Breaking News, September 14 | LIVE UPDATES

Two 19-year-old women, both childhood friends and living in the same building in Pune, allegedly committed suicide within a span of an hour, police said on Wednesday. The incidents took place on Tuesday evening in Shewalwadi area of Hadapsar town here in Maharashtra, they said. One of the women allegedly hanged herself in the bedroom of her residence at around 6.30 pm, police inspector Arvind Gokule said. "While the body was being sent for post-mortem in an ambulance, the deceased's childhood friend jumped to death from the terrace of the four-storey building around 7.30 pm," he said. One of them was a commerce student and the other was pursuing an animation course, police said. No suicide note was found and the reasons behind their extreme step were not yet known, police said. 

In burgeoning instances of stray dog menace in Kerala, a 25-year-old man succumbed to head injuries suffered in an accident involving a canine last week in the city. The man died at a hospital near here on Wednesday. Several people suffered stray dog bites in various parts of the state today and on Tuesday night also while the Left government was going ahead with various programmes to put an end to the menace. The deceased was identified as Ajin AS, a native of Kunnathukal at nearby Neyyattinkara. The accident occurred after the stray dog jumped across a vehicle which was moving in front of his bike at Aruviyod Junction near on Friday.

The Uttarakhand High Court has asked the state government to transfer the District Excise Officer of Haridwar, where nine people had died recently after consuming illicit liquor. A division bench comprising Chief Justice Vipin Sanghi and Justice R C Khulbe asked the government to ensure the order is complied with within 10 days. Nine people had died after consuming illicit liquor in Shivgarh and Phoolgarh villages of Haridwar district recently, while several others were hospitalised. 

Two airstrikes hit the capital of Ethiopia's Tigray region on Wednesday morning, killing 10 people, according to the director of the city's flagship Ayder Referral Hospital. The target in Mekele “was a residential neighbourhood,” Kibrom Gebreselassie told The Associated Press. “Three of the victims need urgent major surgery, in the face of (a) shortage of medicines and zero medicines.” A second doctor told the AP the fatalities occurred in the second strike. The death toll could climb as more patients reach the hospital, a third doctor said. The two doctors spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly.

At least four people were arrested on Wednesday for allegedly assaulting a police officer and setting a police vehicle on fire in Kolkata during the BJP's rally, an official said. The arrests were made during night-long raids in Beliaghata, Topsia and Bowbazar areas, he said. Assistant Commissioner of Police (ACP) Debajit Chattopadhyay was chased and assaulted with sticks by some people in the Bowbazar area during the BJP's 'March to Nabanna' rally on Tuesday. A police vehicle was also torched near the Kolkata Police headquarters Lalbazar. "The raids are still going on," said an officer of Kolkata Police on Wednesday afternoon. The four arrested persons were identified from video clips of the two incidents, he said.

Singapore's rice imports from Vietnam and Thailand are healthy and the country has not faced any significant disruption in importing rice from India, but the prices may go up as New Delhi has imposed a 20 per cent levy on exports of non-basmati varieties and banned the export of broken rice, according to a media report on Wednesday. The Indian government on Thursday imposed a 20 per cent export duty on non-basmati rice except for parboiled rice to boost domestic supplies amid a fall in area under the paddy crop in the current Kharif season. After that, it also banned the export of broken rice with an aim to increase domestic availability. “Export Policy of broken rice …is amended from ‘Free’ to ‘Prohibited’,” the Directorate General of Foreign Trade (DGFT) said in a notification dated September 8, 2022. The notification came into effect on September 9, 2022.

Solomon Islands, Papua New Guinea, Samoa and Tuvalu have accepted Australia's help to fly representatives to Queen Elizabeth II's funeral and other British Commonwealth island leaders could take up the offer, Australia's prime minister said on Wednesday. Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said all 10 former British colonies in the Pacific region had been offered help.

Senior advocate Mukul Rohatgi is set to return as India's attorney general from October 1, sources familiar with the development said. Rohatgi was the country's attorney general from June 2014 to June 2017. The present man in the job, K K Venugopal, 91, was re-appointed as the top law officer of the country for three months on June 29. He had been unwilling to continue in the position due to "personal reasons" but acceded to a request by the government, Law Ministry officials said.

Maharashtra Deputy Chief Minister has condoled the death of Chhatrapati Shivajiraje Bhosale, a 12th generation descendant of Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj, and lauded his contribution in the fields of culture, literature and sports. Bhosale, 75, died in a hospital in Pune on Tuesday due to age-related ailments. With his demise, a personality who contributed in the fields of arts, sports, literature, culture and society is lost, Fadnavis said in a tweet late Tuesday night. Chhatrapati Shivajiraje Bhosale's nephew and BJP Rajya Sabha member Udayanraje Bhosale had said the body will be kept at Adalat Wada in Satara on Wednesday for people to pay homage. His work as Satara mayor was exemplary, BJP MLA Shivendra Raje Bhosale said. 

The monsoon session of the Andhra Pradesh Legislative Assembly and Council will commence from Thursday and the state government is likely to hold an elaborate discussion on the importance of establishing three capitals- executive, legislature and judicial spread across three regions in the state. According to government sources, the session is expected to be held for five days, though it is yet to be confirmed in the Business Advisory Committee. The Jagan Mohan Reddy-led government had earlier introduced the AP Decentralisation and Inclusive Development of All Regions Bill, 2020, and the AP Capital Region Development Authority (Repeal) Bill, 2020, for creating three capitals, but withdrew it in November 2021.

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The Congress on Tuesday took a swipe at Ghulam Nabi Azad, who quit the party recently, saying "climate change" has taken place and he has become a "loyal soldier" of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). Congress general secretary in-charge communications Jairam Ramesh tagged a tweet of a video clip of Azad, in which the former Congress leader is heard saying that he opposes the government's policies but does not abuse Prime Minister Narendra Modi like Rahul Gandhi. "Climate change ho gaya hai aur ab yeh janab BJP ke wafadaar sipahi ban gaye hain (climate change has taken place and this gentleman has become a loyal soldier of the BJP)," Ramesh tweeted.

With the process for electing the new Congress president round the corner, senior party leader Jairam Ramesh has batted for "consensus" in selecting the new AICC chief and sought to uphold the "prominence" of the Nehru-Gandhi family in the organisational matters in any sort of emerging situation. Ramesh, the AICC general secretary in-charge Communication, Publicity and Media, said even if somebody else is elected as the party chief in the October 17 polls, Sonia Gandhi will continue to be a person "everybody looks up to" and insisted Rahul Gandhi will be the "ideological compass" of the grand old organisation.

Congress leader Rahul Gandhi on Wednesday visited Sivagiri mutt here to pay respects to renowned social reformer Sree Narayana Guru before commencing the fourth day of the Kerala leg of the party's Bharat Jodo Yatra. At Sivagiri Mutt, Gandhi met the swamis there and offered prayers to the saint reformer. The yatra, which began after 7.30 am from Navaikulam junction here, continued to witness an encouraging turn out and will enter the Kollam district of the state during the day after spending the last three days in Thiruvananthapuram district. On Tuesday, after that day's yatra ended at Kallambalam junction here, Gandhi had questioned how a party which calls itself a representative of Hindus was allegedly spreading 'ashanti' in the country when the first words taught in Hinduism is 'om shanti'. "Wherever they are going they are destroying harmony, they are attacking people, they are dividing people, abusing them," he had said.

At least five people, including a peace committee member and two police officials, were killed in a blast in Pakistan’s restive Khyber Pakhtunkhwa district, officials said on Tuesday. Security officials said a roadside bomb attack targeted the vehicle of the peace committee member, Idrees Khan, who was an ex-Village Defence Council (Aman Committee) Chairman of Kabal Tehsil, in Swat district. The blast, which occurred in Bara Bandai area, resulted in the death of Khan, his security guards and two police officers, they said.

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A police bomb squad rushed to the campus of Northeastern University in Boston late Tuesday to examine a suspicious package, and there were unconfirmed reports of an explosion and minor injuries to at least one person. Boston police said they were investigating two packages that had been left near the university's Holmes Hall. They declined to elaborate, but WCVB-TV said an individual was taken to a hospital and that firefighters and paramedics were at the scene. WBZ-AM radio, citing unidentified police officials, said the person suffered minor injuries. Police responded shortly before 8 p.m., and the university asked students who had gathered for an evening journalism class at the hall to evacuate the building. Northeastern is a private university in downtown Boston. 

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said Tuesday that Sept. 19 will be a holiday so that federal employees can mourn Queen Elizabeth II on the day of her state funeral. Trudeau also said he's working with the provinces on a possible public holiday for other workers but Ontario and Quebec, Canada's two most populous provinces declined to make it a holiday. “Ontario will mark September 19, 2022 as a provincial Day of Mourning in lieu of a provincial holiday. The people of Ontario may observe a moment of silence at 1:00 p.m. on that day," Ontario Premier Doug Ford said in a statement. Quebec Premier François Legault told reporters Tuesday that Monday also would be a day of commemoration, but not a public holiday in the French-speaking province.

Based on a purported suicide note found with a 38-year-old housewife who hanged herself two days ago at Dombivili in Thane district, police have registered a case against her husband and seven members of his family, including in-laws, an official said on Tuesday. The accused, originally hailing from Jalgaon in north Maharashtra, have been charged with abetment to suicide and other offences, he said. An official from the Manpada police station of Dombivili in the Kalyan division said based on a complaint by the 71-year-old father of the deceased woman, the police have registered the case against the eight under IPC sections 306 (abetment of suicide), 377 (unnatural offences), 498A (husband or relative of husband of a woman subjecting her to cruelty) and 323 (punishment for voluntarily causing hurt), among others.

Foreign Secretary Vinay Kwatra on Tuesday held talks with his visiting Nepalese counterpart Bharat Raj Paudyal and took stock of the entire spectrum of bilateral cooperation, also covering trade, connectivity, culture and people-to-people relations. Paudyal is on two-day visit to India from September 13. The Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) said the two foreign secretaries noted with appreciation the progress on many projects. Kwatra and Paudyal also reviewed the implementation of initiatives announced during Nepalese Prime Minister Sher Bahadur Deuba's visit to India in April and his Indian counterpart Narendra Modi's trip to Lumbini in May.

Between March and May, Delhi experienced five heat waves with record-breaking temperatures reaching up to 49.2 degrees Celsius which increased the vulnerability of half of the city's population which lives in low-income, informal settlements, according to a new report released by the World Meteorological Department on Tuesday. The report titled 'United in Science' also cited a recent attribution study which concluded that climate change made this prolonged hot weather in Delhi 30 times more likely and that the same event would have been about 1 degree Celsius cooler in a pre-industrial climate. 

The United States has a very close defence relationship with India, the Pentagon has said as it dismissed questions about the latest multinational military exercises involving Russia, India and China. “India's a sovereign nation, they can make their own decisions in terms of who they're going to conduct exercises with,” Pentagon Spokesman Brig Gen Patrick Ryder told reporters at his news conference on Tuesday.