Month: July 2014

Sunni insurgents Thursday forced all 46 Indian women nurses to move out of a hospital in Iraq where they had been holed up, injuring three of them, officials said.

Kerala Chief Minister Oommen Chandy said there was “no reason for any anxiety” as the nurses were moved in three buses to an unknown destination by the insurgents who control large parts of Iraq.

The external affairs ministry said separately that some nurses — all of them from Kerala — suffered “minor injuries” during the shifting but that all of them were safe.

Finance Minister Arun Jaitley Thursday met finance ministers of states and union territories to push for early implementation of the proposed indirect tax reform Goods and Services Tax (GST).

Talking to reporters after the meeting, chairman of the empowered committee on GST and finance minister of Jammu and Kashmir Abdul Rahim Rather said the government is serious on early implementation of the tax reform and all the states were on board.

“The government of India is very much interested to have this tax reform introduced. Every state is on board,” Rather said.

French President Francois Hollande and German Chancellor Angela Merkel Thursday called on Russian President Vladimir Putin to do more to reach a ceasefire in Ukraine.

During a phone conversation with a top Moscow official, the two European leaders stressed “the importance of implementing a deal reached in Berlin Wednesday between the foreign ministers of France, Germany, Russia and Ukraine in order to achieve a bilateral ceasefire”, Xinhua reported.

The Supreme Court Thursday frowned at Bihar government for not paying the retirement and other dues of the employees who had worked with Bihar State Road Transport Corporation but were now caught up in competing claims between it and Jharkhand after the state’s bifurcation in 2000.

The monsoon finally arrived in the national capital Thursday, with rains bringing down the temperature and giving respite from heat waves.

The Met Office forecasts more rains Friday. “Monsoon has finally hit Delhi and there will be constant rains for the next few days,” M. Durai Swamy of the India Meteorological Department told IANS.

The Met Office had forecast that monsoon would reach Delhi by June 29.

The monsoon rains flooded streets in different parts of the city, leading to traffic jams.

The Pakistani army Thursday raised with top Afghan defence and intelligence officials the issue of “terrorist sanctuaries” in eastern Kunar and Nuristan provinces of Afghanistan and attacks on Pakistani border villages and posts from these sanctuaries.

Senior Pakistani and Afghan military officials met in the Pakistani garrison city of Rawalpindi and discussed important security issues, with special focus on border management and cooperation in Pakistan’s current major military operation in North Waziristan tribal region, Xinhua reported.

Britain’s airports were put on alert Thursday amid fears that Islamist groups are working on an undetectable “stealth bomb” which could be implanted inside an extremist’s body to bring down an airliner.

Heightened precautions were brought in at terminals around the country since Thursday morning after reports that two terror networks were trying to produce a new explosive, which may have already been tested by militants in Syria, the Daily Mail reported.

President Pranab Mukherjee’s son Abhijit Mukherjee, who once courted controversy for a sexist remark, has now sprung to the defence of Trinamool Congress MP Tapas Paul seeking forgiveness for the latter’s rape comments.

“Tapas has written an apology letter. I feel since he has apologised and his party has pardoned him, the debate should not be dragged any further,” Abhjiit, a Congress MP from West Bengal’s Jangipur, told media persons here.

Mukherjee junior even went on to describe Paul’s comments, which have triggered a nationwide outrage and disgust, as “slip of tongue”.

Touching a speed of 160 km an hour, a high-speed train from New Delhi to Agra completed its trial run Thursday.

Railway officials said this was the highest speed recorded by a train in the country.

The train reached Agra in 90 minutes, covering a distance of 200 km, Divisional Railway Manager Vijay Sehgal told IANS.

Sehgal said: “With 10 coaches and two generators, the train touched a speed of 160 kmph. From New Delhi to Agra Cantt, it took 100 minutes and from Nizammuddin (also in Delhi) 90 minutes.

A team of police officials from Telangana will soon visit New York and London to study their policing methods as part of the efforts to modernize the force in the new state, including Hyderabad.

Home Minister N. Narasimha Reddy Thursday said the officials would undertake the visit after the current Ramadan and Bonalu festivals. The minister also plans to join the team if permitted by Chief Minister K. Chandrasekhara Rao.

The home minister said as New York and London made wide use of CCTVs to control crime, the government planned to install 2,000 such cameras in Hyderabad.

A specially trained police commando unit would be raised and deputed for safety and security of the national capital region (NCR), especially Gurgaon, to tackle situations like those seen during the 26/11 Mumbai attack, the Haryana police chief said Thursday.

Director General of Police S.N. Vashisht said that the commando unit will be trained and assigned duties in the NCR.

Himachal Pradesh Thursday sought to increase the price of housing units constructed under the Rajiv Awas Yojna from Rs.500,000 to Rs.800,000 in order to meet the cost of site development.

Speaking at a conclave of ministers of urban development from states here, Himachal Minister Sudhir Sharma said due to hill topography and difficult terrain, construction in the state was costlier compared to that in the plains.

He urged the central government to grant two additional years for completion of various developmental projects in the state.

Attempting to build up pressure on the Congress, alliance partner NCP indicated here Thursday that it would insist on the post of chief minister if it secured more seats in the ensuing Maharashtra assembly elections.

Newly-appointed Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) state president Sunil Tatkare told media persons that the party would also make its demand to contest 144 seats – or 50 percent – of the total 288 seats in the legislature.

Russian President Vladimir Putin today expressed “deep concern” over the growing number of civilian casualties and refugees in eastern Ukraine.

“Vladimir Putin expressed deep concern over the growing number of peaceful civilians and a sharp increase in the number of refugees from southeastern Ukraine in Russia,” the Kremlin said in a statement after a telephone conversation between Putin, German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Francois Hollande.

Former President of Pakistan retired Gen Pervez Musharraf’s legal team drew up a list of eight meetings that he held with political and military leaders prior to imposing emergency and the sacking of Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry, the then chief justice of Pakistan in 2007. The list challenged the claims made by the prosecution earlier in which it said that it could not obtain the details of meetings that Musharraf held before Nov 3.

Thirty-three percent of American voters have voted President Barack Obama as the worst President since the Second World War in a poll. Only eight percent of voters voted Obama as the best in the list that included George W. Bush, Richard Nixon, Jimmy Carter, John F. Kennedy, Ronald Reagan and others. Released on Wednesday, the poll conducted by Quinnipac University revealed that Bush followed Obama closely as the second-worst at 28 percent. On the other hand, Nixon came third in the list with 13 percent of the votes.

Maintaining firmly that his “conscience is clear,” new ICC chairman N. Srinivasan on Thursday said he has “done nothing to tarnish the image of the game” and will speak out once the Probe Committee headed by Justice (Retd.) Mukul Mudgal tables the final report.

Refusing to comment on the controversy stirred by a senior AIIMS forensic doctor’s allegation that he was pressured to manipulate the post mortem report of Sunanda Pushkar, former Union Minister Shashi Tharoor today merely said that it was up to the investigators “to sort it out”.

“It is a process, we will leave it to investigators to sort out,” Tharoor told reporters.

Security has been tightened across all UK airports over US intelligence reports pointing towards a “credible threat” to trans-Atlantic flights being targeted with a new generation “stealth bomb”.

US officials believe two terror networks in Syria and Yemen have teamed up to target flights bound for America, media reports said here.

UK transport secretary Patrick McLoughlin confirmed the measures, saying they were being taken to protect the public.

West Bengal continued to be rocked by protests over Trinamool Congress MP Tapas Paul’s hate speech, as students and youth wings of opposition parties took to the streets Thursday.

Members of Students Federation of India – the Communist Party of India-Marxist students’ wing – took out a rally carrying posters and banners and blockaded the busy Moulali crossing in central Kolkata for some time.

They were demanding the arrest of Paul, whose rape remarks in a video footage have led to outrage across India.

Days after the price of non-subsidised cooking gas (LPG) was hiked by Rs 16.50 per cylinder, the government today said the increase will impact less than 1 per cent of the consumers.

The price of non-subsidised LPG, which customers buy after using up their quota of 12 subsidised cylinders, was raised to Rs 922.50 per 14.2-kg cylinder in Delhi on July 1, the first hike in six months.

With the arrest of two girls and four youths from a hotel in Swar town of Rampur district, the police today claimed to have busted a flesh trade racket.

The raid was carried out yesterday.

District Police Chief S P Goswami said of the arrested men, one Khalid hails from Moradabad and the remaining three are from Swar itself.

The girls are residents of Kashipur and Rudrapur of Uttrakhand, he said.

–PTI

Singapore Foreign Affairs and Law Minister K Shanmugam today met Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister N Chandrababu Naidu and Telangana Chief Minister K Chandrasekhar Rao here.

In his meeting with Naidu, he discussed possibilities for cooperation in oil and gas resources in East Godavari district off KG basin, an official release said.

Cooperation in education sector and making AP corruption-free was also discussed, it said.

46 Indian nurses, who were stuck in Tikrit, have been forced to move out by ISIS even as India is dealing with the “difficult times” with no option in sight to evacuate these nurses, some of whom have suffered “minor injuries”, from the conflict zone in Iraq.

Confirming that the nurses are “on road” and moving towards an undisclosed destination, the Spokesperson in the External Affairs Ministry said they were moving for their own safety as there was no “freewill in a zone of conflict”, indicating that they were under captivity and moving under duress.

The opposition Congress Thursday slammed the Punjab government for withdrawing security from its state party headquarters here.

Punjab Congress president Partap Singh Bajwa condemned the move, expressing apprehension that the party headquarters, located in a building in Sector 15, was now vulnerable from the security point of view.

He said that the security deployment has been reduced from 12 personnel, including a woman constable, to just four people, while the security scanner had also been removed.