Justice AK Ganguly should resign as West Bengal Human Rights Commission chief: Arun Jaitley

NEW DELHI: In the wake of fresh revelations in the sexual harassment case against Justice AK Ganguly, BJP leader Arun Jaitley on Monday said that since these are not "untested allegations", he should resign as chief of the WBHRC to protect the dignity of the office.

In his latest Facebook post, the leader of the opposition in Rajya Sabha said that had the charges against the former Supreme Court judge been untested allegations, he could have taken a stand that the law will take its own course and he would quit only if found guilty.

Jaitley said according to media reports, a three-judge inquiry committee constituted by the Chief Justice of India had found prima facie substance in the intern's complaint against Justice (retired) Ganguly.

"There is reason to believe on the basis of the report of the three judges that an offence could have been committed. Since this involves a former judge of the Supreme Court, who is presently the Chairperson of the West Bengal Human Rights Commission, a person in a high position, Justice Ganguly, like Caesar's wife, must be above suspicion," he said.

Jaitley maintained that since Justice Ganguly was suspected of committing an "unacceptable offence," his insistence on continuing in office raised some questions.

"Firstly, if it were a case of a prominent politician rather than a former judge, would the judicial institutions have completely washed their hands of or would they have monitored the investigations?" he said.

Since a former judge of the apex court is involved, the standards of judicial scrutiny should be higher than normal, Jaitley said.

He also asked how Justice Ganguly could discharge his duties as WBHRC chairman in the wake of such allegations.

Jaitley suggested that it would be "fair and proper" if Justice Ganguly contests the allegations as an ordinary citizen rather than a high functionary.

"If he were to relinquish his office, he would only be protecting the dignity of the office that he occupies. His decision to cling on to his office only establishes that even judges, like most in political positions, continue to stick to their office till the intensity of public opinion forces them out," Jaitley said.

Excerpts of an affidavit by the law intern, who has accused Ganguly of sexual harassment, have been made public by additional solicitor general Indira Jaising. Justice Ganguly has denied the charge.

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With 2014 in mind, Centre makes major changes in MNREGA

NEW DELHI: Ahead of Lok Sabha polls, the Centre tried to reach out to rural masses on Monday by making major changes in its flagship programme MNREGA which include Rs 10,000 for constructing toilets for all job cardholders and assistance for buildings for women self-help federations.

In a bid to address the issue of delay in distributing wage payment to MNREGA workers, the UPA government also announced compensation for them if it is delayed beyond 15 days and the amount would be deducted from officials responsible for it.

"Every (MNREGA) job cardholder will be entitled to build an individual toilet and the MNREGA contribution goes up from the current Rs 4,500 to Rs 10,000," rural development minister Jairam Ramesh said announcing changes in Schedule I and Schedule II of the Centre's ambitious rural job scheme.

Ramesh, who also held the sanitation portfolio for a brief period, said that with this decision, the government was universalizing the toilet construction programme in the country where 60 per cent of its people still defecate in the open.

"Anybody who has a job card, you may be APL ... and if you don't have a toilet at your home, you will get Rs 10000 under MNRGA for constructing toilet ... What we are doing is we are expanding the universe of people who can build toilets," the minister said.

He announced contribution from MNREGA for building houses for the poor in convergence with Indira Awas Yojana or any other state rural housing scheme, buildings for women self help federations operating in village or block levels, community storage facilities at gram panchayat or women SHG levels for agriculture produce and centres for manufacturing building materials like bricks in gram panchayats.

On the issue of delayed MNREGA payment, Ramesh said, "If wages are delayed beyond 15 days, a compensation at 0.05 per cent of wage per day of delay will be paid and the same will be duly deducted from the salary of the responsible personnel." The minister also said that the payment should not be on "attendance" but on measurement of work.

"I am sorry to say in many states payment is being given on attendance," he said.

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Las Vegas developer selling $7.85 million mansion, will accept payment in bitcoin

LAS VEGAS: A casino owner-turned-commercial developer is asking $7.85 million to sell a Las Vegas home, and he's willing to accept the online currency bitcoin for the deal.

Jack Sommer said he got the idea to seek bitcoin for his 25,000-square-foot (2,300-square meter) mansion from two of his sons, who've been involved in making and trading the currency.

"The advantage is that we're expanding our market and adding some notoriety," Sommer said.

Bitcoin peer-to-peer trading began in 2009. Value is purchased through an exchange website with a mainstream paper currency, such as dollars or euros, though trading isn't government-regulated.

Using the currency can streamline international business deals, said Julian Tosh, a consultant and owner of the marketplace website bitcoinsinvegas.com.

"There are a bunch of people who have bitcoins, and they're dying for a place to spend it," Tosh told the Las Vegas Review-Journal.

He said Sommer's willingness to accept bitcoin could open the home to a global audience.

"If you increase awareness of potential buyers, you could tap into new markets," Tosh said.

Sommer has put a lot of work into the home in the posh Spanish Trail Country Club. It features marble from China, Iceland and Brazil, a full basement, staff quarters with Jacuzzis, and a secret garden. It also has 39 air conditioning zones fed from a 120-ton cooling tower.

Library shelves are stainless steel clad in American cherry wood, and the view from the owner's suite is of golf course fairways.

Sommer once owned the Aladdin resort, which is now the Planet Hollywood Resort on the Las Vegas Strip.

He said he and his wife, Laura, were downsizing now that their seven children have grown and moved out.

Sommer's sales agent, Craig Tann, of Prudential American Group's Estates of Las Vegas team, said the home may be the first in southern Nevada to be marketed formally around bitcoin.

A range of businesses accept the currency. A California Lamborghini dealership sold a $103,000 Tesla to a Florida man for 91.4 bitcoin, the Review-Journal reported, and a Canadian man listed his Alberta home for the bitcoin equivalent of $405,000.

The currency hit a watermark when Bank of America Merrill Lynch said this month that one bitcoin could have a maximum value of $1,300, or more than the price of an ounce of gold.

A bitcoin on Friday was valued at about $870, up from $10 in January.

Tosh acknowledged the volatility in value could make a $7.85 million bitcoin trade risky.

"Locking in a price for such a large transaction is going to be kind of difficult," he said. "If the value is changing 30 per cent a day, how do you quantify that in a contract and expect each side to hold on for 30 to 90 days while escrow clears?"

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Govt reduces minimum export price of onion

The author has posted comments on this articleDipak Kumar Dash, TNN | Dec 16, 2013, 07.29PM IST

NEW DELHI: The government reduced minimum export price of onion by $350 a tonne to push exports.

The price was revised on Monday — at $800 per tonne amid reports of crashing onion prices at major mandis.

Though it is expected to bring some relief experts doubt whether it will be of great help considering the prevailing global prices.

They said fixing the price at $600 could have helped exporters to get buyers.

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No evidence against Salman in black buck poaching case: Counsel

JODHPUR: Salman Khan's counsel today on Monday said there were no direct evidence against the actor that he carried arms with expired license during the alleged Blackbuck poaching at the nearby Kankani village in 1998.

Salman's counsel Hastimal Saraswat today claimed at the ACJM (Jodhpur District) court that the case against the actor is nothing but a sheaf of untruth, which has miserably failed to count some very important facts.

"During the arguments, the officer could not give any satisfactory and conclusive replies to some very important questions I had raised," Saraswat said.

It may be recalled that a separate case had been registered against Salman by the forest department on October 15, 1998 under the Arms Act mentioning that the licences of the arms in the actor's possession during the alleged blackbuck poaching had expired and hence he had been using them illegally.

"Upon this complaint, the Luni police had registered a case against the actor under sections 3/25 and 27 of Arms Act," Saraswat said.

Meanwhile, magistrate Chandra Kala Jain deferred the trial of the final witness of prosecution in the Arms Act against Salman in the case till January 15.

The then Additional SP and Investigating Officer Ashok Patni, who is the final witness among 16 others, appeared at the trial began today at the ACJM (Jodhpur District) court.

The trial resumed in the court of Chief Judicial Magistrate (Jodhpur District) on May 25 this year, seven years after the Rajasthan High Court rejected the revision petition, filed by the state government in 2006.

Besides Salman, actors Saif Ali Khan, Sonali Bendre, Tabu and Neelam were accused of poaching two Blackbucks in the intervening night of October 1 and 2, 1998 in Kankani village near Jodhpur during the shooting of the film 'Hum Saath Saath Hain'.

It may be recalled that the High Court had revised the charges against the actors in December 2012. In the fresh charges, Salman was charged with Section 9/51 of the Wildlife Protection Act and others including a local accused Dushyant Singh with sections 9/51, 9//52 of the same Act and section 149 of IPC.

Blackbuck is a protected animal and hunting or poaching of the same is a punishable offence under law.

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8 killed in roadside bombings in Afghanistan

KABUL: Roadside bombs killed eight people, including four civilians, in two separate incidents Sunday in eastern Afghanistan, officials said.

Ahmad Zia Abdulzai, a spokesman for eastern Nangarhar province, said four policemen were killed and seven wounded when their pickup truck ran over a bomb in in the Agam district. He said the dead included the district's police chief.

He said that in an earlier incident, a suicide bomber attacked an intelligence service office near the border with Pakistan, shooting and wounding a guard before detonating his explosives. He added that two intelligence service officials were wounded and the building was damaged by the blast.

The interior ministry said in a statement that four civilians were killed when their car drove over another bomb in the Shegal district of Kunar province. It said the attack wounded one person.

No group claimed responsibility for the attacks. The Taliban frequently use roadside bombs and suicide attacks against Afghan and Nato forces and government offices in the country.

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Gaza's sole power station begins working again: Company

GAZA CITY: Palestinian Territo Gaza's lone power station rumbled to life on Sunday for the first time in more than seven weeks after receiving a long-awaited delivery of diesel, the electricity company said.

"The power station started reworking gradually after stopping for 50 days," spokesman Jamal Dirsawi told AFP.

The plant, which supplies some 30 per cent of the coastal enclave's electricity needs, fell silent on November 1 as the stocks of diesel to power it ran out.

"The first generator has started working, the second one will follow, and by this evening, the company should be able to generate around 60 megawatts of electricity," he said.

"This will give the Gaza Electricity Distribution Company (GEDCO) an opportunity to provide more hours of electricity to citizens."

The power station began operating after receiving a delivery of long-awaited fuel earlier in the day that had been purchased from Israel by the West Bank-based Palestinian Authority using funds donated by Qatar.

Raed Fatuh, the PA official in charge of transferring goods into Gaza, said 450,000 litres of fuel were being supplied to the plant on Sunday.

The PA is involved in helping coordinate the transfer of goods into Gaza via Israel, which Hamas does not recognize.

Gaza's Hamas rulers have blamed the fuel outage on Egypt's destruction of cross-border tunnels which had been used for bringing fuel into the blockaded Strip.

They have also accused the Palestinian Authority of charging too much for fuel.

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Awaiting Congress, BJP's stand on our 18 points: AAP

NEW DELHI: Aam Aadmi Party leader Arvind Kejriwal on Sunday said he would wait for a response from the Congress and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) to the 18 points he raised before deciding on whether his party could form the government in Delhi.

"We are waiting for their (Congress and BJP) reply on 18 issues. Let the reply come, we will decide after that," Aam Aadmi Party's (AAP) founder leader Kejriwal told reporters.

He said his party wanted to have a consensus on all the 18 issues with the Congress and the BJP, and would think of a process for forming government only after that.

The AAP on Saturday sought 10 days' time from Delhi L. Governor Najeeb Jung to decide on government formation, and asked the two parties to clear their stand on 18 issues it listed in letters to Congress president Sonia Gandhi and BJP chief Rajnath Singh.

The points include: Regularization of unauthorised colonies, pukka (concrete) houses for slum dwellers, 500 new schools, regular jobs for those working on contract basis with the Delhi government, full statehood for Delhi and control over Delhi Development Authority and Delhi Police by the state government and not the centre, and provision for people to make decisions at "mohalla sabhas" or neighbourhood gatherings.

Kejriwal met Lt governor Jung after the Bharatiya Janata Party, which netted 32 seats in the 70-member assembly, including one seat by its ally Akali Dal, Thursday conveyed it was not in a position to form the government.

The results of the Delhi assembly polls were announced Dec 8. The one-year-old AAP emerged the second-largest party, winning 28 seats.

The Congress, which won only eight seats, has offered the AAP unconditional support. In his letter to Jung, however, Kejriwal maintained that "no support is 'unconditional' in politics".

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Gunmen kill female TV presenter in Iraq: Al-Mosuliyah TV station

MOSUL, Iraq: Gunmen shot dead Al-Mosuliyah TV presenter Nawras al-Nuaimi in northern Iraq on Sunday, the station and police said, the latest in a series of journalists killed in the country.

Nuaimi was killed near her home in the city of Mosul, Al-Mosuliyah said. She was the fourth journalist to be killed in the northern city since October.

The mostly-Sunni Arab city is one of the most dangerous areas in Iraq, with militants frequently carrying out attacks and also reportedly extorting money from shopkeepers.

Iraq has come in for repeated criticism over shortcomings in media freedom, and ranks first in the Committee to Protect Journalists' Impunity Index, which tracks unsolved murders of journalists.

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DRDO parachute to drop heavy combat vehicles from IL-76

NEW DELHI: Enhancing the Army Special Forces' capabilities to airdrop combat vehicles and heavy equipment, DRDO has developed a a heavy system which can drop loads up to 16 tonnes from the IL-76 transport aircraft using parachutes.

"A 16-ton capacity heavy drop system (HDS) consisting of a platform and a highly advanced system of parachutes to drop loads consisting of military stores such as vehicles (including BMP class), supplies and ammunition from IL-76 heavy lift aircraft has been designed and developed and demonstrated," DRDO spokesperson Ravi Gupta said in a release.

Three prototypes of the system developed by an Agra-based DRDO lab have been realised and two successful drops meeting the performance parameters have been demonstrated, they said.

On the development, DRDO chief Avinash Chander said, "The system offered 'drop and drive' capability and once inducted, the system, a force multiplier, will considerably enhance the capabilities of armed forces."

P-7 heavy drop system (P-7 HDS), paradropped as composite unit termed as 'Load', has been developed for paradropping military stores/equipment such as military vehicles and ammunition trolleys from IL-76 aircraft and comprises two main sub-systems namely Platform sub-system and Parachute Sub-system.

The platform has a set of removable wheels which provides transportability for load to be taken to the airfield by means of towing it behind a suitable vehicle once the load is prepared at the distantly located unit.

These parachutes reduce the descent rate to desired speed at touchdown.

On impact with ground, parachutes are released by automatic disengage unit (ADU) to avoid dragging and toppling of load due to high speed winds.

The design features built in the system ensure aircraft safety during the separation of such a large body in a foolproof manner as well as smooth deployment of parachutes and landing of load at pre-designated target point.

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