1. Barcelona Attack: 13 Killed, 100 Injured as Van Ploughs Through Crowd
A van mowed through a crowd of tourists on Barcelona’s most famous avenue on Thursday, killing about a dozen people in an attack that was claimed by Islamic State.
A Catalan government official said the death toll could rise above the 13 so far confirmed. Joaquim Forn, from the Catalan government’s interior ministry, told a news conference that over 100 people had been injured when the van mowed down pedestrians in Barcelona’s city centre.
The head of the Spanish region of Catalonia, Carles Puigdemont said two people had been arrested. It was still not clear how many attackers had been involved.
Source: The Hindustan Times
2. In a First, SC Orders Rs 10 Lakh Relief for Rape Victim Denied Abortion
The Supreme Court on Thursday asked the Bihar government to pay Rs 10 lakh in compensation to a destitute woman who was raped and not allowed an abortion due to delays by the high court and a Patna hospital.
The court had in May denied the 35-year-old woman, who is also HIV positive, the permission to abort as she was 26-week pregnant. India has a 20-week legal ceiling on abortion except when there is a risk to the mother’s life. The court said:
The fundamental choice (of termination of unwanted pregnancy) which is available in law is totally curtailed and scuttled, the victim is entitled for compensation, for the entire action has caused her immense mental torture.
This is the first time that a rape victim has been awarded compensation for delays preventing her from getting the pregnancy terminated.
Source: The Hindustan Times
3. Ten-Year-Old Rape Victim Delivers Baby Girl, Told She Has a Stone Inside Her
Three weeks after the Supreme Court cited medical grounds to reject a plea for allowing a 10-year-old rape victim from Chandigarh to undergo an abortion, the girl on Thursday delivered a baby girl with doctors performing a Caesarean section that lasted two hours.
The surgery was performed at the Government Medical College and Hospital (GMCH) in Chandigarh’s Sector 32, officials said, with the girl being told by her parents and doctors that she was being operated upon “for a stone in her stomach”.
Source: The Indian Express
4. Standoff Over Doklam: Tokyo Throws Weight Behind Delhi
Two months into the Doklam border standoff between Indian and Chinese soldiers, Japan has conveyed its unequivocal support to India and Bhutan through diplomatic channels — a first by a major country, which is China’s neighbour, top sources have told The Indian Express.
This comes a month ahead of Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s visit to India from September 13 to 15.
The Indian Express has learnt that Japanese Ambassador to India, Kenji Hiramatsu, and his team of diplomats have conveyed Tokyo’s position to New Delhi and Thimphu in the last couple of weeks.
Source: The Indian Express
5. SC Forces 2 Gujarat Cops in Ishrat and Sohrabuddin Cases to Quit
In a repeat of the process that displaced Gujarat DGP P P Pandey four months ago, the Supreme Court on Thursday forced police officers N K Amin and Tarun Barot, who like Pandey were accused in fake encounter cases, to resign from post-retirement posts.
Amin was an accused in the Sohrabuddin encounter case. Given a clean chit by the trial court last year after being accused of disposing of the body of Sohrabuddin's wife, Kausarbi, in 2005, Amin retired as superintendent of police in August 2016 but was re-appointed SP of Mahisagar district by the Gujarat government for a period of one year.
Barot, who was an accused in the Ishrat Jahan encounter case, was re-appointed as deputy SP with Western Railways in Vadodara for a year after his retirement. Both the cases were probed as “fake encounters”.
Source: The Times of India
6. Rahul Gandhi Explains Difference Between RSS and Congress, in One Line
Congress Vice-President Rahul Gandhi attacked the RSS on Thursday, saying the right-wing organisation had accepted the national flag only after its ideological offspring, the BJP, came to power in 2014.
Rahul said at the 'Save Composite Culture' event called by JD(U) leader Sharad Yadav in Delhi:
Jab tak inhone (RSS) Hindustan mein raaj nahi kiya tab tak jhande ko salute nahi mara
Source: The Times of India
7. Corporates Donated Rs 957 Crore to National Parties in 4 Years, BJP Got Lion's Share: ADR Report
The BJP received the lion’s share – Rs 705.81 crore – of Rs 956.77 crore that corporate houses donated to five national parties between 2012-13 and 2015-16, a report by a Delhi-based non-profit pushing for poll reforms said on Thursday.
The party, which swept to power in 2014, got money from 2,987 corporate donors followed by the Congress that received Rs 198.16 crore from 167 business houses, the Association for Democratic Reforms (ADR) said.
Source: The Hindustan Times
8. TMC Sweeps WB Civic Polls; CPM, Congress Wiped Out
Trinamool Congress swept all seven civic agencies, winning 140 of the 148 wards that went to the polling booth this Sunday, in a result that would seem ominous for every other political party in Bengal ahead of the 2018 panchayat elections.
But the fine print, buried under the colossal victory margin, indicates a bigger paradigm shift in Bengal politics: BJP has emerged as a distinct second party , winning six of the eight wards that voted anti-Trinamool, leaving the Forward Bloc just one ward in seven muni cipalities. CPM drew a blank, as did Congress.
Source: The Times of India
9. Winning at All Cost, Without Ethics, Is New Normal in Politics: EC Speaks Out
Barely ten days after the Election Commission used its special powers to reject votes cast by two rebel Congress MLAs in the high-stakes Rajya Sabha polls in Gujarat, Election Commissioner O P Rawat spoke out against the “creeping new normal of political morality” in New Delhi on Thursday.
He said in his keynote address delivered at the ‘Consultation on Electoral and Political Reforms’ organised by the Association of Democratic Reforms (ADR):
Democracy thrives when elections are free, fair and transparent. However, it appears to a cynical common man that we have been scripting a narrative that places maximum premium on winning at all costs — to the exclusion of ethical considerations.
Source: The Indian Express
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