Rome, Jan 17 : Four people died and nearly 180 are missing, presumed dead, after Saturday’s migrant ship capsize in the Mediterranean, officials said today after interviewing a handful of survivors.
Humanitarian workers from International Organisation for Migration (IOM) and the UN refugee agency (UNHCR), recounted harrowing details of the latest major tragedy in waters off Libya after talking to four rescued passengers, two Eritreans and two Ethiopians, who arrived last evening in the Sicilian port of Trapani.
The survivors, three men and one woman, were described as “traumatised and exhausted”. They said their two-tier, wooden boat had left Libya on Friday with more 180 people packed on board, all of them originally from East Africa.
After five hours at sea, the engine cut out and the boat started to take on water. As it slowly sank, more and more of the people on board were submerged under water.
One of the survivors described his desperate effort to find his wife, who had taken a spot in the centre of the ship.
After hours in the water, the survivors were rescued on Saturday 30 nautical miles from the Libyan coast by a French boat operating as part of the European borders agency Frontex’s Operation Triton before being transferred to another Frontex ship, the Siem Pilot.
Siem Pilot, provided by the Norwegian coastguard, arrived in Trapani last evening with the four survivors, four recovered corpses and 34 people rescued from another stricken migrant boat.
The latest deaths and rescues follow a record year for the number of migrants trying to reach Europe on the western Mediterranean route from north Africa to Italy.
Some 181,000 people were registered at Italian ports in 2016 while the UNHCR recorded more than 5,000 deaths and presumed deaths on all migrant routes across the Mediterranean.
Despite the mid-winter weather making crossings particularly perilous, the start of 2017 has brought no sign of departures slowing with some 2,300 migrants already registered in Italy since January 1.
The union environment ministry notified the Supreme Court approved ‘Graded Response Action Plan’ on its website early Monday morning. The plan features emergency measures like odd-even scheme and halting construction activities to improve Delhi-National Capital Region’s (NCR) poor air quality. This is the first time that a graded plan to improve air quality will be enforced in India.
As per the plan, a set of fixed measures kick in when pollution reaches specific levels categorised as emergency, severe, very poor and moderate. The notification entrusts the SC-appointed Environment Pollution Control Authority (EPCA) to implement the graded action plan.
A task force, comprising of members from CPCB, environment ministry, Delhi Pollution Control Committee, Uttar Pradesh and Haryana pollution boards, India Meteorological Department (IMD), health experts and other stakeholders, will facilitate implementation of the plan. Based on the forecast for critical pollution days, the measures will have to be rolled out at least two weeks in advance.
EPCA and other authorities have the power to pull up polluters and legally enforce the plan when air-quality in Delhi-NCR plunges, said senior officials from the ministry.
“Our first aim is to prevent pollution levels from crossing emergency levels where public health is threatened. Hence, graded action marked for ‘poor’ category of air-quality has to be enforced through the year,” said Sunita Narain, EPCA member and director-general, Centre for Science and Environment.
Narain added, “We need to be well prepared, since measures such as closing down construction sites will lead to labour distress. But these measures are necessary, even Beijing and Paris enforce these emergency actions.”
The graded response action plan framework relies on IIT-Kanpur’s study that analysed air-quality of Delhi-NCR over an year and the major sources of pollution. Analysis of the past air quality trend shows that severe and very Poor air quality is anticipated throughout the winter months of November to February and largely poor category during the summer months of March to May. Road dust, biomass burning, construction, power plants and industries contribute to pollution in Delhi round the year. During winter biomass burning, solid waste burning, firecrackers, stubble burning and secondary particles contribute greater to pollution while fly ash, vehicles and biomass burning are the big pollutants in summertime.
New Delhi : In a significant breakthrough in implementation of India’s biggest tax reform, the deadlock over administration of GST ended on Monday after the Centre agreed to allow states control over most of small taxpayers, but the rollout date was pushed back by 3 months to July 1.
The split of GST taxpayers between the two will be done horizontally with states getting to administer and control 90 per cent of the asseesses below INR 1.5 crore annual turnover, and the remaining 10 per cent coming under the Centre.
The Centre and states will share control of assessees with annual turnover of over INR 1.5 crore in 50:50 ratio even as Finance Minister Arun Jaitley insisted that each tax payer will be assessed only once and by only one authority.
Besides ceding control, the Centre also agreed to the demand of coastal states, allowing them to tax economic activity in 12 nautical miles even though constitutionally the Centre has jurisdiction over territorial waters.
“This is a significant headway,” Jaitley said after the meeting.
While a four-rate tax slab of 5, 12, 18 and 28 per cent had already been reached, a consensus on the administration of the Goods and Services Tax – which will subsume central and state levies like excise duty, service tax and VAT – paved the way for finalisation of the draft supporting laws.
Jaitley said the draft of Integrated GST or IGST, the tax which will be levied by the Centre on inter-state movement of goods and services, as well as SGST and CGST will be finalised in the next meeting of the GST Council on February 18.
Once approved, the Council will then decide on taxing various goods and services in different tax slabs, he said.
The stalemate over administration of GST had been holding up consensus in the GST Council since early November with four successive meetings failing to break the deadlock as the Centre was not in favour of a horizontal split. It said states did not have the expertise to administer levies like service tax.
The Centre also did not favour dual agencies auditing and scrutinising each taxpayer as multiple authorities could end up acting at cross-purposes.
With the legislative calendar drawn up, Jaitley said “realistic” date for implementation of GST will be July 1 instead of previously planned April 1.
Since GST is a transactional tax, which is to be levied when a sale takes place, it does not necessarily have to be implemented from the beginning of the fiscal, he said.
New Delhi : A youth’s plea against an institute for allegedly not providing him with an internship or job as promised at the time of admission, has been rejected by a consumer forum here which observed that “education is not a commodity”.
A Delhi District Consumer Disputes Redressal Forum (West) rejected the plea of the youth who sought refund of the Rs 3.52 lakh fee paid by him to pursue PG Diploma in Event Management and Public Relations at a private institute here.
The complainant, a Noida resident, had also sought compensation of Rs 40,000 on account of mental pain and agony and deficiency in service from the institute and its Executive Director.
“The complainant took admission with the opposite party, an education institution for pursuing PG Diploma in event management and Public Relations on payment of requisite fee.
“The opposite parties (institute and Executive Director) are imparting education. Therefore as held by Supreme Court, National Commission and State Commission of Chandigarh consistently, education is not a commodity and they are not service providers and the complainant is not a consumer under the Consumer Protection Act,” a forum bench headed by Presiding Officer R S Bagri said.
The forum accepted the assertion of the institute and its executive director that the complaint was not maintainable as the complainant “does not fall within the definition of consumer as provided under the Consumer Protection Act.”
It observed that “education is not a commodity”.
The bench, while deciding the matter, considered various verdicts of the Supreme Court, National Consumer Disputes Redressal Commission and a state commission, all of which had held that students are not consumers.
The youth had approached the consumer forum after he was refused a refund from the institute, which denied the allegations of any unfair trade practice.
New Delhi : A panel has recommended reservation for girl students in IITs to address the issue of slump in the number of female students entering the prestigious institutes.
The committee is learnt to have suggested creating up to 20 per cent supernumerary seats for girls out of the total number of seats.
The recommendation of the committee will be taken up in the meeting of the joint admission board (JAB) for a final decision, which will decide whether the reservation will come in effect from this year or from 2018.
Concerned by the slump in number of girl students entering IITs, the JAB has set up a sub-committee under the chairmanship of professor Timothy Gonsalves to find ways to rectify the situation in the institutes.
The number of seats for male candidates will not be affected and this will help IITs achieve the 1 lakh target by 2020. Also, only candidates who have already qualified in JEE-Advanced will be considered.
In a tragic incident, a boat capsized in the Ganga river near Patna, According to ANI, at least 19 people have died in the accident.The accident took place when the boat,was about to reach the river bank. The boat was returning from a kite festival on the occasion of Makar Sankranti. Meanwhile, the state police have launched a search operation for the missing people. State government has announced compensation of Rs 4 lakh for the deceased.
Some persons swam to safety, while some families were complaining of missing members, the SP said adding, a search operation is on. District Magistrate Sanjay Kumar Aggarwal and the SP have reached the spot.
Chief Minister Nitish Kumar has expressed grief over the boat tragedy and ordered a probe.
The CM instructed Principal Secretary of Health R K Mahajan and the Patna District Magistrate to ensure proper treatment of the victims of the boat tragedy. Kumar has also instructed Principal Secretary of Disaster Management Pratyay Amrit and DIG Shalin to supervise relief and rescue operations and has ordered Patna district administration to provide ex-gratia to the family of the deceased.
According to eye-witnesses, at least 50-60 people were aboard the small boat, which drowned only a few metres away from the bank. “The incident took place just before sunset. While few people swam their way across to the bank, several were feared trapped under the boat,” he said.
The toll figures were likely to rise as several people were still missing, till the time of filing the report. An eye-witness said around 4pm, the sandbar jetty, from where people were boarding the boats, got damaged because of which several people were stranded across the river.
About 10 injured were admitted to the Patna Medical College and Hospital (PMCH) for treatment.
It may be mentioned that the Bihar government had organised a kite festival on the occasion of Makar Sankranti at the Sabbalpur bank off the NIT Ghat on Saturday. Such fests are being organised for the last several years by the state government at the venue.
Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar has expressed grief over the incident and has given directions for conduction quick relief and rescue operations. A probe has also been ordered into the incident.
Senior officials reached the spot for the rescue operations. Three NDRF teams of 130 personnel in all were also dispatched for the rescue ops late evening.
The incident brings back memories of 2014 Dussehra stampede and 2012 Chaath stampede which claimed over 50 lives in the state capital.
Mumbai : The Bombay High Court asked the Maharashtra government to consider a petition seeking action against open defecation, as if it was a representation made to the state and take appropriate measures expeditiously.
The court was hearing a petition filed by advocate Vishwasrao Devkar seeking strict action against people who defecate in the open, thereby spoiling the environment and making areas in the cities and villages dirty and unhygienic.
A bench headed by Chief Justice Manjula Chellur and Justice Girish Kulkarni asked the government to treat this petition as if it was a representation made to it and asked the state to act on open defecation.
The petition said that the government had amended the Village Panchayat Act to compulsorily provide that every home must have a toilet and possess a certificate from the local authority that it has the toilet facility.
The petitioner raised a grievance saying that people resorted to open defecation in Maharashtra and no action was taken by the authorities against those who are resorting to such a practice.
It pleaded that the local authorities must take action on complaints or photographs of such open defecation by the people.
The court was of the view that the government must take a policy decision on the issue and take immediate steps to curb such a practice.
Dhaka, Jan 14 : Bangladesh police today said they have arrested a top Islamist militant accused of being one of the “masterminds” of the country’s worst terror attack at a popular Dhaka cafe and plotting murders of religious minorities including two Hindu priests.
ISIS-linked outlawed Neo-Jamaat-ul-Mujahideen recruiter Jahangir Alam alias Rajib alias Gandhi was arrested last night from Elenga, some 120 kms north of Dhaka, Counter-Terrorism and Transnational police unit chief Monirul Islam told media.
He said that Alam was one of the “key players” of the July attack on Holey Artisan restaurant who were captured alive so far as “13 of the 17 militants who were presumed to have plotted the attack were killed in encounters so far”.
“During the initial interrogation he has admitted to his direct link to plot of staging the attack on Gulshan’s Holey Artisan and the subsequent Eid congregation in Sholakia,” Islam said.
The official said the police investigations found that Alam was involved in plotting murders of 22 people including a slain Japanese national, a Hindu tailor, two Hindu priests, a village doctor, a Sufi Muslim, a professor of state-run Rajshahi University and several others in the past four years.
The development came two weeks after five suspected JMB operatives were arrested over plotting attacks on the New Year’s Eve and 30-kg explosives were seized from them.
A breakaway faction of JMB constituted the Neo-JMB which was behind the July 1 attack on the Dhaka cafe in which 22 people, including 17 foreigners, were killed. An Indian girl was among those killed in Bangladesh’s worst terror attack.
Police said Alam’s name surfaced during investigations when they found that he served Neo-JMB as the commander of the outfit for the Northern districts.
The arrest was made a week after Neo-JMB’s most wanted leader Nurul Islam alias Marzan and another extremist were killed by counter-terrorism forces in Mohammadpur Beribadh area of the capital during a pre-dawn raid.
Police had claimed that Marzan coordinated the attack on the Holey Artisan Bakery.
Bangladeshi-Canadian Tamim Chowdhury, who was singled out by the police as the neo-JMB chief and the key player in the recent terror activities in Bangladesh, and two others were killed in a police operation in Narayanganj on August 27.
Last week, RAB arrested 10 people from different parts of Dhaka for their suspected involvement with the cafe attackers.
A dozen other top and second-tier leaders of the New JMB group are still absconding.
New Delhi : Sports Ministry today lifted the suspension of Indian Olympic Association with immediate effect after it removed the corruption-tainted duo of Suresh Kalmadi and Abhay Singh Chautala as life presidents following an outrage but still took a dig at it for ignoring rules at the first instant.
The ministry said that it was revoking the suspension of deemed recognition of IOA handed down on December 30 last following its admission of “faux pas” while making Kalmadi and Chautala as life presidents.
“Government has decided to revoke the suspension of deemed recognition of IOA with immediate effect in the light of the corrective action taken by them in reversing its earlier decision making Shri Abhay Singh Chautala and Shri Suresh Kalmadi, Life Presidents of IOA,” the ministry said in a statement.
“In the light of the above developments and keeping in view the larger interest of promotion and development of sports in the country, the Minister of State (Independent Charge), Ministry of Youth Affairs and Sports has revoked the suspension of deemed recognition of IOA, imposed on 30.12.2016, with immediate effect,” it added.
The ministry, however, asked the IOA to uphold the highest standards of probity and ethics in future also.
“Since IOA has admitted the faux pas committed and regretted the inconvenience and embarrassment caused to all concerned, it is expected of IOA that it will uphold the highest standard of probity and ethics in its functioning in future,” the ministry said.
In the official letter sent later to the IOA, informing about the revocation of suspension, the ministry said that the proposal to make Kalmadi and Chautala as life presidents should not have been allowed to be placed before the AGM in Chennai.
“IOA has itself admitted in its reply (to the showcause notice) that the proposal placed before the AGM was not in consonance with IOA Constitution. As such, the proposal should not have been allowed to be placed in the AGM citing the rules. IOA, which is the mother body of all NSFs, should not have been ignorant of its own Constitution and rules and procedures,” the ministry said.
“The IOA has now clarified that Shri Suresh Kalmadi and Shri Abhey Singh Chautala have not been made its life presidents,” it added.
IOA President N Ramachandran welcomed the ministry’s decision of revocation of suspension.
“If the ministry revokes the suspension, it is good news for IOA. As far as I am concerned, if the government revokes the suspension, I am thankful to the ministry,” Ramachandran told PTI.
Ramachandran, in his reply to a showcause notice served by the Ministry, had said that the decision to appoint Kalmadi and Chautala does not stand owing to technicalities.
Belying expectations of a slowdown due to demonetization, industrial production in November grew by 5.7% compared to a contraction of 3.4% in the same month a year ago. Factory output measured in terms of Index of Industrial Production (IIP) got a push in November 2016 due to better performance of manufacturing, mining and electricity sectors coupled with larger offtake of capital goods, considered a barometer of investment.
Following demonetization of Rs 1,000 and Rs 500 notes announced on November 8, 2016, it was feared that cash crunch will hit all sectors. According to data released by the Central Statistics Office on Thursday, IIP for the month of October last year was revised slightly upwards to a contraction of 1.8% from provisional estimates of (-) 1.9% released last month.
As per the data, IIP growth during April-November period this fiscal remained almost flat at 0.4% compared to 3.8% a year ago. Manufacturing sector, which constitutes over 75% of the index, grew at 5.5% in November compared to a decline in output by 4.6% earlier.
However, during the April-November period the sector recorded a contraction of 0.3% compared to a growth of 3.9%. Similarly, electricity generation grew at 8.9% in November compared to a meagre 0.7% a year ago. Mining output grew 3.9% in November compared to 1.7% same month a year ago.
Capital goods production increased by 15% in November compared to a decline in production by 24.4% earlier. As per use-based classification, growth rates in November 2016 over November 2015 are 4.7% in basic goods and 2.7% in intermediate goods.
Consumer durables and consumer non-durables recorded growth of 9.8% and 2.9% respectively, with the overall growth in consumer goods being 5.6%. In terms of industries, 16 out of 22 industry groups in the manufacturing sector have shown growth during the month of November 2016 as compared to the corresponding month of the previous year.
NEW DELHI: India grew fastest among major economies worldwide at over 7.5 per cent in 2016 and will continue to drive global growth in 2017 with its share in the world GDP expected to rise to 17 per cent, a study said today.
“Asia will remain the fastest growing region of the world, but the spotlight will shift away from China to India and Indonesia,” PwC’s global economy watch (GEW) said, adding that Indonesia is set to become the world’s 16th trillion dollar economy.
As per the projections Chinese growth to remain at around the 6 per cent mark, while India’s contribution to world GDP growth could reach almost 17 per cent this year.
The study noted that China will feel the costs of higher private sector debt burden.