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Uttarakhand administers 1st dose COVID-19 vaccine to 100% eligible population

fake coronavirus vaccines

Uttarakhand has become the fourth state to administer 100% of its eligible population with COVID-19 vaccine.

The other states that have achieved the feat are Himachal Pradesh, Goa and Sikkim along with Union Territories of Ladakh, Lakshadweep, Diu & Daman, and Dadra & Nagar Haveli.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi has congratulated the people of Devbhoomi for 100% first dose of Covid 19 vaccination for 18+ age group people. The Prime Minister has also said that this achievement of Uttarakhand is very important in the country’s fight against Covid-19.

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TN CM Stalin wishes for Milad-un-Nabi; didn’t wish for Ayudha Pooja, Vijayadasami

Tamil Nadu Chief Minister MK Stalin on Monday (October 18), extended his ‘heartfelt’ wishes to the ‘Muslim brotherhood’ on the occasion of Prophet Mohammad’s birthday Milad-un-Nabi.

In his wish CM Stalin said “I extend my heartfelt wishes to the Islamic community on the occasion of Milad-un-Nabi on behalf of the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam and its government formed by the ‘people’ which always has an affection to those who follow the path of the holy prophet.”

Just a few days before on October 14 and 15, Hindus across the world celebrated Ayudha Pooja and Vijayadasami on the respective days. However, CM Stalin did not extend his wishes for these festivals.

In August, when Hindus celebrated Vinayaka Chathurthi, he didn’t wish on that occasion too.

Know-it-all political commentator Sumanth C Raman took a jibe at CM Stalin selectively wishing for Milad-un-Nabi calling it as ‘true secularism’.

While it is one thing to stick to ‘rationalism’ and not wish for Hindus on their festivals as the President of DMK, it is expected that a Chief Minister who is supposed to be a leader for all acts without prejudice and bias.

Political observers and experts opine that by selectively wishing for only Muslims and Christians on their festivals and not extending privilege to Hindus, MK Stalin is violating his oath as Chief Minister.

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TNM’s Dhanya Rajendran makes distasteful remark on ‘Trishul’ weapon maker, deletes tweet later

Dhanya Rajendran, the Editor-in-Chief of digital news outlet The News Minute, made an absolutely distasteful remark on the Uttar Pradesh-based inventor who has made a non-lethal weapon named Trishul.

Noida-based start-up firm Apasteron Private Limited had been tasked by the Indian Armed Forces to come up with indigenous non-lethal weapons that can be used for combating Chinese forces who had used barbed clubs and tasers during the clash at Galwan Valley last year.

The company had developed ‘Trishul’, inspired by Lorsh Shiva’s three-headed spear and ‘Vajra’, a metal rod taser. The Trishul sends an electric shock and the spiked taser Vajra can be used for attacking enemy soldiers as well as puncture bullet-proof vehicles.

A video shared by ANI shows Chief Technology Officer of the company Mohit Kumar demonstrating the Trishul weapon in electric shock can be seen passing between the three heads causing a sound.

Reacting to this video, Dhanya Rajendran wrote on her Twitter “Sounds like he is farting. Oh, well!”.

 

This tweet has now been deleted.

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Indian Navy receives one more P-81 long-range maritime reconnaissance to keep eye on China

Indian Navy’s capability to defend our maritime interests and have a more robust presence in the Indian Ocean got bolstered when it received its eleventh P-8I long-range maritime reconnaissance and anti-submarine warfare aircraft from Boeing.

Just last week, four more Rafale fighters landed in the Indian Airforce base in Jamnagar Gujarat, increasing the number to 29.

The aircraft is part of the second batch of four P-8Is bought by the Indian Navy and it landed in Goa today (October 18) from Seattle in the United States.

India already has ten of these aircraft in service making the Indian Navy is the largest foreign customer of the P8 platform and one more is likely to be delivered this year and six more are being procured. India had recently used the P-81 in Ladakh for electronic surveillance.

Before that, the P-81 was used effectively during the 73-day-long Doklam standoff as the technology in aircraft was sending live data to support decision making during the Doklam face-off”.

Also, the P-81 aircraft was also put to use “to keep an eye on Pakistani troops movement after the Pulwama terror attack in 2019.

The P-8Is come equipped with the AN/APY-10 radar, which its maker Raytheon describes as a “maritime, littoral and overland surveillance radar”, capable of monitoring ground movement, and is fully capable of providing data in all weather conditions, both at night and day.

The plane is equipped with Synthetic Aperture and Inverse synthetic-aperture mode, the AN/APY-10 radar can penetrate through clouds and foliage to give detailed images of the surface below and images produced by the radar in these modes can give the size of structures on the surface, movement, and change which would allow senior commanders to make correct decisions and there are other features in the P8 that remain classified when it comes to enemy’s dispositions on the ground.

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Persecution of Bangladeshi Hindus by radical Islamists continues for fifth day

bangladeshi hindus
Featured Image Credits: India Today

This year’s Dussehra festivities were marred with gloom and tragedy for Bangladeshi Hindus, as the Hindu minority in Bangladesh faced brutal persecution by the majority Muslim population.

Muslim mobs targeted Durga Puja pandals and attacked devotees in multiple cities of the Muslim-majority country, after rumours spread that one of the pandals had desecrated the .

These attacks on Hindus also come on the backdrop of the 75th anniversary of the Noakhali riots.

The violence, which started on October 13, has only escalated in the past five days.

Muslim mobs are now targeting Hindu homes and temples.

At Nanua Dighi in Comilla on the evening of October 13, a Durga Puja pandal was attacked and the idol was thrown into a pond.

Temples in Chandpur’s Hajiganj, Chattogram’s Banshkhali, Chapainawabganj’s Shibganj and Cox’s Bazar’s Pekua were also vandalised. Hindu devotees attending the Durga Puja festivities iin the temples were beaten up.

18 crude bombs were recovered from the gate of a Hindu temple in Khulna district.

In Bangladesh’s Noakhali area, an ISKCON temple was vandalised and at least one man was lynched by a mob of 200 people.

Over 60 houses of the Hindu community were also torched at a village in Rangpur district on the night of Oct 16.

https://twitter.com/UnityCouncilBD/status/1449808782582853638

 

https://twitter.com/UnityCouncilBD/status/1449802606897999877

Although Bangladeshi paramilitary forces were deployed across the country on Oct 15, violence continues unabated.

At least four people have been confirmed to have died and more than 100 others are wounded in the violence so far.

https://twitter.com/UnityCouncilBD/status/1450005122101174272

The Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) and Jamaat-e-Islami are allegedly behind these attacks.

Protests were also held in front of the Bangladesh High Commission in Kolkata against the killings.

Hindus in Bangladesh have faced persecution ever since Partition. Once comprising 30-31% of the total population in East Bengal, their numbers whittled down to 8% in 2020.

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Sri Lanka asks India, and not China, for $500 million credit to purchase crude oil as financial situation worsens

Sri Lanka which is going through its worst foreign exchange crisis has asked India for a $500 million credit line from India to pay for its crude oil purchase.

The country’s state-owned Ceylon Petroleum Corporation (CPC) owes about $3.3 billion to its government banks, namely: People’s Bank and Bank of Ceylon.

Sri Lanka’s energy minister Udaya Gammanpila has given his nation a stark reminder that the current availability of fuel in the island nation can be guaranteed only until January 2022.

“We are currently engaged with the Indian High Commission here to obtain the facility (USD 500 million credit line) under the India-Sri Lanka economic partnership arrangement,” Sumith Wijesinghe, Chairman of the CPC, was quoted by the Financial Express.

If the negotiations are complete, the monies will be utilised for purchasing their requirements for petrol and diesel and Finance Secretary S R Attygalle informed that the energy secretaries of India and Sri Lanka are slated to sign an agreement for the loan soon.

To ensure there is no panic, the Lankan government has put a stop to the expected retail price hike of fuel though they increased the prices of cooking gas and other essentials last week.

It must be noted that Sri Lanka asked India for a line of credit and not China because of the latter’s predatory financial practice with the island nation in massive debt.

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Ali Harbi Ali, the Somali Muslim who killed Tory MP David Amess was inspired and radicalised by Anjem Choudary

Ali Harbi Ali, the Somali terror suspect accused of stabbing to death senior Conservative party Member of Parliament Sir David Amess to death has been pictured for the first time.

Sir David Amess was a veteran Conservative party and was brutally stabbed to death when he was meeting constituents at Southend West on Friday afternoon. 

Police and intelligence officials are saying that the murder of the Tory politician was singled out for attack by a suspected Islamist extremist. he may not have been had a specific motive for the targeting of Sir David his alleged killer had plotted to kill any national politician.

According to a report published in The Telegraph, a government insider told the paper, ‘He was unlucky. He was not targeted because of his political party. David Amess was not specifically targeted.’

However, former friends of Ali, a British national of Somali heritage claim he was radicalised after watching YouTube videos of convicted hate preacher Anjem Choudary who has recently completed his prison sentence and probation and now is free to preach his violent and intolerant form of Islam in the UK.

Anjem Choudary is one of the most influential and dangerous radicalisers in the UK and his followers included Michael Adebolajo, who murdered Fusilier Lee Rigby in South London.

But what is disturbing is that the 25-year-old had been referred to Prevent, the Government’s counter-terrorism programme, several years ago – but that his behaviour was not considered to be extreme enough to alert MI5. 

Now British security services have warned Ministers that Britain could face a wave of terrorist attacks carried out by ‘bedroom radicals’ – so-called ‘lone wolf’ terrorists who turned to extremism after spending months at home during the Covid lockdown. 

‘Counter-terror police and MI5 have been concerned for some time that once we emerged out of lockdown there would be more people out on the streets and more targets for the terrorists,’ one security source told The Telegraph.

But many in the UK believe that a time has come to stop people like Anjem Choudary from spewing hate. One of Ali’s friends had said, “He watched a lot of extreme videos including those posted by Choudary and his followers. Everyone used to say to him, But he’s a hate cleric and hates the West’ but he didn’t care. He became a huge fan. He admired Anjem, said he was right and his cause was right. It disgusted me. We were all very, very worried. He became totally radicalised through the internet and now he’s a suspect in something as evil as this. It’s horrendous.”

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India concerned about Bhutan-China ongoing border negotiations

India is keeping a very close eye on the agreement signed between Bhutan and China regarding a ‘three step roadmap’ to fast-track negotiations to resolve their boundary dispute.

“We have noted the signing of the Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) between Bhutan and China today,” Arindam Bagchi, official spokesperson of the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA), was quoted by The Indian Express.

Bagchi added, “You are aware that Bhutan and China have been holding boundary negotiations since 1984. India has similarly been holding boundary negotiations with China.”

The MoU between Bhutan and China speaks of implementing the roadmap in a spirit of goodwill, understanding and accommodation that will bring about a successful and acceptable conclusion to the boundary negotiations.

Bhutan and China share a 400-km long border and have conducted about 24 rounds of boundary talks to end the dispute. 

“The negotiations which have been conducted in a spirit of understanding and accommodation have been guided by the 1988 Joint Communique on the Guiding Principles for the Settlement of the Boundary and the 1998 agreement on the maintenance of peace, tranquillity and status quo in the Bhutan-China Border area,” the Bhutanese foreign ministry’s official statement was quoted in the report.

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Drunk DMK functionary creates ruckus at restaurant and hits worker with iron rod

In yet another incident of DMK office bearers attacking common people, a DMK functionary from Kodaikanal hit a restaurant owner with a iron rod causing grievous injuries.

Sivakumar hailing from Poondi in Dindigul district is a DMK functionary holding a post in the party’s youth wing. He had gone to a restaurant in the region in an inebriated state where he picked fight with an employee of the hotel named Suresh.

In a fit of rage, the DMK office bearer took an iron rod and gave a severe blow to Suresh causing serious injury. Suresh was later sent to the Government Hospital in Kodaikanal.

When the police had gone to arrest Sivakumar, he had said “I am a DMK office bearer. You can’t do anything to me.” and went on to abuse them.

His relatives too joined him and a case has been filed against the three of them.

(With inputs from News J)

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Congress to oppose Centre’s decision to extend BSF areas in Punjab, Bengal, Assam

Congress

After the Union government decided to give the Border Security Force (BSF) power to undertake search, seizure, and arrest within a larger 50 km stretch, instead of the existing 15 km, from the international border in Punjab, West Bengal, and Assam, the Indian National Congress party led by Sonia Gandhi on Saturday (October 16) said, “it will consult other political parties as well as state governments and formulate a course of action to compel the Modi government to repeal the order on it,”.

The decision to allow the BSF to search, seizure, and arrest within a larger 50 km stretch from the border of these three states was taken because huge amounts of drugs and weapons were being smuggled. In Punjab, drones were being used by Pakistan to transport drugs and weapons to create unrest. 

However, Congress Working Committee (CWC) said it will pass a resolution and said that the party has noted with grave concern the notifications issued by the central government empowering the officers of central security forces to search any place and arrest, as also search any person in the purported exercise of powers to prevent a cognisable offence under any central act.

“This is a dangerous encroachment on the exclusive power of the states and the powers of the state police,” the CWC said.

So now the Congress has decided it will consult all other political parties as well as state governments and formulate a course of action and force the Modi government to repeal these notifications, the resolution stated. Such proclamations are quite similar with regards to the farmer’s protest that is currently taking place in Haryana and Uttar Pradesh and have taken a more militant and anti-India discourse.

As per the latest notification issued by the Centre, BSF will have the power to execute search, seizure and arrest for the purpose of prevention of any offence punishable under the Passport Act, the Registration of Foreigners Act, the Central Excises and Salt Act, the Foreigners Act, the Foreign Exchange Management Act, the Customs Act or of any cognisable offence punishable under any other Central Act, according to officials.

The resolution was necessitated after a “monstrous proportions” of drugs was seized at Mundra Port, Gujarat. Security agencies seized 3,000 kg of heroin following reports of another large consignment that was successfully “imported” into India.

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