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Minister bows to public demand; tenders resignation
Bowing to public outcry, controversial Kerala Industries Minister P.K. Kunhalikutty, facing charges in the infamous ice-cream parlour sex scandal, tendered his resignation from the Cabinet.Kunhalikutty, also the General Secretary of the Indian Union Muslim League, the second largest constituent in the Congress-led United Democratic Front (UDF), submitted his resignation to party supremo Panakkad Syed Mohammedali Shihab Thangal at his residence.
An early-warning system could have saved thousands of lives
The 26 December earthquake was the largest anywhere in the world in the last 40 years, with a magnitude of 9.0. It was caused by the sudden collision of two tectonic plates under the floor of the Indian Ocean.A monitoring station that could have provided early warning of the devastating Indian Ocean tsunamis lacked the telephone connection needed to relay news of the impending disaster.
Countries such as Sri Lanka and India, which suffered thousands of casualties, could potentially have been warned some two hours before the waves completed the 1,500-kilometre journey from the earthquake's epicentre off Indonesia.
India and Sri Lanka, which were devastated by killer waves, are not even part of the The Pacific Tsunami Warning System.
Scientists at the PTWS centre in Hawaii desperately tried to warn Asian nations by calling the US embassies in their capitals.
Prisoner starved to death
In an Indian Jail a prisoner was starved to death because the jailor and the fellow prisoners were scared to share food with him since he was suffering from AIDS.
Hindu seer confesses to murder
A top Hindu cleric has confessed to murdering a worker at his temple in India's southern Tamil Nadu state.
The murdered worker was reportedly writing anonymous letters charging the seer with various misdemeanours.
"In a moment of weakness I ordered his murder," the counsel quoted the cleric as saying.
The charges levelled against the cleric, Mr Saraswati included embezzlement of gold procured for making a temple chariot and providing lavish lifestyles for the seer's relatives.
Victim Girl Arrested
The victim girl was arrested today by the Kerala state police in connection with her attempt to commit suicide in the year 2000. The police explained that she was in hiding all these years and hence the delay in her arrest.
This was in fact a contradiction of facts since she was under police protection all these days and the police had arrested her from her house which was under police protection.
The incident was reportedly planned by the accused minister and she was threatened during her arrest by the police that she reverted from her statement saying a social activist had compelled her to level the charges against the minister.
Regina's case has striking similarities with that of Zahira Sheikh of the Best Bakery Case, who said she had made accusations against those who allegedly killed her father and 14 others in Gujarat in 2002 at the instance of social activist Teesta Setalvad.
Any way the harm has been done as the government spokesmen have started saying that someone who keeps changing her statement cannot be believed.
No plans to resign
Kunhalikutty has ruled out his resignation from the UDF ministry in Kerala saying that there is no question of his resignation as minister or a reinvestigation into the case which had been dismissed even by the Supreme Court.
The government of Kerala continues to support and protect the accused minister saying that the allegations are yet to be proved in the court of law.
The media and the public demands the minister to be ousted from power so as to pave the way for an impartial probe into the allegation.
The minister who is said to run a mafia gang in the state has reacted massively to the situation using muscle power and political power to threaten and suppress his opponents.
Cable TV services disrupted
Cable TV services were disrupted at key locations in Kerala due to severing of optical fibre and coaxial cables reportedly by the supporters of the accused minister who wanted to prevent the reach of news bulletins containing adverse comments against him.
Journalists stoned and beaten
Journalists including women were stoned and beaten by the supporters of Kerala Industries Minister P.K. Kunhalikutty, who was last week accused of sexually abusing a 22-year-old woman thrice in 1996 when she was 14.
News person manhandled
The Kozhikode bureau chief of The New Indian Express M.P. Prashanth was manhandled by a group of men, while covering the march taken out by the Youth League and IUML cadre in the city in protest against the recent media coverage linking Industries Minister P.K. Kunhalikutty in the ice cream parlour sex scandal.
Minister abuses minor girl
Regina, the girl who was involved in the infamous ice cream sex scandal, revealed that she was sexually exploited by Industries Minister and IUML general secretary P.K. Kunhalikutty three times at separate places in 1996.
She told mediapersons that Kunhalikutty's co-brother Raoof had given her Rs 2.25 lakh to retract from her earlier statement before the court naming Kunhalikutty.
Mobile phones in Kashmir
An increasing number of people in Kashmir are reported to be using Pakistan's national anthem as the ring tone on their mobile phones. Mobile phone services were not launched in Kashmir until last year due to security concerns raised by Indian security agencies.
Guantanamo Bay. What can you do about this?
More than 80% of the prisoners at Guantanamo Bay were captured by Pakistan. They were handed over by Pakistan directly to the US authorities without following any due legal process. Many of the prisoners were stripped naked, fun made of their naked bodies, had their money taken and were tortured by Pakistani Intelligence agents, before being sent to Guantanamo Bay. What can you do about this?
Hunger strike by Palestinian prisoners
Thousands of Palestinians began a mass hunger strike in Israeli prisons demanding that Israeli prison authorities desist from practising sinister methods of humiliation and torture, including the recurrent beating of inmates, forced stripping, surprise midnight searches, extended solitary confinements which often last for months, as well as protracted handcuffing and leg-fettering.
"Let them starve to death" is the Israeli state's policy toward all Palestinians--those now in prison, and those yet to be put in prison.
Israeli officials call this nonviolent activism "terrorism".
HIV positive siblings denied education in Kerala
A government-aided school in Kerala, under a Congress led Government slammed its doors on two HIV positive siblings. This is when Congress president Sonia Gandhi is addressing AIDS 2004 - XV International AIDS Conference in Bangkok.Ananthu, 6, and his sister Akshara, 8, returned empty-handed from Sree Narayana School in the northern Kannur district after a group of parents mounted a resistance, fearing that their children would also get infected by mingling with the two HIV positive kids.
This is not the first instance of HIV positive siblings being sent out or denied admission in Kerala. Benson and Benzy, who had lost their parents to AIDS, had to wage a protracted battle last year to gain admission to a regular school last year. The setting was similar. The villagers who learnt that the kids were HIV positive in fact prevented their children from attending classes.
In most of the civilized world, an individual's HIV status is a confidential matter between patient and doctor, and schools are accordingly unentitled to inquire about their pupils' HIV status.
Remembering the great Bohemian of our times
John Abraham who had become a living myth even during the short span of his nomadic existence due to his constant rebellion against all establishments and social conventions, was killed in a tragic mishap in Calicut on 30 May 1987.
He belongs to the glorious group of artists who were part of a tradition of Bohemian "experiments in living". Despite all the hardships, his life was a celebration. The intensity of the friendship, fun, colour and above all the freedom of life which he brought to the simplest details of his life made it worthwhile and memorable.
Canadian Broadcasting Corporation suggests Israeli culpability for Iraqi prisoner abuses
On the May 4 broadcast of CBC TV's National News correspondent Neil Macdonald made a shift from Iraq to turn his report against Israel, proposing to viewers that Israeli intelligence might be linked in some way to the abuse at the Abu Ghraib prison.
Later, the CBC apologized for this statement by saying that in fact, there is no evidence that Israel was involved in what happened in the Iraqi prison.
Prisoner abuse: A regular occurrence in US Prisons
Horrific abuses, some similar to those revealed in Iraq, regularly occur in U.S. prisons with little national attention or public outrage, human rights activists says.
All over the world, prisoners of war are abused. Its just that when it comes to the so called 'Civilized, Fair and Just' nations that it is not normally expected or acknowledged. It is simply demanded that the prisoners are dealt with in a humanitarian way.
Pakistani council approves rapes to avenge honour
A village council in Pakistan permitted a landlord to rape the sister and sister-in-law of a man he accused of an illicit relationship with his daughter.
The council members, all of them landlords themselves, ruled that the influential landlord could avenge his honour by having sex with the farmer's daughter, who is 16, and daughter-in-law, who is 22.
Later the girls were locked in a room and raped by the landlord while two of his male relatives stood guard and the three-member council waited outside.
Pay woman drug addicts not to have children says Drugs Expert
Women drug addicts should be paid to take contraception to stop them from
having children, according to a drugs expert Professor Neil McKeganey of
the Centre for Drug Misuse Research.
He suggested that in many instances, female drug users are becoming pregnant
not because they want to but because of the sheer chaos of their lifestyle.
His research suggests that more than 50,000 children in Scotland have been exposed to drug addiction at home.
It found a number had even woken up to find their parents had died from an overdose while others had had their Christmas presents sold to pay for drugs.
The Catholic Church is against the idea. They say: "If you are going to sterilise drug-addicted women, why stop there? Why not sterilise alcoholics?
"This is social engineering on a massive scale and it's completely unacceptable."
4,392 Priests Accused of Sex Abuse
A survey compiled by the John Jay College of Criminal Justice and overseen by the National Review Board documenting sex abuse by U.S. Roman Catholic clergy found that 4,392 clerics have been accused of molesting minors since 1950 and blame bishops' "moral laxity" in disciplining offenders for letting the problem worsen.
The Indian Army uses civilians as human shield to launch attacks on terrorists
More than ten thousand people took to the streets in Bandipore town in north Kashmir, protesting against the killing of five civilians who had been used as "human shield" by the soldiers from JAK Rifles in an operation to flush out militants in Argam forests.
Pesticide in soft drinks
In India, a parliamentary inquiry has found that soft drinks sold in India by US companies Coca-Cola and Pepsi contain high levels of pesticide that they could lead to cancer and other diseases.
The Joint Parliamentary Committee has also held the US soft drinks majors Coca Cola and PepsiCo's plants in Palakkad district of Kerala responsible for "causing pollution of water, depleting ground water and reducing crop yields besides causing ailments to human beings".
Kerala Government prosecutes Rationalist Association leader for writing against God Woman
Owing to protests by a group of writers and social activists and the ensuing international attention, the government had relented and halted its steps in March 2003 to facilitate the prosecution of the author for his book on the God Woman. These attempts have been resumed again. Please protest against this.
Marital Rape in India
A rape accused in India has been acquitted after he proved in court that the woman he was accused of raping was his wife. He said she filed the case against him under pressure. The accused produced a marriage certificate to prove his claim.
Marital rape is still legal in India while the neighbouring Nepal has long back outlawed it.
Militant political party encourages "Big Families" to counter "Population Bomb"
Counter to the Indian government's policy of controlling the country's burgeoning population by promoting family planning, a radical Hindu political party in Uttar Pradesh, India's most populous state, which is a key ally of the country's ruling party, is encouraging Hindus to have more children because of fears of a Muslim population explosion.
Campaigning for Democracy in China
An American and a New Zealander were jailed in Beijing on New Years eve on charges of plotting to explode balloons by remote control above Tiananmen Square and scatter pro-democracy leaflets.