Junior Digest

Washington: U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo announced $113 million in new technology, energy and infrastructure initiatives in emerging Asia on Monday, at a time when China is pouring billions of dollars in investments into the region.

In a policy speech delivered amid increased U.S. trade frictions with China and other Asian countries, Pompeo sought to define the economic aspect of President Donald Trump’s “Indo-Pacific” strategy, which aims to cast the United States as a trustworthy partner in the region.

Pompeo said Washington wants a “free and open” Asia not dominated by any one country, an apparent reference to China’s growing economic clout and heightened tensions in the disputed South China Sea.

“Like so many of our Asian allies and friends, our country fought for its own independence from an empire that expected deference,” Pompeo told the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. “We thus have never and will never seek domination in the Indo-Pacific, and we will oppose any country that does.”

“These funds represent just a down payment on a new era in U.S. economic commitment to peace and prosperity in the Indo-Pacific region,” Pompeo said.

Pompeo said he will visit Malaysia, Singapore and Indonesia this week, where he planned to announce new security assistance.

Islamabad/Peshawar, Jul 31: Imran Khan said  that he will take oath as prime minister on August 11, even as his Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf party was striving to get the required numbers to form a government.

The PTI, led by 65-year-old Khan, has emerged as the single largest party in the National Assembly after the July 25 elections, but it is still short of numbers to form the government on its own. Khan’s party yesterday announced that it is trying to reach out to smaller parties and independents to form the next government.

Khan said he will take oath as Prime Minister on 11th of next month (August), state-run Radio Pakistan reported.

“I have also decided about chief minister of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa which I will announce in the next 48 hours. Whatever I have decided in this regard is in the best interest of people,” he said while addressing PTI members of provincial assembly in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa province.

In Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa province, the PTI has won a two-thirds majority by bagging 65 seats in the assembly of 99 members.

He said alleviation of poverty from interior Sindh will be among top priorities of his government.

On Saturday, PTI spokesman Naeemul Haque told reporters that the party chief will take oath as the prime minister before August 14.

Haque said that he hoped the president would call an assembly session and Khan would take oath as premier before the Independence day.

He said Khan would prefer a peoples’ ceremony of oath-taking where thousands can watch him take the oath as prime minister.

“Perhaps D-Chowk area may be the right place to do it,” he said, referring to Islamabad’s famous D-Chowk where the party had staged its 126-day sit-in in 2014 against alleged rigging in the 2013 general elections.

Although the PTI has emerged as the single largest party in the National Assembly after the polls, the final results issued by the Election Commission of Pakistan show that the party is still short of numbers to form its government independently.

New Delhi, Aug 1: West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee on Tuesday alleged that the National Registrar of Citizens (NRC) exercise in Assam was done with a “political motive” to divide people and warned that it would lead to bloodbath and a civil war in the country.

Attacking the BJP, she said the saffron party is trying to divide the country and asserted this will not be tolerated.

“The NRC is being done with a political motive. We will not let this happen. They (BJP) are trying to divide the people. The situation cannot be tolerated. There will be a civil war, blood bath in the country,” Banerjee told a conclave here.

The massive Supreme Court-monitored exercise to identify genuine Indian nationals living in Assam excluded over 40 lakh people from the final draft list.

The issue rocked both house of Parliament after which Home Minister Rajnath Singh appealed to the opposition not to politicise the “sensitive” matter as the list has been published on the directives of the Supreme Court and the Centre has “no role” in it.

He asserted that no “coercive” action will be taken against those whose names were excluded from the NRC draft list.

New Delhi, Jul 27: As many as 17 facilities that can be used as roads as well as airstrips are being developed in the country, Union Minister Nitin Gadkari said today.
The facilities are being developed under the ambitious Bharatmala project that mainly seek to strengthen roads network in the country.

Gadkari told the Lok Sabha that several projects have been taken up under the Bharatmala project.

One of the best things regarding backward areas and Rajasthan is that 17 road-cum-airstrips are being developed. These facilities would come up at places in the state where there is no airport in the vicinity of 300 kilometres, the Minister for Road Transport and Highways said during the Question Hour.

Road would be closed for traffic at the time of landing and take-off of aeroplanes, he added.

“When I talk about it (road-cum-airstrip), people think it is a dream and difficult to believe. I assure this House that whatever I am saying will happen for sure,” the minister said.

Projects for constructing 6,320 km of road have been awarded under the first phase of the Bharatmala project, with the financial implication estimated to be Rs 1.44 lakh crore, he said.

Under the first phase of the Bharatmala, a total of 34,800 km of road, including 10,000 km of residual NHDP (National Highway Development Project) have been approved for development. The first phase of Bharatmala is to be implemented during the period from 2017-18 to 2021-22.

Johannesburg, Jul 27 : Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Chinese President Xi Jinping have agreed that the Chinese defence minister will visit India next month as part of the efforts to maintain the “momentum” generated by their recent meetings

Modi, who is here to attend the BRICS Summit, met Xi for the third time in nearly three months Thursday evening after their two-day informal summit in the Chinese city of Wuhan in late April and a bilateral meeting on the sidelines of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation Summit in Qingdao, China in June

“It is important to maintain this momentum and for this we should, at our level, regularly review our relationship and give proper instructions whenever required,” Modi told Xi in his opening remarks

He told the Chinese leader that their recent meetings have given a new strength to bilateral ties and also provided new opportunities for cooperation

President Xi said that the Chinese side is ready to work with the Indian side to carry forward the fresh impetus of bilateral relations since their informal meeting in Wuhan, China’s state-run Xinhua news agency reported

He called on the two sides to strengthen strategic communication, increase mutual trust, promote practical cooperation, as well as cultural and people-to-people exchanges, strengthen dialogue and properly manage differences, it said.

At Wuhan, Modi and Xi had decided to issue “strategic guidance” to their militaries to strengthen communications to build trust and understanding, a move aimed at avoiding a Doklam-like situation in the future

Modi said the Johannesburg meeting has provided one more opportunity to them to strengthen their closer developmental partnership

Briefing the reporters about the meeting, Indian Foreign Secretary Vijay Gokhale said the two leaders reaffirmed their readiness to give the necessary direction to their militaries to enhance communication between them and to maintain peace and tranquility in the border areas.

New Delhi, Jul 30 : The UIDAI  asserted that the personal details of Trai chief R S Sharma being put out on Twitter are not from the Aadhaar database or its servers, and that “so called hacked information” is easily available with a simple search on Google and other sites, without using the 12-digit unique identity number.

The UIDAI jumped into the debate following a full blown war of words on Twitter between Trai Chairman RS Sharma and some users over the potential of Aadhaar number being misused.

The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai) chairman yesterday shared his Aadhaar number publicly, challenging anyone to show how mere knowledge of the number can be misused to harm him. The move had trigerred a tsunami of tweets with the Twitterati claiming to disclose Sharma’s personal details – from PAN to mobile number.

In a statement today, the UIDAI said: “…any information published on Twitter about the said individual…RS Sharma was not fetched from Aadhaar database or UIDAI’s servers.

“In fact, this so called ‘hacked’ information (about Sharma’s personal details such as his address, date of birth, photo, mobile number, e-mail, etc.) was already available in the public domain as he being a public servant for decades and was easily available on Google and various other sites by a simple search without Aadhaar number.”

Rubbishing all claims that personal details of Sharma were dug up using his Aadhaar number, the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) said it “condemns such malicious attempts by few individuals to malign the world’s largest unique identity project – Aadhaar”.

Many users had claimed that the they got Sharma’s personal details “by hacking Aadhaar database”, but added such a claim was “farce” and that no such information about Sharma has been fetched from either its severs or Aadhaar database. The Aadhaar database is safe, the UIDAI added.

“This is merely cheap publicity by these unscrupulous elements who try to attract attention by creating such fake news,” it alleged.

Anyone can google or tap other sources and find out Sharma’s personal details without Aadhaar, UIDAI said, pointing out that the Trai chief mobile number is available on NIC website as he was, at one point, the IT Secretary.

Similarly, other details like date of birth is available in the civil list of IAS officers kept in public domain, while his address is on Trai website given his current role. The email id may be available in public domain too, it added.

“They clubbed all these inputs and claimed that they have managed to breach Aadhaar database and got his personal details, which is completely false,” the statement said.

The UIDAI said that given the connected digital world, various search engines such as Google, can throw up personal data “without Aadhaar” and a profile can be made.

“It is reiterated that in this case…no data has been fetched using his Aadhaar number from UIDAI’s servers or Aadhaar database. One could have just googled his name (without Aadhaar number), visited a few other websites and got most of the details which are being shown on twitter,” UIDAI added.

The Aadhaar issuing body argued that people usually give PAN or mobile number at many places, and noted: “Someone can pick other personal data from different websites as he gets to know his PAN/mobile number”.

“Can anyone demand on this basis that PAN (permanent account number) number is unsafe and should be abolished? Or, can say that it is the online world and online search which help gather information from different sources and create a profile and therefore, online search should be prohibited? Of course, this is not the answer,” the statement said.

The issue of not about Aadhaar, PAN or mobile number, the UIDAI said, adding that this is a challenge of emerging digital world and personal data protection, which have been sought to be addressed in the recommendations submitted by the Justice Srikrishna committee.

Responding to the open challenge by Sharma yesterday, many on Twitter claimed victory over ‘leaking’ his personal details but the Trai chief has maintained in multiple tweets and replies that the challenge had never been about phone numbers and other information but for causing harm using knowledge of his Aadhaar number.

Interestingly, the Justice Srikrishna committee came out with its report on data protection last week where it mooted changes in Aadhaar Act and proposed new safeguards to protect information of Aadhaar holders.

Sharma, former UIDAI director general, has been an ardent supporter of the Aadhaar programme vouching for the safety of the system, and dispelling privacy concerns surrounding Aadhaar even during his current tenure as Trai chief.

Meanwhile, Justice Srikrishna panel on data protection has recommended that Aadhaar Act be amended “significantly” to bolster privacy safeguards, and mooted that only public authorities discharging public functions approved by the UIDAI or entities mandated by the law be given the right to request for identity authentication.

The report, submitted on Friday, assumes significance given that public and private sectors are collecting and using personal data on an unprecedented scale and for various purposes, and instances of unregulated and arbitrary use, especially that of personal data, have raised concerns about privacy and autonomy of an individual.

Over the last one year, there have also been reports of personal information being allegedly compromised with increasing use of biometric identifier Aadhaar in an array of services, and the Supreme Court has reserved its judgement on a clutch of petitions, challenging the constitutional validity of Aadhaar Act.

New Delhi, July 28 : The government will soon provide free drugs and diagnostics for Hepatitis B and C, Health and Family Welfare Minister JP Nadda said.
Launching the National Viral Hepatitis Control Programme to mark the World Hepatitis Day, 2018, here on Saturday, Mr Nadda said, “This initiative will provide laboratory testing and management of viral hepatitis with a de-centralized approach”.
He said the government was strongly committed to work towards elimination of viral Hepatitis by 2030.
The Minister said that under the guidance of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, the Ministry was aggressively addressing the preventable diseases. Adding that there had been a paradigm shift in designing the programme.
“Programmes are now designed at the ground level and all stakeholders are taken into consideration. We are now making sure that the last person gets the benefit out of it,” he added.
The Minister further said that his Ministry had already launched a campaign to end TB by 2025, five years ahead of global target. The Government now has more than 1100 CBNAAT machines for rapid diagnosis of TB and provides daily regimen with fixed dose combinations and the programme had also initiated active case finding to screen more TB patients.
Speaking at the function, Communication Minister Manoj Sinha stated that the Department of Posts (DoP) had released several stamps to generate awareness about various programmes of the government.
He further informed the participants about various initiatives of DoP.
Mr Sinha released a commemorative stamp and Mr Nadda released the Operational Guidelines for National Viral Hepatitis Control Program, National Laboratory Guidelines for Viral Hepatitis Testing and National Guidelines for Diagnosis and Management of Viral Hepatitis.
Ministers of State Ashwini Kumar Choubey and Anupriya Patel along with others were also present at the launch function.
Mr Choubey, said that awareness was very important component of the programme. As disease burden was very significant in India, this would help all to find the disease carriers and towards their diagnosis and treatment.
“This exemplifies India’s commitment to providing universal health coverage and meeting SDG targets for the country,” he said.
Ms Patel, stated that National Viral Control Programme marks the beginning of the nation’s journey to control viral hepatitis thereby reducing mortality and morbidity attributed to it.
“It is envisaged that this programme will reach large number of people possibly harbouring the infection, she said.
Integrating the intervention within the existing health systems framework under NHM rather than adopting a vertical approach would further complement the efforts in providing more comprehensive care till the grass-root level, she added.
The Health Ministry had launched the ‘National Viral Hepatitis Control Programme’, with the goal of ending viral hepatitis as a public health threat by 2030 in the country.
The aim of the initiative is to reduce morbidity and mortality due to viral hepatitis.

New Delhi, July 28: Union Minister Arun Jaitley said on Friday that the country has witnessed mass tax reduction in the last one year since Independence enhancing the buying power of consumers.
In an article, Mr Jaitley said these lesser tax rates have resulted in higher collection of taxes.
On tax reduction under GST regime in last one year, Mr Jaitley said, ‘if the entire category of all the slabs is taken, the past one year has seen reduction of tax in 384 commodities with no increase on a single product.’
India has never witnessed such mass tax reduction since Independence. Lesser rates and higher collection is
the result.
He wrote, ‘Similarly in the services category, which has now become a part of the GST, on four different occasions 68 different categories of services have witnessed their rates reduced.’
According to Mr Jaitley, the net revenue loss which Government has suffered on account of the reduction of tax on goods and services is about Rs 70,000 crore. Since the state governments have been guaranteed a 14 per cent increase over their pre-GST revenues for the first five years, this burden has entirely been borne from the share of the Central government.
He wrote in his article that this tax reduction has reduced the cost to the consumers, increased his purchasing capacity and added to the increased consumption in the economy. All household items stand reduced from 28 per cent to 18 per cent and 12 per cent. All items of construction except cement stands reduced. Most white goods stand reduced.

Mati, Greece : Greece said on Thursday it suspected arson was behind a devastating forest fire which killed at least 83 people and turned the small town of Mati east of Athens into a wasteland of death and destruction.

In one of the worst Greek disasters in living memory, Monday night’s blaze trapped dozens of people in their cars trying to flee a barrelling wall of flames.

“We have serious indications and significant signs suggesting the criminal actions of arson,” Civil Protection Minister Nikos Toskas told a news conference. He said police had testimonies to that effect, but did not elaborate.

Reuters reported on Wednesday that police were investigating how the fire started from three different locations at the same time, on a day when a second major fire was raging west of the Greek capital.

With the toll from Greece’s deadliest wildfire in decades expected to rise further, about 300 firemen and volunteers were still combing the area on Thursday for dozens still missing.

In a nation numbed by the scale of devastation, desperate relatives appeared on television to plead for information on those missing, while questions mounted on how people got trapped, and why no evacuation order was issued.

“This shouldn’t have happened, people perished for no reason,” a tearful woman shouted at Defence Minister Panos Kammenos as he visited the town and nearby fire-ravaged areas.

Guwahati, Jul 26 : Assam Chief Minister Sarbananda Sonowal today sought to allay fears among people on their names missing from the NRC, saying no one will be treated as a foreigner if his or her name does not appear in the final draft of the state’s citizens list.
Chairing a high-level security review meeting here, he asked officials to guide people, whose names do not figure in the National Register of Citizens (NRC), through the procedure of claims and objections.

“If someone’s name does not appear in the complete draft, he or she is not to be considered a foreigner. Public should be clearly explained the process of claims and objections after publication of the NRC,” Sonowal was quoted as saying by one of the officials present at the meeting.

The chief minister also directed the officials not to refer any case to the Foreigners Tribunal based on the NRC final draft, the official said.

The Home Ministry had yesterday asked the Assam government not to take any action against those whose names do not figure in the NRC.

“There is no question of referring the persons whose names do not figure in the draft NRC to the Foreigners’ Tribunal as people are entitled to file claims and objections and due opportunity has to be given to them before final publication,” an advisory of the ministry had said.

The NRC is being updated with March 24, 1971 as the cut-off date for legitimate claim to Indian citizenship in Assam.

The final draft will be published on July 30. The first draft of the NRC was published during the intervening nights of December 31 and January 1, containing 1.9 crore names out of a total applications of 3.29 crore people.

New Delhi, Jul 28 :  Niti Aayog CEO Amitabh Kant has said the country needs to improve its human development index (HDI) to achieve a growth of around 10 per cent.

We are growing at around 7.5 per cent and if our ambition is to grow at high rates like 10 per cent over a three-decade period, (then) it is not possible to do this if we don’t improve the HDI for India, Kant said at an event by child-rights organisation Plan India here on Friday.

Such growth, Kant said, was not possible if infant-mortality and maternal-mortality rates were at very high rates and if one in three children was stunted.

In the 2016 UN Human Development Report, India had slipped one place to rank 131st among 188 countries in the HDI.

Stating that there were around 200 backward districts in India, Kant underlined that it was not possible for the government alone to transform.

Therefore, non-governmental organisations (NGOs) play a very important role, he added.

Speaking at the event, veteran actor and social activist Shabana Azmi said since India is a multi-religious, multi-cultural and multi-lingual society, any effort for the country’s development needs to be made by all stakeholders, like the government, NGOs and community workers.

But, above all, to actually impact change at the level where it is required, it cannot happen without the last-mile frontline workers, the actor added.

The planet’s largest colony of king penguins has declined by nearly 90 percent in three decades, alarmed researchers said Monday.

The last time scientists set foot on France’s remote Ile aux Cochons — roughly half way between the tip of Africa and Antarctica — the island was blanketed by two million of the flightless birds, which stand about a metre (three feet) tall.

But recent satellite images and photos taken from helicopters show the population has collapsed, with barely 200,000 remaining, according to a study published in Antarctic Science.

King penguins are home bodies. While adults will set to sea for days at a time foraging for food, the species does not migrate.

Why the colony on Ile aux Cochon has been so decimated remains a mystery.

“It is completely unexpected, and particularly significant since this colony represented nearly one third of the king penguins in the world,” said lead author Henri Weimerskirch, an ecologist at the Centre for Biological Studies in Chize, France, who first set eyes on the colony in 1982.

Climate change may play a role.

In 1997, a particularly strong El Nino weather event warmed the southern Indian Ocean, temporarily pushing the fish and squid on which king penguins depend south, beyond their foraging range.

“This resulted in population decline and poor breeding success” for all the king penguin colonies in the region, Weimerskirch said.

El Nino’s are cyclical events that occur every two to seven years. But they can be amplified by global warming, which itself produces many of the same results, albeit on a longer timescale.

Indeed, Weimerskirch and colleagues showed in an earlier study that climate change, on its current trajectory, will likely make the Iles Crozet — the archipelago that contains Ile aux Cochon — unviable for king penguins by mid-century.

Migration is not an option because there are no other suitable islands within striking range.

Other factors may be contributing to the decline of the Ile aux Cochon colony, including overcrowding.

Mumbai, Jul 30 :  The Bombay High Court has asked the Maharashtra government and the Directorate of Education to call for compliance reports from all educational institutes and universities in the state on facilities provided to disabled students.

In an order passed earlier this week, a bench of Justices Naresh Patil and G S Kulkarni said the state must inform the court whether or not all educational institutes across Maharashtra were providing barrier-free access in their buildings to disabled students and staff members.

The bench was hearing a Public Interest Litigation (PIL) filed by Pune resident Akanksha Kale.

In her plea filed through advocate Satyavrat Joshi, Kale sought that all educational institutes provide barrier-free access and other facilities to disabled students and staff, as mandated in the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (RPWD) Act.

Kale, who is confined to a wheelchair, had first approached the high court in 2016 against a Pune college after she was unable to attend classes and appear for her exams as the institute did not have disabled-friendly infrastructure.

At that time, another bench of the high court had passed necessary directions to the college concerned, and also directed the state to ensure that all schools and colleges extend appropriate facilities to the disabled.

However, Kale approached the high court again earlier this year, saying that despite provisions of the act and the high court order, not all educational institutes had complied with the requirements.

The Mumbai University’s counsel, advocate Rui Rodrigues, informed the court that there already existed statutory rules mandating that professional colleges, such as medical and engineering institutes, provide barrier-free environment in their buildings.

The professional institutes that did not comply were denied completion and occupation certificates for their buildings, Rodrigues said.

The high court, however, observed that such a requirement must be made mandatory for all educational institutes and not just those providing professional courses.

“The state and the Directorate of Education shall issue instructions to all universities to call for compliance report from all the educational institutions,” the bench said.

“In case any institute already has the occupation certificate but does not provide the mandatory facilities, then the authorities should take necessary steps for creating basic facilities such as ramps, washrooms and barrier-free access for handicapped people in such buildings,” it said.

The high court has sought a report from the state on the compliance reports from educational institutes by August 2.

New Delhi : India on Saturday said it hoped the new government of Pakistan would “work constructively” to end militancy in South Asia, in its first comments following this week’s general election in Pakistan.

Cricket star-turned-politician Imran Khan, who won the disputed election, has called for better ties with India.

“We hope that the new government of Pakistan will work constructively to build a safe, stable, secure and developed South Asia free of terror and violence,” India’s foreign affairs ministry said in a statement.

 

Johannesburg, July 26 : Leaders of five major emerging economies — Brazil, Russia, India and China and South Africa — vowed to to fight unilateralism and protectionism in global trade and voiced their support for an open and inclusive multilateral trading system as envisaged by the World Trade Organisation.
“We recognise that the multilateral trading system is facing unprecedented challenges. We underscore the importance of an open world economy,” the leaders said in a declaration on Thursday.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi, earlier presenting the Country Statement at the leaders’ Closed Session, reaffirmed India’s commitment to multilateralism, international trade and rules-based world order.
“We are concerned by the rise in unilateral measures that are incompatible with World Trade Organization rules and are worried about the impact of these measures, especially on developing countries,” said President Cyril Ramaphosa of summit host South Africa, in a clear reference to tariff imposed by the US.
Chinese President Xi Jinping said the world is faced with “a choice between confrontation and co-operation, we are at a crossroad.”
“Trade wars should be rejected. Economy hegemony should be rejected. Those who pursue that will only hurt themselves. As BRICS, we should be resolute in rejecting unilateralism and protectionism,” he said, addressing the BRICS Business Forum on Wednesday.
Xi called on the developing world to rise against US protectionism, warning that the tariffs that the world’s biggest economy had imposed on imports would have far-reaching implications for emerging nations and markets.
Ramaphosa said that Brics countries were increasingly recognised as an influential formation in reinforcing the principles of transparency, inclusiveness and compatibility within the multilateral trading system.
“Intra-Brics co-operation has been gaining momentum in areas such as finance, agriculture, trade, combating transnational crime, science and technology, health, education, security and academic dialogue.”
Ramaphosa also said that there is much scope to expand the value of trade between Brics countries, which also need to increase investment between Brics countries, particularly in the productive sectors of our economy.
Equally important is BRICS-Africa cooperation, he said. “There is great potential for investment in Africa. In the past decade Africa has grown at a rate of 2 to 3 percentage points faster than the global GDP, with regional growth predicted to remain stable above 5% in 2018. This growth will be supported by increasing foreign direct investment flows, public investment in infrastructure and higher agricultural production.”
He also said that the agreement to establish the African Continental Free Trade Area, which provides access to a market of more than one billion people and a combined GDP of more than $3 trillion, presented opportunities for BRICS countries, some of whom had extensive experience in infrastructure development and were leaders in education and skills development.
Ramaphosa also said that following a proposal by Russian President Vladimir Putin, the five leaders have agreed to deepen a “people to people” component.
“We should have a Brics sports process in a number of sporting codes,” says Ramaphosa, saying that the popularity of sports that each country specialises in can spread between the different countries.
The details of the sport and cultural meetings, he said, would be ironed out.

Hyderabad, Jul 30 : Mars comes closest to the earth in over decade on July 30-31 and so should be visible with a bright red colour in the sky the brightest it has been in over decade, according to BM Birla Science Center Director Dr B G Sidharth.
In a statement here on Sunday, he said that there has also been a sensational and game changing finding on Mars due to the European Space agency using radar images going deep down over a kilometer Italian Scientists have discovered a 20 km wide lake of cold water.
Scientists had suspected what is called subsurface frost for decades and the question was is this sufficient to trigger life formation. The American Viking Spacecrafts made a detailed examination of the surface of mars for microbial life but could not conclude that it existed. Now this is nothing short of sensational for two separate reasons.
First Life formation could have well been triggered on Mars contrary to scientific belief. This apart Mars is our rpt our next destination for stations and even camps for colonization. The presence of liquid water would be a tremendous advantage, the statement added.

Phnom Penh : Cambodia’s ruling Cambodian People’s Party (CPP) said on Sunday that it had won a general election that rights groups said was neither free nor fair due to voter intimidation and the absence of any significant challenger to Prime Minister Hun Sen.

With no real opposition to speak of, Hun Sen was widely expected to win. But the election was widely criticized as a sham because of a campaign of intimidation by Hun Sen and his allies against critics and the dissolution of the main opposition last year.

CPP spokesman Sok Eysan said the party won an estimated 100 out of 125 parliamentary seats.

“The CPP won 80 percent of all the votes and we estimate we will win not less than 100 seats,” Sok Eysan told Reuters in a telephone interview.

Results from around the country were still being announced by the National Election Commission on Sunday and official results aren’t expected until mid-August.

Hun Sen’s opponents had called for an election boycott.

 

New Delhi, Jul 27 : The Delhi High Court today sought the Centre’s response on a PIL seeking direction to utilise biometric and Aadhaar details of missing persons, including children, aged and mentally challenged, so that they can be re-united with their families.
A bench of Acting Chief Justice Gita Mittal and C Hari Shankar issued notice to the Ministry of Home Affairs on the plea which also sought direction to the authorities to spread awareness in this regard to track the pre-existed biometrics and Aadhaar details for re-uniting missing persons with their families across country.

The bench asked the ministry to file an action taken report on the representation made by petitioner advocate Amit Sahni to the authorities and listed the matter for further hearing on November 13.

The petition said the Centre be directed to issue appropriate and mandatory directions to the authorities for utilising biometric/Aadhaar of missing children, old aged persons and mentally challenged persons immediately for the purpose of tracing and re-uniting them with their families as and when they are rescued by any department.

It said the petitioner was not challenging any question of law, which is already pending adjudication before the Supreme Court, that is, the constitutional validity of Aadhaar.

“There have been many debates regarding Aadhaar and the issue of its constitutional validity is pending before the Supreme Court of India but the same is very useful for tracing missing persons, if the Aadhaar of such missing persons is pre-existed,” it said.

The plea referred to the statistics of National Crime Record Bureau (NCRB) 2016 as per which the total missing persons are 5,49,008 and untraced ones are 3,19,627 .

“There is no greater vacuum or void than the helplessness felt by parents whose children have gone missing and the significance of timely recovering of the missing child can only be understood if one empathies with feelings of the missing child or that of a mother, who is unable to locate her child irrespective of the circumstances under which a child goes missing,” it said.

Sahni also referred to a judicial order in which by the intervention of a trial court, a 31-year-old mentally challenged woman was re-united with her family in Rajasthan through Aadhaar.

In that case, a mentally challenged woman was rescued by Delhi Police and produced before Metropolitan Magistrate Abhilash Malhotra, who directed the authorities to help the victim to undergo the process of Aadhaar, which revealed that her biometric records pre-existed in the Aadhaar database.

The police obtained her details from the Unique Identification Authority of India after which she the woman was re-united with her family.

Pakistan’s main parties rejected the outcome of elections won by cricket star Imran Khan and announced protests demanding new polls Friday, after foreign observers criticised the pivotal vote over rigging allegations.

The announcement by the All Parties Conference (APC), including the outgoing Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N), is a fresh obstacle to power for Khan on a day when delayed results finally showed he had won an emphatic victory — though he will need to seek a coalition to form a government.

The nationwide election held Wednesday has been criticised by the United States, the European Union and other observers after widespread claims that the powerful military was trying to fix the playing field in Khan’s favour.

It had been dubbed “Pakistan’s dirtiest election” but for now, Khan’s victory represents an end to decades of rotating leadership between the PML-N and the Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) that was punctuated by periods of military rule.

The PML-N and other parties have alleged “blatant” rigging over the vote count.

“We think a robbery has been committed,” Maulana Fazalur Rehman, head of the religious Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam (JUI-F) party, told reporters.

“We will run a movement for the holding of elections again. There will be protests… We will not allow democracy to be taken hostage by the establishment,” he said, using a word widely understood in Pakistan to mean the military.

The PML-N, which claims it was the target of military manipulation, said it would join in the protests although no date was immediately announced.

“I fully agree with it. The worst kind of irregularities have been committed, which are unprecedented,” party leader Shahbaz Sharif said.

However, Sharif said he would need to consult with his party’s leadership over a decision by the APC not to take the oath swearing in members of parliament.

The Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP), which has won the third largest number of seats in the vote, was notably absent from the APC.

In a later press conference, PPP chairman Bilawal Bhutto Zardari said his party also rejected the election results, but vowed it would try to convince the other parties to participate in the parliamentary process.

The house and private archives of Greek cinema godfather Theo Angelopoulos, who died in 2012, were destroyed in this week’s deadly wildfires near Athens, his widow said Thursday.

The filmmaker, who won the prestigious Palme d’Or at Cannes in 1998 for “Eternity and a Day”, often spent summers with his family at the house in Mati, east of the capital.

“My husband’s books, his letters from celebrities, all the texts that authors had dedicated to him” were destroyed in the fire, Phoebe Angelopoulou told local television.

She said the collection had also included texts and poems written by her late husband.

Angelopoulou managed to flee the flames, which struck on Monday evening, with her granddaughter, but the house was severely damaged.

Angelopoulos pioneered Greece’s “new wave” cinema following the fall of the country’s military dictatorship in 1974.

His works include “Landscape in the Mist” and “The Dust of Time”.

 

He was killed in a freak accident in January 2012 while filming “The Other Sea”, a project to document the effects of Greece’s debt crisis.

More than 80 people have died in Greece this week in the deadliest wildfire outbreak in Europe this century.

New Delhi, Jul 31: A crucial bill seeking to provide death penalty to those convicted of raping girls below the age of 12 years and making the law against such sexual offences more stringent, was passed by the Lok Sabha on Monday.

The bill replaces the Criminal Law (Amendment) Ordinance promulgated on April 21, following an outcry over the rape and murder of a minor girl in Kathua in Jammu and Kashmir and the rape of another woman at Unnao in Uttar Pradesh.

Although the Criminal Law (Amendment) Bill 2018 was supported by most members across the political spectrum and passed by a voice vote, some in the Opposition objected to the government adopting the ordinance route to enact the law.

A statutory resolution disapproving the ordinance on the matter and several amendments moved by the opposition members were also negated by voice vote.

Replying to an over two hour discussion on the measure, Minister of State for Home Kiren Rijiju said the stringent law was aimed at providing safety to minor girls.

He said the existing Indian Penal Code provided for punishment to those convicted of raping a woman, but there was no provision for rape or gangrape of minor girls below 16 or 12 years of age. These are “very important provisions” which the government has proposed, Rijiju said.

He said the recent incidents of rape and gangrape of women below the age of 12 years has shaken the conscience of the entire nation.

Therefore, the offences of rape and gangrape of women under the age of 12-16 years require effective deterrence through legal provisions of more stringent punishment, he said.

During the debate, Deputy Speaker M Thambi Durai, who was in the Chair, suggested that the provisions of the legislation be given maximum publicity, which would act as a deterrence.

The Minister agreed to it.

The bill stipulates stringent punishment for perpetrators of rape, particularly of girls below 12 years. Death sentence has been provided for rapists of girls under 12 years.

The minimum punishment in cases of rape of women has been increased from rigorous imprisonment of seven years to 10 years, extendable to life imprisonment, Rijiju said.

According to the bill, in case of rape of a girl under 16 years, the minimum punishment has been increased from 10 to 20 years, extendable to imprisonment for rest of life, which means jail term till the convict’s “natural life”.

The punishment for gangrape of a girl below 16 years will invariably be imprisonment for the rest of life of the convict.

Stringent punishment for rape of a girl under 12 years has been provided with the minimum jail term being 20 years which may go up to life in prison or death sentence. Gangrape of a girl under 12 years of age will invite punishment of jail term for the rest of life or death.

The measure also provides for speedy investigations and trial. The time limit for investigation of all cases of rape has been prescribed, which has to be mandatorily completed within two months.

The deadline for the completion of trial in all rape cases will be two months. A six-month time limit for the disposal of appeals in rape cases has also been prescribed, the bill says, adding that there will also be no provision for anticipatory bail for a person accused of rape or gangrape of a girl under 16 years.

It has also been prescribed that a court has to give notice of 15 days to a public prosecutor and the representative of the victim before deciding on bail applications in case of rape of a girl under 16 years of age.

Rijiju said “this bill reflects the concern of the nation. It shows the determinantion of the government towards safety of women and girl child. We want that the women in the country do not feel insecure.”