As many as 26 deaf children from Meghalaya, who won medals at the recently-concluded National Games for the Deaf, are all set to represent India at the Silent Olympics in Bulgaria later this year, officials said today. The children, who live in a rehabilitation centre for the deaf run by a Christian NGO at Umiam Khwan in Ri-Bhoi district, were trained by special coaches of the Army Madras Regiment.
Referring to China’s reported discomfiture over the close Indo-Japan ties, External Affairs Minister Salman Khurshid on Wednesday said just as Beijing’s ties with Islamabad did not affect our relations with it, similarly warmth between India and Japan was no cause of concern.
“China is known to have maintained a close relation with Pakistan. We have never asked it to stop doing so nor have we given up working towards improving ties with Beijing.”
The Delhi High Court on Wednesday sought a response from Army Chief Bikram Singh on a contempt plea of Lt. Gen (Retd) Tejinder Singh for not complying with its order to take disciplinary action against five Army officers including ex-Army chief VK Singh.
Major urban centres, including the national capital, may witness targeted killings by Maoists in coming months as the ultras are looking for opportunities to carry out violence, intelligence reports have warned.
After the massacre of 27 people, including Congress leaders, in Chhattisgarh, Naxals are trying their best to expand the CPI(Maoist) activities beyond its area of influence and targeted killings are one of the key options.
Telangana Rashtra Samithi president K Chandrasekhar Rao on Wednesday reviewed the arrangements for the public meeting proposed to be held at Nizam College Grounds on June 2.
The TRS chief held review meeting with the party leaders of Greater Hyderabad at the Telangana Bhavan and directed them to take steps to ensure the success of public meeting. He also gave certain responsibilities to the leaders with regard to the arrangements for the public meeting.
The Andhra Pradesh government has decided to request the Centre for allocation of Rs 20,000 crore under the second phase of the Jawaharlal Nehru National Urban Renewal Mission (JNNURM), despite some of the projects under phase-I still pending. As per current indications, AP is expected to get Rs 13,200 crore under JNNURM-2, but Chief Minister N Kiran Kumar Reddy, who chaired a meeting of the state-level steering committee (SLSC) here today, said he would plead with the Centre for allocation of at least Rs 20,000 crore as additional central assistance.
Appalled by the “savage” attack in Chhattisgarh, NHRC on Wednesday said the Maoists have now made it impossible for authorities to take social welfare programmes to the most needy and asked government to take precautionary steps to ensure villagers do not suffer in any retaliatory operations.
In a statement, the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) said it condemns this “brutality” in which around 30 people, including Congress leaders, were killed last week, and urged Maoists to “abandon violence, which has made matters worse for the villagers whose cause they claim to espouse”.
A spell of heavy rain brought much sought respite from the heat for the residents of twin cities of Hyderabad and Secunderabad on Wednesday. However, the water logging at several places brought the vehicular traffic to a standstill on several busy roads.
The Supreme Court today refused to interfere with the four-year undergraduate programme introduced by the Delhi University but asked it to be sensitive towards the problems faced by visually challenged students who claimed that they would be put at a disadvantage.
A bench of justices BS Chauhan and Dipak Misra said that it cannot direct the University on how to run the course but asked it to look into the problems faced by the blind students.
A CBI court on Wednesday convicted a retired Major General, a serving Colonel and a private firm, after a 22-year long trial of a case, pertaining to the award of supply of tinned meat to Indian Peace Keeping Force of the Army, then deployed in Sri Lanka.
On completion of the trial, Additional Special Judge court for CBI cases K Paramaraj convicted Maj Gen A K Gupta and Lt Col S S Kadian and sentenced them to two years and one-year rigorous imprisonment respectively.
A fine of Rs 1,000 has also been imposed on each of them.
With growing talk about India and Japan getting closer, especially on a strategic partnership to keep China in check, Japan Wednesday tried to play down the issue saying that nothing of the sort was happening.
A Manipuri woman was found dead under mysterious circumstances in her rented accommodation here Wednesday afternoon, police said.
The body of 21-year-old Leinganphi was discovered by her landlord at Malviya Nagar area in south Delhi. She was lying on a blood soaked bed. Her mobile phone was in her hand, said an officer.
Her uncle said that she had come to Delhi a few months ago.
“The main door of the room was locked from inside but another door was open. Someone killed her,” the victim’s uncle told IANS.
The Rodong Sinmun, an official paper of North Korea’s ruling Workers’ Party of Korea (WPK), Wednesday called for the replacement of the Korean War Armistice deal with Seoul by a formal peace treaty.
The paper, which effectively reflects the view of the ruling party and its leadership, said there was “a pressing need to replace the Armistice Agreement, which is a relic of the war, with a permanent peace regime”, South Korea’s Yonhap news agency reported.
In an effort to further boost India-Africa business collaborations, an “India-Africa Partnership Day” is being organized on the sidelines of the African Development Bank’s annual general meeting in Marrakesh, Morocco, being held May 27-31.
The Indian delegation for the event, being organised by the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry (FICCI) and Exim Bank, comprises industrialists, heads of public sector undertakings and senior finance ministry officials, a FICCI release said Wednesday.
A group of six Russian-American passengers was reportedly removed from a US budget airline flight set to take off from San Diego to Las Vegas, their lawyer said.
“They were on a flight, speaking to each other… in Russian, and about five minutes before the plane took off, someone came over and kicked them off the flight,” said attorney Daniel Petrov, whose sister Sana Bitman was one of the six passengers asked to leave the Spirit Airlines flight.
A court in Malaysia has ordered that an Indian-origin doctor be charged with assaulting his wife in a case dating back to nearly four years, after a lower court had acquitted him.
The high court at Shah Alam, capital of the Malaysian state of Selangor, ordered P. Mahendran, 47, to enter his defence on the charge after a lower court had acquitted him, media reports said Wednesday.
British newspapers say that UK prisons are on the alert after a hostage-taking attack blamed on extremist Muslim inmates came days after an off-duty soldier was hacked to death on a London street.
An email circulated to high-security prisons warned that Sunday’s attack at Full Sutton prison in the northern England region of Yorkshire was linked to “radical Islamist extremism” and warned of an increased risk of attacks at other institutions.
Britain’s Ministry of Justice today declined to comment on the email, which was quoted in newspapers including The Yorkshire Post and The Times.
Pakistani authorities have cut off electricity and sought help from police to evict scores of politicians, including former premier Raja Pervez Ashraf, who are holding on to suites at a hostel for lawmakers despite their defeat in the May 11 General Elections.
The Secretariat of the National Assembly or lower house of Parliament served notices to some 100 former lawmakers who were defeated in the polls, asking them to vacate the hostel by May 20.
At least 36 former lawmakers of the PPP are still occupying their suites, including former ministers and former premier Ashraf.
At least six suspected militants were today killed in a US drone strike in Pakistan’s lawless North Waziristan tribal region, amid reports that Taliban’s No. 2 commander in the country, Waliur Rehman, was among those dead.
The CIA-operated spy plane targeted a house in Chashma Pul area of Miranshah, the main town of North Waziristan Agency, a stronghold of Taliban and Al-Qaeda-linked militants on the Afghan border, early on Wednesday morning.
The Taliban have attacked through their website a well-meaning art peace project in Kabul, which was promoted by giving away 10,000 neon pink balloons.
The attack-piece stated that the conceptual artwork on view, which organisers said was designed to highlight young Afghans’ creativity and sense of fun in a city wrecked by decades of war, was “vulgar and Western”, reports New York Daily News.
Britain’s defense minister says that up to 90 Afghan nationals are being detained in a holding facility at Camp Bastion in southern Afghanistan, but denies that the men are being held illegally.
Lawyers acting on behalf of eight detainees say their clients have been held for between eight and 14 months in breach of international law and have been denied access to counsel.
British forces in Afghanistan are allowed to detain suspects for 96 hours but can hold them longer in “exceptional circumstances.”
Pakistan’s Prime Minister-in-waiting Nawaz Sharif has said that no immediate relief could be expected in power crisis, but said he was confident that he would be able to improve the situation “within days”.
The Daily Times quoted Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) chief Sharif, as saying that the masses should not expect an immediate resolution of the load-shedding problem and presume that it would end when his government takes charge.
Alan Krueger, chairman of White House Council of Economic Advisers (CEA), has announced his plans to return to Princeton University as a professor later this year, the White House said in a statement.
The rupee on Wednesday sank to 10-month low before closing with 21-paise loss at 56.17, making imports costlier that is likely to worsen government’s Current Account Deficit (CAD) woes and hit the common man hard.
The fall would have been much more pronounced, had there not been sustained capital inflows worth of over USD 100 million in equities, forex dealers said.
Delhi Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit Wednesday attacked Lokayuta Manmohan Sarin, saying the ombudsman had gone beyond his legal boundaries and norms by indicting her for something that happened in 2008.
“Whatever the Lokayukta has done is beyond his legal boundaries and norms. Something happened in 2008, why are they remembering it now?”
She was referring to Sarin’s report indicting her for misusing public funds for “political purpose” as the Delhi government had released newspaper advertisements ahead of the 2008 assembly elections.