Modi govt slams UN for opposing its decision to deport helpless Rohingyas

New Delhi, Jun 15: A total of 1,15,519 samples of COVID-19 have been tested in the last 24 hours taking the total samples tested to 57,74,133 in the country, the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) said.

"Total sample tested 57,74,133 and samples tested in the last 24 hours is 1,15,519," said ICMR.

With an increase of 11,502 cases in the past 24 hours, the COVID-19 count in India reached 3,32,424 on Monday, according to the Union Health and Family Welfare Ministry.

The COVID-19 count includes 1,53,106 active cases while 1,69,798 patients have been cured and discharged or migrated so far, and the toll due to COVID-19 has now reached 9,520.

Tehran, Jan 7: The Iranian Parliament on Tuesday ratified a motion dubbed as "harsh revenge", that considers all members of the US Pentagon and those responsible for the death of Major General Qasem Soleimani as "terrorist forces".

The triple-urgency motion is a modification of a previously ratified bill on April 23, 2019, that designated the US Central Command (CENTCOM) as a terrorist organization in retaliation to the same designation imposed on Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) by Washington, the Tehran-based Mehr News Agency said in a report.

Parliament Speaker Ali Larijani said in Tuesday's open session that in the previous anti-US law, CENTCOM was designated as a terrorist entity.

"Today, following the cruel US measure in assassinating General Soleimani, the responsibility of which was accepted by the US President, we modify the previous law and announce that all members of Pentagon, commanders, agents and those responsible for the martyrdom of Gen Soleimani will be considered as terrorist forces," Larijani was quoted as saying in the report.

All of Iran nation supports the resistance, he added.

The modified law also allows withdrawal of $223 million to the IRGC's Quds Force from the National Development Fund of Iran for the next two months, added Larijani.

He said that the Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei's permission to withdraw the fund has been obtained, the Mehr report added.

Following its ratification, MPs chanted anti-US slogans at the Parliament.

Soleimani and his son-in-law and Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, the second-in-command of Iraq's Popular Mobilization Front (PMF), along with eight other people were killed in the January 3 drone attack ordered by US President Donald Trump.

Soleimani, 63, was the elite Quds Force chief in charge of IRGC operations outside Iran, and has been on the ground in Syria and Iraq supervising militias backed by Tehran.

The Quds Force holds sway over a large number of militias across the region ranging from Lebanon to Syria and Iraq.

The attack has led to widespread condemnation in Iran. Supreme Leader Khamenei and President Hassan Rouhani has vowed revenge on the US.

On Sunday, Iranian MP Abolfazl Aboutorabi threatened to attack the heart of American politics.

During an open session of the Iranian Parliament on Sunday afternoon, President Trump was called a "terrorist in a suit" after he threatened to hit 52 Iranian sites hard if Tehran attacks Americans or US assets.

Sheikhupura, May 26: Younus, the brother-in-law of Asia Bibi, a Christian woman convicted of blasphemy by a Pakistani court, was killed in Sheikhupura city of Punjab province in Pakistan on Monday.

According to the FIR, Younus had gone to his farms on May 24 and did not return home at night. His body with throat slit was traced in the farm the following morning.

It is believed that, hailing from minority Christian community, Younus was killed in a rivalry.

This is not the first time that somebody associated with Asia Bibi has been murdered in cold blood.

In 2011, Salman Taseer, the influential governor of Punjab was assassinated after he made headlines by appealing for the pardon of Asia Bibi, who had been sentenced to death for allegedly insulting Prophet Muhammad.

A month after Taseer was killed, Religious Minorities Minister Shahbaz Bhatti, a Christian who spoke out against the laws, was shot dead in Islamabad, underlining the threat faced by critics of the law.

Asia Bibi is now living in exile after the Supreme Court of Pakistan acquitted her based on insufficient evidence in October 2018.

Recounting the hellish conditions of eight years spent on death row on blasphemy charges but also the pain of exile, Asia Bibi recently broke her silence to give her first personal insight into an ordeal that caused international outrage.

French journalist Anne-Isabelle Tollet, who has co-written a book about her, was once based in the country where she led a support campaign for her."You already know my story through the media," she said in the book.

"But you are far from understanding my daily life in prison or my new life," she said. "I became a prisoner of fanaticism," she said. In prison, "tears were the only companions in the cell".

She described the horrendous conditions in squalid jails in Pakistan where she was kept chained and jeered at by other detainees.

Pakistan's blasphemy laws carry a potential death sentence for anyone who insults Islam. Critics say they have been used to persecute minority faiths and unfairly target minorities.

Pakistan's Prime Minister Imran Khan defended the country's strict blasphemy laws during his election campaigns. The status quo is still in place.

No government in Pakistan was ready to make changed to the blasphemy law due to fears of a backlash.