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Parliament adjourned till Aug 16

          New Delhi: Both, the Lok Sabha and the Rajya Sabha, were adjourned till August 16 here Friday. The Houses were adjourned for a three-week recess amid pandemonium over the issue of Union Coal and Mines Minister Sibu Soren. The agitated Opposition benches wanted Soren's dismissal over his involvement in a murder case around 30 years ago. Soren has been on the run after a Jharkhand court issued arrest warrants against him. A special team had even arrived in the Capital to arrest the minister, but had to return empty-handed.

           Manipur scribe beaten up by security forces Imphal: A local journalist covering the protest carried out over the alleged killing of a 30-year old woman by Assam Rifles personnel was roughed by the India Reserve Battalion (IRB) here Friday. Official sources revealed that IRB personnel chased and beat up Thiya Ranjan, a reporter of Sanaleibak, at Keisampat area in the town. Following the incident, local media persons rushed to State Chief Minister O Ibobi Singh's residence and resorted to a sit-in dharna before the CM resident demanding immediate action against the guilty security personnel.

Manipur scribe beaten up by security forces (Go To Top)

          Imphal: A local journalist covering the protest carried out over the alleged killing of a 30-year old woman by Assam Rifles personnel was roughed by the India Reserve Battalion (IRB) here Friday. Official sources revealed that IRB personnel chased and beat up Thiya Ranjan, a reporter of Sanaleibak, at Keisampat area in the town. Following the incident, local media persons rushed to State Chief Minister O Ibobi Singh's residence and resorted to a sit-in dharna before the CM resident demanding immediate action against the guilty security personnel.

Left asks PM to stall privatisation of airports (Go To Top)

          New Delhi: Several MPs belonging to Left parties opposed the "privatisation" of Delhi and Mumbai airports, and asked Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh to consider alternative proposal submitted by the airport employees. CPI (M) leader Nilotpal Basu said that the move to privatise the airports was in "violation" of the Common Minimum Programme (CMP). In his letter to the PM, he said that while the Airports Authority of India (AAI) was consistently making profits and had a reserve of over Rs 2300 crore, "lack of transparency of purpose had shrouded the whole process with mystery and suspicion". "Such a move, in our position, is in violation of CMP," he said.

India in touch with Iraq for securing release of hostages (Go To Top)

          New Delhi: The India government was trying its best for the release of its citizens taken hostage in Iraq, and it was working closely with the Iraqi government in this regard, External Affairs Minister K. Natwar Singh said here Friday. He was speaking to reporters after returning from Islamabad. "They are innocent people, they are there to earn a living and not to fight against anyone. I spoke to the foreign minister of Iraq who was in Cairo, I told him this is humanitarian thing and we believe that the Iraqi government will try its level best that these hostages are released," Singh said. A little known Iraqi insurgent group - The Holders of the Black Banner - kidnapped the seven truck drivers on Wednesday. They threatened to kill them one by one unless the company ended its business in the war-ravaged nation. Kuwait's largest transportation firm, KGL, assured that it was willing to do anything to save the lives of the seven men. Company spokesperson said that they were willing to withdraw from Iraq, in line with the demand of the insurgents.

Iraq hostage crisis: Relatives demand Govt intervention Dharampur (Go To Top)

          Kangar/Dehlan (HP): The families of Indian truck drivers held hostage by insurgents in Iraq are frantically appealing for immediate government action for their safe release. A grim looking Vandana, Raj's eldest daughter appealed to the government for the safe release of her father. "Government should bring my father back. We are very poor and our father is everything for us. We do not want money, we only want our father," said Vandana. For Promila, Raj's wife, the news has shaken her world. "My daughter has stopped eating. We want that government should help him and he should reach home safely to us," she said. An Iraqi group threatened in a videotape aired on Wednesday to kill the hostages, three of them Indians, the others from Kuwait and Egypt, if the Kuwaiti company they worked for did not pull out of Iraq. New Delhi, which has repeatedly turned down calls to send troops to Iraq, said it was doing everything to secure the release of the three Indian hostages. Raj's family said he had called them up a month ago and had also written two weeks back. He also sent them Rs. 50,000.

           Not far from Raj's house is the home of Sukhdev Singh, who left for Kuwait in April to pay off his parent's debts. Sukhdev's desperately poor family paid 80,000 rupees ($1,730) to an Indian recruitment agent by selling off a quarter of their meagre land holdings. He was offered a salary of 20,000 rupees per month as a truck driver, at least five times as much as he made in India. But on Thursday morning, the family's calm was broken when a village elder arrived in the courtyard with a local newspaper showing a video picture of Sukhdev along with the other hostages and masked gunmen. "What can I say about the government whether they will do anything or not? After all, they should be doing something," said Sher Singh, Sukhdev's father. Tears rolled down Jaspal Kaur, Sukhdev's frail mother, as she appealed to the extremists to release her only son. "This morning our (elder) son showed us the newspaper showing the photograph of our son as hostage. Then we saw he is our son only. There is no news of him...," said Kaur.

          Truck drivers Tilak Raj, Sukhdev Singh and Antaryami went to work for a company in Kuwait hoping to pay off their debts and get a better life for their poverty-stricken families. But the trio's families now fear they face death at the hands of their captors. A stream of high-profile officials have visited Raj's home in Dharampur Kangar village in Himachal Pradesh after news of his kidnapping, alongwith seven other men by guerrillas, flashed across the television channels and newspapers. 40-year-old Raj is working for a Kuwaiti transport company, which was contracted by the Americans.