Romanian held in ATM fraud to be brought to Kerala today

Mumbai: The Mumbai
police on Tuesday nabbed a Romanian national in connection with the
hi-tech ATM robbery that rocked Thiruvananthapuram..

Mumbai: The Mumbai police on Tuesday nabbed a Romanian national in connection with the hi-tech ATM robbery that rocked Thiruvananthapuram.......

Read more at: http://english.mathrubhumi.com/news/kerala/romanian-held-in-atm-fraud-to-be-brought-to-kerala-today-english-news-1.1269634

India earned Rs 230 crore through satellite launch services in FY16

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New Delhi, July 21 (IANS) India earned around Rs.230 crore last in fiscal through commercial launch satellite services, parliament was told on Thursday.

The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) through Antrix Corporation Ltd offers satellite launch capacity on a commercial basis, Union Minister of State in the Prime Minister's Office, Jitendra Singh, who also holds charge of the departments of Atomic Energy and Space, told the Rajya Sabha in a written reply.

"During the last year (2015-16), Antrix earned a revenue of approximately Rs 230 crore through commercial launch services, which is about 0.6 per cent of the global launch services market," he said.

Citing published reports available in the public domain on the international satellite market, Singh said the average annual revenue over the last three years, is approximately $200 billion (Rs 13 lakh crore), which includes the launch services market (Rs 0.37 lakh crore), satellite manufacturing (Rs 1.07 lakh crore), ground equipment (Rs 3.85 lakh crore) and satellite services (Rs 8.17 lakh crore).

He said in order to meet the enhanced national requirements for launching satellites for earth observation, communication and navigation, ISRO is taking steps to increase the launch capacity.

Towards stepping up the launch capacity, ISRO is in the process of exploring the possibility of enhanced involvement of Indian industry.

Besides meeting the national demand, the industry can explore the opportunities for commercial launch services, he added.

--IANS

Black money: SIT seeks action against ineligible duty drawback

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New Delhi, July 21 (IANS) In a move to check black money, the Special Investigation Team (SIT) set up on the issue has asked the Enforcement Directorate (ED) and Directorate of Revenue Intelligence (DRI) to act against companies claiming duty drawback without repatriating export proceeds, an official said on Thursday.

The SIT has directed the ED to take action under the Foreign Exchange Maintenance Act (FEMA) against 216 companies for the period before March 1, 2016, and 572 companies for the period after March 1, 2016, for which each such company had export proceeds pending for realisation for more than Rs 100 crore, a Finance Ministry release said here.

"The SIT also directed the DRI to check from its database on how many companies have claimed duty drawback but have failed to bring export proceeds, and take necessary action against them as per law," the ministry said.

As per the Reserve Bank of India rules, all exporters have to bring foreign exchange into the country as export proceeds within a year of the date of exports.

The data on whether an exporter has brought export proceeds to the country is maintained by the RBI.

"Not bringing export proceeds is a violation of FEMA as it amounts to illicitly parking funds abroad," the statement said.

"Further, exporters can claim duty drawback on exports made with respect to taxes paid on inputs to exports. Any exporter can claim duty drawback only if the exporter has brought export proceeds into the country," it added.

The SIT also asked RBI to immediately develop an institutional mechanism and information system to immediately red-flag those cases where exports have been outstanding in violation of FEMA guidelines.

Besides, the RBI has also been asked to share complete data with the Enforcement Directorate and DRI on a monthly basis.

The ministry said the SIT had asked RBI to give details of exports made where exports proceeds were yet to be utilised even after a period of more than one year.

In response, the RBI provided data on export outstanding for shipping bills prior to March 1, 2014, pending for more than one year, as well as data on export outstanding for shipping bills on or after March 1, 2014 pending for more than one year.

--IANS

bc/tsb/vt

When InSanity beckons

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Dr. Umer O Thasneem / July 13, 2016, 4:04 pm

Samuel Becket had famously declared that he hadn’t taken sides in the primordial conflict between God and devil or good and evil simply because he hadn’t had the opportunity to listen to the devil’s side of the story.

In our own times ISIS has gone to the other extreme and taken the devil’s side, even while claiming to be God’s warriors. For its adherents, IS stands for Islamic State; for the rest of Muslims and the rest of humanity it incarnates nothing but InSanity. With its indomesticable barbarity, wanton cruelty and boorish Neanderthalism it represents the worst challenge to all sane versions of Islam. Voltaire had considered fanatics neuropaths. He warned against hating them, stating that they needed to be treated like people suffering from other illnesses.

What kind of treatment IS activists and sympathizers need is a question worth pondering. Theirs seems to be a madness that has no method to it. If they are fighting for Islam, why should they be the very antithesis of everything that Islam is? The prophet had indeed fought battles. But historians note that the fatalities in all his battles together were less than a thousand. His magnanimity in the aftermath of battles was so exemplary that many of his prisoners of war chose to return to his fold even after they were released. He entered Mecca, the city that had thirsted for his blood and hounded him out, a decade after being forced out of there, as a conqueror without letting an ounce of blood to be spilt. And to boot, he forbade his men even from claiming the encroached houses and properties they had been forced to leave behind in the city of their birth.

When his followers extended the domain of Islam after his death, they did not exactly follow his model of tolerance, but as the famous French Christian historian Amin Malouf pointed out, largely abstained from gratuitous violence. The example of the great Saladin (Salahuddin Ayyoubi) has been legendary. When his enemy commander King Richard lost his horse during the combat, Saladin immediately sent him a horse saying that a king like him should not be fighting on foot. When the English king fell ill, he sent his personal physician to treat him. In the aftermath of the Jerusalem victory, he was so magnanimous that he made it a point to make the city a true cosmopolitan centre by allowing Christians, Jews and Muslim to settle there on equitable terms. In gratitude many Christians chose to call their newborn sons Saladin.

Abubakr el Bagdadi is no Saladin, nor even his dark shadow. He is a monstrous incarnation, a Frankenstein organism on whose provenance and motives mystery abounds. Suspicions about his Zionist connection have been further amplified in recent times following the recovery of Israeli ammunition from IS bastions that recently fell. Earlier too there were reports of Israeli nurses and volunteers assisting his injured soldiers. Indeed IS has not even by mistake fired a cracker, let alone a missile, aimed at Israel.

Indeed modern Islam has no bigger enemy to confront than IS. Islam could survive history’s worst nightmares, including those unleashed by the US but IS seems to be a tumour of a more malignant species. Because of Islamic tolerance Muslim heartlands like Iraq, Syria, Egypt and Turkey are home to large number of Christians, Jews and even Yazidis. These counties are also home to some of the most sacred sites of these denominations. It was in these lands that European Jews sought refuge when they were persecuted and driven out of Europe during inquisition.

More than on their individual victims, IS is now inflicting an irreparable damage on this tradition. It is in this context that the disappearance of a few Keralite families allegedly to join IS becomes a worrying development. As yet there has been no confirmation of these reports and there are speculations that their port of call is actually Yemen and not Syria. If the latter is true, it would mean less alarm and a little less concern for leaders of Muslim community.

Some of the desolate Yemeni hills are home to a particularly orthodox sect of the Wahabi species who believe in renouncing all ways of modern living and embracing primitive simplicity by tending to their beards and goats. This is also a worrisome development and runs against the grain of Islamic principles which disapprove of asceticism.  As of now, India’s Muslim leadership and religious scholars have every reason to pat themselves on their backs because neither the toxic IS nor the non-toxic but regressive Wahabi schools have been able to make inroads into the Indian Muslim psyche. But changed times call for greater vigil and more concerted campaigns.

The rulers too have an added responsibility. More than at any point of time, Indian Muslims are now feeling besieged and beleaguered. Questions are being raised from quarters close to the ruling hierarchy about their belongingness and right to exist. As Bobby S Said put it in a similar but different context their very ontology is being challenged by a hauntology. The talk of a Muslim-free India by the likes of Sadhvi Prachi is a grim instance of this. Increasingly, minorities feel like being deprived of not only democratic spaces of protest and articulation but even air pockets to breathe. The government stance on Aligarh and the witch hunt against Zakir Naik are stark reminders of this.

It is a fact of nature that any organism threatened of living space, reacts in a suicidal and self-destructive manner. There won’t be none better to wise up Narendra Modi on this than the wisest and probably the wealthiest new cabinet inductee MJ Akbar. In his epochal work In the Shade of Swords, he describes how frustration expresses itself not only through poetry but finds vent in insane acts causing cumulative damage.

(Dr. Umer O Thasneem teaches English at the Department of English, University of Calicut. The views expressed here are personal. He may be contacted at uotasnm@yahoo.com)

   

- See more at: http://www.madhyamam.com/en/anti-matter/2016/jul/13/when-insanity-beckons#sthash.l35d4XzA.dpuf

Medical Centre in Vadakara closed by BJP workers....

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Medical Centre in Vadakara closed by BJP workers Tense atmosphere is prevailing in the locality and police personnel are camping in the area.Kozhikode: A private medical centre in Vadakara was forcibly closed by BJP workers on Sunday .......Sources said Dr Ijas, who is suspected to have joined IS, served here. ..... The BJP workers, who assembled at the spot, said the centre would not be allowed to function until the probe into the case is completed. ..... Tense atmosphere is prevailing in the locality and police personnel are camping in the area....... The BJP workers initially took out a march to a medical store, a sister concern of the medical centre. Later, they reached the medical centre, downedthe shutters and locked it from outside. On coming to know that the staff are trapped inside, they opened it, asked them to leave and forcibly locked it again...

More missing person complaints from Kasargod .....

________ A to Z kerala .......... [kvk] [www.atozkerala.in , www.atozkerala.blogspot.com] Kasargod: Close on the heels of the revelations that certain persons, who went missing from Kasargod and Palakkad, joined the Islamic State (IS)more missing person complaints have been lodged with the police....... On Sunday, eight man missing complaints were lodged with the police. With this, the total number of complaints lodged with police suspecting IS links for the missing persons have reached 10....... On Saturday, the father of Palakkad native Bexon alias Eesa (31) had approached police. In his complaint, he had said that his younger son Betson alais Yahiya (23), his wife Merin alias Mariyam, Bexon’s wife Nimisha alias Fathima had gone missing ....... Meanwhile, Nimisha’s mother on Sunday met Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan and lodged a complaint with him. ......Later, responding to media persons’ queries, she expressed hope that her daughter would come back. ...... Meanwhile, the State Intelligence wing has confirmed that a few among the missing persons have links with the IS. They include five persons from Kasarkode.. The intelligence has handed over its preliminary investigation report to DGP Loknath Behera. It is learnt that the Central agencies have also confirmed this information ...s per the details available, a total of 19 persons have gone missing from Kerala _ 15 from Kasargod and four from Palakkad. They comprise six women and three children...

KSA’s gift to Egypt: ‘Islamic city’ at Al-Azhar

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CAIRO: Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques King Salman laid the foundation stone of the Beouth Islamic City, which includes a dormitory for up to 30,000 students, at the Al-Azhar University in Cairo on Saturday.

The king, who was accompanied by a number of princes and ministers, was received by Grand Sheikh of Al-Azhar Ahmed Al-Tayeb and a number of officials. He performed the greeting prayer at the 1,000-year-old Al-Azhar Mosque and was briefed on the mosque’s restoration project. 
In 2014, Saudi Arabia had given funds to Egypt for the restoration work at the mosque and university, and for establishing a dormitory for foreign students. Later in the same year, Egyptian President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi allocated land for the new city in New Cairo’s fifth settlement district.
Meanwhile, King Salman met Egypt’s Coptic Orthodox Pope Tawadros II on Friday, becoming the first Saudi king to do so, and was hailed by the Coptic of Egypt as an “exceptional leader.”
Reverend Paul Halim, the official spokesman for the Coptic Orthodox Church, said the church thanks King Salman and the Kingdom for its continued support for Egypt. 
He said the visit of King Salman to Egypt and his meetings with Muslim and Christian clerics, public figures, intellectuals and economists indicate a new stage of relations. 
“The two countries seek to rewrite the rules of joint Arab action. This new direction will send a message to the whole world that we are one Arab fabric,” he said.
“The meeting of the king and Pope Tawadros II also sends a strong message to extremists and terrorists who have distorted the face of religion. It also reflects the importance of dialogue between religions and cultures for serving mankind.” 
The king is scheduled to meet Egyptian Parliament Speaker Ali Abdel Aal on Sunday and deliver a speech there.
King Salman will on Monday receive an honorary doctorate from Cairo University, making it the 80th such honor so far. “The Ph.D. is in recognition of the king’s stature as a global figure with great influence on the Arab and international stage,” Cairo University President Jaber Nassar was quoted as saying by a local newspaper.
“King Salman is known for his outstanding role in serving Arabs, Muslims and Islam and for his support to Egypt and its people, in addition to his prominent role in supporting Cairo University, including the historic project to develop the hospitals of Cairo University,” he said.

Shani temple allows women devotees

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 Ahmednagar
(MH): In a historic decision, the famous Shani Shingnapur Temple Trust has decided to throw open its doors to women from Friday, a trustee announced here.
Trustee Shalini Lande informed the mediapersons about the decision on behalf of the temple trust.
The step was immediately welcomed by Maharashtra Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis and women's group Bhumata Ranragini Brigade that was agitating for it for four months.

Disclose records related to denotification of Wakf properties

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>New Delhi: The Central Information Commission has directed the Central Government to disclose all records related to UPA government's decision to de-notify 123 Wakf properties which enabled their title to be transferred to Delhi Wakf board.
Information Commissioner Yashovardhan Azad rejected the contention of Union Ministry of Urban Development that the issue of transfer of properties, being a matter of policy is under reconsideration consequent to the directions passed by Delhi High Court.
"Every decision of council of ministers precedes deliberation and due consultative process. Any subsequent decision modifying or altering the earlier decision would be preceded by a consultative process 'distinct' from the earlier one. Thus, the proposition that a settled policy decision of council of ministers gets unsettled merely by an act of reconsideration is untenable," Azad said in his order.
Hearing the plea of activist Subhash Agrawal, he said once a decision is taken by Council of Ministers, the matter gets over and any subsequent reconsiderations of the earlier decision would not get the benefit of exemption as contemplated under section 8(1)(i) of the RTI Act for records forming part of it.
"However, exemption would be permissible for the records forming part of subsequent consultative process in consequence of any reconsideration, decision whereof is yet to be taken. Hence, the plea of Section 8(1)(i) is not maintainable in the present set of facts," he said.
The Information Commissioner said the plea of the Government that information could not have been disclosed since the information pertained to a cabinet decision facing challenge in Delhi High Court, at the relevant time is "grossly misplaced".
"Clause (b) to Section 8(1) of the RTI Act, 2005 would have been applicable, had the court of law seized with the matter forbade disclosure of information expressly or revelation of information sought would have constituted contempt of court. Thus this plea of respondent is also found unsustainable," he said.
Section 8(1)(b) exempts disclosure of information which has been expressly forbidden to be published by any court of law or tribunal or the disclosure of which may constitute contempt of court.
About sixty of these 123 properties are owned by the Land and Development Office (L and DO) under the Urban Development Ministry while the rest are with Delhi Development Authority.
The decision had enabled the Wakf Board to take a call on the properties including selling them. These properties are spread over prime locations in the capital in and around Connaught Place, Mathura Road, Lodhi Road, Man Singh Road, Pandara Road, Ashoka Road, Janpath, Parliament House, Karol Bagh, Sadar Bazaar, Darya Ganj and Jangpura.
The minority affairs ministry had set up a committee of experts under the Central Wakf Council to evaluate the proposal. The expert committee backed the proposal.

Mehbooba to be sworn in as J&K’s first woman CM on April 4 -

Srinagar: PDP president Mehbooba Mufti will be sworn in as the first woman Chief Minister of Jammu and Kashmir on April 4, a party leader said on Friday. “Mehbooba Mufti sahiba will be sworn in as Chief Minister on April 4,” PDP leader Amitabh Mattoo said in Srinagar. Mr. Mattoo, who worked as an advisor to the former Chief Minister Mufti Mohammad Sayeed, expressed the hope that 56-year-old Ms. Mehbooba would usher in a new era of peace and prosperity in the region. Meanwhile, sources in the PDP and its alliance partner BJP said they have also conveyed the mutually agreed date for the swearing-in ceremony to Governor N.N. Vohra The date for the swearing-in ceremony of the new Cabinet was decided after deliberations between the leadership of both the parties, they said. Asked whether there were any differences between the coalition partners which led to the delay in the swearing-in ceremony, the sources said there were no differences but deliberations between alliance partners happen and they take time. The PDP and the BJP had staked claim for government formation on March 26, two days after Ms. Mehbooba was elected as the PDP’s legislature party leader.< After the death of her father, who headed PDP-BJP coalition government for 10 months from March 1 last year until his death on January 7 this year, Ms. Mehbooba was reluctant to take over as Chief Minister coalition government. She was seeking assurances from the Central government on implementation of Agenda of Alliance, Common Minimum Programme (CMP) framed by the two parties last year. Ms. Mehbooba also sought some J&K-specific confidence building measures.
Ms. Mehbooba had described her meeting with the Prime Minister as positive, saying she was satisfie