Al Qaeda Militants Seize Yemeni Military Base

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by Wochit  

Military officials said that Al Qaeda militants seized control of an important army base Thursday following clashes with soldiers that left at least eight people dead. The officials added that at least four soldiers and four militants died in the fighting and that at least 15 soldiers were taken hostage. The base is home to Yemen's 19th Infantry Brigade and is located in the Baihan area in southern Shabwa province.

Al-Qaeda affiliate claims killing of 14 Algerian soldiers

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Nicosia (AFP) - Al-Qaeda's North African branch said it killed 14 Algerian soldiers in an ambush southwest of the Algerian capital, in what would be the deadliest attack on the army in over a year.

The El Khaber newspaper, citing security sources, reported earlier in the day that troops were killed by a terrorist group on the road to Tifran, a wooded area in the south of Ain Defla province, 140 kilometres (85 miles) from the capital.

The ambush took place on Friday night at the start of the Eid al-Fitr holiday marking the end of the Muslim fasting month of Ramadan.

Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) claimed the attack in an unverified statement posted online late on Saturday night.

"The knights of Islam have, on the first night of Eid killed 14 soldiers in an ambush on an army platoon in the area of Djebel Louh," it said, adding that the attackers managed to escape unharmed after seizing the dead troops' weapons.

The defence ministry has made no official statement on the attack, but the news was widely circulated on social media and some Facebook users posted pictures of alleged victims.

If confirmed, this would be the deadliest attack on Algeria's army since April 2014, when 15 soldiers were killed in the country's mountainous east.

The ministry of defence said last week that 102 Islamists were killed, captured or surrendered to security forces in the first half of 2015.

The Ain Defla region was considered a hub for jihadist groups during the 1990s, but there has been a drop in Islamist-linked violence in Algeria in recent years.

Curiosity Mars rover clicks rare sunspots

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Washington : NASA's Curiosity Mars rover has provided images of sunspots from the other side of the Sun that is turned away from Earth.

While investigating bedrock types on Mars' Mount Sharp and preparing for a drill test, Curiosity tracked large sunspots from the opposite side of the Sun.

'Tracking the sunspot activity on the far side of the sun is useful for space-weather forecasting,' said Yihua Zheng, project leader for NASA space weather services.

'It helps us monitor how the sunspots evolve and grow before they become visible from this side,' he added.

Scientists temporarily have no other resource providing views of the Sun from the opposite side of the solar system from Earth.

The sun completes a rotation about once a month -- faster near its equator than near its poles.

'Information about sunspots that develop before they rotate into view of Earth and Earth-orbiting spacecraft is helpful in predicting space-weather effects of solar emissions related to sunspots,' the US space agency said in a statement.

NASA's STEREO-A spacecraft, which monitors the Sun, is currently almost exactly behind the Sun from Earth's perspective and is temporarily out of communication.

The Sun disrupts radio transmissions that pass too close to it.

Communication with Curiosity was also suspended last month when Mars passed nearly behind the Sun but the rover resumed full communication and operations in late June.

Daily information from STEREO-A is expected to begin again this month.

Curiosity has been working on Mars since early August 2012.

It reached the base of Mount Sharp last year after fruitfully investigating outcrops closer to its landing site and then trekking to the mountain.

The main mission objective now is to examine successively higher layers of Mount Sharp.

Nurse cuts off child's thumb in Bengal hospital?

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 Kolkata: A nurse allegedly cut off the thumb of a eight-day-old girl in a state-run hospital in West Bengal and threw the body part into a dustbin to escape responsibility.

The baby, admitted to the Balurghat General Hospital on Friday with diarrhoea, met with the tragic incident on Sunday night with the nurse - in an attempt to cut a leucoplast to make a channel for administering saline - severed the thumb with scissors.

'I saw blood oozing out from the affected area and saw the thumb was missing,' said the new-born's mother Mamoni Mondal, who called her husband.

Babla Mondal said: 'When I confronted the sister, she said she had no idea about the thumb. I looked everywhere and finally found the thumb in the dustbin. Helpless, with the finger in one hand and my child in the other, I began pleading with the doctors to attend to my child. But none came forward.'

After an hour, hospital superintendent Tapan Biswas came to the ward and asked the parents to take the child to the North Bengal Medical College and Hospital in Siliguri of Darjeeling district.

But that was not the end of their ordeal.

'At NBMCH, the doctors told us that it would be meaningless to admit our baby there as it did not have the infrastructure to do a plastic surgery on the child,' said Mamoni Mondal.

The child has now been brought back to the Balurghat District Hospital.

Biswas said the nurse has been asked to proceed on five-day leave.

'I have received a report from the nursing superintendent. I will receive the probe report from the doctors on Tuesday,' he said.

'All expenses for the child's treatment will be borne by us,' he added.

IANS

22 pilgrims killed in Andhra stampede

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Vijayawada: At least 22 pilgrims, mostly women, were killed and 20 others injured in a stampede during Godavari pushkaralu in Rajahmundry in Andhra Pradesh on Tuesday, officials said.

The tragedy occurred when a large number of pilgrims rushed towards one of the gates and tried to scale it at Kotagummam pushkar ghat on the banks of Godavari river to take the holy dip.

Chaos prevailed at all the three gates at the bathing ghat in Rajahmundry, a town in East Godavari district.

The toll may further go up as some bodies were still believed to be lying at the spot.

The bodies of victims were shifted to Rajahmundry government hospital. The injured were also brought to the hospital, where the condition of some of them is stated to be critical.

Tragedy struck couple of hours after Godavari maha pushkaralu, a once in 144-year event, began on Tuesday morning.

The 12-day pushkaralu, described as Kumbh mela of the south, began in both Telangana and Andhra Pradesh.

Chief Minister N. Chandrababu Naidu, who had a holy dip in Rajahmundry Tuesday morning, rushed to a control room to monitor the situation.

He appealed to people to follow queues to entry and exit points. He also requested the pilgrims to move to other ghats.

The failure of authorities to anticipate the huge crowds at the ghat and lack of proper arrangements to regulate the pilgrims led to the tragedy.

IPL: CSK, RR suspended for two years; Meiyappan, Kundra banned

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New Delhi:Indian Premier League (IPL) teams Chennai Super Kings (CSK) and Rajasthan Royals (RR) were on Tuesday banned for two years by the Supreme Court appointed Justice Lodha Committee in the 2013 IPL betting and spot fixing scandal.

Former CSK team official Gurunath Meiyappan and Rajasthan Royals co-owner Raj Kundra were suspended for life from any cricketing activity undertaken by the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI). The guilty duo were also suspended from any cricket related activity for a period of five years. They were earlier found guilty of betting in the scandal that rocked the lucrative Twenty20 tournament in 2013.

The verdict, read out by Justice Lodha in the presence of the other committee members, said that the cricketers who were part of the two IPL teams were free to join any IPL team they wanted.

The Supreme Court on January 22 had set up the committee comprising former Chief Justice of India R.M. Lodha, former Justice Ashok Bhan and former Justice R. Raveendran to determine appropriate punishments for Meiyappan, Kundra and their respective franchises.

In March, the panel had also issued showcause notices to Meiyappan and Kundra seeking their reply on the quantum of punishment.

Meiyappan is the son-in-law of former Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) president and current International Cricket Council (ICC) chairman N. Srinivasan. Kundra is a businessman who is married to Bollywood actress Shilpa Shetty.

Lodha also said the fate of IPL COO Sundar Raman, who is also alleged to have involved in wrongdoing, is yet to be ascertained as the investigation regarding him is still going on.

Lodha said the committee, which was supposed to form a guideline for the smooth administration of BCCI, will formulate such a guideline in 'due course of time'.

Music composer M S Viswanathan passes away

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Chennai: Acclaimed music director and composer M S Viswanathan (86) passed away at a private hospital here. His end came around 4.30 am on Tuesday. Viswanathan had been undergoing treatment for age-related ailments.

Viswanathan's body has been kept for the public to pay homage at his residence in Chennai.

Viswanathan has done music for more than 2000 movies, including 100 Malayalam ones.

Born at Elappully in Palakkad in 1928, he moved to Chennai at the age of 10. Since 1945, he has been active in music composition.

12-day Eid holiday bonanza for soudi govt staff

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RIYADH: The Eid Al-Fitr holiday has been extended for government employees from 10 to 12 days, according to the Ministry of Civil Services. This is the longest Eid break in many years. 
“All government employees are entitled to a period of Eid Al-Fitr holidays beginning on July 10 (Friday), continuing through the weekend, and ending on July 21, to spend this blessed time with their families,” an official at the ministry said on Thursday, the last working day before the break.
The private sector, however, will have six days of holidays, commencing on July 16. 
A large number of people flock to various tourist destinations across the Kingdom during the Eid break, while many government agencies organize a number of festivals and events during the holiday to attract people to domestic tourism, which is growing constantly. Many Saudi families also go abroad looking for a vacation away from home.
According to travel and tour offices in Riyadh, most people have booked tickets for their preferred destinations in advance, including Dubai, Bahrain, Istanbul, Kuala Lumpur, London and other European destinations.
Earlier, the government had slashed working hours with the advent of the fasting month.

India’s Supreme Court orders probe into job scam, deaths

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NEW DELHI: India's top court Thursday ordered a federal investigation into a multimillion-dollar college admission and government job recruitment scandal in central India said to be linked to dozens of mysterious deaths.

The Supreme Court ordered the Central Bureau of Investigation, India's FBI, to take over from the state police the investigation into the alleged irregularities in job recruitment and college admissions as well as the deaths of nearly 50 people associated with the scam.
Police have arrested hundreds of parents and students for paying bribes and officials for allegedly rigging eligibility tests for admission to medical colleges and recruitment for jobs in the police force, schools and banking sector in Madhya Pradesh state.
The court also directed the Madhya Pradesh government to respond to a petition demanding the removal of the state's federally appointed governor after questions were raised about his involvement in the scandal. Gov. Ram Naresh Yadav's son Shailesh Yadav died mysteriously in May after the younger man was alleged to have accepted bribes in the governor's house.
Opposition Congress party leaders had been demanding a federal inquiry into the scam, accusing the Madhya Pradesh government of trying to influence the outcome of the inquiry by the state police.
Congress leader Digvijay Singh demanded the resignation of Madhya Pradesh's top elected official, saying Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan should step down to allow for a free and fair investigation.
"Students who have been arrested in connection with the scam should be made witnesses for the state," Singh said. "Isn't it strange that hundreds of students and their parents are in jail, while those who took the bribes are roaming free," he told reporters Thursday.
More than 2,500 people have been accused in connection with the scandal and around 1,900 of them have been arrested.
Dozens of people, either witnesses or accused participants in the scam, have died over the last five years in inexplicable circumstances. Congress leaders have alleged that some top state bureaucrats and politicians accepted millions of dollars in bribes to facilitate the admissions.
The scandal has come to be known in India as the "Vyapam scandal," after the Hindi language acronym for the state-run employment agency in Madhya Pradesh. For the past couple of weeks, Indian media have given wide coverage to the sudden deaths of a number of people connected to the scam.
The scandal hit the front pages of newspapers once again last weekend after the death of an investigative journalist who had gone to Madhya Pradesh to speak with witnesses.
The following day, the body of a medical college dean was found in a New Delhi hotel. The official, Arun Kumar, headed a medical college in Madhya Pradesh that was involved in the admissions scandal. Kumar was helping the state police in its investigation.
The many suspicious deaths of people linked to the scam have raised concerns among civil society groups who feel the deaths were in some way connected. Many of the dead were younger than 40 and autopsy reports in most cases were inconclusive.
Madhya Pradesh home minister Babulal Gaur dismissed the opposition's charge that witnesses and whistle-blowers were being targeted to shield top politicians and bureaucrats. He said most of the deaths were due to natural causes.

Prince Saud mourned

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JEDDAH: Veteran former Foreign Minister Prince Saud Al-Faisal died on Thursday at the age of 75, two months after he stepped down following 40 years in the job, family members and a Foreign Ministry spokesman said.
Nawaf Al-Faisal, a relative, announced the death on Facebook, while a ministry spokesman also confirmed the death on Twitter and expressed condolences.
I wish I could deny the rumor of the news of your death," the spokesman Osama Nugali tweeted.
Prince Saud's nephew Saud Mohammed Al-Abdullah Al-Faisal also acknowledged the death. "May God accept him in paradise," he wrote on Twitter. 
Prince Saud, who was appointed in 1975, was the world’s longest serving foreign minister.
The prince, who was born in 1940, was one of the highest profile members of Saudi's ruling elite and steered the diplomacy of the world's leading oil exporter for four decades before stepping down in April for health reasons.
Prince Saud retained an influential position in Saudi foreign policy circles even after his replacement, serving as an official adviser to King Salman, who took power in January, and was sometimes present when foreign leaders met the monarch
Prince Saud's tenure covered Israeli invasions of Lebanon in 1978, 1982 and 2006, the Palestinian intifadas that erupted in 1987 and 2000, Iraq's invasion of Iran in 1980 and Kuwait in 1990, and a US-led coalition's occupation of Iraq in 2003.