Author: News Desk

The value of a woman was equated to that of 71 sheep by a village council in Uttar Pradesh’s Gorakhpur, where a man was asked to compensate his lover’s husband with the flock for taking away the wife. According to reports, a panchayat (village council) in Pipraich asked the man to give 71 sheep to the woman’s husband as “compensation”. The matter began on July 22 when a married woman eloped with her lover. When intervened, she expressed her decision to leave her husband. However, the matter was not to end that easy, and just days later the two men…

The waiter’s colleagues called police after he was shot in the shoulder with a handgun in the Noisy-le-Grand suburb east of Paris on Friday night, the source said. Attempts to revive the 28-year-old failed and he died at the scene. According to a witness, the gunman had lost his temper “as his sandwich wasn’t prepared quickly enough”. With the shooter still on the run Saturday, shocked residents gathered outside the Mistral pizza and sandwich eatery. Police have opened a murder investigation. “He was killed for a sandwich?” one asked, unbelievingly. “It is sad,” said a 29-year-old woman. “It’s a quiet…

Russian opposition activists staged a string of pickets in central Moscow on Saturday to call for free elections and for charges against protesters detained at recent rallies to be dropped. Moscow has been rocked by weekly protests for more than a month since the authorities barred opposition candidates from running in an election for the city’s legislature in September. Police have briefly detained more than 2,000 protesters in recent weeks, launched criminal cases against some dozen people for mass disorder and used force to disperse what they said were illegal protests. In contrast, Saturday’s solo pickets, spread across three locations…

Pro-democracy protesters marched on one side of Hong Kong’s famous harbor on Saturday to demand the government heed their demands. Across the water, a pro-government rally called for an end to the often violent protests. The dueling demonstrations highlighted the political divide in the semiautonomous Chinese territory, which for 10 weeks has been rocked by protests that show no signs of relenting. “The government right now doesn’t listen to the people, and the police are too violent,” said Bobby Tse, a 76-year-old retiree who watched the pro-democracy march from a bridge. “It didn’t use to be like this. We didn’t…

UN Security Council members believe India and Pakistan should refrain from taking unilateral action over the disputed region of Jammu and Kashmir, China’s UN envoy said on Friday after the council met on the issue for the first time in decades. The 15-member council met behind closed doors at the request of China and Pakistan after India removed the decades-old autonomy the Muslim-majority territory of Jammu and Kashmir enjoyed under the Indian constitution. China rarely requests Security Council meetings. No statement issued While the council did not agree on a statement, China’s UN Ambassador Zhang Jun summed up the discussions,…

India’s defense minister hinted on Friday that New Delhi might change its “no first use” policy on nuclear weapons, amid heightened tensions with fellow atomic power Pakistan. India committed in 1999 to not be the first to use nuclear weapons in any conflict. Among India’s neighbors, China has a similar doctrine but arch-rival Pakistan does not. Defence Minister Rajnath Singh commented on Twitter after visiting Pokhran, the site of India’s successful nuclear tests in 1998 under then prime minister Atal Vajpayee. “Pokhran is the area which witnessed [Vajpayee’s] firm resolve to make India a nuclear power and yet remain firmly…

A 36-year-old businessman allegedly shot dead his parents, wife and son before killing himself near Bandipur in the south Indian state of Karnataka, police said on Friday. “Omprakash and his four-member family appear to have entered into a suicide pact, unable to bear the harassment of debtors and the burden of mounting losses from his businesses, including a call center, real estate and mining at Mysuru and Bengaluru,” Chamarajanagar Superintendent of Police H.D. Anand Kumar told IANS on phone. Bandipur is 220km southwest of Bengaluru on the way to popular hill station Ooty in Tamil Nadu. Citing a preliminary report…

Among Mumbai’s glitziest society events over the past year were two weddings in the family of Mukesh Ambani, the Indian tycoon who in 2018 became Asia’s richest person. In December, his 27-year-old daughter Isha got married in a Bollywood-style extravaganza attended by global power brokers and titans of finance. Beyonce sang at the festivities, Hillary Clinton flew in and KKR & Co.’s Henry Kravis made an appearance. In March, her twin brother Akash wed in a ceremony attended by the likes of Google Chief Executive Officer Sundar Pichai. The lavish events put Ambani’s eldest children in a very public spotlight…

Pakistan Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi on Saturday termed Indian Defence Minister Rajnath Singh’s statement over a possible change in its “no first use” nuclear policy as a “damning reminder of India’s unbridled thirst for violence”. In a post on Twitter, Rajnath Singh said on Friday that while India had remained firmly committed to the doctrine of “no first use”, what would happen in the future would depend on circumstances. Responding to the remark, Qureshi said in a tweet: “Another damning reminder of India’s unbridled thirst for violence. Contrast to Pakistan’s aggressive efforts to galvanize diplomacy as the UN Security…

A 33-year-old man in India’s Jharkhand state has modified a scrapped motorcycle into a low-cost tractor tiller, using his experience as a two-wheeler mechanic. Mahesh Karmali, a resident of Uncha Ghana village in Hazaribagh, some 40km from the district headquarters town, was employed by the Baja Auto Showroom at Pune in Maharashtra until January this year but financial troubles in the company left him suddenly jobless. The Grade VI dropout returned to his village, hoping to engage in farming as a way of eking out a living for his family. The jobless man, however, was shocked when he was told…