New Delhi, Aug 24 (IANS) Col. Pushpender Singh (retd), one of the three ex-servicemen on a fast-unto-death here on the One Rank One Pension issue, was on Monday rushed to hospital after his health deteriorated on the eighth day of the indefinite fast.
United Ex-Servicement Front spokesman Col. Anil Kaul (retd) told IANS that the armed force veteran was taken to Rockland hospital in south Delhi.
Retired Havildar Tej Singh replaced Col. Pushpender Singh. The health of the other two veterans, Major Singh and Ashok Kumar Chauhan, both retired havildars, is fine, Col. Kaul added.

Kathua (JK), Aug 24 (PTI) Police today arrested one person and recovered 280 kilogram of a rare banned medicinal herb Nag Chatri from his possession at Lakhanpur inter-state toll plaza.

“A joint team of police, excise and forest department Lakhanpur seized 280 kilograms of rare forest herb Nag Chatri from a truck during checking at Lakhanpur toll plaza today and arrested Sabzar Ahmed of Bijbehara in South Kashmir”, a police officer said.

Acting on a tip-off, the truck which was on its way to Delhi from Kashmir was subjected to checking and 280 kg of Nag Chatri packed in gunny bags was recovered, Deputy Commissioner of Excise at Lakhanpur toll post, Rajesh Sharma said.

A case has been registered in this regard and investigation is underway, he said.

A UN tribunal on Monday asked both India and Italy to “suspend” all court proceedings involving two Italian marines charged with killing of two Indian fishermen in 2012 and also refrain from initiating new ones that might “aggravate or extend” the dispute.

Hearing Italy’s appeal in the case, the President of the International Tribunal on Law of the Sea (ITLOS), Vladimir Golitsyn asked the two countries to submit the initial report in the entire incident by September 24.

The judge said pending a decision by the arbitral tribunal, “Italy and India shall both suspend all court proceedings and shall refrain from initiating new ones which might aggravate or extend the dispute submitted to the…
arbitral tribunal or might jeopardise or prejudice the carrying out of any decision which the arbitral tribunal may render.”

He further said, “Italy and India shall each submit to the Tribunal the initial report…not later than 24 September 2015, and authorises the President, after that date, to request such information from the Parties as he may consider appropriate.”

The 21-member UN-mandated court located in this German city issued the order with 15 in favour and six against. Unhappy over India’s handling of the marine’s issue, Italy took the matter to the ITLOS challenging Indian jurisdiction in the case.

It has pleaded that India must cease to exercise any form of jurisdiction over the Enrica Lexie Incident and the Italian Marines, including any measure of restraint with respect to Sergeant Latorre and Sergeant Girone.

The two marines, who were on board ship ‘Enrica Lexie’, are accused of killing two Indian fishermen on February 15, 2012 off the Kerala coast. ITLOS is an independent judicial body established by the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Seas to adjudicate disputes arising out of the interpretation and application of the Convention.

JAMMU: India and Pakistan must hold their dialogue in a neutral country, former Jammu and Kashmir chief minister Farooq Abdullah said on Sunday after the collapse of the NSA-level talks.

“I think the way forward is they can’t talk in this country or in Pakistan. They have to find another third neutral country where they can talk,” the National Conference leader told the media.

“Otherwise I don’t see there is going to be ever any breakthrough between these two countries,” he said.

Islamabad on Saturday axed the talks between the Indian and Pakistani national security advisers after New Delhi strongly opposed to any meeting by the visiting Pakistani officials with Kashmiri separatists.

The former chief minister also said Pakistan needed to realise how terrorism was affecting it.

He said everybody was hoping that something better would come out of the NSA talks in New Delhi and bombing on the Kashmir border would stop.

“I think Pakistan does not realise that how terrorism is eating its own land.

“Every day they also have incidents where lots of people die. If they do not want to stop terrorism, India cannot help,” Abdullah added.

Mahoba (UP), Aug 21 (PTI) Taking suo motu congnisance of his recent remarks on rape, a local court has summoned Samajwadi Party supremo Mulayam Singh Yadav on September 16.

Civil Judge (Junior Division) of Kulpahad Tehsil Ankit Goel took congisance of Yadav’s statement on rape on August 18 in Lucknow, where he had said while one man commits rape, four are named to “settle scores” and that rape by four persons was not “practical”.

The SP supremo had said there were instances where only one person committed rape but the victim named four people merely to “settle scores”.

The summons have been issued under sections 3 and 4 of Indecent Representation of Women (Prohibition) Act, 1956 and under IPC sections 504 (intentional insult with intent to provoke breach of the peace), 505 (statements conducing to public mischief), 509 (word, gesture or act intended to insult the modesty of a woman), 116 (abetment of offence punishable with imprisonment).

New Delhi, Aug 21 (PTI) After a long “dormancy”, the country’s investment cycle is showing signs of recovery and to sustain this trend the government needs to step in as “investor and enabler”, a Standard Chartered report said today.

“Our analysis of the recent Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy (CMIE) data, shows initial signs of recovery, particularly in infrastructure investment, after years of dormancy,” Standard Chartered said in a research note adding that “we expect the investment cycle to recover in FY16, albeit at a gradual pace.”

According to the global financial services major, an investment recovery seems to have begun as investment remained on an upward trend in the first quarter of this fiscal year.

The global brokerage said reviving the investment cycle is crucial to put India’s growth on a higher and more sustainable trajectory and in order to support the recovery, government has to play the “dual role of investor and enabler”.

The government is driving the current investment recovery, while private-sector investment remains soft, it said.

The report noted that recovery in private-sector investment will be gradual and halting given high corporate -sector leverage, a weak banking sector, and low capacity utilisation in sectors to which the private sector has high exposure.

“Since these issues will take time to resolve, a pick-up in private-sector investment is still two to four quarters away, in our view. We expect India’s investment growth to improve to 7.2 per cent in FY16 from 4.6 per cent in FY15,” the report said.

As per the report, land acquisition hurdles, lack of funding, weak and environmental clearances are key bottlenecks to investment.

“The impact of global developments on domestic investment also needs to be monitored. The recent sharp decline in global metal prices, for example, is likely to curb private-sector investment in the metal sector, delaying its recovery,” the report added.

WARSAW, Poland: Two men in Poland claim they have found a legendary Nazi train that according to local lore was loaded with gold, gems and valuable art and vanished into a system of secret tunnels as the Germans fled advancing Soviet forces at the end of World War II.

Historians say the existence of the train has never been conclusively proven, but authorities are not passing up this chance at possibly recovering treasures that have sparked the imaginations of local people for decades.

“We believe that a train has been found. We are taking this seriously,” Marika Tokarska, an official in the southwestern Polish district of Walbrzych, told The Associated Press on Thursday.

She said her office has received two letters this month from a law firm representing the men, a Pole and a German who are remaining anonymous, saying they are seeking 10 percent of the value of the train’s contents for revealing its location.

She says that hiring a law firm gives credibility to the two men’s claims, as do indications that they are familiar with the train’s contents.

Already, the district governor has convened a meeting of firefighters, police and others to explore how they can safely handle the train if it is located. Not only could it be armed with explosives, but methane gas underground could add to the risk of an explosion.

“It could be dangerous,” Tokarska said.

The train is said to have gone missing in May 1945. Legend says it was armed and loaded with treasure and disappeared after entering a complex of tunnels under the Owl Mountains, a secret project known as “Riese” — or Giant — which the Nazis never finished. At the time the area belonged to Germany but now lies in Poland.

A Pakistani-American girl, Amna Farooqi, who is a senior at the University of Maryland has been elected as president of the national student board of a pro-Israeli group called J Street U.

The girl was elected as the president during the group’s ‘Summer Leadership Institute’ in Washington. The four-day event was attended by around 120 U student leaders. The group consisits of 4,000 active participants from almost 75 campuses in the United States.

Talking about the Palestine-Israel conflict and how the issue personally affects her, Farooqi during the conference said, “Growing up in a household sympathetic to the Palestinian cause, the Palestine-Israel conflict was always the elephant in the room. This conflict evoked a level of anger and emotion in me, and I needed to learn more. Everything I was learning about the conflict made me not want to be pro-Israel. … As someone who wanted to contribute to ending this conflict I knew I needed to understand all sides.”

She also said that she “fell in love with Zionism” while taking up a course in college which dealth with issues in Israel. Further commenting obout Zionism she added, “ecause Zionism became about taking ownership over the story of one’s people. If Zionism is about owning your future, how can I not respect that?”

Amna Farooqi is a local resident of suburban Washington DC and has grown up in a ‘fairly religious Muslim home’ with several Jewish friends.

NEW DELHI: Exiled Bangladeshi author Taslima Nasreen’s visa was today extended for a year by the home ministry.

The decision has been taken following an intervention of home minister Rajnath Singh as Taslima has been requesting the Indian government to further extend her visa.

The 52-year-old writer’s visa was granted for a year with effect from July 23, a Home Ministry official said.

Reacting to the decision, Taslima told PTI that she was very happy even though she was expecting her visa to be extended by more than a year.

“Anyway, this is always a welcome news. I am yet to be officially conveyed (the government decision) and you are the one who broke the news to me,” she said.

Taslima, living in exile since she left Bangladesh in a cloak of secrecy in 1994 in the wake of threats to her by fundamentalist groups, was given a one-year visa by the government in 2014.

Taslima, a citizen of Sweden, has been getting Indian visa on a continuous basis since 2004.

She has also stayed in the US and Europe in the last two decades. However, on many occasions she had expressed her wish to live in India permanently, especially in Kolkata.

The writer had to leave Kolkata in 2007 following violent street protests by a section of Muslims against her works.

Taslima said if she is not able to stay on in India she will suffer from an “identity crisis” which will affect her writings and championing the cause of women’s rights.