A record 17,000 anti-Islamic protesters rallied for their tenth demonstration in as many weeks in eastern Germany, celebrating the rise of their far-right populist movement by singing Christmas carols.

Germany has for weeks grappled with the emergence of the “Patriotic Europeans Against the Islamisation of the Occident” or PEGIDA, whose ranks in the city of Dresden have swelled rapidly from just a few hundred in October.

About 4,500 counter-demonstrators marched through the city yesterday under the slogan “Dresden Nazi-free”, warning that there was no space for racism and xenophobia in the country that perpetrated the Holocaust.

Most PEGIDA followers insist they are not Nazis but patriots who worry about the “watering down” of their Christian-rooted culture and traditions. They often accuse mainstream political parties of betraying them and the media of lying.

Braving cold and wet weather, they gathered outside the historic Semperoper concert hall for their pre-Christmas recital. Police put their numbers at about 17,500, up from the previous high of 15,000 a week earlier.

The management of the opera house signalled its distaste by turning the building’s lights off and flying flags outside that read: “Open your eyes”, “Open your hearts”, “Open doors” and “Human dignity is sacrosanct”, the first line of the national constitution.

The Protestant bishop of Saxony state, Jochen Bohl, said the PEGIDA followers, by singing Christmas carols, were seeking “to exploit a Christian symbol and a Christian tradition” for political purposes, German news agency DPA reported.

Former German chancellor Gerhard Schroeder, of the centre-left Social Democrats, called for concerned citizens to launch a “rebellion of the decent” against the anti-foreigner movement, saying “that’s the kind of public reaction we need now”.

PEGIDA, born in a city that was part of communist East Germany until the fall of the Berlin Wall 25 years ago, has spawned copycat groups in western areas which have failed so far to attract similar crowds.

Smaller clone groups rallied yesterday in the western cities of Bonn, Kassel and Wuerzburg, but they only drew up to 200 followers each and were all vastly outnumbered by counter-demonstrations that drew 20,000 nationwide.

Police reported no major violence but said eight people were temporarily detained after confrontations in Kassel, reported DPA.

The biggest anti-PEGIDA march was held in the southern city of Munich, where at least 12,000 rallied under the banner “Make space — Refugees are welcome”.

Hyderabad: Three students were killed and 14 others, including an autorickshaw driver, sustained injuries when their three-wheeler collided with a school bus in Andhra Pradesh’s Nellore district on Monday, police said.

The accident occurred in Chilakur town of Nellore at 8.40 am when the autorickshaw carrying 15 students to the school collided head-on with a school bus which was on its way to pick up students, DSP B Srinivas said over phone.

“In the mishap, two children died while undergoing treatment at a hospital while three other students were seriously injured. Eleven others, including the auto-driver, sustained minor injuries,” the DSP said.

The deceased children were identified as D Vamsi. M Venkateshwarlu and Pavan, all aged 7 and students of second standard, another police officer said.

A probe was on into the mishap, police added.

State-owned CIL said that it is ready for the conciliation even as employees’ unions of the coal PSU have threatened to go on five-day strike beginning January 6.

“As and when the (notice of strike) is received, we shall go for conciliation process,” Coal India (CIL) said in a filing to BSE.

CIL said that it has learnt from the newspaper reports that four trade unions–Indian National Mineworkers Federation (INMFW), Hind Khadam Mazdoor Federation, AITUC-controlled Indian Mine Workers Federation and Bharatiya Mazdoor Sangh– have decided to go on strike from January 6-10.

However, CIL added that it has yet to receive an official notice from the unions.

Employee unions of state-owned CIL and SCCL had on December 17 threatened to go on strike.

The strike call comes at a time when the country is grappling with coal shortages and as many as 43 thermal power plants are facing significant fuel deficit.

The charter of demands include stopping or withdrawing “process of denationalisation of coal sector” and stopping “disinvestment, restructuring of CIL” (Coal India) among others.

The demands also includes extending National Coal Wage Agreement (NCWA) wages and other benefits to existing and prospective captive coal workers and lifting the ban on general recruitment.

Regularising contract workers engaged in mining jobs in underground as well as open cast mines is another demand.

Earlier, the proposed strike on November 24 by CIL employee unions was deferred after a meeting between Coal Ministry officials and trade unions.

As per latest data from the Central Electricity Authority (CEA), 43 thermal power plants had coal available for less than seven days as on December 18.

GUWAHATI, India (AP) — An explosion in the parking lot of a bus station early Sunday killed three people and wounded five others in India’s remote northeastern state, where several separatist groups operate, police said.
The homemade bomb went off in Imphal, the capital of Manipur state, killing three construction workers, said police Superintendent Ibomcha Singh.
Five other men were hospitalized.
No one has claimed responsibility for the blast.
Imphal is about 550 kilometers (340 miles) southeast of Guwahati, the biggest city in the region.
At least 17 separatist groups are active in Manipur state and often stage hit-and-run attacks on government forces. Their demands range from greater autonomy for the state to an independent homeland for the people of Manipur.

More than 30,000 suspects have been arrested in a two-month long crackdown on porn and gambling activities in China’s south Guangdong Province.
The province has so far arrested 3,014 people and more than 5,000 others were put under criminal detention in the campaign, the Guangdong Provincial Public Security Department said.
In one case, police cracked down an online gambling gang in Huizhou City on November 24.
The gambling activities involved funds totalling 30 million yuan, (USD five million), state-run Xinhua news agency reported on Sunday.
Police said they will continue to crack down on the illegal activities to prevent them from rebounding.
Earlier this year, police in the province had captured 3,033 suspects in a prostitution crackdown launched after a February media exposure of sex services offered at hotels in the city of Dongguan, which is notorious for its illegal sex trade.

STANBUL: A Turkish court on Friday remanded in custody the head of a national TV network and three ex-police officers on terrorism charges, in a case linked with a top foe of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan that has strained EU ties.

Prosecutors also asked an Istanbul court to issue an arrest warrant for Fethullah Gulen, a US-based Turkish cleric who Erdogan regards as his top enemy, also on terrorism charges.

Samanyolu TV chief Hidayet Karaca was placed under arrest on charges of forming a terrorist group, after being detained with over two dozen others in weekend raids on journalists, scriptwriters and police accused of plotting to overthrow Erdogan.

The court however ordered the release of Ekrem Dumanli, the editor-in-chief of the Zaman daily which has repeatedly accused Erdogan of running a corrupt regime and who was arrested in the same raids last Sunday.

Both the Zaman newspaper and the STV channel are linked to Gulen, a one-time ally of Erdogan whom the Turkish strongman has now vowed to crush without mercy.

Dumanli defiantly told hundreds of supporters outside the court after his release that “the press cannot be silenced, media will never succumb to intimidations”. Seven other suspects in the case were ordered released by the court in Istanbul while three more — all ex-police officers — were also remanded in custody.

Erdogan accuses Gulen of running a “parallel state” and being behind sensational corruption allegations against his inner circle that broke on December 17 last year.

According to Zaman’s website, Karaca raised his hands after the decision was announced and said: “No need to be worried, God helps”. “Just as this is an arrest order for a fictional scenario, this is a fictional ruling”.

Gulen, who is believed to have millions of followers in Turkey and runs private crammer schools around the world through his Hizmet (Service) group, has vehemently denied all the allegations against him.

The prosecutors asked the court for the warrant to arrest Gulen for leading a “criminal” group acting against the “rules and laws in media, economy and bureaucracy,” the state Anatolia news agency reported.

According to a copy of the request published in Turkish media, Gulen is charged with setting up and directing an “armed terrorist organisation” as well as using intimidation to deprive a person of their freedom.

The United States has so far paid little attention to repeated requests from Turkey for Gulen’s extradition from his secluded compound in the state of Pennsylvania.

LONDON: Mandy Rice-Davies, a model implicated in the Profumo affair that scandalised 1960s Britain and almost brought down the government, has died of cancer at the age of 70, a spokesman said on Friday.
Allegations by Rice-Davies, who became known by her married name Marilyn Foreman, were part of a wave of lurid disclosures that threatened Harold Macmillan’s Conservative administration in 1963.
“It is with deep sadness that the family of Marilyn Foreman, also known as Mandy Rice-Davies, have confirmed that she passed away yesterday evening,” a spokesman for the Hackford Jones PR agency said.
The nightclub dancer was friends with the main figure in the scandal Christine Keeler, who was alleged to be sleeping with British Secretary of State for War John Profumo and a Russian defence attache.

GUWAHATI, India (AP) — An explosion in the parking lot of a bus station early Sunday killed three people and wounded five others in India’s remote northeastern state, where several separatist groups operate, police said.

The homemade bomb went off in Imphal, the capital of Manipur state, killing three construction workers, said police Superintendent Ibomcha Singh.

Five other men were hospitalized.

No one has claimed responsibility for the blast.

Imphal is about 550 kilometers (340 miles) southeast of Guwahati, the biggest city in the region.

At least 17 separatist groups are active in Manipur state and often stage hit-and-run attacks on government forces. Their demands range from greater autonomy for the state to an independent homeland for the people of Manipur.

An “alarming” number of pre-school children are being prescribed drugs to treat hyperactivity – contrary to medical guidelines that say they should not be used on children under six – because overstretched health workers go straight to medication rather than offering psychological interventions.

More than a fifth of educational psychologists say they know of preschool children who are being given medication such as Ritalin even though the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (Nice) recommends psychological interventions should be tried first.

The survey, which aimed to investigate the medicalisation of childhood behaviour, also found there was an “intolerance of difference”, so children not conforming to the norm were increasingly being seen as having something wrong with them.

One educational psychologist who took part in the study, which was carried out by the University College London Institute of Education (IoE) and the British Psychological Society, wrote: “Our biggest difficulty is that children’s and adolescent mental health services and paediatric teams are so short-staffed they go straight to medication and completely ignore Nice guidance.”

Ritalin, which is the most commonly used trade name for methylphenidate, is a central nervous system stimulant used to treat attention deficit disorder (ADD) and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD).

The Nice guidelines, which were amended in 2013, state: “Parent-training/ education programmes are the first-line treatment for parents or carers of pre-school children … Drug treatment is not recommended for pre-school children with ADHD.”

The findings are part of a survey of 136 educational psychologists from 70 local authorities across the UK, seeking their views on the assessment, diagnosis and treatment of ADHD.

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The report found that medication was seen as the main solution in the treatment of ADHD. “Medication was felt to be the predominant form of treatment for ADHD despite Nice guidelines that psychological interventions should be implemented first,” the report said.

“Multiple systemic factors” were creating a “pressure for increasing rates of diagnosis and medication”.

The survey, which will be formally published next year, said there was an “urgent need to examine local policies regarding the effective prevention and intervention in cases of pre-school behavioural, emotional and social difficulties”.

Vivian Hill, director of professional educational psychology training at the IoE, who conducted the research with Horatio Turner of UCL, said: “It is very alarming to discover that terribly young children who often have not had access to alternative treatments are being put on medication.

“It is almost certainly to do with the fact that the whole of children’s mental health services is incredibly underfunded. It’s quick and easy – one off the waiting list, one intervention in place.

“To work with a child or a young person and their family over time is much more costly, but much safer and likely to have much better results. Medication has a short-term impact. It will not make the difference long-term.”

Educational psychologists who took part in the survey said “intolerance of difference” affected the way adults viewed children’s learning and behaviour. One wrote: “There is an increasingly prevalent view in society that people who do not fit a particular environment must have something wrong with them.”

The report said “within-child” factors were emphasised too often, rather than environmental factors, “due to families and schools wishing to abdicate responsibility for children’s behaviour and systemic failings in current diagnostic procedures”. One participant said: “It’s an easy explanation, which is convenient and comforting and absolves everyone of blame by locating the problem within the child.”

Educational psychologists said they were frustrated by factors that limited their ability to care effectively for children with ADHD. “Usually when [we] get involved the die is cast and is predominantly problem-focused, so much so that the only perceivable solution is medication,” one wrote.

The report concluded that educational psychologists should be involved in developing a broader understanding of contextual perspectives of ADHD among families and recommended establishing a multi-agency approach for its assessment and treatment.

One EP said: “My local authority has a behaviour pathway that includes ADHD.” Following its introduction one of the survey participants said that behavioural observation by an educational psychologist led to a significant fall in the diagnosis and medication of ADHD.

A Department of Health spokesman said: “Prescribing decisions are for doctors to make, but there are clear independent guidelines for the treatment of ADHD, which only recommend the use of drugs in severe cases and as part of a comprehensive treatment plan.

“Children’s mental health is a key priority, which is why we’ve formed a taskforce to look at how we can provide the best possible care and have invested £54m in improving access to psychological treatments.”