GS-II

Modi letter calls for positive engagement

Prime Minister Narendra Modi has called for constructive engagement with Pakistan, sources confirmed on Monday. In a letter to his newly sworn-in Pakistani counterpart Imran Khan, Mr. Modi has called for building good neighbourly ties for security and prosperity in the South Asian region. “PM expressed India’s commitment to build …

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Ghani offers Taliban a new ceasefire

Afghan President Ashraf Ghani declared a provisional three-month ceasefire with the Taliban in a televised broadcast on Sunday, but said the truce would hold only if the insurgents reciprocated. The announcement followed a bloody week of fighting across Afghanistan which saw the Taliban launch a massive assault against the provincial …

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Rajapaksa keen on a third term

Among other things, the 19th Amendment to Sri Lanka’s Constitution, passed three months after Mr. Rajapaksa was unseated in January 2015, revived a clause in the 1978 Constitution that said: “No person who has been twice elected to the office of President by the People, shall be qualified thereafter to …

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50,000 mt of foodgrain released

The Centre has released 50,000 metric tonnes of rice and wheat to help Kerala tackle the flood situation, with a promise to release additional quantities soon. It has also made arrangements to airlift 100 metric tonnes of pulses by Monday with additional quantities to be sent by train. An official …

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‘Give Perarivalan remission data’

The Central Information Commission has directed the Union Ministry of Home Affairs to provide copies of all orders passed by the Union Government from January 1, 2010 to December 31, 2015, granting remission to various prisoners across the country to A.G. Perarivalan, one of the convicts undergoing life imprisonment in …

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No home for Britain’s poorest

For a visitor to the U.K., men and women sleeping rough on the streets, both in city centres and in suburban areas, have sadly become an all-too-familiar sight, but figures have shown that the situation has been getting consistently worse. Government figures published earlier this year revealed that the number …

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Militants’ war on education in Afghanistan

“Education is increasingly a casualty in Afghanistan,” a briefing note by the Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC) recently observed. The note was in reaction to a larger, comprehensive report by the Global Coalition to Protect Education from Attack (GCPEA), titled ‘Education Under Attack’, which studies the impact of conflict on education …

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From the ruins of Operation Storm

The air was still and the streets of Zagreb bore little sign of life on Sunday, August 5, a public holiday marking the Homeland Thanksgiving Day and Operation Storm of 1995. The capital was bereft of pompous celebrations but Croatian flags hanging over nearly every shop, bar and house marked …

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Is America afraid of socialists?

Reconciling the U.S.’s current economic model with its democracy is a challenging task for Americans but to come up with a name to call what they want appears to be even more challenging. The crisis is more evident for the Democrats, as opposed to Republicans who generally think the only …

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No peace till occupation ends: Taliban

The leader of Afghanistan’s Taliban said on Saturday there will be no peace in Afghanistan as long as the foreign “occupation” continues, reiterating the group’s position that the 17-year war can only be brought to an end through direct talks with the United States. In a message released in honour …

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Cong. to seek JPC on Rafale deal

In an attempt to turn the alleged scam in the Rafale deal into the focal point of its campaign for the 2019 Lok Sabha election, the Congress has decided to hold demonstrations from the district to State levels demanding a Joint Parliamentary Committee investigation. This was decided at a meeting …

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‘Multiple PANs still a menace’

All the attention over the privacy aspects of Aadhaar has diverted the conversation from the legitimate uses of a biometric ID, such as weeding out multiple PAN cards linked to the same person, according to a number of lenders. The issue, they said, is that many unscrupulous people run up …

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NSCN-K purges ‘Indian’ elements

The Myanmar-based Shangnyu Shangwang Khaplang faction of the extremist National Socialist Council of Nagaland, or NSCN-K, has ousted the last of its ‘Indian’ leaders. Mr. Konyak, 70, is a Naga of Indian origin. A China-trained rebel, he had taken over as chairman of the NSCN-K after Khaplang died in June …

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