Month: September 2014

The Shiv Sena’s solitary representative in the union cabinet, Anant Geete, will quit his post soon, party chief Uddhav Thackeray indicated here Monday.

“After the return of Prime Minister Narendra Modi from the US, Geete will meet him and tender his resignation,” Thackeray said here, five days after the six-party Grand Alliance in the state collapsed last Thursday.

With this, the BJP-Sena alliance will end at the state and centre levels, but would continue in several prominent civic bodies in the state, including Asia’s richest, the Municipal Corporation of Greater Mumbai.

Singer-actress Jennifer Lopez was involved in a car crash caused by a suspected drunk driver in Malibu, California.

She was travelling with her six-year-old twins Max and Emme and her friend Leah Remini and everyone in the car was unharmed.

The group was going to a Demi Lovato concert when they were rear-ended by a drunk driver along the Pacific Coast Highway Saturday night.

The Latin star took to photo-sharing website Instagram to express her anger, reports eonline.com.

Pakistan’s Supreme Court today adjourned till October 2 the hearing of a plea to disqualify Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif for allegedly lying to the parliament over asking the army to mediate a truce with anti- government protesters.

The three-judge apex court bench, headed by Justice Jawwad S Khawaja, adjourned the hearing till Thursday due to shortage of time.

Nine Bahraini Shiites have been jailed for life and stripped of their nationality for smuggling arms to be used in “terrorist acts”, the Gulf kingdom’s prosecutor general announced today.

A Manama court also found all nine guilty of having contacted an agent of an unnamed foreign country “to carry out acts hostile to Bahrain”, he said in a statement.

The case dates back to February 2013 when authorities in the Sunni-ruled country announced they had dismantled a “terrorist cell” with links to Shiite Iran.

Congress today took a dig at Prime Minister Narendra Modi for accidentally calling Mahatma Gandhi “Mohanlal Karamchand Gandhi”, saying that one cannot be expected to follow the ideals of the Father of the Nation if the person mispronounces his name.

“It wld (sic) be foolish to expect one to follow Gandhiji’s ideals when that person forgets or mispronounces the Father of Nation’s name in public!” Congress spokesperson Abhishek Singhvi said in a tweet.

Sania Mirza and Saketh Myneni combined well to clinch gold medal in the mixed doubles event as India’s tennis campaign at the Asian Games concluded with a rich haul of five medals at the Asian Games, here today.

The second seeds overwhelmed the top-seeded Chinese Taipei pair of Hao Ching Chan and Hsien Yin Peng 6-4 6-3 in the summit clash in only 69 minutes.

Indian Super League (ISL) franchise FC Goa Monday signed on its second Arsenal player and Brazilian international Andre Santos, according to an official statement issued here.

Santos will be joining the club’s training sessions shortly and will be the second Arsenal player after midfielder Robert Pires to be roped in by the Goa-based team.

The Calcutta High Court Monday extended the stay of a single bench order directing a CBI investigation into a murder case in West Bengal’s Birbhum district in which a leader of the ruling Trinamool Congress is allegedly involved.

Hearing an appeal filed by the Mamata Banerjee-led state government, the division bench of Justices Jayanta Biswas and I.C. Das directed that the stay on CBI probe be extended till Oct 27.

A court in Egypt Monday decided to postpone until Oct 14 the trial of ousted president Mohamed Morsi and 35 leaders of the banned Muslim Brotherhood (MB) on charges of spying.

The trial was postponed as the authorities failed to bring Morsi to the court due to security reasons, state-run MENA news agency reported.

Morsi and the 35 other Brotherhood figures are facing charges of collaborating with foreign organisations to commit acts of terrorism in Egypt, revealing defence secrets to a foreign country and funding terrorist groups.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi today gifted famous Indian tea to the captains of 11 large American corporations.

The signature gift box containing three famous tea of India – Darjling, Assam and Nilgiri – was presented by the Prime Minister after he hosted a breakfast meeting for them.

Two persons were arrested from Madhya Pradesh in connection with a fraud case involving a Nigerian wherein a resident of Tirupati town in Andhra Pradesh was allegedly cheated for over Rs 7 lakh, police said today.

“The accused Ajit Singh Rajput and Mohan Kumar Singh Rajput were arrested from Gwalior on September 27,” said Additional DG CID Ch Dwaraka Tirumala Rao.

Banks will approach the Reserve Bank (RBI) for restructuring coal assets after the Supreme Court order cancelling coal block allocations that may impact such assets’ quality, the finance ministry’s topmost official said Monday.

The apex court last week cancelled 214 coal blocks allocated from 1993 to 2011, except four vested with the NTPC, SAIL and the Sasan Ultra Mega Power Project (UMPP).

The death toll in the recent flash floods and landslides in Meghalaya has risen to 55 with the recovery of three more bodies, even as the flood waters are slowly receding in some areas, officials said Monday.

Chief Minister Mukul Sangma Monday started ground-zero inspection on the flood-hit areas to assess the damage caused by the floods in the plain belt areas of Garo Hills.

He directed the deputy commissioners to probe into the complaints of the flood victims on the poor distribution of relief materials. Earlier, Sangma had conducted aerial survey on the flood situation.

Indian tennis player Saketh Myneni completed a memorable Asian Games campaign for the country bagging two medals — a mixed doubles gold – partnering Sania Mirza – after winning the men’s doubles silver with Sanam Singh — at the Yeorumul Tennis Courts here Monday.

Sania and Myneni, seeded second, defeated top seeded Chinese Taipei duo of Hsien Yin Peng and Hao Ching Chan in straight sets (6-4, 6-3) in 44 minutes.

Discus thrower Seema Punia gave the first gold medal from the track and field event at the Incheon Games while middle-distance runners O.P.Jaisha and Naveen Kumar added two more bronze in what was an impressive day for India at the Incheon Asiad Main Stadium here Monday.

With the three medals, India’s tally from the track and field events now stand at eight.

Turkey’s military Monday deployed 35 tanks in a border town near Syria after mortar shells landed on Turkish territory, injuring three people, media reported.

As clashes between Islamic State (IS) militants and the People’s Protection Units (YPG) intensified in Kobane city in northern Syria, the Turkish Armed Forces stepped up security measures on the border line in Suruc town of the southeastern province of Sanliurfa, Xinhua reported citing the semi-official Anadolu Agency.

Newly-wed couple actor George Clooney and British human rights lawyer Amal Alamuddin Monday made their vows official with a formal civil wedding ceremony in Venice.

Alamuddin looked incredibly chic in a pair of cream wide leg trousers and matching top with navy waist band. She teamed it with a wide brim cream hat which also had a navy band, reports mirror.co.uk.

Clooney looked suave in a charcoal grey suit.

The couple was seen grinning at the venue with Clooney waving at fans who were out in their droves to see the happy duo.

Up to 3,072 illegal migrants are believed to have died in the Mediterranean so far in 2014, compared with an estimated 700 in 2013, the International Organisation for Migration (IOM) said Monday in a report.

The report, titled “Fatal Journeys: Tracking Lives Lost During Migration”, compiled under IOM’s Missing Migrants Project, estimated that at least 4,077 migrants died in 2014, Xinhua reported.

Over the last year, the increase in deaths has largely been driven by a surge in the number of fatalities in the Mediterranean region.

The last phase of the trial of former Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic at the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) began Monday with the prosecution’s closing arguments.

Prosecutors have asked that should he be found guilty, Karadzic should be sentenced to life imprisonment for war crimes and crimes against humanity.

In his opening remarks, the chief prosecutor argued that Karadzic’s actions were direct and deliberate against the Muslim population during the civil wars of the early 1990s in the former Yugoslavia.

Twelve candidates, contesting from four assembly seats in Gurgaon, have been served notice by the Election Commission for ‘paid news’, an official said.

Outgoing Haryana youth and sports minister Sukhbir Kataria contesting as an independent candidate from Gurgaon seat has been served notice for violating the model code of conduct. The other three candidates from this seat who have been served notice for ‘paid news’ are BJP’s Umesh Aggarwal, independent R.S. Rathi and Gaje Singh.

Offering a silver lining, Indian men shooting team returned back home after stringing together a series of few good shots to clinch one gold, two silvers and six bronze medals at the Asian Games 2014.

Indian shooting team comprising of Vijay Kumar, Pemba Tamang and Gurpreet Singh arrived in New Delhi.

The team, headed by 2012 London Olympic silver medalist Vijay Kumar, participated in 25m Centre Fire Pistol Men’s team final and were two points behind gold medalist China.

As a tribute to the heroic struggle of Indian immigrants against discriminatory immigration laws of Canada in the early years of twentieth century, the Government of India (GoI) has decided to commemorate the centenary of Komagata Maru incident on completion of 100 years after the incident.

The inaugural function of the year-long centenary commemoration was organised here today by the Union Ministry of Culture.

Three granddaughters of Baba Gurdit Singh, the hero of the episode – Harbhajan Kaur, Satwant Kaur and Balbir Kaur were honoured by Culture Minister Shripad Naik on the occasion.

UST Global, Kerala’s largest IT employer, Monday, unveiled an advanced telemedicine application to help treatment of patients in remote locations, developed in collaboration with Mumbai-based Balabhai Nanavati Hospital’s telemedicine centre and BlackBerry India

Metro services were disrupted on the Noida-Dwarka line for 11 minutes Monday when a mentally challenged man jumped on to a track and started walking, an official said.

The incident was reported from Shadipur metro station at around 9 a.m..

Suraj Bhan, a 41-year-old resident of Gorakhpur in Uttar Pradesh, was caught by the Central Industrial Security Force (CISF) personnel and handed over to the police.

Commenting on the racist remarks on Twitter about her rumoured relationship with actor Robert Pattinson, singer FKA Twigs says she is shocked and disgusted.

The singer, whose real name is Tahliah Debrett Barnett, ranted at the social networking website Twitter Sunday, reports dailymail.co.uk.

“I am genuinely shocked and disgusted at the amount of racism that has been infecting my account the past week,” she tweeted.

“Racism is unacceptable in the real world and it’s unacceptable online,” she added further.