Cabinet okays 50 percent quota for women in panchayats

Moving to empower women at the grassroots level, the Government today approved a proposal to raise reservation for them in panchayats to 50%.

The Cabinet approved a proposal for a Constitutional Amendment Bill for enhancing reservation for women in panchayats at all tiers from one-third to at least 50%. This provision will apply to the total number of seats filled by direct election, offices of chairpersons and seats reserved for SCs and STs.

As of now, women constitute only 36.87% of the total 28.18 lakh elected panchayat representatives. With the Cabinet clearance today, the Ministry of Panchayati Raj will now move a Bill to amend Article 243D of the Constitution.

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Fan stabbed as violence hits English Cup tie

Fan was stabbed during large-scale violence before West Ham met Millwall on Tuesday while the English League Cup match was interrupted by several pitch invasions.

Metropolitan Police said hundreds of fans were involved in the disorder before the game between the London neighbours at Upton Park. One man, said to be aged 44, was stabbed close to the stadium and taken to a hospital. Police said he was in a stable condition.

The violence was condemned by the Football Association. “We absolutely condemn all of the disorder that has occurred at Upton Park this evening both inside and outside of the ground,” the FA said in a statement.

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Lankan striker eyes I-League

His numbers are comparable to Bhaichung Bhutia's, and even better, but Sri Lanka's Etire Bandanage Channa likes keeping a low profile. The veteran of 102 internationals with 49 goals concedes his opponents were not half as good as Bhutia's and that teams like Bhutan and Pakistan have been his most frequent targets. But what transpires from the conversation is the striker's desire to play for an Indian club.

"I think India have had the best set up for football among the SAARC countries over the last decade and this is one place I would love to play in. The players are kept better and paid better and we can't think of those facilities back home. We used to play at the Galle national stadium and now it's available exclusively for cricket. I had to leave Sri Lanka and fly to Maldives to keep playing," Channa says.

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Shourie dares: RSS must rebuild BJP, Rajnath is Alice in Blunderland

Days after the expulsion of Jaswant Singh highlighted the crisis in the BJP, the party’s beleagured leadership came under an unprecedented, no-holds-barred attack launched by its senior leader Arun Shourie today.

Urging the RSS to step in and revamp the party, including replacing the entire top brass with fresh blood from states, Shourie hit out at party president Rajnath Singh calling him an “Alice in Blunderland.”

In an unusually candid interview to The Indian Express Editor-in-Chief Shekhar Gupta on NDTV’s Walk The Talk today, Shourie said: “The BJP today is like a kati patang (kite without a string). Unless it’s got hold of swiftly...I don’t see people within the party who now have such authority....

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Ashes urn returns home

England regained the Ashes beating Australia by 197 runs on Sunday to take the five-match series 2-1.

Michael Hussey was the last man out after tea at The Oval, caught for 121 by Alastair Cook off Graeme Swann as Australia were dismissed for 348 on the fourth day of the fifth Test, falling well short of the 546 target set by England. Swann claimed 4/120 and Steve Harmison picked up 3/54 but it were two run outs in six balls -- including that of captain Ricky Ponting -- that put England on way to victory and sent all-rounder Andrew Flintoff into Test retirement as a winner.

The defeat also meant that Ponting became only the second Australia captain in 132 years of Ashes history to lose two consecutive series on England soil.

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Two years in prison, top Hizbul man walks free, red faces in Jammu and Kashmir

In a setback for security forces in the Valley, Nisar Ahmad Bhat alias Gazi Misbah-ud-din, Hizbul Mujahideen chief commander of operations, has been released on bail by a court in Anantnag after being in jail for more than two years. He was allowed to walk out of the court itself where he was handed over to his lawyer.

"He was bailed out by the honourable court which directed the police party accompanying him to remove his handcuffs and hand him over to his lawyer in court," a J&K Police spokesman said. Sources said the police are conducting an inquiry why Bhat was allowed to leave immediately after he was bailed out.

Before he became the outfit's chief operations commander, Bhat, while in Pakistan, had been the driver of Hizbul Mujahideen supreme commander Syed Salahuddin.

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Baghdad bombings kill 95, wound over 500

AT least 95 people were killed and 563 wounded in a series of truck bombings and other attacks on Wednesday that rocked areas around official buildings in central Baghdad, the Interior Ministry said.

Taken together, the attacks were among the most devastating in Baghdad since the withdrawal of American forces from street patrols at the end of June.

The explosions, at least one of them close to the heavily fortified Green Zone security area, sent plumes of dark smoke billowing over the capital, ripped a gaping hole in a compound wall and set cars ablaze, trapping drivers inside.

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To revive interest in Tests,Sachin has an idea: Free one stand for school kids

Since India's win in the Twenty20 World Cup in South Africa two years ago, the impact of the game's shortest version has sparked off a debate on the future of Test cricket. This was one of the main topics on Tuesday during a discussion on `Cricket in Changing Times', which followed the launch of Out of the Box -- Watching the Game We Love, a compilation of Harsha Bhogle's columns in The Indian Express.

At a function attended by luminaries from different sports and walks of life--including the cream of Mumbai's cricket fraternity, former hockey skipper Dhanraj Pillay, former world billiards champion Michael Ferreira, and Oscar winner Resul Pookutty -Bhogle presented the first copy of the book to Sachin Tendulkar.

The panelists -- Bhogle, former cricketer and commentator Sanjay Manjrekar, Editor-in-Chief of IBN18 Network Rajdeep Sardesai, and Indian Premier League (IPL) Commissioner Lalit Modi -- then had a lively debate about the emergence of T20, about how cricket is written and reported these days, and how other sports in the country can be revived.

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FTA India, ASEAN ink comprehensive trade pact

India and 10-country bloc ASEAN today signed a free trade agreement after more than six years of negotiations. The FTA will eliminate tariffs on products including electronics, chemicals, capital goods and textiles, that account for more than 80 per cent of total trade in goods between the two sides. Tariffs on these products will be reduced to zero between 2013 and 2016.

Agreement on trade under the comprehensive economic cooperation plan was signed by Commerce and Industry Minister Anand Sharma with ASEAN economic ministers. "The agreement with ASEAN is well-balanced and is in harmony with India's Look East policy," Sharma said after the signing ceremony.

The Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) groups Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam.

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Islamabad admits Fahim Ansari went to Pakistan on its fake passport 26/11

Pakistan has, for the first time, confirmed the role of one of the two Indians charged in the 26/11 Mumbai terror attacks although only partially.

In its dossier given to New Delhi on July 11, Islamabad has said that Mumbai-resident Fahim Ansari traveled to Pakistan in late 2007 using forged documents as accused by the Mumbai Police.

Ansari and Bihar's Sabahuddin Ahmed are alleged to be Indian operatives of Lashkar-e-Toiba and charged with surveying targets in Mumbai, making maps and videos and giving them to their Lashkar bosses in Pakistan to help guide the attackers who raided the city in November.

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Question lost in translation: Hillary snaps at student

Blame it on possible incorrect translation. US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton stunned her audience with a rare speck of public anger when she was provoked by a student by asking for her husband’s views.

“I will you tell you my opinion, I’m not going to channel my husband,” a visibly angry Secretary of State Hillary Clinton bluntly told the meeting on Monday in Kinshasa, capital of the Democratic Republic of Congo.

It happened as Clinton spoke to students at a Congolese university when a male student asked a question in French about Chinese financial contracts with Congo.

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Don’t have capability or intention to match China force for force: Navy chief

Admitting that India neither has the “capability nor the intention” to match China’s military strength, Chairman of Chiefs of Staff Committee and Navy chief Admiral Sureesh Mehta said here today that “common sense dictates” that India needs to cooperate with China rather than confront it.

“In military terms, both conventional and non-conventional, we neither have the capability nor the intention to match China, force for force. These are indeed sobering thoughts and therefore our strategy to deal with China would need to be in consonance with these realities,” Mehta said, delivering an address on National Security Challenges organized by the National Maritime Foundation.

In his address, perhaps his last in public as Navy chief he retires month end Mehta said: “Common sense dictates that cooperation with China would be preferable to competition or conflict,

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Separate wards, staff in Maharashtra private hospitals

As the swine flu toll in India rose to four on Sunday, the central government announced major policy decisions in the battle against the global pandemic.

Health Minister Ghulam Nabi Azad has asked the government of Maharashtra — where three of the deaths have occurred — to make it mandatory for all major private hospitals to isolate wards and designate and train staff to handle cases of H1N1 infection.

All big hospitals both private and government in Pune, Satara and Mumbai are required, with immediate effect, to assign separate halls or wards and special OPDs for patients suspected to have swine flu.

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Tamil Nadu first state to quarantine Maharashtra

With a Pune girl becoming the first H1N1 fatality in the country, Tamil Nadu has become the first state to issue a formal travel advisory, cautioning people against travel to the flu-hit districts of Maharashtra, and has made special arrangements at the Chennai railway station to screen passengers arriving on trains from Mumbai and other parts of the state. All trains from Maharashtra are being directed to Platform No. 1 at the Chennai Central.

Tamil Nadu Director of Public Health, S Elango, issued a travel advisory on Wednesday, urging people not to visit, unless absolutely essential, the districts of Pune and Satara in Maharashtra where the Epidemic Act has been invoked following the death of 14-year-old Reeda Shaikh on Monday.

Elango said the advisory was issued following a government review meeting over the H1N1 situation. The state government also invoked the Public Health Act of 1939, an amended form of the Epidemic Act.

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Pune in panic, Government to map each victim’s virus trail

Two days after the death of Reeda Sheikh, as another girl from her St Anne’s School, a Class X student, tested positive for the H1N1 virus on Wednesday, the District Collector called an urgent meeting of doctors and told them not to refer “any and every case of seasonal flu” to the already over-stretched Naidu Hospital.

Naidu Hospital and Aundh General Hospital are the two government establishments in the city designated to treat swine flu. Together, these have 50 beds — Naidu that started off with 20 having raised its capacity recently to 40 and Aundh, 10.

But given the panic after Reeda’s death and the number of cases already reported in the city, the government health department announced it will add another 200 beds exclusively for swine flu treatment in the next 15 days.

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Victim went to clinic with cold, may have got virus there: Government

Fourteen-year-old Reeda Shaikh, who on Monday became the country’s first H1N1 casualty, is suspected to have contracted swine flu at a clinic in Pune when she went to a general practitioner (GP) with a usual cough-and-cold complaint in the third week of July.

Before examining Reeda, this GP had attended to a patient who later tested positive for the H1N1 virus, according to a Union Health Ministry team in Pune.

Since Reeda had no history of travel to any flu-affected country nor any known contact diagnosed with the virus, the Ministry team, comprising an epidemiologist and a paediatrician, whittled down the possibilities to zero-in on the clinic visit.

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First India H1N1 death is girl in Pune

he H1N1 virus or swine flu claimed its first life in India when a 14-year-old girl died of multiple organ failure today at the Jehangir Hospital in Pune. She was a Class IX student of St Anne’s Girls High School in the city.

Three doctors and a nurse who had respiratory problems after the girl’s death were being treated with Oseltamivir while 85 hospital contacts had been put on prophylaxis and 31 contacts, including 11 family contacts, were on chemoprophylaxis.

The death raised concerns because until now experts had been calling the virus in India a mild strain capable only of a self-limiting form of the disease.

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Private airlines blink, call off strike

With the government talking tough and the regulator's deadline to comulator's deadline to comply with its directive getting nearer, private airlines tonight buckled under pressure and "put on hold" their decision to go on strike on August 18.

In a written statement, the Federation of Indian Airlines said that FIA secretary-general Anil Baijal had been able to impress upon private airlines, including IndiGo, to put on hold their decision to suspend flights on August 18.

Citing "agitated public sentiment", potential passenger inconvenience and government emphasis on a dialogue, the FIA said "constructive dialogue with Government will lead to redressal of the problems faced by the aviation industry."

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Searched by CBI days ago, IAS officer kills himself, family, son is critical

Senior IAS officer and Protector General of Emigrants in the Ministry of Overseas Affairs Jagadananda Panda shot four of his family members before killing himself at his ancestral home in Bargarh, Orissa.

The Central Bureau of Investigation had searched his office and residence on July 22 over an emigration scam in Chennai. The 53year-old Orissa-cadre officer, on Central deputation since 2006, shot his father Munshi (75), wife Surekha (46), elder sister Bijayalaxmi (57) and younger sister Kishori (44) before killing himself with a pistol at his home in Deogaon village at around 2 am on Friday.

Panda also tried to kill his son 22-year-old Swapneswar Panda, an engineering student, who is now battling for his life at a government hospital in Sambalpur.

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