TOKYO: Tokyo stocks soared 1.62 per cent at the open on Monday after Japan's conservative opposition swept to victory in national polls, with promises from its leader to press for more central bank easing.
The benchmark Nikkei 225 index added 158.12 points to 9,895.68 at the start of trade, as the yen plunged in the wake of the Liberal Democratic Party's landslide win over the ruling Democratic Party of Japan.
- AFP/fa
CHANDIGARH: Short "vacation marriages" resulting from Punjab's puritan social mindset and preference of NRI grooms over the desi counterparts are set to find a permanent halt.
Two legislations -- Compulsory registration of marriage act for NRIs and Punjab prevention of human smuggling act -- will be tabled when the Punjab assembly begins on Monday. The bills will put an end to trauma that has been faced by over 12,000 women in Punjab deserted by their NRI husbands since 1998.
"This first of its own kind law would tighten the noose of grooms against fraud marriages as it would be mandatory for NRIs to register their marriage, their full details of lives abroad and their address in India," Punjab NRI and public relations minister Bikram Majithia told TOI.
The marriage bill, Punjab Compulsory Registration of Marriages Bill 2008, has taken four years after it was first passed, paving the way for registration of marriages solemnized in the state under the Anand Marriage Act, 1909.
According to a recent overseas ministry report, a copy of which is with TOI, Punjab, Delhi and Andhra Pradesh reported the highest number of complaints in the country in 2011, from Indian brides against their NRI husbands. While 101 complaints were registered against spouses from Punjab, Delhi and Andhra Pradesh reported 74 and 42 cases respectively.
According to another report by National Commission for Women (NCW), the maximum number of these complaints have been registered with grooms from Canada, US and Australia (in the same order).
The second bill on smuggling Act, would make it compulsory for travel agents to register themselves with the competent authority of Punjab government. When the Act is enforced, Punjab would be the first state in the country to put an end to illegal practices of unauthorized travel agents.
"The smuggling Act would encourage youngsters to go abroad through proper and legal channel," said Majithia.
FIRs against NRI grooms
2011: 74
2010: 85
2009: 67
2008: 72
(Under Section 498A of domestic violence)
Punjab NRIs
UK: 3,00,000
US: 2,50,000
Canada 2,78,400
Malaysia: 1,00,000
Africa: 1,00,000
UAE: 70,000
(Source: Ministry of overseas affairs)
Photograph by Mike Theiss, National Geographic
The aurora borealis, also known as the northern lights, illuminates the Arctic sky in a recent picture by National Geographic photographer Mike Theiss.
A storm chaser by trade, Theiss is in the Arctic Circle on an expedition to photograph auroras, which result from collisions between charged particles released from the sun's atmosphere and gaseous particles in Earth's atmosphere.
After one particularly amazing show, he wrote on YouTube, "The lights were dancing, rolling, and twisting, and at times looked like they were close enough to touch!" (Watch his time-lapse video of the northern lights.)
Published December 14, 2012
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WASHINGTON: The latest mass shooting in the United States - this time with 20 children among the dead - is triggering a deluge of calls for President Barack Obama to address gun control, a politically sensitive issue which he avoided during his first term in the White House.
With the nation in shock over the carnage on Friday, Obama went on television and wiped away tears as he mourned the slain, which included six adults killed at the Newtown, Connecticut, elementary school and another elsewhere.
The president stressed he was particularly saddened as a parent. He and wife Michelle have two young daughters.
"We have to come together and take meaningful action to prevent more tragedies like this," Obama said in his weekly radio address on Saturday. "Regardless of the politics."
He did not go into details, however, and proponents of gun control are getting impatient.
"The country needs (Obama) to send a bill to Congress to fix this problem," said New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg. "Calling for 'meaningful action' is not enough. We need immediate action. We have heard all the rhetoric before."
White House spokesman Jay Carney said on Friday it was too early to address the issue. "There is I'm sure - will be, rather, a day for discussion of the usual Washington policy debates, but I don't think today is that day," Carney said.
People reacted quickly. "Today is the day," read banners held by activists outside the White House in a vigil within hours of the school shooting.
A petition for tougher gun control legislation had more than 80,000 signatures on the White House website Saturday.
The Connecticut killings are unspeakably gruesome because such small children were involved.
But they are not the first such massacre under Obama's watch.
In January 2011 in Arizona six people died at the hands of a shooter targeting Democratic Representative Gabrielle Giffords, who took a bullet in the head but survived.
This summer 12 people were shot in Colorado during a midnight screening of a Batman movie.
Obama visited both cities and spoke of the need to crack down on gun violence. He promised to work with Congress and achieve a consensus.
But that is all. His timidity on the issue has been attributed to wariness of alienating voters who believe their constitutional right to bear arms is sacred, deserves a broad interpretation and is not to be touched.
The gun buff and manufacturers lobby, the National Rifle Association, is very critical of Obama even though he has done little that goes against its platform. Its pockets are deep, and it tries to influence local elections. Both Democrats and Republicans are wary of tangling with it.
But after winning re-election in November, Obama will not face the voters again and Jonathan Lowy, director of the Brady Center's Legal Action Project, said the NRA is nothing to fear.
"President Obama and other Democrats have really misread and overestimated the strength of the gun lobby," said Lowy, whose organisation is named for James Brady, the White House press secretary who was shot and left disabled in an assassination attempt on then president Ronald Reagan in 1981.
"The fact is they have very loud bark, but they have very little bite," he told AFP on Saturday.
"In the past election, they (the gun lobby) spent a lot of money - 99 percent of it was towards losing candidates, and that holds true in virtually every election cycle," Lowy said. "They spend a lot of money, they make a lot of noise and their candidates lose, so they really are not a force to be afraid of."
Left-leaning or moderate news outlets also urged the president to take action.
"Obama told the nation that he reacted to the shootings in Newtown 'as a parent,' and that is understandable, but what we need most is for him to act as a President, liberated at last from the constraints of elections and their dirty compromises - a president who dares to change the national debate and the legislative agenda on guns," David Remnick wrote in The New Yorker.
- AFP/de
CHANDIGARH: Kargil hero Captain Saurabh Kalia's father Dr N K Kalia on Saturday claimed that he has evidence which proves that his son and five other jawans were tortured after they were captured by the Pakistan troops, a day after Pakistan interior minister Rehman Malik suggested that Captain Kalia could have died of adverse weather.
As evidence, he referred to the announcement made by Pakistan radio in May 1999 that Pakistan army had arrested one officer and five soldiers of Indian army, following which the then DG (military operations) Lt Gen N C Vij had taken up the issue with his counterpart in Pakistan.
"I am surprised why our Army is not contesting the lies of Rehman Malik, as the Army headquarters is in possession of all such records, including preliminary investigation of Saurabh's body at Kargil, full report of autopsy and video recording of his entire body," Dr Kalia, a retired scientist from Council of Scientific and Industrial Research, said.
He added that it is high time the Army handed over all the relevant documents to the visiting minister. "If weather was responsible for Saurabh's death, then who fired at him? How is it that the private parts and limbs of Saurabh's body were chopped off? How his eyes were gorged out and bones broken," asked Dr Kalia.
"I am a retired scientist and can differentiate between the cause of death due to weather and torture," he said, adding that he is in possession of edited report of Saurabh's autopsy provided by the Army headquarters.
"I have no remorse for losing my son in battle but it is disgusting to see the brutal treatment given by the Pakistan troops after taking him into their custody. My fight is not for my son alone but for the dignity of all the soldiers of the armed forces," Kalia said.
The Supreme Court on Friday had said that the doors were still open for the Union government to move the International Court of Justice on gross human rights violations by Pakistani soldiers in torturing Captain Kalia before killing him and handing back his mutilated body.
Meanwhile, Malik on Saturday tried to assuage outrage over his remarks on torture meted out to Kargil hero Saurabh, saying he will look into the case.
Malik claimed that India has never raised the Saurabh issue with Pakistan in the last 15 years.
"If the Pakistani Army has tortured him, why would have they given his dead body. There have been many things to it. His father wants to take the matter to International Court of Justice. On Friday, during the meeting for the first time I was asked to look into the matter," he said.
"I promised them that please give me the detail. I will return and will look into the matter and revert with detailed information. I sympathise with his father," he added.
The minister reiterated that he was not sure whether Kalia died of a bullet or bad weather in Kargil.
"I said that Kargil is full of snow. I said I don't know whether he died of a bullet or because of any other reason or weather. So no negativity of any kind should be brought into it," he said.
Photograph by Mike Theiss, National Geographic
The aurora borealis, also known as the northern lights, illuminates the Arctic sky in a recent picture by National Geographic photographer Mike Theiss.
A storm chaser by trade, Theiss is in the Arctic Circle on an expedition to photograph auroras, which result from collisions between charged particles released from the sun's atmosphere and gaseous particles in Earth's atmosphere.
After one particularly amazing show, he wrote on YouTube, "The lights were dancing, rolling, and twisting, and at times looked like they were close enough to touch!" (Watch his time-lapse video of the northern lights.)
Published December 14, 2012
(Image credit: Emilie Parker Fund/Facebook)
Emilie Parker, the little girl with the blond hair and bright blue eyes, would have been one of the first to comfort her classmates at Sandy Hook Elementary School, had a gunman’s bullets not claimed her life, her father said.
“My daughter Emilie would be one of the first ones to be standing and giving support to all the victims because that’s the kind of kid she is,” her father, Robbie Parker said as he fought back tears, telling the world about his “bright, creative and loving” daughter” who was one of the 20 young victims in the Newtown, Conn., shooting.
“She always had something kind to say about anybody,” her father said. ”We find comfort reflecting on the incredible person Emilie was and how many lives she was able to touch.”
Emilie, 6, was helping teach her younger sisters to read and make things, and she was the little girls would go to for comfort, he said.
“They looked up to her,” Parker said.
READ: Complete List of Sandy Hook Victims
Parker moved his wife and three daughters to Newtown eight months ago after accepting a job as a physician’s assistant at Danbury Hospital. He said Emilie, his oldest daughter, seemed to have adjusted well to her new school, and he was very happy with the school, too.
“I love the people at the school. I love Emilie’s teacher and the classmates we were able to get to know,” he said.
(Image Credit: Alex von Kleydorff/AP Photo)
The family dealt with another tragic loss in October when Emilie lost her grandfather in an accident.
“[This] has been a topic that has been discussed in our family in the past couple of months,” Parker said. “[My daughters ages 3 and 4] seem to get the that there’s somebody who they will miss very much.”
Emilie, a budding artist who carried her markers and pencils everywhere, paid tribute to her grandfather by slipping a special card she had drawn into his casket, Parker said. It was something she frequently did to lift the spirits of others.
“I can’t count the number of times Emilie would find someone feeling sad or frustrated and would make people a card,” Parker said. “She was an exceptional artist.”
The girl who was remembered as “always willing to try new things, other than food” was learning Portuguese from her father, who speaks the language.
(Image Credit: Emilie Parker Fund/Facebook)
On Friday morning, Emilie woke up before her father left for his job and exchanged a few sentences with him in the language.
“She told me good morning and asked how I was doing,” Parker said. “She said she loved me, I gave her a kiss and I was out the door.”
Parker found out about the shooting while on lockdown in Danbury Hospital and found a television for the latest news.
“I didn’t think it was that big of deal at first,” he said. “With the first reports coming in, it didn’t sound like it was going to be as tragic as it was. That’s kind of what it was like for us.”
CLICK HERE for full coverage of the Sandy Hook shooting.
Parker said he knows that God can’t take away free will and would have been unable to stop the Sandy Hook shooting. While gunman Adam Lanza used his free agency to take innocent lives, Parker said he plans to use his in a positive way.
“I’m not mad because I have my [free] agency to use this event to do whatever I can to make sure my family and my wife and my daughters are taken care [of],” he said “And if there’s anything I can do to help to anyone at any time at anywhere, I’m free to do that.”
(Image credit: Emilie Parker Fund/Facebook)
Friday night, hours after he learned of his daughter’s death, Parker said he spoke at his church.
“I don’t know how to get through something like this. My wife and I don’t understand how to process all of this,” he said today. “We find strength in our religion and in our faith and in our family. ”
“It’s a horrific tragedy and I want everyone to know our hearts and prayers go out to them. This includes the family of the shooter. I can’t imagine how hard this experience must be for you and I want you to know our family … love and support goes out to you as well.”
NEWTOWN, Conn.--A shooting rampage in this small Connecticut town on Friday morning left 28 people dead, including 20 children killed inside their elementary school, authorities said.
The dead included the suspected gunman, whom law enforcement sources identified as Adam Lanza, 20. Police said that Lanza first apparently killed his mother, Nancy Lanza, at the home they shared in Newtown. Then he drove in her car to Sandy Hook Elementary, the school at which Nancy Lanza taught kindergarten.
NEW YORK: The US dollar dropped to its lowest level against the euro in three months Friday, the euro going above US$1.31 as politicians in Washington appeared no closer to averting the economy-crunching fiscal cliff.
With just over two weeks to go before the deadline, markets began to show strains from worries that US leaders will not be able to carve out a compromise deal to beat the year-end deadline to skirt the cliff's harsh mandatory budget cuts and tax hikes.
At 2200 GMT, the euro was at US$1.3161, compared to US$1.3073 late Thursday.
The US dollar has slipped steadily for a week amid cliff fears and the Federal Reserve's extension of its bond-buying easy monetary accommodation, aimed at sparking more growth in the sluggish US economy.
The yen was mixed ahead of Sunday's Japanese general election: the euro gained to 109.94 yen from 109.38 yen, while the US dollar slipped to 83.52 yen from 83.64.
"According to most reports out of Japan, former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe is well ahead in polls and his coalition government should easily take more than 60 per cent of the seats in Parliament, leading to Abe's return to the PM seat," said Neal Gilbert of GFT.
"Abe has made many declarations that he wants to become more aggressive with monetary policy by lowering interest rates to 0 per cent, increasing the inflation target to 3 per cent, and increasing the amount of QE (quantitative easing)."
Gilbert added that if Abe regains the premiership, the yen's weakness "may be much more long lasting."
The US dollar slipped against the Swiss franc to 0.9172 francs, while the British pound edged higher to US$1.6173.
- AFP/jc
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