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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News Network
January 27,2020

New Delhi, Jan 27: Remember the story of two friends coming face-to-face with a bear in a forest? One of the two friends climbs the tree to save his life and the other, not knowing how to, lays on the ground, breathless, pretending to be dead.

Well, that lesson turned out to be useful for this man who pretended to be dead when a tiger had both his paws on the man's chest.

Yes, that is right. IFS officer Parveen Kaswan recently shared a video of a man lying under a tiger, with their faces extremely close to each other with the caption, "You want to see how does a narrow escape looks like in case of an encounter with a #tiger. #Tiger was cornered by the crowd. But fortunately, the end was fine for both man and tiger. Sent by a senior."

Another Twitter user shared the full 30-second video in the comments. He also said that the incident occured in Tumsar in Bhandara district, Maharashtra. The spine-chilling clip shows a tiger running freely in the fields trying to avoid people who have surrounded him and are trying to shoo him away.

In his quest to run away, the scared tiger grabs a human. When he sees that people are still approaching him and trying to scare him away, he gets up and runs away for his life. All this while, the man who was captured by the animal lays still on the ground and does not make an attempt to get free.

This is what stuck with Twitter and they are praising the man for his presence of mind.

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News Network
January 28,2020

Kolkata, Jan 28: West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee Tuesday said she is ready for talks with Prime Minister Narendra Modi on the issue of Citizenship Amendment Act but the Centre has to first withdraw the contentious law.

Banerjee said protesting against the decisions of the centre doesn't make opposition parties anti-national and iterated that she will not implement CAA, NRC or NPR in the state.

"It is good that the prime minister is ready for talks but the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) must be revoked first. They (Centre) did not call an all-party meeting before taking a decision on Kashmir and CAA.

"We are ready for talks but first withdraw this Citizenship Amendment Act," Banerjee, a staunch critic of the BJP, said addressing a protest programme against CAA through paintings.

The West Bengal assembly had on Monday passed a resolution against the CAA to become the fourth state after Kerala, Punjab and Rajasthan, to do so. The state assembly had on September 6, 2019, passed a resolution against the NRC.

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News Network
March 19,2020

New Delhi, Mar 19: Hit hard by coronavirus, budget carrier IndiGo today announced that it will cut salaries of senior employees. IndiGo CEO Ronojoy Dutta, who will himself take a 25% cut in salary, said senior vice presidents and above are taking a 20% pay cut while vice presidents and cockpit crew are taking a 15% pay cut.

With precipitous drop in revenues, the very survival of airline industry is now at stake, Dutta said while announcing the pay cut. "We have to pay careful attention to our cash flow so that we do not run out of cash," Dutta said adding that he knew how hard it was for families to take a cut in "take-home pay".

"With a great deal of reluctance and a deep sense of regret, we are therefore instituting pay cuts for all employees, excluding Bands A and B, starting April 1, 2020," the chief executive officer said. Band A and B are the lowest brackets in salary class, where most of the employees are.

IndiGo's flight operations chief Ashim Mitra had written an email to pilots this morning saying that the economic environment has deteriorated significantly and no airline is insulated from this severe downturn.

"It has become a necessity to initiate some tough calls and we are working on a string of measures that will be shared and implemented over the next few days and weeks," Mitra said.

With countries sealing their borders partially or fully across the world due to the novel coronavirus pandemic, aviation sector has been hit extremely hard as most airlines globally have drastically curtailed their flight operations.

Another budget airline GoAir has already terminated contracts of expat pilots amid curtailed operations due to the coronavirus pandemic.

Citing "unprecedented" decline in air travel, the budget carrier announced it was suspending international operations and offering leave without pay programme to its staff on a rotational basis.

Government-owned Air India may also cut salary of employees by 5% amid its growing financial woes particularly in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic, which has nearly grounded its entire international operations. The reduction will be across the board, according to a PTI report.

The loss-making airline, which is in the process of a second attempt of privatization after failing to get a single buyer nearly two years ago, has already taken some steps such as reduced flying allowances to cabin crew besides withdrawing entertainment allowance to executive pilots, among others.

“Air India is considering a 5 per cent pay cut to its employees as it faces huge financial crisis due to the ongoing coronavirus outbreak, which has brought almost its entire international operations save the US, Canada and a few other markets, to the ground," a source told news agency.

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