Asia

    The BJP was set on Monday to wrest power in Himachal Pradesh from the Congress, winning 19 seats and leading in 25 in hard fought Assembly elections, although its two top leaders were worsted in the contest. Needing 35 seats to control the 68-member House, the Bharatiya Janata Party was on course to win 44 the Congress had bagged 11 seats and led in 10 others. An Independent and the CPI-M got one seat each. The Congress accepted defeat in Himachal Pradesh, which went to the polls on November 9. Among its prominent winners were outgoing Chief Minister Virbhadra Singh (Arki) and his son Vikramaditya Singh (Shimla Rural), who entered the Assembly for the first time. State BJP chief Satpal Satti was humiliated in Una by Satpal Singh Razda of Congress while the BJP’s Chief Mini...

    An Indian woman’s visa application was rejected by authorities in the United Kingdom because her English-language proficiency is much higher than what is required by the immigration department, she claimed in a Facebook post. Alexandria Rintoul, who is originally from Shillong, Meghalaya, passed an advanced version of the International English Language Testing System (IELTS), but the visa requirement is for a much easier exam, reports the Hindustan Times. ‘Some applicants for visas to settle in the UK need to pass an English language test at an approved centre that is specified in the immigration rules,’ a Home Office spokeswoman told the BBC. ‘Rintoul failed to do this and also failed to submit the necessary supporting evidence for her application. It is open to her to re...

    At least nine people were killed and 16 injured in a suicide attack on the Bethel Memorial Methodist Church on Quetta’s Zarghoon Road on Sunday afternoon. All casualties were shifted to Civil Hospital Quetta. Hospital sources initially said they had received four bodies and around 20 injured, including women and children. Four of the injured later passed away while receiving treatmen, reports the DAWNt. At least two suicide attackers had struck the Bethel Memorial Church while Sunday service was ongoing. There were 400 worshipers inside the church when it came under attack, Balochistan’s Inspector General of Police (IG) Moazzam Ansari and Home Minister Sarfaraz Bugti confirmed to DawnNews. Police assigned to the church’s security reacted in a timely manner and averted a mu...

    Liberation War Affairs Minister AKM Mozammel Haque on Friday said the war in 1971 was never a war between India and Pakistan rather it was a War of Liberation for Bangladesh. It was never a War between India and Pakistan. We never say it. It’s no way a Pak-India war. It was our War of Liberation, he said while addressing a function as the chief guest at the National Museum in the city, reports the UNB. The Minister expressed gratitude to India for its tremendous support extended by its people and government in 1971. ‘India provided shelter, training and arms. We got all logistic support from India,’ he said. He said Bangladesh and its people are extremely grateful to Indian government and its people for the wholehearted support they extended during the War of 1971. ‘We, th...

    Video footage from inside the wedding of the year has gone viral online after actress Anushka Sharma and cricketer Virat Kohli announced on Monday evening they were married. The newlyweds had a series of pre-wedding functions in Italy, ending with a traditional Hindu ceremony, reports NDTV. The guest list was extremely restricted for the hush-hush festivities - none of the couple’s celebrity colleagues attended and the ladki and ladkewalo comprised of family and close friends. Anushka and Virat posted pictures of the wedding on their Twitter accounts and video clips from the jaimala, engagement, mehendi and other functions have been sourced and posted by fan clubs. Instagram handle Instant Bollywood posted footage of Anushka’s wedding entry, the jaimalaor exchange of garla...

    In a shocking incident, a 57-year-old man was arrested for raping a 13-year-old girl, taking a video of the act and sharing it with his friends. As per the police the man ran a video game parlour in south Mumbai and perpetrated the crime after seeing the girl playing outside his shop. As per reports by Indian Express, an officer from the JJ Marg police station said that the man started the camera on his cellphone and then raped the girl while the act was captured on camera. He then threatened her with dire consequences if she told anyone about the incident. He then kept the memory card in a drawer in his shop. The incident came to light when the girl’s family members saw the video after someone showed it to them. A local resident who needed a memory card rummaged through t...

    Fears that China risks being the cause of a fresh global financial crisis have been highlighted by the International Monetary Fund in a hard-hitting warning about the growing debt-dependency of the world’s second biggest economy. The IMF’s health check of China’s financial system found that credit was high by international levels, that personal debt had increased in the past five years, and that the pressure to maintain the country’s rapid growth had bred an unwillingness to let struggling firms fail. While praising China’s president, Xi Jinping, for his commitment to improving financial security, the IMF said reforms by Beijing in recent years had not gone far enough. The system’s increasing complexity has sown financial stability risks, the IMF’s assessment said. “Credit...

    Heart breaking footage has emerged of an abandoned baby boy found suffocating inside carrier bags just hours after being born. The suffering newborn was discovered wrapped in plastic shopping bags on a motorbike and side car at 1am on Monday, reports the Mirror. The baby was covered in blood and still had his umbilical cord attached when a group of friends heard his cries as they returned from a birthday party. Medics said the baby had been slowly suffocating inside the bags and thankfully had not been alive long enough to contract infections from rubbish strewn in the street in Caloocan City, Philippines. Emergency services arrived and rushed the boy to hospital where we was declared perfectly healthy with a a full of head of hair. Sean Casiman, a 21-year-old man who foun...

    Kim Jong-un has once again raised the risk of a devastating nuclear war with America by firing a new, powerful ballistic missile. The Hwasong-15 missile travelled 621 miles and reached an altitude of 2,796 miles as it travelled towards Japan. The rogue country described the intercontinental ballistic missile as "the most powerful it has fired to date. Photoshot Ominously, North Korea boasted that it could reach "all of mainland USA. US President Donald Trump said: It is a situation we will handle. We will take care of it. So, what do we know about the new missile and how worried should we be? When did North Korea fire the missile? North Korea launched the missile from Pyongsong, South Pyongan Province, about 18 miles north of its capital, Pyongyang. It was the first time a...

    Aung San Suu Kyi has been formally stripped of the Freedom of the City of Oxford award over her response to the repression of her country’s Rohingya Muslims. Oxford city council voted unanimously to permanently remove the honour given to the de facto leader of Myanmar in 1997, and said it did not want to celebrate those who turn a blind eye to violence. Oxford councillors had previously voted to support a cross-party motion to remove the award, and made the decision official in a vote on Monday evening. The vote comes on the same day Myanmar’s powerful army chief told Pope Francis there is no religious discrimination in Myanmar. Over 600,00 Rohingya Muslims have been driven from Rakhine state in western Myanmar into neighbouring Bangladesh through a series of military oper...