Month: June 2015

Stuart Broad’s heroics on the crease ensured that England matched New Zealand’s first innings total of 350 on the third day of the second test match at Headingley.

After an overnight score of 253 runs for the loss of five wickets, England looked to be in danger of a major collapse as the hosts lost three quick wickets, the scorecard reading 267/8. However, Broad forged partnerships first with Mark Wood and then with James Anderson to ensure that England staggered to 350 all out.

The Congress party on Monday criticised the stand taken by the NDA Government at the Centre to not approach the International Court of Justice (ICJ) with respected to the alleged torture and killing of Kargil martyr Captain Saurabh Kalia by Pakistani forces, terming it a ‘disgrace’ to soldiers sacrificing their lives for the nation.

Telugu Desam Party (TDP) MLA A. Revanth Reddy, who had been arrested for allegedly trying to bribe a nominated member of the state assembly, has been sent to 14 days judicial custody by a local court.

However, he has been allowed to cast vote for the MLC elections.

According to reports, Reddy was arrested after the member, Elvis Stephenson, lodged a complaint with the Anti-Corruption Bureau (ACB).

Reddy and his aide had gone to Stephenson’s residence in Secunderabad to hand over the cash when the ACB caught the two. (ANI)

The first trial run for Kolkata-Dhaka-Agartala bus service started here on Monday.

West Bengal Transport Department Principal Secretary Alapan Bandyopadhyay said that the bus service will bring Kolkata and

Agartala closer.

“By connecting Kolkata to Agartala via Dhaka through a direct bus road, we are touching Agartala in an unprecedented direct manner. Kolkata and Agartala are thus coming close to each other. The [people] of both the states will come nearer and will not to travel the whole of North East in order to reach other,” said Bandyopadhyay told ANI.

Sweden monarch King Carl Gustaf XVI welcomed President Pranab Mukherjee at the Royal Palace yesterday, during the Indian dignitary’s three-day official visit to the Scandinavian country.

Also present at the occasion were Queen Sylvia, Crown Princess Victoria and Prince Daniel.

Earlier in the day, President Mukherjee arrived in Stockholm and was welcomed by Crown Princess Victoria and Prince Daniel. Swedish fighter planes escorted the Presidential flight from the time it entered Swedish air space till its landing.

The President was also accorded a guard of honour.

A 11-year-old boy in the US state of Georgia who made a prank call to emergency responders has been caught by his parents who not only made him write an apology letter but also took him to the police station to apologise in person.

“Last night I called and said ‘Dezz Nuts’ ” the unidentified sixth grader wrote, according to an image of the message posted by the Savannah-Chatham Metropolitan Police.

“I know this was stupid but I was not listening to myself but I knew it was wrong.”

Scattered rains were witnessed in the early hours as the city woke up to partly cloudy skies on Monday with the minimum temperature being recorded at 25.9 degrees Celsius, two notches below the season’s average.

Weather stations at Safdarjung, Lodhi road and Palam recorded traces of rainfall in the last 24 hours. Ridge and Ayanagar recorded 0.4 and 0.2 mm rainfall respectively, said MeT department officials.

The weatherman has predicted partly cloudy skies, along with the possibility of dust storms and thunderstorms accompanied by squall in some parts of the city.

Australian opposition leader Bill Shorten on Monday introduced a same-sex marriage bill in the Federal Parliament.

The Australian Labour Party leader’s private members bill proposes replacing the words “man and woman” with the term “two people” to define who can be legally married, ABC reported.

The same-sex marriage debate in Australia gained momentum this week days after Ireland’s hugely successful referendum on May 24.

Prime Minister Tony Abbott has emphasised that any moves to legalise gay marriage must be owned by the Parliament, and not just by a single party.

India’s objections to the 3,000 km-long Pakistan-China Economic Corridor (PCEC) notwithstanding, Islamabad was firmly committed to the $46 billion project and would not permit any attempt to sabotage it, a key advisor to the prime minister said.

Sartaj Aziz, foreign affairs and national security advisor to Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif said on Sunday that Pakistan’s “enemies” would not succeed in sabotaging the Pakistan-China Economic Corridor (PCEC).

The currently levied education cess and secondary and higher education cess would become ineffective from today as they would be subsumed in the service tax rate of 14 percent notified by the Central Board of Direct Taxes.

“The provisions levying education cess and secondary and higher education cess would also cease to have effect from June 1, 2015, as the same would be subsumed in the service tax rate of 14 percent,” a statement by the Ministry of Finance said.

Number of online registrations for Delhi University’s undergraduate courses shot up to over 1.3 lakh today.

“The number of registrations till 5.30 PM today were 1,35,549. A total of 68,857 applicants have already made the payment,” a senior varsity official said.

Since the online registrations process opened on May 28 the university has received 46,964 applications in general category, 14,106 OBC, 6,404 SC, 1,290 ST and 145 in Persons With Disability category, he said.

At least eight persons were killed and more than 80 others injured today when supporters of rival political parties clashed during the local body elections in Pakistan’s northwestern Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa province.

The casualties were reported from Charsadda, Dera Ismail Khan, Kohat, Peshawar and other areas during the polling which was interrupted at several booths due to poor security arrangements, officials said.

In what is seen as an attempt to mend fences, Delhi’s Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) government wants the centre to vet its anti-graft Jan Lokpal Bill before it is tabled in the assembly – a process it did not follow in the measure’s previous avatar and which means its tabling in next month’s budget has been pushed back.

The Arvind Kejriwal government, which in its previous 49-day tenure had resigned over the failure to get the bill passed in the Delhi Assembly last year, does not want to “rush” this time. This means it will miss its deadline of presenting the Bill in the Budget session in June.

Five people were killed and six others injured when an Islamic State (IS) suicide bomber blew himself up in the city of Misrata in Libya, a media report said.

A suicide bomber driving a vehicle rammed into Dafniya gate -the entrance into Misrata -killing three people and injuring eight others on Sunday.

Two of the injured died later, Xinhua reported, citing a source from Misrata’s military operation chamber.

An IS affiliate claimed responsibility for the attack on Twitter and identified the attacker as an Tunisian.

A suspected Islamic State recruiter has been arrested here by Bangladeshi police, the third operative belonging to the dreaded terror group to be held in the country within a week.

“The members of our detective branch arrested him last night raiding a house at Baridhara area (in Dhaka) acting on a secret tip off,” an official of the Dhaka metropolitan police told PTI.

Abdullah Al Ghalib, who was arrested by police, appeared to be in his early 30s and was believed to be a trained recruiter of the outfit.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s assurance on the issue of roll-out of ‘One Rank, One Pension scheme today was met with skepticism with ex-servicemen seeking a firm timeline and the Congress saying he has further compounded the problem by saying it was a “complex issue”.

Though Modi vowed to address the “vexed” OROP issue in his monthly ‘Mann Ki Baat’ programme on radio and said he should be given some time, the miffed ex-servicemen also appeared to be in no mood to call off their planned protest on June 14 over the delay in its implementation.

BJP leader Sudhanshu Trivedi today congratulated the Modi government after India overtook China to become the world’s fastest growing economy by clocking 7.5 per cent GDP for the March quarter.

“The latest economic growth rate that puts India ahead of China is an indicator of Modi’s good governance,” he said at a press conference here.

A meeting of a Prime Minister-led panel has been called on Monday to decide on the chiefs of Central Information Commissioner (CIC) and Central Vigilance Commission (CVC).

Monday’s meeting has been convened at the Prime Minister’s residence and will be attended by Home Minister Rajnath Singh, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley, Leader of Congress in the Lok Sabha Mallikarjun Kharge and Minister of State for Personnel Jitendra Singh, official sources said.

The last meeting of the panel held here on May 23 had remained inconclusive.

India has decided to buy only 36 Rafale fighter jets scrapping the earlier plan to acquire 126 of the French aircraft on grounds of huge cost.

Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar termed as “economically unviable” the previous UPA government’s 20 billion USD deal for purchase of the 126 Rafale fighter planes more than three years after France’s Dassault Aviation was declared the lowest bidder.

“We are not buying the rest. We are only buying the direct 36,” Parrikar told PTI in an interview when asked what will happen to rest of the requirement.

Having started making public the names of Indians and other foreign nationals with Swiss bank accounts that are under scanner, Switzerland will now publish a list of accounts that have remained unclaimed for 60 years.

The list would be published later this year by the Swiss Banking Ombudsman and would include unclaimed assets held by foreigners in their bank accounts in Switzerland, while giving their lawful beneficiaries an opportunity to submit a claim.

These accounts have remained unclaimed since 1955.

Clutching their parents’ hands, children in Nepal, many still traumatised by the last month’s devastating earthquakes, today walked through the rubble of their school buildings to attend classes for the first time after the worst disaster that killed nearly 9,000 people.

Amid fresh tremors, schools reopened on Sunday, a working day in Nepal, and classes are being held in temporary classrooms made of tents and makeshift cottages.

A Dalit girl was allegedly gang-raped by four men after two of them abducted her from her house after gagging and tying her grandmother to a cot, police said today.

The girl’s father has registered a case against four persons, Saharanpur SSP Nitin Tiwari said.

According to the complaint, the incident occurred when the 14-year-girl was sleeping with her grandmother in her home at Sankror village in Lakhnauti last night, the SSP said.

Shiv Sena on Monday slammed new `avatar’ of the Congress vice president, saying even 100 Rahul Gandhis cannot match the charisma of Prime Minister Narendra Modi​.

Mocking at the `suit-boot ki sarkaar` jibe, Shiv Sena, in an editorial published in mouthpiece Saamna, said such a government is better than the `suit case` one.

The editorial further noted the remarkable change in Rahul Gandhi’s tone after returning from the 56-day sabbatical earlier this year. The Congress vice president has now started to speak, Sena said.

The ruling TRS in Telangana appeared to have an edge to get its fifth candidate elected in the election, to be held on Monday, to fill six seats in the Legislative Council.

The election is necessitated after opposition parties filed disqualification petitions against some MLAs who joined the ruling party post last year’s Assembly polls and there are seven candidates in fray for six seats in the council, to be voted by the MLAs.

TRS has fielded five candidates while opposition Congress and the TDP-BJP combine have fielded one candidate each.

Pakistan-born Australian leg-spinner Fawad Alam wants to be a role model for his community not just through his cricketing skills but also wants to showcase the true meaning of his religion via the game.

An asylum seeker in Australia after fleeing Pakistan in 2010, Ahmed earned a T20 entry in the Kangaroo squad in August 2013 and has since played 3 ODIs and 2 T20 for the national side.