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India commissioned its first home-built aircraft carrier Friday as it seeks to counter regional rival China's much larger and growing fleet, and expand its own indigenous shipbuilding capabilities. The INS Vikrant, whose name is a Sanskrit word for “powerful" or "courageous," is India's second operational aircraft carrier, joining the Soviet-era INS Vikramaditya that it purchased from Russia in 2004 to defend the Indian Ocean and Bay of Bengal. The new 262-meter (860-foot) carrier, designed by the Indian navy and built at the Cochin shipyard in southern India, was launched by Prime Minister Narendra Modi as part of the country's commemoration...

A charity named after Winston Churchill has provoked fury by rebranding itself amid concerns over his views on race. The Winston Churchill Memorial Trust has removed pictures of the wartime leader from its website and is changing its name to the Churchill Fellowship. Volunteers at the trust said it was 'rewriting history'. One told The Sun: 'He was voted, by the people, as the Greatest Briton in a BBC poll in 2002 but is now erased from his own charity by the woke brigade. ... ...Controversies surrounding his rule include whether he could have acted more decisively to prevent the...

David Olusoga has claimed Winston Churchill was a war criminal. And David Olusoga, who co-presents the BBC’s new Civilisations series, said those who criticised tributes to various historical figures should not be derided as “snowflakes”. Mr Olusoga made his sensational claims during a speech to the Oxfordshire Literary Festival. Suggesting that "almost all historical figures did good and bad", Mr Olusoga said academics were entering a period of ‘history wars’ in which accepted versions of Britain’s past are being challenged. He explained: “So while I’m personally glad that Churchill overcame Halifax in early 1940 and it was Churchill who faced...

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi promised to unite the country on Thursday after a big election win, with his party on course to increase its majority on a mandate of business-friendly policies and a tough stand on national security. Official data from the Election Commission showed Modi’s Hindu-nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) ahead in 300 of the 542 seats being contested, up from the 282 it won in 2014 and more than the 272 seats needed for a majority in the lower house of parliament. That would give it the first back-to-back majority for a single party since 1984. “Together...

Briefing by Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Maria Zakharova, Moscow, April 19, 2018 On April 13, UK Ambassador to Russia Laurie Bristow said that “the Russian state has a record in state-sponsored assassinations including in the UK.” It is not the first Russophobic statement made by a UK official...but it’s not the main point... Maybe the UK Ambassador does not know his own country’s history, role and involvement in processes that took place in other countries over the past centuries... Let’s start with modern history...Britain was one of the most ruthless metropolises in terms of the repressive actions it took in its...

Caption - To establish a caliphate, al-Hanif promises to topple Shiekh Hasina government in Bangladesh. ISIS vows to implement 'sharia' law in India. Islamic State (ISIS) has made new threat to send its fighters from Pakistan and Bangladesh to carry out 'guerrilla attacks' in India. In a recent interview carried by Dabiq magazine, the 'amir' of ISIS fighters in Bangladesh, Shaykh Abu Ibrahim al-Hanif has vowed to wipe out Hindus and implement 'sharia' law in India and Bangladesh. al-Hanif also revealed the terror group is currently training fighters in Bangladesh and Pakistan to launch attacks on India and is seeking...

Muslim deaf & dumb juveniles are kept chained in rural Bengal • Chained in ropes and shackles for years. Inhumane treatment to deaf and dumb juveniles in Muslim families of rural Bengal. It is obviously inhumane and utter injustice to put some juveniles in ropes or shackles as they are challenged persons, very unfortunately. But, in a Muslim village of Sahebdanga near Shantipur (in Nadia, West Bengal, India) it is an Islamic fashion to put the Deaf and Dumb or mentally incapacitated juveniles in chain as they are simply uncontrollable or misunderstood sometime. Take the story of cute Arfin of...

Voters in West Bengal have overthrown one of the world's last Communist governments in a humiliating state election landslide. They were defeated after 34 years in power by the Trinamool Congress, led by the country's fiery Railways Minister Mamata Bannerjee, and her allies in the Congress Party. Supporters of the Trinamil Congress celebrate Miss Bannerjee's alliance capitalised on widespread disillusionment with the Communists by voters who blamed them for the state's failure to share in India's rapid economic growth. There was also anger at Communist-orchestrated attacks on poor farmers who protested against the confiscation of their land for sale to...

H.RES.1615 -- Whereas Mother Teresa was born Agnes Gonxha Bojaxhiu on August 26, 1910, in Skopje, Macedonia; (Introduced in House - IH) HRES 1615 IH111th CONGRESS 2d Session H. RES. 1615 Commemorating the 100th anniversary of the birth, and honoring the life and legacy, of Mother Teresa. IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES September 14, 2010 Mr. FORTENBERRY submitted the following resolution; which was referred to the Committee on Foreign Affairs RESOLUTION Commemorating the 100th anniversary of the birth, and honoring the life and legacy, of Mother Teresa. Whereas Mother Teresa was born Agnes Gonxha Bojaxhiu on August 26, 1910, in...

Santipur: Three teen age Hindu Girls have been raped by the Muslim goons on 12th July at Middepara Lichutala under Santipur police station in Nadia district of West Bengal. The girls were molested, raped and brutally tortured in broad daylight. Nobody came in their rescue as the area is Muslim area. The Hindus of the area could not tolerate this horrible incident. They enquired from the local Muslim girls who are classmates of the victims and witnesses of this gruesome incident. But they refused to tell the names of the Muslim culprits.

Warning of tsunami greater than 2004 By Roger Highfield, Science Editor Last Updated: 6:01pm BST 05/09/2007 Tens of millions of people who live in the Bay of Bengal face the threat of a tsunami as massive as the one that devastated the Sumatran coast in 2004, a leading geologist warns today. Satellite images showing Banda Aceh before (top) and after (bottom) the 2004 tsunami While the Boxing Day 2004 disaster took the scientific community by surprise, killing around a quarter of a million people, one geologist who had sounded the alert about the dangers in the Indian Ocean now says...

Baby tiger's birth adds to rare species   Last Edited: Friday, 09 Mar 2007, 7:41 PM EST Created: Friday, 09 Mar 2007, 6:54 PM EST     A rare tabby tiger has been born in Polk County. Related Items Videos DAVENPORT - Sounds of life fill the air at Horseshoe Creek Wildlife Foundation.  Spring is dawning, and that means babies being born.All the births are a joy for Horseshoe Creek founder Darryl Atkinson. "It's like being a father all over again.  I can't explain -- they are my children," Atkinson said.   He is especially thrilled by the recent birth...

More than 20,000 tribes people have come on to the streets of a remote district of India's West Bengal state to demand a separate tribal homeland. The Rajbongshi tribes people are blocking roads a day after violent protests had left five dead and more than 100 injured. Police killed two people on Tuesday when they fired on protesters who went on the rampage, killing three officers. The state government has sent a huge number of troops to quell the unrest. Armed groups Intelligence officials say tension is high, with the Rajbongshis demanding an inquiry into Tuesday's police shootings. Police had...

Calcutta's famous hand-pulled rickshaws will soon be banned, according to the chief minister of the Indian state of West Bengal. The rickshaws had long been considered "inhuman" and did not exist anywhere else, Buddhadev Bhattacharya said. The rickshaw, immortalised as a living symbol of Calcutta in films such as City of Joy, will be phased out in four to five months. The hand-pulled rickshaw came from China in the 19th century. Mr Bhattacharya said: "We have taken a policy decision to take the hand-drawn rickshaw off the roads of Calcutta on humanitarian grounds. "Nowhere else in the world does this...

Bangladesh police have held 24 people for questioning following a bomb attack on a shrine in the city of Sylhet on Monday that killed three people. The bomb, which injured around 30, went off during a festival at the shrine of Muslim saint Hazrat Shah Jalal. A 14-year-old boy and an unidentified man died instantly and another man died later in hospital. Shrine officials said up to 50,000 devotees had gathered for the three-day Urs Sharif festival. Police said the explosion was the first act of violence at the 700-year-old shrine in Sylhet, 192 kilometres (120 miles) north-east of the...

The buried palace of Gaur SUHRID SANKAR CHATTOPADHYAY in Malda Excavations in Malda throw light on the architecture and engineering of Gaur, the capital of the medieval Muslim rulers of north Bengal. PICTURES: SUSHANTA PATRONOBISH The Bais Gazi wall, which surrounds the palace area. IN his book Memoirs of Gaur and Pandua, the historian Khan Sahib Abid Ali, who himself hailed from Malda, wrote: "Excavations have been made in different parts of the ruined city by village cultivators in search of treasure, which have revealed traces of spacious halls, pavements, staircases, subterranean passages, and a good many other relics, all...

A 42-year-old man in Kolkata on Sunday tested positive for SARS taking the number of infected people in the country to seven even as pathological results of 13 more suspected cases in six states were awaited.The textile engineer contracted SARS during a recent trip to China and a few other Southeast Asian countries between March 28 and April 14.After returning to Kolkata, he took ill and was admitted to a private hospital. He was allowed to go home after a few days.But he was readmitted following high fever and chest congestion. The nursing home then referred him to a specialty...

An Ancient Link to Africa Lives on in Bay of Bengal By NICHOLAS WADE Inhabitants of the Andaman Islands, a remote archipelago east of India, are direct descendants of the first modern humans to have inhabited Asia, geneticists conclude in a new study. But the islanders lack a distinctive genetic feature found among Australian aborigines, another early group to leave Africa, suggesting they were part of a separate exodus. The Andaman Islanders are "arguably the most enigmatic people on our planet," a team of geneticists led by Dr. Erika Hagelberg of the University of Oslo write in the journal Current...