Breaking News, July 14

At least 33 government schools in Dumka have declared Friday as the weekly holiday.

Speaking on the matter, DSE Dumka Sanjay Kumar Das said, "We have written a letter to the BO of the 33 schools advising them to enquire about this matter. All the schools have Urdu in their names."

Vaitarna River in Palghar swells as the region continues to receive incessant heavy rainfall.

IMD has issued a red alert for Palghar. The major rivers of the district - Vaitarna, Tansa are flowing above the danger mark. 35,000 cusecs of water was discharged from Modak Sagar into Vaitarna River yesterday, said Kiran Mahajan, Palghar Resident Deputy Collector.

4 accused arrested, they had planned to kill Chisti. It was a property dispute. Two more accused on the run, police searching for them, said SP Rural Nashik Sachin Patil on killing of an Afghan preacher Zarif Chishti in Nashik over a property row.

People risk their lives for fishing despite overflowing of Pakadiguddam Dam in Chandrapur district amid heavy downpour in the region. 

Following the recommendation of governing bodies for suspending a male Associate Professor of College of Vocational Studies on grounds of alleged sexual harassment of a female colleague, DU has suspended the teacher and an enquiry will be conducted in the matter, said DU VC Yogesh Singh.

The BJP-RSS are determined to gag Parliamentarians. Parliament is being undermined... The Opposition will not take it lying down, TMC will not take it lying down. We will hit back hard because we have to save democracy, said TMC MP in RS, Derek O'Brien on 'unparliamentary' words row.

All trains suspended between Valsad-Surat section from 17:39 onwards on Thursday. 

AIADMK's Interim General Secretary Edappadi Palaniswami expels 18 O Panneerselvam supporters which include two sons of O Panneerselvam, MP OP Ravindranath & JayaPardeep, former minister Natarajan, Kolathur Krishnamoorthy, Marudhu Alaguraj.

"A photograph shared on social media, shows President Gotabaya Rajapaksa and First Lady Ioma, at Terminal 03, Changi Airport, Singapore. The photograph has been captured by another passenger," tweets Sri Lanka's DailyMirror.

Congress party's Bharat Jodo Yatra to begin on 2nd October under the leadership of Rahul Gandhi. The 148-day long yatra will be undertaken from Kanniyakumari to Kashmir. Every day 25 kilometers of padyatra will be undertaken.

The BJP Parliamentary Board will meet on July 16 (Saturday) to decide the name for the Vice Presidential candidate.

The security of former AAP leader and poet Kumar Vishwas upgraded to 'Y+' category from 'Y' following recent threat assessment. Central Reserve Police Force personnel have been providing security cover to him.

Lok Sabha Speaker on expunged words in the Parliament: "Words that have been expunged have been said/used in the Parliament by the Opposition as well as the party in power. Nothing as such selective expunging of words used by only Opposition...no words banned, have removed words that were objected to previously..."

Russia's war in Ukraine is expected to wreak havoc with the European Union's economic recovery for the foreseeable future with lower annual growth and record-high inflation, the bloc's economic forecast showed Thursday. The summer figures for the 19-nation eurozone set inflation to reach an average of 7.6% this year, a major increase from its earlier expectation of 6.1%. Last month, consumer prices surged 8.6% from a year earlier. Expectations for economic growth slid by 0.1 point to 2.6% for the year, a big drop from last year's expansion of 5.3%.

The Congress, TMC and Shiv Sena on Thursday slammed the "gag order" on usage of certain words in Parliament, saying all terms used by opposition parties to describe the Modi dispensation will now to be considered "unparliamentary". According to a new booklet by the Lok Sabha Secretariat, use of terms like 'jumlajeevi', 'baal buddhi', 'Covid spreader' and 'Snoopgate' and even commonly used words like 'ashamed', 'abused, 'betrayed', 'corrupt', 'drama', 'hypocrisy' and 'incompetent' will henceforth be considered unparliamentary in both the Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha.

Delhi BJP leaders and workers led by party MP Ramesh Bidhuri on Thursday staged a protest near Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal's residence over hike in power bills in the city. Police used water cannons to disperse the protesters when they attempted to get past barricades erected to stop them from reaching the chief minister's residence. "The Kejriwal government has looted crores of rupees from Delhi people through various charges and surcharges in the past many years," Bidhuri claimed, addressing the protesters. Power distribution companies (discoms) were in June allowed by the Delhi Electricity Regulatory Commission to increase power purchase adjustment cost by two-six per cent. The increase will be added to the power bills of consumers in the next bill cycle. 

Union Home Minister Amit Shah on Thursday congratulated everyone over the inclusion of India's first UNESCO world heritage city Ahmedabad in TIME magazine's list of 'World's 50 Greatest Places of 2022'. Shah said that since 2001, visionary ideas of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, the then chief minister of Gujarat, have laid the foundation for creating world-class infrastructure in the state. Be it the Sabarmati river front or the science city in Ahmedabad, Modi has always stressed on creating next-generation infrastructure and making India 'future-ready', he said in a series of tweets. "Matter of immense pride for every Indian, especially the people of Gujarat that India's first UNESCO world heritage city, Ahmedabad, has now been included in the list of the 'World's 50 Greatest Places of 2022' by Time magazine. Congratulations to everyone," Shah tweeted. 

The Supreme Court on Thursday refused to accord urgent hearing to a PIL which seeks a direction to the Centre and states to implement a common dress code for staffers and students in registered educational institutions for securing equality and promoting fraternity and national integration. A bench headed by Chief Justice N V Ramana was urged by lawyer Ashwini Upadhyay that his PIL be also listed for hearing like the batch of appeals filed against the Karnataka High Court verdict on the hijab row. On Wednesday, the bench, also comprising justices Krishna Murari and Hima Kohli, took note of the submissions of lawyer Prashant Bhushan and agreed to list next week the petitions challenging the Karnataka High Court verdict refusing to lift the ban on hijab in educational institutions of the state. At the outset, Upadhyay said this is a matter pertaining to the common dress code.

Five people died when the car in which they were travelling hit a tree near the Raghunathpura bypass in Haryana's Narnaul, police said on Thursday. The crash took place a little after midnight, Narnaul City police station SHO Inspector Santosh Kumar said. "The car hit a tree along the road, and the five occupants were killed in the incident," he said over the phone. Kumar said the victims were in the mid-30 to mid-50 age group. 

Eleven passengers were injured after a roadways bus rammed into a hill on a mountainous road in Himachal Pradesh's Mandi district on Thursday, an official said. The incident happened near Jangal Morh when the bus was on its way to Dharampur from Mandi, the state disaster management official said. Mandi District Disaster Management Authority said the injured persons have been taken to a hospital in Rewalsar. 

Heavy rains lashed several parts of Gujarat in the last 24 hours and many areas in Navsari went under knee-deep water as some rivers in the district were in spate, officials said on Thursday. Authorities rescued 45 people stranded in Tapi and Vadodara districts in the early hours of Thursday, a state government release said. Heavy showers have been lashing many parts of the state since the last four days. The India Meteorological Department (IMD) has predicted heavy rains during the day at several places across Gujarat, including north and south parts of the state and the Saurashtra region. Vansda taluka in south Gujarat's Navsari district received a whopping 394 mm rainfall in the last 24-hour period ending at 8 am of Thursday, a release from the State Emergency Operations Centre (SEOC) said.

The Special Task Force of the Uttar Pradesh police, which is probing a suspected hawala racket linked to China, has arrested four Chinese nationals who were allegedly staying illegally in India, officials said on Thursday. Those held have been identified as Johnson alias He Zhuang, Ryen alias Ren Chao, Zeng Haozhe alias Jon, and Zeng Dye, they said. The four accused were staying in Greater Noida without a valid visa since 2020 and are connected to Xue Fei alias Kelay (36), a Chinese national who was arrested on June 13 on similar charges along with his Indian girlfriend Petekhrinuo (22) who hails from Nagaland, they said.

Two rescue personnel, who were reported missing in a flood-hit village in Telangana's Komaram Bheem Asifabad district on Wednesday, have been found dead. Their bodies were found near Ainam village of Dahegaon mandal in Komaram Bheem Asifabad district. They were part of a six-member team which had gone to flood-hit Bibra village to shift a pregnant woman to the hospital. Ramu and Satish were washed away. Authorities had used the services of other rescue personnel for search operations. Rescue workers found bodies of both the missing persons in the wee hours on Thursday.

READ FULL DETAILS HERE:
 

Nick Barragan is used to wearing a mask because his job in the Los Angeles film industry has long required it, so he won't be fazed if the nation's most populous county reinstates rules requiring face coverings because of another spike in coronavirus cases across the country. “I feel fine about it because I've worn one pretty much constantly for the last few years. It's become a habit,” said Barragan, masked up while out running errands on Wednesday.

Nearly 550 women passengers have sued ride-hailing platform Uber, alleging they were assaulted by its drivers that included kidnapping, rape and physical attacks in the US. The complaint, filed in San Francisco County Superior Court, has sought damages and a jury trial. The women said in their complaint that they were kidnapped, sexually assaulted, sexually battered, raped, falsely imprisoned, stalked, harassed or otherwise attacked by Uber drivers, per a court filing, TechCrunch reported late on Wednesday. "Uber's whole business model is predicated on giving people a safe ride home, but rider safety was never their concern- growth was, at the expense of their passengers' safety," said Adam Slater, founding partner of Slater Slater Schulman representing the women, in a statement.

Sensex opens in green - currently at 53,758.07 points, up by 243.92. Nifty rises 72.70 points, currently at 16,039.35.

CBI has arrested seven people, including a serving and three retired general managers of state-run Eastern Coalfields Limited (ECL), in connection with the multi-crore coal pilferage scam, an official said. The others arrested are a manager and two security guards, he said. They were arrested following interrogation by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) at its Kolkata office on Wednesday, he said. "They couldn't give satisfactory answers to questions asked. They were hiding several pieces of information, and we suspect their active involvement in the scam. As a part of the investigation, we have arrested them," the officer said.

The Lucknow Municipal Corporation (LMC) has announced legal action against the owner of the Pit Bull dog that killed an 82-year-old woman if he fails to submit the pet license. Savita Tripathi, a teacher retired from Nari Shiksha Niketan, was alone in the house when the incident took place on Tuesday. Her son Amit, a gym trainer, had gone out for a training session. Neighbours informed Amit after they heard Savita's screams and found her lying in a pool of blood. She died during treatment in hospital. Amit has two dogs- a Pitbull named Brownie and a Labrador called Daisy. The LMC officials had ordered a probe into the incident after it found no record of pet licence.

READ FULL STORY HERE 

Goa Chief Minister Pramod Sawant had said that about 90 per cent work of the Mopa international airport in the state has been completed. Speaking in the state Assembly during the monsoon session on Wednesday, Sawant also said the airport at Mopa in North Goa district would be commissioned "between August 15 and September 1 this year". “Almost 90 per cent of the work on this project has been completed and trials at the airport are on,” he said without elaborating further. A Skill Development Centre has already started operating at the airport site where students are being trained for the purpose of employment in the project. More students would be enrolled in the coming days, the CM said.

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According to the fire department, they got a call at around 4 a.m regarding the fire at Roma Delux Hotel in Paharganj. Four fire tenders were rushed to the spot. "We rescued ten people from the third floor of the hotel. They had been trapped," said a firefighter.

North Korea has become one of the few nations in the world to recognize the independence of two Russian-backed separatist regions in eastern Ukraine in support of Russia's war against its neighbor. Ukraine's Foreign Ministry cut off diplomatic ties with North Korea in response and condemned Pyongyang's decision as undermining Ukraine's sovereignty and territorial integrity. North Korea has repeatedly blamed the United States for the crisis in Ukraine, claiming the West's “hegemonic policy” justified Russia's offensive in Ukraine to protect itself. North Korea's state media said Thur

Arizona's Republican attorney general has asked a court to lift an injunction blocking the enforcement of a law that bans all abortions except when the life of the mother is at risk. The filing from Attorney General Mark Brnovich on Wednesday asks a court in Tucson to lift an order in place since shortly after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 1973's Roe V. Wade case that abortions are a constitutional right. The newly conservative high court overturned that decision last month, leaving it again to the states to decide how to regulate abortions. Arizona's near-total ban on abortions has been on the books since at least 1901, and Brnovich said with Roe overturned it should now be enforceable.

Texas Governor Greg Abbott has named Arun Agarwal, Indian American philanthropist and CEO of Dallas-based home textile company NEXTT, to the Texas Economic Development Corporation's (TxEDC's) Board of Directors. Governor Abbott tapped Agarwal, along with eight other Texas executives, to market the state nationally and globally to relocate a business and create new jobs. "Their efforts will be instrumental in amplifying the success of TxEDC in promoting Texas as a premier business destination," Abbott said in a statement. Apart from textiles, Agarwal also has business interests in cotton trading and real estate. Additionally, he is a board member of the U.S. India Friendship Council, Executive Board UT Dallas, Texas Tech Innovation HUB at Research Park, Big Brothers Big Sisters International and MD Anderson Board of Visitors.

Sri Lankan President Gotabaya Rajapaksa who fled to Maldives on Wednesday followed by an uprising triggered due to the economic collapse of the island nation, is now waiting to travel further to Singapore. Sri Lankan Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe, who is now an acting president, has declared a state of emergency in the country and a curfew in the Western province had been imposed. President Gotabaya Rajapaksa has not departed for Singapore on the scheduled Singapore Airlines flight from Male to Singapore, the Daily Mirror reported. Rajapaksa along with his wife Ioma Rajapaksa and two security officers were expected to leave for Singapore on board SQ437 from Male to Singapore tonight but did not board the aircraft due to security issues, Daily Mirror added citing sources. Moreover, securing a private aircraft for the embattled President is currently in talks, Maldivian Media reported. President Gotabaya Rajapaksa and his wife along with two bodyguards from Katunayake International Airport travelled to the Maldives after full approval of the country's Defense Ministry on Wednesday. An Air Force flight was given early in the morning on 13th July 2022.

Nepal's Parliament on Wednesday passed the country’s first Citizenship Amendment Bill, which was under discussion for more than two years as political parties failed to forge a consensus on it. The bill has been under discussion in the House of Representatives since 2020, but it failed to be endorsed due to differences among the political parties over certain provisions, namely the seven-year waiting period for obtaining naturalised citizenship for foreign women married to Nepali men. In the meeting of the lower house of Parliament or the House of Representatives on Wednesday, Home Minister Bal Krishna Khand presented Nepal’s first Citizenship Amendment Bill 2022 before the lawmakers, and said that the bill has been tabled in parliament to amend the Nepal Citizenship Act 2006 and make provisions for providing citizenship as directed by the Constitution.

The U.S. is getting another COVID-19 vaccine choice as the Food and Drug Administration on Wednesday cleared Novavax shots for adults. Novavax makes a more traditional type of shot than the three other COVID-19 vaccines available for use in the U.S. -- and one that's already available in Europe and multiple other countries. Nearly a quarter of American adults still haven't gotten their primary vaccinations even this late in the pandemic, and experts expect at least some of them to roll up their sleeves for a more conventional option — a protein-based vaccine.

The U.N. Security Council postponed Wednesday's vote on extending the U.N. political mission in Haiti after China called for closed consultations on the proposed resolution. China has no diplomatic relations with Haiti, which is the Western Hemisphere's poorest country and is being wracked by an increase in gang-related violence, with kidnappings and killings on the rise. Russia's deputy U.N. ambassador, Dmitry Polyansky, said after the meeting that “everybody's very much preoccupied, and we think that we need to do more.” The question is “what to do in practical terms,” he said. The United States and Mexico, which are in charge of drafting the resolution, will make some changes to the text.

Singapore reported 16,870 new COVID-19 cases –15,978 local infections and 892 imported cases – and three deaths as of Wednesday noon. "The increase in the number of cases today is due to the spike we typically see following a long weekend. The seven-day moving average number of local cases has remained stable over the past week, at about 8,400," the Ministry of Health (MOH) said on its website. Among the local cases reported on Wednesday, 15,072 people tested positive in the Antigen Rapid Tests (ARTs) and were assessed by doctors to have mild symptoms. They were of low risk, the MOH said. The remaining 906 local COVID-19 cases were confirmed via Polymerase Chain Reaction (PCR) tests.