Nepal forms team for dialogue with Madhesis
Kathmandu: The Nepal Government formed a team for holding a dialogue with the agitating Madhesi community, headed by Deputy PM Kamal Thapa who has just returned from India after parleys with Indian leaders, to end the current transport blockade over the new Constitution. The five-member Govt team will hold talks with the agitating groups, including the Joint Democratic Madhesi Front.
Two dead as bomb hits in Thai south
Bangkok: A large bomb buried under a road killed two Thai Army rangers and wounded five others today in the kingdom’s restive, Muslim-majority deep south. The explosion was large enough to knock the armoured vehicle carrying the rangers off the road in Saiburi district of Pattani province, a hotspot in an 11-year insurgency that has claimed thousands of lives.
Typhoon kills at least 16 in Philippines
Santa Rosa: Residents of flooded farming villages in the Philippines were trapped on their rooftops on Monday and animals floated down fast-rising rivers, as the death toll from Typhoon Koppu climbed to 16.
Second-hand smoke kills over 1 lakh in China: WHO
Beijing: Second-hand smoke causes more than 1,00,000 deaths in China annually, the WHO has said as it called on the world’s largest tobacco consuming nation to enact a national tobacco control law. According to joint report by WHO, WTO, International Tobacco Control (ITC) Policy Evaluation Project and Chinese Centre for Disease Control and Prevention (CCDCP), around one million people die from tobacco-related illnesses in China annually and if uncurbed the number could rise to some three million by 2050.
Taliban hid in bombed hospital: Afghan Def Min
Kabul: Afghanistan’s acting Defence Minister said on Monday that the Doctors Without Borders hospital in the north of the country that was bombed by US forces was being used by insurgents who were fighting Government forces. Masoom Stanekzai told The Associated Press in an interview that Taliban insurgents and possibly Pakistani operatives of the Government’s secret service were using the facility in Kunduz city as a “safe place.”
Powerful blast rips through Rio
Rio De Janeiro: A powerful explosion suspected to be caused by a gas leak ripped through a Rio de Janeiro neighbourhood on Monday, injuring at least eight people and destroying homes and businesses, officials said.
First day of Egypt vote saw 15-16% turnout: PM
Cairo: The first day of a parliamentary election in Egypt saw 15-16 per cent of voters in the country turn out to cast ballots, Prime Minister Sharif Ismail said on Monday. Voting for the much-delayed 596-member Parliament is being staged in two phases ending December 2.