Know India chance for Indian diaspora

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JEDDAH: India’s Ministry of External Affairs will organize the next edition of the “Know India Program” (KIP) to familiarize Indian diaspora youth with India’s culture, heritage and contemporary India. 
The program will be for a duration of 25 days, during which participants will spend nearly 10 days in a select state. The focus of this year’s event will be Maharashtra and the participants will tour the state on board the luxury train Deccan Odyssey. 
The program is open only for Indian origin diaspora youth in the age group of 18-26 years. The selected participants would be required to purchase air tickets for their journey from the country of residence to India and back. Ninety percent of the total cost of air tickets (lowest economy excursion fare) would be reimbursed to the participants on successful completion of the program by them. 
The minimum qualification required for applying is graduate or studying for graduation, and the applicant should be able to converse in English. Non Resident Indians (NRIs) are not eligible.
Duly filled in application form with a passport size photograph should reach the librarian, Consulate General of India, Tahliya Street, Jeddah on or before April 5 between 10 a.m. and 4 p.m. on any working day. The application form may be collected from Saeed Ahmad, librarian, Consulate General of India, Jeddah, Tel: 6614027, Mobile: 0545071044.

Drug sellers on Snapchat ‘logged out’

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JEDDAH: The Interior Ministry in Riyadh has arrested five people for selling drugs on social networking sites, particularly Snapchat.
Maj. Gen. Mansour Al-Turki, spokesman of the ministry, said the users had been sharing videos encouraging drug abuse and urging young people to buy narcotics. 
Those arrested were all Saudis, with officers seizing 788 amphetamine pills, 12 grams of hashish, two pistols and 66 live rounds.
Al-Turki said that the ministry has the capability to track down those using social networks for criminal activities. He urged citizens and expatriates to work with the police to apprehend criminals.

Haj scam: Saudi woman arrested in Cairo for swindling 260 Egyptians

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CAIRO: A Saudi woman has been arrested in Cairo for swindling 260 Egyptians and stealing 1.5 million Egyptian pounds from them, promising them Haj visas. According to Alyaum Alsabe, the 36-year-old woman named Maha owns a travel agency in Cairo. She committed the fraud in cooperation with an Egyptian accomplice. The suspect has admitted to her crime after the Egyptian citizens filed a complaint against her, reported Ajel.

SR25: Weekly ticket for Riyadh Metro

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RIYADH: A weekly ticket for the much-awaited Riyadh Metro would cost around SR25, the Riyadh Development Authority has announced.

Abdur Rahman Al-Shalan, the authority’s director of transport, said that metro was aimed at providing services to families and citizens, not workers, according to a report by an online publication on Wednesday.
Al-Shalan said work was underway at 184 sites, which include the railway and bus routes of both the tracks of trains and buses in various parts of Riyadh. He was speaking at a workshop on the metro at the 9th Saudi Forum on Travel and Tourism Investment that ends on Friday.
Al-Shalan said the Riyadh Metro plan would be reviewed in 2025, to decide whether more stations should be added, or changes to the track made, he was reported as saying.
The $22-billion Riyadh metro is a rapid transport system being built by the world’s leading construction companies including Bechtel, FCC, Strukton, Salini Impregilo, Larsen and Toubro and Samsung. 
It will be the backbone of the city’s public transport system and integrated with an 85-km three-line rapid bus transit network. Six lines will serve the capital city’s center, government facilities, universities, commercial areas, the airport and the financial district.

14 killed, many trapped in overpass collapse in India

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KOLKATA, India: Rescuers in Kolkata dug through large chunks of debris from an overpass that collapsed while under construction Thursday, killing at least 14 people and injuring scores of others, officials said.
A section of the overpass in the busy Bara Bazaar residential and shopping area in central Kolkata fell on vehicles and people moving underneath, trapping scores in their cars, trucks and motorized rickshaws.
“We heard a loud rumble and then saw a lot of dust in the sky,” a witness told the NDTV channel.
Army troops and personnel from the National Disaster Response Force joined efforts to extract people from vehicles that lay under massive concrete blocks and metal debris. Huge cranes and other rescue equipment reached the site and began clearing the rubble. Workers also used gas cutters to pry open the slabs.
More than 70 injured were admitted to two hospitals in Kolkata, the capital of West Bengal state, hospital officials said. At least 14 were dead, they said.
“The area was very, very crowded. Motorized rickshaws, taxis ... there was a lot of traffic,” one witness told the New Delhi Television news channel, or NDTV.
Television images showed the bloody legs of some of the trapped people jutting out of the collapsed girders and concrete slabs.
Mamta Banerjee, the top elected leader in the state, visited the collapse site and said a private builder had missed several deadlines for completing the overpass.
The contract for the overpass was signed in 2008 and it was expected to be completed in two years. She accused the previous communist government in West Bengal of not adhering to building regulations.
Building collapses are common in India, where builders use poor enforcement of regulations and use substandard materials.

With garbage crisis solved, Lebanon shifts focus to pending issues

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Beirut: With Lebanon’s garbage problem resolved, at least on a temporary basis, ministers have turned their attention to other concerns.
On Tuesday, Health Minister Wael Abu Faour asked the prosecutor’s office to launch an investigation into the country’s latest scandal, this one dealing with wheat imports, twenty-four hours after he agreed to form a task force with Minister of Agriculture Akram Shehayeb, and Minister of the Economy Alain Hakim to resolve the problem of imported wheat that apparently was not safe to consume.
Although Shehayeb stressed that samples tested by his inspectors did not include dangerous substances, Abu Faour’s crack team confirmed that their tests taken from Beirut Port showed wheat contained high levels of the carcinogenic ochratoxin substance — 20mg in every 1kg of wheat, or four times the normal levels.
There was no explanation on how the wheat was contaminated with ochratoxin and where these stocks came from.
Meanwhile in London, Interior Minister Nouhad Al Mashnouq met with the UK Secretary of State for International Development Justine Greening, and stressed the importance of tackling Beirut’s airport security, when he returned home.

Teacher jailed for secretly recording colleagues in Saudi Arabia

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Manama: A teacher in a Saudi school was sentenced to three months in jail for secretly recording her colleagues on her mobile phone.
The teacher who was initially suspended pending the investigation said her act was spontaneous and that she was just joking with her colleagues when she made the recording during a short break between lessons.
She added that she teasingly told them she would post the recording in case they stirred her feelings.
However, the teachers were not amused and reported the case to the school, launching a process that that escalated from keeping the teacher out of the classroom for two weeks by the education authorities to referring her to a court of justice and a prison verdict.
The judge gave the defendant a 30-day grace period to challenge the court sentence.

Nearly 1.8 billion people will face water scarcity by 2025: UN

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United Nations: By 2025, some 1.8 billion people will face absolute water scarcity and an estimated two-thirds of the world’s population could be living under water-stressed conditions, showed UN statistics released on Monday.
A panel discussion held at the UN headquarters highlighted that safeguarding forests is an essential way to manage global freshwater resources and to avoid water shortages, Xinhua reported.
Three-fourths of the fresh water that people use every day comes from forested catchment areas and more than 1.6 billion people live on the forests for food, water, medicines and fuel, forest experts said at the panel discussion marking the International Day of Forests which falls on Monday.
Experts said forested watersheds and wetlands influence how and where rain falls and can filter and clean the water. Forests also play an important role in providing and regulating water in a number of ways, from groundwater recharge to erosion control.
"The protection and restoration of forest watersheds and catchments is not just climate-smart; it is a cost-effective and green alternative to new infrastructure development for water purification," said Manoel Sobral Filho, director of the UN Forum on Forests Secretariat.
"Forests are the planet's natural water towers," he added.
The International Day of Forests is observed annually on March 21. UN statistics show that every year, seven million hectares of natural forests are lost and 50 million hectares of forest land are burned.

Missing Infosys employee was traveling by metro, tweets Sushma Swaraj

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New Delhi: The Infosys employee who has been missing in Brussels since Tuesday's deadly terror attacks was "travelling in the metro", Foreign Minister Sushma Swaraj tweeted this morning.
Raghuvendran Ganesh, who has been missing since the attacks that killed 34 people, hails from Bengaluru.
“We are doing our best to locate Raghavendran Ganesh,” External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj tweeted.
She also said that two other Indians, both employees of Jet Airways, who were injured were “recovering well”.
At least 34 people were killed on Tuesday as two deadly explosions rocked the Zaventem airport and a more powerful blast ripped through a train coach at a Metro station in the heart of Brussels in the worst terror attack in Europe in four months.

Attempt was made on Bal Thackeray's life: David Headley

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Mumbai: In a shocking disclosure, Pakistani-American terrorist-turned-approver David Coleman Headley on Thursday claimed that an attempt was made on the life of the late Shiv Sena founder-patriarch, Bal Thackeray.
"I believe an attempt was made on the life of the Shiv Sena chief... The man who made the attempt had escaped from police custody," Headley said in the Special Court of Additional Sessions Judge G.A. Sanap.
His replies came on the second day of his cross-examination conducted by lawyer Abdul Wahab Khan, the defence counsel for Sayed Zabiuddin Ansari alias Abu Jundal, who is facing trial in the 26/11 case.
During his examination-in-chief by Special Public Prosecutor Ujjwal Nikam on February 12, Headley had first confirmed the LeT's plot to target Thackeray, but said nothing on an unsuccessful bid made to kill him and the attacker having slipped from the police hands.
When Khan asked him how many times he visited the party headquarters Shiv Sena Bhavan in Dadar and what was the motive, Headley said he recced the building twice and reiterated that the LeT's target was the late Thackeray.
To the question, under whose instructions, Headley said he was instructed by his LeT supervisor in Pakistan, Sajid Mir.
On any other attempts on the late Thackeray's life, Headley said he had learnt of one previous attempt on the late champion of Hindutva (Thackeray), and the man who made the bid had escaped police custody.
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