QBullet: Trump, Kim Finally Meet; Charges Framed Against RaGa
Read the morning news wrap to kick-start your day.
1. Trump, Kim Make History
Clasping hands and forecasting future peace, President Donald Trump and Kim Jong Un committed Tuesday, 12 June, to “complete denuclearisation” of the Korean Peninsula during the first meeting in history between a sitting US president and a North Korean leader.
Yet as Trump toasted the summit’s results, he faced mounting questions about whether he got too little and gave away too much — including an agreement to halt US military exercises with treaty ally South Korea.
(Source: Hindustan Times)
2. Defaming RSS: Charges Are Framed Against Rahul Gandhi
A Bhiwandi court in Maharashtra, on Tuesday, 12 June, framed charges against Congress president Rahul Gandhi for allegedly making defamatory remarks against the RSS at an election rally in 2014.
While Rahul pleaded not guilty, charges were framed after Rajesh Kunte, secretary of the Bhiwandi unit of the RSS, filed a complaint against Rahul for saying that the RSS was responsible for the assassination of Mahatma Gandhi.
The court also agreed to conduct the case as a detailed summons trial and not a summary trial following an earlier application by Rahul’s lawyers. The matter will be heard next on 10 August, which, Rahul’s lawyers said, would not require his presence.
(Source: The Indian Express)
3. High Profile Guru Bhaiyyuji Maharaj Takes His Own Life
In an apparent suicide, spiritual leader Bhaiyyuji Maharaj was on Tuesday, 12 June, found dead with a gunshot wound in his temple at his Silver Spring Colony residence in Indore. In a short note believed to be left behind by him, Bhaiyyuji talked about stress and being fed up with life, but did not spell out a reason for the same.
The 50-year-old was a former model and worked as a marketing executive before taking to preaching, a calling that gave him immense clout and a following cutting across political lines, mostly in Madhya Pradesh and Maharashtra.
It was Bhaiyyuji who mediated between Anna Hazare and the UPA government during his anti-corruption fast in 2011 in Delhi and was also invited to break then Gujarat chief minister Narendra Modi’s fast the same year.
(Source: The Indian Express)
4. Delhi CM Arvind Kejriwal Refuses to Leave L-G’s Office, AAP Minister Starts Hunger Strike
Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal on Tuesday, 12 June, continued his sit-in protest at lieutenant governor Anil Baijal’s office along with three senior Cabinet ministers and said he would stay put until the government’s demands were met.
The state home minister, Satyendar Jain, who is also accompanying Kejriwal, went a step further and announced that he had started an indefinite hunger strike to protest against Baijal’s “inaction.”
Kejriwal, Deputy Chief Minister Manish Sisodia, Jain and Development Minister Gopal Rai, who had gone to speak to the L-G on Monday evening, never left the building after the meeting.
(Source: Hindustan Times)
5. Karnataka Police Arrests Sixth Suspect in Gauri Lankesh Murder Case
Karnataka Police on Tuesday, 12 June, arrested another suspect in connection with the killing of journalist-activist Gauri Lankesh but denied speculation about him being the assassin.
26-year-old Parashuram Waghmare was held from Sindhagi in Vijaypura district and produced before the 3rd Additional Chief Metropolitan Magistrate’s court in Bengaluru, said the police. Waghmare was remanded to SIT custody for 14 days for further interrogation, an official release said.
(Source: The Indian Express)
6. Air Quality in Hot, Dusty Delhi Hits Winter Levels
A sudden haze descended upon Delhi and its neighbouring areas on Tuesday, 12 June, as the air quality plummeted into the severely polluted category, bringing back memories of November when the city’s air reached dangerous levels of pollution.
Tuesday’s pollution was driven by dust particles classified as PM10, which are roughly a fifth of the width of a human hair. From 138 at 6 pm on Sunday evening, the PM10 concentration index shot up to 433 at 8 pm on Tuesday, a trend that experts attributed to a switch of wind direction.
(Source: Hindustan Times)
7. 'Nirav Modi Shifted All Dummy Directors in Hong Kong to Cairo After Scam Was Exposed'
Diamond merchant Nirav Modi shifted all dummy directors of his six Hong Kong-based shell companies to Cairo after CBI registered a case in the Rs 6,500 crore Letter of Undertaking scam involving Punjab National Bank.
Divyesh Gandhi, director in Anuragen, one of the Hong Kong-based dummy companies, stated that he was handling accounts of all the six companies. He said that after the crisis, Nehal Modi, Nirav Modi’s US-based stepbrother, destroyed mobile phones of all dummy directors and shifted them to Cairo. Gandhi is not an accused in the case and was made a witness.
(Source: The Times of India)
8. Draft Report on Note Ban Divides House Panel, BJP Members Say it Is Biased
There was a sharp political divide at a meeting on Tuesday, 12 June, of the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Finance when BJD member Bhartruhari Mahtab sought to know the fate of the panel’s draft report related to demonetisation and BJP members objected, calling it a “biased” draft report.
Soon after the members assembled, Mahtab, sources said, asked panel chairman and Congress veteran Veerappa Moily: Where has the draft report on the ‘Demonetisation of Indian currency notes of Rs 500 and Rs 1000 and ramifications thereof’ gone? He said the committee was already done with the report on the related matter of ‘Transformation towards a digital economy’.
(Source: The Indian Express)
9. How Cheap Power, Inefficient ACs are Pushing Delhi to the Brink
Cheaper electricity, combined with a lack of regulation to ensure efficient performance of air conditioners, is pushing up Delhi’s electricity demand to record levels.
A new analysis by the Centre for Science and Environment (CSE) released on Tuesday, 12 June, shows subsidised electricity and severe heat, combined with heavy use of air conditioners by the domestic sector, is fuelling this huge demand.
(Source: The Times of India)
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