PM Modi arrives in Lanka as final stop of his 3-nation tour

March 13, 2015

Colombo, Mar 13: Prime Minister Narendra Modi today flew into the Sri Lankan capital in the early hours for a historic visit during which he is expected to hold talks with the country's top leadership.

narendra modi1Modi was received by Sri Lankan Prime Minister Ranil Wickramasinghe at the airport after he arrived in Colombo for a two-day visit at 5.25 A.M. following an overnight journey from Port Louis in Mauritius in a special Air India plane.

Sri Lanka is the final stop of his three-nation tour of Indian Ocean island nations that took him to Seychelles and Mauritius.

Modi, who is the first Indian Prime Minister to visit Lanka in 28 years, will today hold summit talks with Sri Lankan President Maithripala Sirisena, who was in India last month on his first foreign trip after assuming office in January.

He will also hold talks with his Sri Lankan counterpart Ranil Wickramasinghe. The prime minister's visit to Lanka is considered to be an opportunity to further strengthen all aspects of the bilateral relationship.

His trip to Lanka is also the first standalone prime ministerial visit to the island nation since 1987 when Rajiv Gandhi came here.

"I see this visit as an opportunity to further strengthen our relationship in all its dimensions – political, strategic, economic, cultural, and above all, people to people contacts," he had said in his pre-departure statement.

Modi will also address the Sri Lankan Parliament during his visit. He will be the first Indian Prime Minister and only the second foreign leader after British Premier David Cameron to visit Jaffna in the war-ravaged Northern province, where he will hand over homes built with the help of Indian assistance.

Some 20,000 such homes were built in Jaffna described by India as "a flagship cooperation project currently in Sri Lanka".

He is also expected to meet leaders of the Tamil National Alliance and other political parties. Modi is accompanied by National Security Advisor Ajit Doval and Foreign Secretary S Jaishankar.

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January 15,2020

New Delhi, Jan 15: The mother of 23-year-old paramedic student, who was raped and brutally assaulted by six men in December 2012, on Tuesday said she knew that the curative petitions of the convicts will be rejected and is confident that they will be hanged on January 22.

Her remarks came after the Supreme Court on Tuesday refused to stay the execution of two of the four death row convicts in the 2012 Nirbhaya gang rape and murder case while dismissing their curative petitions against their conviction and capital punishment.

"The curative please had to be rejected. This was the third time they had gone to the Supreme Court. Whatever pleas they file, we are ready to face them and we will fight it out. We feel that they will be hanged on January 22. We want that to happen," Nirbhaya's mother told PTI over phone.

The four convicts -- Vinay Sharma (26), Mukesh Kumar (32), Akshay Kumar Singh (31) and Pawan Gupta (25) -- are to be hanged on January 22 at 7 am in Tihar jail as a Delhi court issued their death warrants on January 7.

Vinay and Mukesh had filed curative petitions on January 9.

Shortly after the apex court refused to stay the execution of two of them, Mukesh moved a mercy petition before President Ram Nath Kovind.

Mukesh also approached the Delhi High Court for quashing the death warrant. The high court is expected to take up his petition on Wednesday.

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News Network
May 10,2020

Kochi, May 10: A total of 698 people who were evacuated from Maldives on INS Jalashwa, arrived here on Sunday around 9.30am (India time), said the Cochin Port officials. This operation is part of Indian Navy's 'Operation Samudra Setu'.

Another 121 from Lakshadweep also arrived at Mattanchery, near here. on MV Arabian Sea - a passenger/cargo ship sailing under the Indian Flag.

Samudrika Cruise Terminal has been opened up for handling the expatriates and Port has taken up necessary refurbishments consistent with the medical protocols.

The Cochin Port Trust officials said the first group of 698 persons evacuated from Maldives comprises 595 males and 103 females. Of this, 14 are children below 10 years and 19 pregnant women.

Among the 698 passengers, 440 are from Kerala, 156 from Tamil Nadu and the rest are from various states in the country.

Ernakulam district collector S. Suhas said all those from Tamil Nadu will be sent to their state in the bus.

The ship is berthed at BTP Jetty and the disembarkation procedures are being carried out at Samudrika Cruise Terminal. It will take around three hours for all the passengers to be cleared.

According to the protocols, all the Keralaites will be sent for 14 days institutional quarantine at their respective home districts.

Those who are having exemption from institutional quarantine have to be at home isolation.

Among the 121 who arrived on MV Arabian Sea from Lakshadweep include students and those Keralaites who work in the island.

The protocol for these 121 passengers is that since they have been checked there, all these people can go to their homes and be in isolation for 14 days.

The general guideline is if any one shows any symptoms of Covid-19, all such people will be directly sent to Covid hospitals, here.

The distance between Male and Kochi is 493 nautical miles and it began its voyage to Kochi on Friday evening.

INS Jalashwa is an Indian naval ship attached to the Eastern Naval Command. It was acquired from the United States and was commissioned in 2007.

INS Jalashwa has the capacity to accommodate 1000 troops, and comes equipped with extensive medical facilities, including four operation theatres, and a 12-bed ward facility.

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News Network
March 24,2020

New Delhi, Mar 24: The total number of active COVID-19 cases reported so far in the country stands at 446 while the number of people who have been cured or discharged stands at 36, according to the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare.

Nine people have died from the disease while one case has migrated, the Ministry further informed.
The Central government has taken several steps to contain the rapid spread of the virus, including stoppage of all incoming passenger traffic on 107 immigration check posts at all airports, seaports, land ports, rail ports, and river ports.
There is a complete lockdown in as many as 548 districts of the country affecting several hundred million people.
The Indian Railways has also cancelled all passenger train operations till March 31.

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