Rahul Gandhi's two-day UAE visit begins

New Delhi, Feb 3: The Allahabad High Court on Monday granted bail to former BJP leader Swami Chinmayanand in the alleged rape case of a law student. He was arrested in September last year after the 23-year-old woman accused him of sexual harassment and blackmail.

The woman was a student of the Chinmayanand-controlled SS Law College in Shahjahanpur in Uttar Pradesh.

Chinmayanand is facing charges under Sections 376C (sexual intercourse by a person or persons taking advantage of their official position), 354 D (stalking), 342 (wrongful confinement) and 506 (criminal intimidation) of the Indian Penal Code (IPC).

The case is being investigated by a Special Investigation Team (SIT) formed on the directions of the Supreme Court.

The case came to light after the woman posted a video on August 23 last year on social media alleging that “a senior leader of the saint community” was harassing and threatening to kill her. The law student went missing a day later, after which her father lodged a complaint, accusing Chinmayanand of harassing his daughter.

Chinmayanand was expelled from the BJP after his arrest.

The SIT had, on November 6, submitted chargesheet in the case.

In a parallel case, the woman was charged with trying to extort money from Chinmayanad. The Allahabad High Court granted her bail in that case in December last year.

Washington, Feb 21: Days ahead of his India visit, US President Donald Trump on Thursday said the two countries could make a "tremendous" trade deal.

"We're going to India, and we may make a tremendous deal there," Trump said in his commencement address at the Hope for Prisoners Graduation Ceremony in Las Vegas.

Trump, accompanied by First Lady Melania Trump, is scheduled to travel to Ahmedabad, Agra and New Delhi on February 24 and 25.

Ahead of the visit, there have been talks about India and the United States agreeing on a trade package as a precursor to a major trade deal.

During his commencement address, Trump indicated that the talks on this might slowdown if he did not get a good deal.

"Maybe we'll slow down. We'll do it after the election. I think that could happen too. So, we'll see what happens," he said.

"But we're only making deals if they're good deals because we're putting America first. Whether people like it or not, we're putting America first," Trump said.

Bilateral India-US trade in goods and services is about three per cent of the US' world trade.

In a recent report, the Congressional Research Service (CRS) said the trading relationship is more consequential for India -- in 2018 the United States was its second largest goods export market (16.0 per cent share) after the European Union (EU, 17.8 per cent), and third largest goods import supplier (6.3 per cent) after China (14.6 per cent) and the EU 28 (10.2 per cent).

"The Trump Administration takes issue with the US trade deficit with India, and has criticised India for a range of 'unfair' trading practices," the CRS said.

"Indian Prime Minister Modi's first term fell short of many observers' expectations, as India did not move forward with anticipated market opening reforms, and instead increased tariffs and trade restrictions," it said.

"Modi's strong electoral mandate may embolden the Indian government to press ahead with its reform agenda with greater vigour. Slowing economic growth in India raises concerns about its business environment," CRS said.

As per a fact sheet issued by the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), trade in goods and services between the two countries from 1999 to 2018 surged from $16 billion to $142 billion.

India is now the United States' eighth-largest trading partner in goods and services and is among the world's largest economies.

India's trade with the United States now resembles, in terms of volume, the US' trade with South Korea ($167 billion in 2018) or France ($129 billion), said Alyssa Ayres from CFR.

"The United States for two years now has set out in stone pretty clearly the things that they wanted to see to try to get an agreement, and it's basically then on India's doorstep on whether they want to take those steps," Rick Rossow, Wadhwani Chair in US-India Policy Studies at the Center for Strategic and International Studies think-tank told reporters during a conference call.

"The list of US asks has been pretty static all throughout. Not to say that any of these things are easy for India to do, but the United States to my knowledge didn't change the goalposts just because we now consider India to be a middle-income country. The things that we wanted to see happen to get this trade agreement have been pretty static all throughout, no matter how difficult they are," he said in response to a question.

Riyadh, Feb 27: Saudi Arabia on Thursday halted travel to the holiest sites in Islam over fears about a new viral epidemic just months ahead of the annual hajj pilgrimage, a move coming as the Mideast has over 220 confirmed cases of the illness.

The extraordinary decision by Saudi Arabia stops foreigners from reaching the holy city of Mecca and the Kaaba, the cube-shaped structure the world's 1.8 billion Muslims pray toward five times a day. It also said travel was suspended to Prophet Muhammad's mosque in Medina.

The decision showed the worry about the outbreak potentially spreading into Saudi Arabia, whose oil-rich monarchy stakes its legitimacy on protecting Islam's holy sites. The epicenter in the Mideast's most-affected country, Iran, appears to be in the holy Shiite city of Qom, where a shrine there sees the faithful reach out to kiss and touch it in reverence.

"Saudi Arabia renews its support for all international measures to limit the spread of this virus, and urges its citizens to exercise caution before traveling to countries experiencing coronavirus outbreaks," the Saudi Foreign Ministry said in a statement announcing the decision.

"We ask God Almighty to spare all humanity from all harm." Disease outbreaks always have been a concern surrounding the hajj, required of all able-bodied Muslims once in their life, especially as pilgrims come from all over the world.

The earliest recorded outbreak came in 632 as pilgrims fought off malaria. A cholera outbreak in 1821, for instance, killed an estimated 20,000 pilgrims. Another cholera outbreak in 1865 killed 15,000 pilgrims and then spread worldwide.

More recently, Saudi Arabia faced a danger from a related coronavirus that caused Middle East respiratory syndrome, or MERS. The kingdom increased its public health measures in 2012 and 2013, though no outbreak occurred.

While millions attend the 10-day hajj, this year set for late July into early August, millions more come during the rest of the year to the holy sites in the kingdom.

"It is unprecedented, at least in recent times, but given the worldwide spread of the virus and the global nature of the umrah, it makes sense from a public health and safety point of view," said Kristian Ulrichsen, a research fellow at the James A Baker III Institute for Public Policy at Rice University. "Especially since the Iranian example illustrates how a religious crossroads can so quickly amplify the spread and reach of the virus." The virus that causes the illness named COVID-19 has infected more than 80,000 people globally, mainly in China. The hardest-hit nation in the Mideast is Iran, where Health Ministry spokesman Kianoush Jahanpour said 19 people have died among 139 confirmed cases.

Experts are concerned Iran may be underreporting cases and deaths, given the illness's rapid spread from Iran across the Persian Gulf. For example, Iran still has not confirmed any cases in Mashhad, even though a number of cases reported in Kuwait are linked to the Iranian city.

In Bahrain, which confirmed 33 cases as of Thursday morning, authorities halted all flights to Iraq and Lebanon. It separately extended a 48-hour ban overflights from Dubai and Sharjah in the United Arab Emirates, through which infected travellers reached the island kingdom off the coast of Saudi Arabia.

Iranian President Hassan Rouhani said there were no immediate plans to quarantine cities but acknowledged it may take "one, two or three weeks” to get control of the virus in Iran.

As Iran's 80 million people find themselves increasingly isolated in the region by the outbreak, the country's sanctions-battered economy saw its currency slump to its lowest level against the US dollar in a year on Wednesday.