The first Indian Airforce flight C-17 carrying 156 persons, who were evacuated from war-torn South Sudan’s capital city Juba, arrived in Thiruvananthapuram on Friday.
The evacuees also included two Nepali citizens, besides nine women and three children.
The passengers from Kerala and some from Tamil Nadu disembarked after a brief halt in Thiruvananthapuram before leaving for Delhi.
Minister of State for External Affairs, V K Singh, who accompanied the passengers, told reporters at the airport that 156 persons have been evacuated, of whom two are from Nepal.
There are over 550 Indians at Juba and another 150 in areas where the oil wells are located.
“When we landed, 156 came out with us. There were 30-40 people who had already booked their tickets when the commercial flights started and 300 people did not want to be evacuated due to their business concerns and other activities. There are 9 women and three children among those evacuated,” Singh said.
On those who turned down the government’s plea to be evacuated, Singh said, “we tried to convince them. I suppose business comes first, life comes later (for them)..”
“After fighting broke out in Juba and its outskirts, our aim was to evacuate our people who were in danger. As per our information, there were 550 plus people in Juba itself with another 150 indians in areas where the oil wells are there..,” he added.
The evacuation exercise faced a hurdle when several Indians, after registering with the External Affairs Ministry for leaving South Sudan, refused to return, despite an appeal by External affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj on Twitter asking them to move out.
Singh said he had met Vice President of Sudan who spoke of the situation out there.
The C-17 aircraft was brought via Uganda and the minister also met the Ugandan Prime minister Ruhakana Rugunda who on his part assured of all help.
South Sudan is witnessing heavy fighting between former rebels and government soldiers in several parts of the city.
State Power minister, Kadakkampally Surendran, Thiruvananthapuram district collector, Biju Prabhakar, were among those who received the travel weary passengers when they arrivedin Thiruvananthapuram.

Athens – The bodies of four migrants – including two children – were pulled from the Aegean Sea on Wednesday after their boat sank off the Greek island of Lesbos, port police said.

Coastguard rescuers saved six other migrants, while another person is still missing from the group of 11 that set off for Greece from the Turkish coast.
The dead included “a four-year-old girl and boy of an unknown age, as well as a man and woman,” a police official told AFP.

Though some migrants continue to arrive by sea, a controversial deal between the European Union and Turkey that came into force in March has largely halted the influx of people fleeing war and poverty, mainly from the Middle East and Africa.

Lesbos and other eastern Aegean islands last year were the gateway into Europe for a migration wave unseen since World War II.

Some 2,900 migrants have died or gone missing in the Mediterranean since the start of the year, compared with about 1,900 for the same period in 2015, according to International Organization for Migration figures.

More than two dozen people were sickened in an apparent mass drug overdose on a New York City street corner, sparking warnings from police and health officials about the dangers of using K2, also known as synthetic marijuana.

Calls started coming in Tuesday morning that numerous people appeared to be overdosing in the Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood of Brooklyn. Witnesses reported seeing victims lying on the sidewalk, shaking and leaning against trees and fire hydrants.

Thirty-three people were taken to area hospitals with non-life-threatening injuries, police said. It was not immediately clear what drugs the victims had ingested, but police said some of the victims had been smoking K2.

Dennis Gonzalez of Bushwick told WNBC-TV that K2 use in that part of Brooklyn is out of control.

“It’s gotten out of hand,” Gonzalez said. “They even sleep in the street, we have to walk around them. It’s just too much to keep under control.”

The Health Department issued a statement Tuesday saying it “recorded a spike in K2-related emergency room visits” connected to the incident in Brooklyn. The department said it’s investigating and monitoring emergency rooms across the city.

“We remind New Yorkers that K2 is extremely dangerous,” the Health Department said in its statement. “The city’s public awareness efforts and aggressive enforcement actions over the past year have contributed to a significant decline in ER visits related to K2.”

Though K2 affects the same area of the brain as marijuana, it contains chemicals made in laboratories and sprayed onto dry leaves. These chemicals are not derived from the marijuana plant, according to the Health Department.

K2 can cause extreme anxiety, confusion, paranoia, hallucinations, rapid heart rate, vomiting, fainting, kidney failure and reduced blood supply to the heart.

The production and sale of the drug was outlawed in New York City in October 2015.

The Jammu and Kashmir government has sought services of eye surgeons for treating dozens of youth who are in danger of losing their eyesight after getting hit by pellets during protests over the past five days in the Valley.
“A specialised team of surgeons from New Delhi and other parts of the country are being rushed to Kashmir to take care of the persons injured in ongoing law and order situation and needing super-specialty care,” an official spokesman said.
He said Chief Minister Mehbooba Mufti spoke to Health Minister J P Nadda this morning and requested him to send a specialised team of doctors, including retina surgeons, to Kashmir to take care of the injured who have suffered ophthalmic and other trauma.
Ads by ZINC

“We are expecting these specialised doctors to arrive here today and get down to the job immediately,” the spokesman said.
He said on the instructions of the Chief Minister, the government is also facilitating shifting of any injured person outside the state, who needs super-specialised treatment in case it is not available locally.
The SMHS hospital here alone has received more than 100 cases of eye injuries due to pellet guns fired by security forces in the clashes following killing of Hibzul Mujahideen commander Burhan Wani in an encounter last Friday.
According to doctors at SMHS hospital, 107 cases of eye injuries have been reported since Saturday at the hospital.
“As many as 87 surgeries have been carried out on these patients. Out of these, eyesight of 40 patients has been restored while we are monitoring other patients,” a doctor said.
He said three of the injured persons have lost their eyesight due to pellet injuries and among the injured are three girls, including a nine-year-old. PTI

The Zakir Naik issue has sparked a debate among Muslims, creating a “vertical division” in the community on whether his preachings are right or wrong, and this “unwarranted” development may lead to law and problems, says Abid Rasool Khan, Chairman of State Minorities Commission, serving Telangana and Andhra Pradesh.
He said the Muslim community on Wednesday has two views on Naik, with half of them saying his preachings are right and the rest contending he is wrong.
The controversial Islamic preacher, whose speeches allegedly inspired some of the militants involved in the Dhaka carnage, is currently facing multiple probes.

China today escalated its condemnation of the ruling by a UN-backed tribunal that struck down its “historical rights” over the South China Sea, issuing a “white paper” that asserted its claims over the strategic region and accused the Philippines of illegally occupying its territory.

The White Paper said the core of the relevant disputes between China and the Philippines in the South China Sea lies in the territorial issues caused by the Philippines’ invasion and illegal occupation, starting in the 1970s, of some islands and reefs of China’s Nansha Qundao (the Nansha Islands).

“The Philippines has concocted many excuses to cover up this fact, and to pursue its territorial pretencions,” said the document, titled ‘China Adheres to the Position of Settling Through Negotiation the Relevant Disputes Between China and the Philippines in the South China Sea.’

The Philippines’ relevant claim is groundless from the perspectives of either history or international law, said the white paper issued by the State Council Information Office.

The document asserted that China has claims over the South China Sea for 2,000 years and the Philippines, which had filed the petition before the Permanent Court of Arbitration in the Hague, was occupying Chinese territory.

It attacked the Philippines for turning “a blind eye to bilateral consensus”, saying Manila has repeatedly taken moves that complicate the relevant disputes, gradually intensified them between China and the Philippines in the South China Sea.

In a major diplomatic blow to China, the tribunal working under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) struck down the Communist giant’s claims in the strategic waters yesterday.

The Hague-based court said China violated the Philippines’ sovereign rights. It said China has caused “severe harm to the coral reef environment” by building artificial islands.

China has often accused the US for fomenting trouble in the South China Sea, through which USD 3 trillion of trade passes annually and where Vietnam, the Philippines, Malaysia, Brunei and Taiwan have rival claims to the waters.

The white paper said with the development of the international law of the sea, a maritime delimitation dispute also arose between China and the Philippines regarding certain maritime areas of the South China Sea.

The Philippines built military facilities on some islands and reefs of China’s Nansha Qundao (the Nansha Islands/Spratly islands) it invaded and illegally occupied and deliberately destroyed survey markers set up by China, it said adding that Manila attempted to illegally occupy China’s Ren’ai Jiao by using a military vessel illegally run around it.PTI

Rio-bound Indian sprinter Dutee Chand today said she is working hard to improve her speed endurance so that she doesn’t taper off in the last 40 metres of the 100m event during next month’s Olympics.

“I am too good in first 60 meters, but my speeds slows down in the last 40 meters dash. I agree. I have to improve on my speed endurance, and I am working on it. Ramesh sir is giving lot of attention on it and I am also reciprocating it,” she told reporters.

Dutee became the first Indian woman athlete in 36 years to qualify for 100 metres race in an Olympics after legendary P T Usha competed in the blue-riband event in the 1980 Moscow Games.

Asked whether she is better placed than Usha to win an Olympic medal, Dutee said it is not easy because the level of performances of athletes have improved over the years.

“It is not easy to win the medal because times have changed, and there is a lot of competition, besides athletes’ performances have been improving over the years,” she said.

Dutee said her rivalry with Kazakhstan’s Viktoriya Zyabkina, a semifinalist at World championship in Beijing last year, at the Kosanov memorial athletics meet in Kazakhstan, has done a world of good to her ahead of the mega event.

“I did not face any competition from any sprinter in India. Running against Viktoriya has helped me a lot,” she said.

N Ramesh, coach of Dutee, praised the Odisha sprinter, saying she has the fighting spirit of a lioness, which stems from the hardships she faced in various stages of life, including the harsh ban imposed on her for having higher level of testosterone than was permissible in a woman athlete.

“She is like a lioness. The good the competition, the better is her performance. She has been bettering her performance from the junior level till the international competition where she qualified for Rio Olympics.

“That is her range. So, wherever she goes she fights like a lioness,” Ramesh told reporters.

Ramesh was in the city along with Dutee to attend meet-the-press event held by Kalinga Institute of Industrial Technology and Kalinga Institute of Social Sciences here.PTI