NEW DELHI: A person has died in a clash that took place between the cadres of two rival parties during the first phase of Lok Sabha elections in Andhra Pradesh, India.
The clashes took place between the cadres of Telugu Desam Party and YSR Congress in Tadipatri City of Anantapur district in Andhra Pradesh
According to India media report, the deceased has been identified as Siddha Bhaskar Reddy who is said to be associated with Telugu Desam Party.
Similarly, clashes were also reported to have occurred between the cadres of YSR Congress and Telugu Desam in other constituencies of Andhra Pradesh.
The election is taking place peacefully in other constituencies, reported Indian media.
(Agencies)
BRUSSELS: European Union (EU) leaders have given Britain six more months to leave the bloc which is more than Prime Minister Theresa May says she needs but less than many in the bloc wanted.
The summit deal in Brussels in the early hours of Thursday meant Britain will not crash out on Friday without a treaty to smooth its passage.
But it offers little clarity on when, how or even if Brexit will happen, as May struggles to build support in parliament for withdrawal terms agreed with the EU last year.
Meanwhile, German Chancellor Angela Merkel insisted that Britain would not be forced out and that a chaotic no-deal departure must be avoided if at all possible.
(Agencies)
NEW DELHI: The Election Commission of India has ‘halted’ the release of a controversial film about the life of the Prime Minister Narendra Modi on the eve of the first day of voting, India media reported.
The movie PM Narendra Modi was set to be released in cinemas on Thursday, the day when Indians started voting in 91 seats throughout the country.
Opposition parties have been arguing that the film would “affect” the elections, since it has been made as a political advertisement.
They had earlier demanded that the movie should be banned until after the last phase of voting on 19 May.
India’s election commission announced the deferral of the film until after the polls. (Agencies)
SEOUL: South Korea’s Constitutional Court has termed the law criminalizing abortion as unconstitutional, media reports said on Thursday.
This has been a landmark ruling that is likely to overturn a ban on abortion that had been in place since 1953.
The court said the ban on abortion, as well as a law that made doctors who conduct abortions with a woman’s consent liable to criminal charges, were both unconstitutional.
The court had previously upheld the abortion law in 2012. (Agencies)
BRUSSELS: Leaders of European Union gave Britain six more months to leave the bloc, media reports said.
The time is more than Britain’s Prime Minister Theresa May has sought.
The summit deal in Brussels on Thursday meant Britain will not crash out on Friday without a treaty to smooth its passage. However, the EU offers clarity on when, how or even if Brexit will happen.
Britain’s PM Theresa has been struggling to build support in parliament for withdrawal terms agreed with the EU last year.
Meanwhile, German Chancellor Angela Merkel has been insisting that Britain would not be forced out. (Agencies)
India votes in its first phase of general elections today. In the first round, 91 out of 543 Lok Sabha constituencies are in the fray.
Around 900 million voters, above 18, will be queuing up at more than a million polling stations to elect 543 representatives to the Lok Sabha, the country’s lower house of the parliament.
A total of 2,300 parties are in the fray across India’s 543 constituencies in 29 states and 7 union territories in the elections to be held in seven stages beginning today.
Voting is taking place for all the parliamentary constituencies in states including Assam, Andhra Pradesh, Arunachal Pradesh, Bihar, Chhattisgarh, Jammu and Kashmir, Meghalaya, Maharashtra, Sikkim, Manipur, Uttarakhand, Odisha, Tripura, Uttar Pradesh, Mizoram, Nagaland, Lakshadweep, Andaman and Nicobar Islands and Telangana today.
Voting will continue till May 19. The results will be announced on May 23.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi seeks a second term ending the first inning. However, he is facing Rahul Gandhi, President of Indian National Congress.
A snapshot:
900 million voters will cast their vote
432 million eligible women voters
83 million new voters
15 million voters aged 18 and 19
38,000 voters form the transgender community
38 days to complete the entire process beginning today — April 11 to May 19, 2019
1.035 million polling booths across India
3.96 million electronic voting machines to be used
11 million election personnel deployed
MELBOURNE: The city of Melbourne came to a standstill after tens of thousands marched demanding better working condition. The rally comes ahead of the national elections slated for May.
The opposition Labor party wants to make moribund wages a focus of its election campaign, with its union allies claiming “Australians have seen the largest fall in their living standards in 30 years”.
The governing conservative Liberal-National coalition has been arguing that company tax cuts were the best way to boost wages.
In a breakthrough achievement, astronomers have taken the first ever image of a black hole, international media report said. The black hole is located in a distant galaxy.
The black hole is 500 million trillion km away from the earth and was photographed by a network of eight telescopes across the world, BBC reported.
It has a mass 6.5 billion times that of the Sun and it is one of the heaviest black holes that astronomer think exists.
BRUSSELS: The European Union said it will grant UK Prime Minister Theresa May a second delay to Brexit at an emergency summit on Wednesday, media reports said.
Leaders, however, said they will debate a longer extension with conditions to prevent any future British leader jeopardizing the bloc.
PM Theresa dashed to Berlin and Paris on the eve of the summit to ask Angela Merkel and Emmanuel Macron to allow her to postpone a divorce that was supposed to have been Britain’s ‘liberation’.
May requested the EU defer Friday’s exit until June 30. However, in Brussels a “flextension” until the end of the year or until March 2020 was being discussed. (Agencies)
WASHINGTON: Measles has broken out in New York City, prompting the City to declare public health emergency on Tuesday.
The outbreak is mainly confined to Orthodox Jewish children in Brooklyn. It is considered as the largest outbreak since 1991, with total of 285 cases confirmed since October. Two cases had been reported in 2017.
The City has required unvaccinated people in the affected areas to get vaccine.
The measles virus is highly contagious and can lead to serious complications and death.
While there have been no confirmed deaths so far, 21 people have been hospitalized, with five admitted to intensive care, officials said.
The outbreak is part of a broader resurgence in the United States, with 465 cases reported in 19 states so far this year, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The United States declared measles eliminated from the country in 2000 thanks to widespread vaccination, meaning it is no longer constantly present.
(Agencies)