade long career, decided about 55,000 cases. A special bench headed by him has decided over 10,000 cases of a criminal nature since 2014.

At outgoing Chief Justice Saqib Nisar’s full court reference on Thursday, Justice Khosa introduced the agenda for his tenure: “To attend to the causes that contribute towards delay in disposition of cases at all levels of the judicial hierarchy.”

Justice Khosa had observed that there are 1.9 million cases pending before all courts across the country compared to just 3,000 judges and magistrates. 

[Nasheman news] San Francisco Facebook has announced to invest over $300 million over the next three years to support local news organisations.

In a blog post, Campbell Brown, Vice President, Global News Partnerships, said that Facebook wants to support local journalists and newsrooms with their news gathering needs in the immediate future and help these organisations build sustainable business models, through both its product and partnership work.

“We heard one consistent answer: people want more local news, and local newsrooms are looking for more support. That’s why today we’re announcing an expanded effort around local news in the years ahead,” Brown said late on Tuesday.

In 2018, Google also committed $300 million for over three years to strengthen quality journalism, support sustainable business models and empower newsrooms through technological innovation. 

It was also committing to spend $300 million over the next three years on its various journalism-related projects.

According to Facebook, it would invest $300 million in news programmes, partnerships and content.

Among the components is a Pulitzer Centre — a $5 million endowment gift to launch “Bringing Stories Home”, a gift that will provide local newsrooms across the US with reporting grants to foster coverage on topics that affect local communities.

“Report for America” is a $2 million investment in the initiative to place 1,000 journalists in local newsrooms across America over the next five years.

“This year, we’ll commit over $20 million to continue our local ‘Accelerator’ programme in the US and to expand the model globally, including in Europe,” said Brown.