Month: June 2015

Former British migrants who were physically and sexually assaulted at a notorious school in Australia today won the largest compensation payment for survivors of mass child abuse in the country’s legal history.

A class action lawsuit was brought by almost 150 former residents of Fairbridge Farm School, which housed British child migrants, against the Australian and New South Wales state governments after they were abused between 1938 and 1974.

Sebi today slapped a six-year ban on seven individuals for manipulating trading in the shares of LGS Global Ltd over a period of three years starting from 2008.

After observing irregularities, Sebi had initiated investigation into trading in certain scrips, including LGS, during the years 2008, 2009 and 2010.

Seeking to strengthen its fleet, Delhi Metro will procure 17 new eight-coach trains and convert 61 six-coach trains into eight-coach formations to provide more convenience to the commuters on the Red, Blue and Yellow lines of its network.

A total of 258 new coaches are being procured. Bombardier’s facility in Savli, Gujarat will assemble 162 coaches while 96 new coaches will be procured from state-run BEML’s plant in Bengaluru, an official of Delhi Metro Rail Corporation said.

Defending champion Novak Djokovic and five-time women’s winner Serena Williams reached the Wimbledon second round today as organisers boosted security and weathermen ramped up warnings of a crushing heatwave.

Top seed Djokovic enjoyed a 6-4, 6-4, 6-4 win over Germany’s Philipp Kohlschreiber with crucial breaks in the ninth game of each set and goes on to face either 2004 champion Lleyton Hewitt or Jarkko Nieminen for a place in the last 32.

Delhi ACB chief M K Meena today transfered the SHO, considered close to the AAP government, and made a new appointment hours after the Delhi High Court turned down its plea seeking to restrain him from entering his office.

Inspector Brij Mohan has been appointed as the new SHO of ACB. He will replace Inspector Vinay Malik with immediate effect, sources said.

Malik is considered close to the AAP government-appointed ACB chief S S Yadav and had been playing a crucial role in the recent anti-corruption action, according to the sources.

In an evening of poignant remembrance, friends and admirers of former IAS officer and noted urban planner Mahesh Neelkanth Buch today came together to “celebrate” his life marked by honesty and integrity.

Luminaries cutting across political, bureaucratic and legal spectrum eulogized Buch, widely regarded as the architect of new Bhopal, at a memorial service organised at the India International Centre.

The UN cultural organisation today condemned the “barbaric assaults” the Islamic State group has launched on World Heritage sites in Iraq and Syria, saying they may amount to war crimes.

Meeting in Bonn, Germany, UNESCO delegates said the IS attacks on sites such as Iraq’s ancient city of Hatra recalled the “mindless destruction” by other Islamist extremists in Bamiyan, Afghanistan, in Mali’s Timbuktu and elsewhere.

Indian stock market was hit on Monday following Greece debacle which forced the banks to remain shut and forced capital controls to prevent withdrawals, after cash machines ran dry. The benchmark BSE Sensex tanked over 535 points and the NSE Nifty slid below the 8,300 mark in opening trade today on across-the-board selling by participants.

A weak trend at other Asian markets was the main trigger for the plunge as investor sentiment was dampened by fears of a possible Greece default.

After tumbling over 602 points in early trade spooked by Greece concerns that may trigger capital outflows, the benchmark BSE Sensex recovered over 435 points, powered by gains in HUL, ITC, L&T, ICICI Bank and Dr Reddy’s, but still closed down over 166 points.

Also, the broader NSE Nifty after dipping below the 8,200-point mark, recovered most of losses to close 62.70 points or 0.75 per cent down at 8,318.40. Intra-day, it shuttled between 8,195.65 and 8,329.45.

Transaction service provider Payworld, promoted by Sugal and Damani Group, is eyeing five fold rise in revenues in the country to Rs 10,000 crore by 2018 by strengthening retail outlets and expanding customer base, a top official said.

“Currently, Payworld operates in 18 states with revenues of Rs 2,000 crore. Payworld has set an ambitious target to achieve revenues of Rs 10,000 crore as part of increasing its retail footprint pan India to three lakh outlets,” Payworld Chief Operating Officer, Praveen Dhabhai said.

Yes Bank on Monday preferred to raise money through an ADR issue under its USD 1-billion capital infusion plan next fiscal. The Mid-sized private sector lender stressed that the court order in a case involving its promoters will not impact these plans.

“The aspiration is to do an ADR (American depository receipts) issue. It will be our first such issue. It helps the profile of the bank and more diverse investors can come in,” bank’s president for financial markets Jaideep Iyer told PTI.

Bahrain-based GFH Financial Group has signed an agreement with Indian conglomerate Adani Group for developing an economic development zone in Mumbai.

Under the agreement, the financial group’s unit Energy City Navi Mumbai (ECNM) and Adani Group will work together in creating the master plan for the lands of Phases II and III of the project, which will offer world class business infrastructure for local and international services, IT and energy companies.

Taking a serious view on non-filing of counter affidavits in response to various petitions, the Madras High Court today imposed a fine of Rs 5,000 each on four government departments.

A bench comprising Chief Justice Sanjay Kishan Kaul and Justice T S Sivagnanam directed Housing and Urban Development, Home (Fire and Rescue Services), Labour and Employment departments and the Commissioner, Corporation of Chennai to pay the cost of Rs 5,000 each.

Jharkhand forest department’s efforts to use trained camels to drive wild elephants back to deep forest was ‘unsuccessful’ after the herd entered a residential area on the borders of Ranchi-Khunti districts injuring a couple of villagers.

“Three trained camels were brought yesterday to drive a herd of about 12 elephants into the forests. The elephants did go some distance at the sight of the camels, but they came back and chased away the camels and the forest officials,” the region’s forest guard, Naval Paswan, said today.

Ahead of the Bihar polls, senior Congress leader Digvijay Singh today said that Mulayam Singh Yadav and Lalu Prasad should lead the fight at a time when socialist ideology was under threat.

“Socialism and socialist ideologies are under threat, at present. I hope Mulayam Singh and Lalu Prasad to lead and assist the fight of socialism conceived by Pandit (Jawaharlal) Nehru in 1954-55, against the growing capitalist system,” Singh said at a book release function here.

Australia and New Zealand will play the first ever day-night Test under lights with a pink ball in November at the Adelaide Oval, according to a report.

The historic event on November 27 will be the third Test of a three-match series against the Black Caps on Australian soil this summer and will be the first to be played under lights and with a pink Kookaburra ball.

The Economic Offences Wing (EOW) of Delhi Police has arrested two alleged racketeers who duped at least seven businessman from different states of several crores of rupees.

The accused — Arun Kumar Sharma and Parvez Alam — were arrested from Faridabad in Haryana on Thursday last, police said, adding that several other accused are still absconding.

According to EOW, the duo, along with other accused, duped a Gujarat-based businessman of Rs. 12.7 crore on the pretext of promising him a loan of Rs. 400 crore from a Thailand-based company.

A system has been reached in talks between Iran and major powers towards a nuclear deal that will give the UN atomic watchdog access to all suspect sites, a senior US official said today.

“The entry point isn’t we must be able to get into every military site, because the United States of America wouldn’t allow anybody to get into every military site, so that’s not appropriate,” the official said.

The state credit plan in Andhra Pradesh for 2015-16 has been pegged at Rs 1,25,748 crore, in which the share of agriculture is Rs 65,272 crore.

The plan, launched by Chief Minister N Chandrababu Naidu at a meeting of State Level Bankers’ Committee (SLBC) here today, allocated Rs 16,960 crore for MSMEs and Rs 14,688 crore for other priority sectors, an official release said.

The total credit for priority sector is Rs 96,920 crore and non-priority segment at Rs 28,828 crore.

In a new initiative, now a standard reporting format for banks will help share investigation-related information. The initiative will be taken up jointly by RBI, other banks and law enforcement agencies who have been working together after central agencies like IB and CBI complained about receiving data in different formats making deciphering difficult.

The intelligence and probe agencies have been raising the issue and emphasising on having a standardised format for sharing of information by the banks, official sources said.

Terming the Delhi government’s maiden budget as a “deficit budget”, Opposition leader Vijendra Gupta today alleged that the revenue figures shown by the AAP dispensation were “inflated”, and claimed this will cause a financial crisis in the national capital.

Gupta, while participating in a discussion on the Budget tabled by Deputy Chief Manish Sisodia in Delhi Assembly on June 25, also alleged the government has “not introduced” any measure reflecting austerity and expenditure in it.

A 25-year-old computer engineer from Mumbai was today arrested for allegedly designing and hosting a fake website of the Odisha Joint Entrance Examination (OJEE), police said today.

Ranchi-based Sana-ul-haq was arrested by the Odisha cyber police and produced in court here today from where he was remanded to jail custody, they said.

Cyber police station officials said the youth, a graduate in computer engineering from a private institution in Bhubaneswar, was working in a Mumbai firm.

Cracking the whip, Sebi today barred four companies and 235 other entities from the securities market for making Rs 614 crore illegal gains through suspected money laundering and tax evasion activities.

The capital market watchdog’s order comes after it found manipulations in the scrips of four companies — Eco Friendly Food Processing Park, Esteem Bio Organic Food Processing, Channel Nine Entertainment and HPC Biosciences.

A US woman pleaded guilty today to killing two of her children and storing their bodies in a home freezer, telling a judge that she had no remorse for beating and suffocating them.

Mitchelle Blair, 36, of Detroit, Michigan, has never challenged allegations that she killed her 13-year-old daughter and 9 year-old son. She pleaded guilty to first-degree murder without any deal with prosecutors an extraordinary move and said she would have accepted the death penalty if the state of Michigan had it.

The theme of “social development” chosen for Statistics Day is quite relevant and related to various schemes of development initiated by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Statistics & Programme Implementation Minister Vijay Kumar Singh said today.

Singh, who also looks after the Ministry of External Affairs & Overseas Indian Affairs as a Minister of State, called upon statisticians to use technology to analyse the data to make it relevant for interventions to be made in specific areas for the development of the society.