Breaking News, September 11

Queen Elizabeth's funeral cortege left Balmoral castle to be moved first to Edinburgh, Scotland & then to London for her funeral on September 19

Thousands are lining the route to catch a glimpse as Queen Elizabeth II’s coffin begins its journey on Sunday from Balmoral Castle in Aberdeenshire to the late monarch’s official Scottish residence of Holyroodhouse Palace in the capital city of Edinburgh.

An offence has been registered against five persons for allegedly fabricating Aadhaar cards and cheating online service providers of more than Rs 2.61 lakh in Dombivili town of Maharashtra's Thane district, police said on Sunday.

A special Pakistani court has ordered the freezing of 13 bank accounts of companies related to Suleman Shehbaz, the younger son of Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif, in connection with a multi-million dollars money laundering case, a media report said on Sunday. The order was issued by the special court of the Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) on September 7. The investigating officer submitted to the court details of 13 bank accounts of various companies related to Suleman, the Dawn newspaper reported. Prime Minister Shehbaz and his sons- Hamza Shehbaz (former Punjab chief minister) and Suleman- have been booked by the FIA for allegedly laundering over Rs 14 billion.

The body of an engineering student with his throat slit was found in Ilambazar area in West Bengal's Birbhum district, police said on Sunday. A friend of the deceased has been arrested in connection with the case, a senior officer said. Syed Salauddin, a 22-year-old student of a private engineering college in Durgapur, was missing since Saturday afternoon and his body was recovered from a jungle in the Ilambazar area later in the day, he said. "Salauddin had gone out with his friend on September 10. There are reports that his father received a phone call yesterday afternoon, and a ransom of Rs 30 lakh was demanded from him. His friend is being interrogated. We are trying to ascertain the motive behind the murder and trace the alleged caller," the officer said.

The central government has fixed the total number of seats in the Municipal Corporation of Delhi at 250 from the existing figure of 272. This was stated in a Delhi Gazette notification issued on Saturday. The total number of seats reserved for the members of the Scheduled Castes in the MCD in proportion to their number is also determined to be 42, it said. The previous three corporations in Delhi comprised 272 wards. While the North and South corporations accounted for 104 wards each, the East corporation had 64 wards under its jurisdiction. "In pursuance of sub-section (5) of section 3 of the Delhi Municipal Corporation Act 1957, as amended by the Delhi Municipal Corporation (Amendment) Act, 2022, the Central government hereby determines the total number of seats of the Councillors in the Municipal Corporation of Delhi as two hundred and fifty (250)," reads the notification.

Sri Lankan President Ranil Wickremesinghe has come under fire from the Opposition over his government expansion with 37 state ministers and with moves underway to appoint at least 12 more Cabinet ministers soon at a time when the island nation is facing bankruptcy. President Wickremesinghe on Thursday appointed 37 junior ministers, largely representing the ruling Sri Lanka Podujana Peramuna (SLPP) and the Sri Lanka Freedom Party (SLFP). The 37 new posts are in addition to the 20-member Cabinet of President Wickremesinghe, who took over in late July following Gotabaya Rajapaksa's exit. Talks are also underway to appoint at least 12 more Cabinet ministers soon.

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Odisha's COVID-19 tally mounted to 13,30,240 on Sunday as 245 more people, including 43 children, tested positive for the infection, a health bulletin said. The toll rose to 9,185 as one more person succumbed to the disease, it said, adding that fifty-three other COVID-19 patients have died due to comorbidities so far. Odisha had reported 269 infections on Saturday. The state now has 1,756 active cases, while 246 more people recuperated from the disease in the last 24 hours, taking the total number of recoveries to 13,19,246, the bulletin said. The daily positivity rate was at 1.88 per cent as the new coronavirus infections were detected from 13,050 sample tests, it added. 

Two brothers were arrested for allegedly cheating people on the pretext of selling air guns, walkie-talkies, telescopes and pellets online, police said on Sunday. Ravi and Harish Singh were arrested on Friday from their house in Ghaziabad, they said. The matter came to light following a complaint by a resident of Malviya Nagar in Delhi. It was alleged that one Robin Singh called the complainant on WhatsApp, informing him that he sells air guns, blank guns, walkie-talkies, telescopes and pellets. Trusting him, the victim ordered 25 telescopes online and transferred Rs 2,49,000 to a bank account, police said.

The Uttarakhand Waqf Board will soon demolish illegal structures on its properties across the state, said its new president Shadab Shams on Sunday. Shams was elected unopposed as the president of the 10-member board on September 7. Shams says Waqf properties worth Rs 1.5 lakh crore across Uttarakhand are illegally occupied. The board will move a proposal at its meeting on September 15 for buying or hiring bulldozers needed to remove the illegal encroachments on the Waqf land all over state.

"Thousands of acres of Waqf land is illegally occupied in different parts of the state. We want to free our properties from the clutches of the mafia to make them useful for people they are really meant for," Shams told PTI.

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People flocked from all parts of the city which had at one time been seen as the strongest opponent of the British Raj on a broad boulevard called Chowringhee, jostling for a vantage point to see the daughter of the King Emperor they had fought – Queen Elizabeth II. Prof Aloke Kumar of IIM Calcutta, remembered the visit of the young Queen of Great Britain to Kolkata, then Calcutta, on a winter morning 61 years ago, when he was a five-year-old child as a “fairy Book Pop-up”, where cheering onlookers look up to “find this beautiful lady in her tiara and white gloves waving and smiling at you. And then she was gone.” The Queen, who died on September 8 at the age of 96 having reigned the United Kingdom for 70 years, came to the city during her visit to the Indian subcontinent in February 1961.

Adesh Khamra, a tailor from a small Madhya Pradesh town, is no ordinary offender- he is accused of killing more than 30 people – but the 52-year-old is now seeking to turn a new leaf in his life by taking refuge in religious and motivational books in jail. According to officials of Bhopal’s Central Jail, where Khamra is lodged, the undertrial is often found engrossed in religious scriptures , a far cry from his image of a dreaded man accused of committing heinous crimes.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Sunday paid tributes to Vinoba Bhave, an ardent Gandhian who had launched the Bhoodan movement, on his birth anniversary. His life was a manifestation of Gandhian principles, Modi tweeted. The prime minister also recalled the "special connection" September 11 has with Swami Vivekananda, noting that the renowned spiritual figure had delivered his famous speech in Chicago on this day in 1893. Sharing the speech on Twitter, Modi said, "It was on this day in 1893 that he delivered one of his most outstanding speeches in Chicago. His address gave the world a glimpse of India's culture and ethos." The speech at the World's Parliament of Religions is celebrated for Swami Vivekananda's impressive articulation of India's cultural ethos and its ancient values while underlining its philosophical acceptance of the truth guiding every religion.

Photographs of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, star cricketer Mahendra Singh Dhoni and Bihar Governor Phagu Chauhan have been found on admit cards issued by a university in the state. The examinees happen to be BA part III students of colleges based at Madhubani, Samastipur and Begusarai districts, all affiliated to the Lalit Narayan Mithila University headquartered in Darbhanga. "A serious note has been taken of the anomalies which have come to light through social media. An inquiry has been ordered and the students concerned have been issued show cause notices. An FIR may also be lodged," said Mushtaq Ahmed, the university's registrar.

Delhiites woke up to a sunny Sunday morning with the minimum temperature settling at 26.6 degrees Celsius, a notch above the season's average.  The relative humidity recorded at 8:30 am is 78 per cent, they said. The weather office has predicted a generally cloudy sky with light rain or thundershowers. The maximum temperature is predicted to hover around 36 degrees Celsius. On Saturday, the maximum temperature recorded was 36.8 degrees Celsius, three notches above the maximum temperature while the minimum was 27. 6 degrees Celsius.

Cheetahs will arrive in Madhya Pradesh's Kuno-Palpur National Park from Namibia on September 17 and Prime Minister Narendra Modi will release them in specially built enclosures the same day, state forest minister Vijay Shah said. September 17 is also the birthday of Prime Minister Modi. After overseeing preparations made at the Kuno-Palpur National Park for the ambitious cheetah re-introduction programme, Shah on Saturday expressed hope that the project will increase tourist footfall and boost employment opportunities for people in the region.

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Union Home and Cooperation Minister Amit Shah will take part in a cooperative conference in Gujarat's Amreli district on Sunday and unveil a 16-feet tall statue of Lord Hanuman in Somnath town. As per the schedule shared by the Gujarat BJP unit, Shah will begin the visit by attending a conference of cooperative organisations of Amreli district in his home state, where the Assembly elections are due later this year. The minister will then leave for Gir Somnath district where he will offer prayers at the Somnath Mahadev temple. Shah will also unveil a 16-feet statue of Lord Hanuman in Somnath town and inaugurate 262 shops, called as 'Maruti Haat', near the Arabian Sea coast in the town. 

Congress’ Bharat Jodo Yatra commenced its 19-day long Kerala leg Sunday morning from Parassala area of the capital city. Rahul Gandhi started the yatra after being formally welcomed by Kerala Pradesh Congress Committee (KPCC) president and MP K Sudhakaran, Leader of Opposition (LoP) in the state assembly V D Satheesan, and AICC general secretary Tariq Anwar and other senior Congress leaders. The other senior party leaders who welcomed the former party chief included Congress MPs K C Venugopal and Shashi Tharoor as well as former Kerala chief minister Oommen Chandy and ex-LoP Ramesh Chennithala.

Samajwadi Party leader and former MP from Budaun Dharmendra Yadav has withdrawn his petition against sitting MP Sanghamitra Maurya that accused her of submitting “incorrect information” in an election affidavit. Maurya, the daughter of Samajwadi Party leader Swami Prasad Maurya, had fought the 2019 general elections from Budaun on a BJP ticket. She had won the contest defeating Dharmendra Yadav, the then sitting MP from the seat, with a margin of 18,000 votes. Dharmendra Yadav is a cousin of SP chief Akhilesh Yadav.

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Russia's Defence Ministry announced on Saturday that it was pulling back troops from two areas in Ukraine's eastern Kharkiv region where a Ukrainian counteroffensive has made significant advances in the past week. The news came after days of apparent advances by Ukraine south of Kharkiv, the country's second-largest city, in what could become the biggest battlefield success for Ukrainian forces since they thwarted a Russian attempt to seize the capital, Kyiv, at the start of the nearly seven-month war. Russian Defence Ministry spokesman Igor Konashenkov said troops would be regrouped from the Balakliya and Izyum areas to the eastern Donetsk region.

The body of a 25-year-old man was found hanging from a tree in south Delhi on Saturday, police said. According to the man's family, he left his house in a huff on Friday night after talking to someone on the phone. At 4:22 am on Saturday, information was received that a man's body was found hanging from a tree in a park opposite Batra Hospital in the Sangam Vihar area, the police said. Police rushed to the spot and found the body that was hanging from the tree with a plastic rope, they said. The body has been preserved at AIIMS mortuary, they said.

A fiery crash between a tanker truck carrying fuel and a passenger bus has killed at least 18 people in northern Mexico, authorities reported. Prosecutors in the northern border state of Tamaulipas said the crash on Saturday might have been caused by one of the truck's two tank trailers coming lose. The collision left both vehicles completely burned. Police photos showed the bus was reduced to a tangle of smoking, charred metal. Tamaulipas state police initially found nine sets of remains, but by early afternoon prosecutors said nine more had been recovered. The death toll could rise, they said.

Meghalaya Governor Satya Pal Malik on Saturday claimed that people had indicated that he would be made vice president if he stopped speaking against the Centre. "I already had indications that you will be made (vice president) if you don't speak, but I don't do this, I speak what I feel," he said when asked about the elevation of Jagdeep Dhankhar, whom he described as a "deserving". He also praised Congress leader Rahul Gandhi for taking out the "Bharat Jodo Yatra". Gandhi is working for his party and it is good, Malik said. When asked about what message the yatra has given, Malik said, "I do not know this. It is for the people to tell but I feel he is doing the right work." On the Enforcement Directorate's raids on the leaders of opposition parties, Malik said raids on BJP leaders should also be conducted.

The US Geological Survey has detected a 7.6-magnitude earthquake in northeastern Papua New Guinea. The quake hit at 6:46 am. Initial readings put the quake at a depth of some 50 to 60 kilometers (30 to 40 miles) located 67 kilometers (42 miles) east of Kainantu, a sparsely populated area. NOAA has since removed the tsunami threat for the area. Papua New Guinea is located on the eastern half of the island of New Guinea, to the east of Indonesia and north of eastern Australia. It sits on the Pacific's “Ring of Fire,” the arc of seismic faults around the Pacific Ocean where much of the world's earthquakes and volcanic activity occurs.