The death toll from a suicide blast at a luxury hotel in Pakistan’s northwest Peshawar city has risen to 14, while 57 people were injured, a police official said Wednesday. Early reports suggest at least two men shot their way through a security barrier and rammed a pick-up truck packed with explosives into the five-star Pearl Continental hotel late Tuesday,…
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Australian PM Urges Calm, Warns off Student Vigilantes
Australia’s Prime Minister Kevin Rudd called for calm as Indian students led “vigilante” patrols on Wednesday after a second night of protests in the wake of attacks on foreign students in Sydney and Melbourne. Scores of Indian students took to the streets of western Sydney, leading to two police arrests, after attacks in both Sydney and Melbourne which have sparked diplomatic…
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India’s Parliament Elects First Woman Speaker
India’s lower house of parliament elected a woman as its speaker Wednesday, a first in the male-dominated chamber’s history. Meira Kumar is also a member of the “untouchable” Dalit class, the lowest rung in the centuries-old caste system in the country.The speaker conducts the proceedings of the house. She will preside over 543 elected members, of which 58 are women.Read
Meira Nominated for Post of LS Speaker
Five-term Lok Sabha MP Meira Kumar on Tuesday became the consensus candidate of the ruling UPA and the Opposition BJP for the post of Lok Sabha Speaker. Leader of the House Pranab Mukherjee led a UPA delegation to submit Kumar’s nomination papers to Lok Sabha Secretary General P D T Achary for the election to the Speaker’s post scheduled to…
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Air France: Missing Plane Probably Crashed into Atlantic
The jet carrying 228 people from Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, that disappeared overnight as it entered an area of strong turbulence probably crashed into the Atlantic Ocean, the CEO of Air France said Monday.Brazilian and French ships and planes were looking for any sign of the missing plane, authorities said. The first three hours of what was to have been…
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