To expeditiously settle claims arising due to the floods in Jammu and Kashmir, the Insurance Regulatory and Development Authority (IRDA) Friday advised life insurers to nominate a senior official as a nodal officer for coordination purposes.
The IRDA also asked the life insurers to publicise a dedicated toll free phone number, a dedicated e-mail ID and contact address of the local office.
Hours after the Election Commission announced the dates for Haryana Assembly polls; Chief Minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda on Friday expressed confidence and said that the Congress will form the government in the state for the third time.
“We are ready for elections; the Congress will form its Government for the third time in Haryana. The party is fully prepared, and the atmosphere of the state is also our favor as we are getting a lot of support from the people. There has been immense development in past 10 years,” he said.
Samsung Electronics, India’s leading electronics company, today donated Rs.3 crores to the Prime Minister’s National Relief Fund to aid the relief operations in flood-hit Jammu and Kashmir.
As a major step towards people’s involvement in Ganga rejuvenation, Union Minister of Water Resource, River Development and Ganga Rejuvenation Uma Bharti launched a website on the Ganga here today.
Speaking on the occasion, Bharti said the launch of the website is an important tool to connect the public with the gigantic task of Ganga rejuvenation.
She expressed the hope that large number of people concerned with the present state of Ganga will come forward to give their suggestions to improve the situation.
The Delhi Metro has set up a help desk at the Indira Gandhi International Airport (IGIA) to assist and guide Jammu and Kashmir flood victims returning to the city, a statement said Friday.
The help desk has been set up at Terminal 3 of the airport.
“The Delhi Metro has set up a facilitation counter-cum-help desk at Terminal 3 of the IGIA to assist and guide the victims of the Jammu and Kashmir floods who are returning to the city,” a Delhi Metro statement said.
Many countries have shown interest in developing 100 smart cities in India, union Urban Development Minister M. Venkaiah Naidu said here Friday.
“We have queries from Japan, Singapore, Sweden, Australia, Germany and the US. Lot of countries are evincing interest (about smart cities),” he said.
He was talking at the Conclave of Ministers of States and Union Territories on smart cities.
Naidu sought suggestion of representatives from the various state governments that will be incorporated in the draft for creating smart cities.
–IANS
Prime Minister Narendra Modi Friday invited ideas from people on the design of Mission Swachh Bharat (Clean India).
“Yesterday (Thursday), I had a very fruitful meeting with ministers and officials on Mission Swachh Bharat, which would be launched Oct 2, 2014. Mission Swachh Bharat aspires to realise Gandhiji’s dream of a clean India through ‘jan bhagidari’ (people’s participation). Together, we can make a big difference,” Modi said in a tweet.
Sharing the link to an open forum that has been created on mygov.nic.in, the prime minister invited suggestions on the mission.
Get ready for a fierce content war between YouTube and Facebook. The social networking site is in talks with some of the biggest video content producers of YouTube to test videos directly on Facebook, media reported.
Till date, content creators use Facebook to promote their programming but prefer people to watch the videos on YouTube and other platforms where they can make money through advertisements sales easily.
Facebook and video content producers are now discussing how advertising might be incorporated into these videos, according to a Wall Street Journal report.
India Friday contributed a total of $500,000 in financial assistance to augment the World Health Organization (WHO) efforts to prevent the spread of Ebola virus.
“India contributes $500,000 financial assistance to augment WHO efforts to prevent spread of Ebola virus disease,” Syed Akbaruddin, ministry of external affairs spokesperson, said in a tweet.
This is the biggest outbreak of the deadly Ebola virus since it was discovered in the Democratic Republic of Congo (then called Zaire), in 1976. There is no known cure for the infection, which has a high mortality rate.
–IANS
Haryana and Maharashtra will vote Oct 15 to elect new assemblies and the results will be known Oct 19, it was announced Friday.
Chief Election Commissioner V.S. Sampath told the media that the last day for filing nominations is Sep 27. Candidates can withdraw from the contest by Oct 1.
Haryana has 90 assembly seats and Maharashtra 288. Both states are ruled by the Congress, the latter in alliance with the Nationalist Congress Party.
Sampath put the number of voters in Haryana at 16 million and in Maharashtra at 82 million.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi Friday appealed to the nation to contribute generously and to “stand shoulder to shoulder” with the distressed people of flood-ravaged Jammu and Kashmir, from where 130,000 people were rescued.
Srinagar is battling the worst floods in 60 years. While hundreds have been rendered homeless, the main city of Srinagar has been partially submerged under water.
Around 40 Malaysian citizens have joined the Islamic State (IS) terrorist group to fight in the conflicts in Syria and Iraq, Malaysian media reported Friday.
Malaysian Home Affairs Minister Ahmad Zahid Hamidi called on the population to reject extremism and protect the image of the country.
“We don’t want Malaysia to be considered internationally as a breeding ground for terrorists (and) we must protect the image of our religion and country based on the principle of moderation,” the Malaysian Star quoted Hamidi as saying.
Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko Friday voiced his commitment to settling the crisis in his country through political dialogue and negotiations.
“I am confident that negotiations will bring positive results,” said Poroshenko at the 11th Yalta European Strategy (YES) conference in Kiev.
In an effort to resolve the crisis in eastern regions through political means, Ukrainian authorities were ready to make concessions to independence-seeking insurgents, including granting a “special status” to some restive areas, Xinhua reported citing Poroshenko.
New economic sanctions imposed by the European Union (EU) against Russia for its involvement in the crisis in Ukraine have come into effect with EU publishing them Friday in its official journal.
The measures, which affect the oil sector, will be reviewed before the end of the month to decide whether to annul or modify these, depending on the evolution of the ceasefire and the peace plan for Ukraine.
The new sanctions are more restrictive than those adopted last July on the capital markets, defence products and sensitive dual-use technologies.
There was a time when Mulayam Singh Yadav would never campaign here – and yet comfortably get elected. But this time, the Samajwadi Party strongman is campaigning very hard – because he can’t afford to see his candidate defeated.
Is Mainpuri, the long-time citadel of Uttar Pradesh’s first family, finally cracking? While there are no clear answers, there are pointers as the Lok Sabha constituency prepares to vote Saturday.
While Mulayam Singh Yadav has won from here thrice, his nephew Dharmendra Yadav has won the seat twice.
Though Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) will not contest the Haryana assembly elections scheduled for Oct 15, it will expose tainted poll candidates, its leader Yogendra Yadav said Friday.
Addressing media persons here, he said, “With the help of common people, we will expose the tainted candidates fielded by parties, especially national ones like the Congress and the BJP (Bharatiya Janata Party).”
The AAP Friday issued a special helpline number 09416016004 for public to share information on regarding candidates with corrupt or criminal background.
Activists of Nepal’s hardline Communist Party of Nepal-Maoist (CPN-M) burnt copies of the Power Trade Agreement (PTA) with India as part of their protests Friday.
Nepal and India initially signed the PTA last week in New Delhi aiming to boost bilateral power trade.
The Maoist party, along with 10 other leftist parties of Nepal, has decided to hold month-long protests against what they call the unfair and unequal power trade with India.
Forty-seven percent Delhiites want fresh assembly polls in the national capital while half the electorate will vote for the BJP if elections were held today, said an opinion poll Friday.
However, 67 percent people think the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) should not form the government by engineering defections in the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) or the Congress, a snap poll – Mood of Delhi – conducted by India Today Group-Hansa said here.
Moreover, 38 percent respondents disbelieve the AAP’s video “sting” that accused the BJP of horse-trading and poaching on its legislator.
The Malaysian flight MH17 tragedy, in which 298 people perished mid-July when the jetliner was reportedly downed by a missile over Ukraine, could have been prevented, the Emirates Airline’s chief has suggested.
According to Sir Tim Clark, the flight would not have flown over Ukraine if the knowledge that high-altitude missiles were there had been passed on.
A group of Taliban terrorists who attacked Malala Yousafzai, the teenaged Pakistani girl education activist, and her friends in the country’s Swat district in 2012 has been arrested, the Pakistan Army announced Friday.
Since surviving the Taliban assassination attempt, Malala has become a global figure for the struggle of all children to study in school.
Even in her hour of grief, the mother of a 30-year-old software engineer agreed to donate her brain dead son’s organs so that other patients can live longer.
On Sep 7, M. Pakshirajan, employed at Tata Consultancy Services, was riding his two wheeler when he met with a road accident and was critically injured.
“He was the only son of his parents and the youngest in the family. All his five sisters are elder to him,” A. Raghuraman, Pakshirajan’s brother-in-law, told IANS.
The Telugu Desam Party and Congress are engaged in a straight fight for the Nandigama (SC reserved) assembly seat in Krishna district of Andhra Pradesh where bye-election will be held tomorrow.
Four others are also in the fray as Independents but they are being seen as “dummies” of the main candidates.
The bye-election is being held because of the vacancy caused by the death of Tangirala Prabhakar of the TDP, who died of heart-attack days after getting elected to the first Assembly of new Andhra Pradesh in May.
There was a protest against actor Salman Khan outside the Kotla Mosque in the capital today for hurting religious sentiments.
Khan’s NGO, Being Human, had recently organised a fashion show in Mumbai where a model walked down the ramp wearing a T-shirt on which a word was inscribed in Arabic.
This has hurt the religious sentiment of the Muslim community, according to the complainant Mohammad Asim Mohammad Arif, a resident of Mumbai.
The Supreme Court Friday asked the government to consider setting up a unified agency to coordinate the relief, rescue and rehabilitation operation in Jammu and Kashmir hit by floods that have left lakhs of people marooned.
The court was hearing two petitions, one a PIL by a person Vasundhra Pathak Masoodi and the other by the Jammu and Kashmir National Panthers Party who had urged the court to intervene for the immediate rescue, relief and rehabilitation of the lakhs of people affected by the floods.
India’s top squash player Dipika Pallikal and sports brand Adidas teamed up to conduct a master class for the capital’s aspiring squash players.
The Adidas Master Class was held at the Siri Fort Stadium yesterday and received an encouraging response in the presence of Pallikal, world no.12 and 2014 Commonwealth Games gold medallist.
In the two-hour session, the 22-year-old from Chennai guided young athletes on how to improve their performance and play.