The big news: Centre approves death penalty for rapists of children, and nine other top stories
Other headlines: Yashwant Sinha quits the BJP, and the Cabinet cleared an ordinance to seize assets of fugitive economic offenders.
A look at the headlines right now:
- Centre approves ordinance providing death penalty for rape of girls below 12 years of age: Brinda Karat criticised ordinance for capital punishment to rapists while the Congress was divided.
- ‘I am taking sanyas from party politics,’ says Yashwant Sinha after quitting BJP: The veteran leader, who has been criticising his party’s leadership in the past few months, recently launched the political action group Rashtra Manch.
- Union Cabinet clears proposal to promulgate ordinance to seize assets of fugitive economic offenders: The ordinance will force the defaulters to return to India, the Centre said.
- Democrats file lawsuit against Russia, Trump campaign team for alleged conspiracy in 2016 US election: The president’s campaign manager called it a ‘bogus claim by a desperate, dysfunctional, and nearly insolvent party’.
- Punjab National Bank moves Hong Kong High Court against Nirav Modi: The bank will also approach the courts of other countries where the billionaire jeweller and his uncle Mehul Choksi have assets and businesses, reports said.
- Kathua, Unnao rapes part of a pattern of targeted attacks against minorities, academics tell Modi: More than 630 scholars from India and abroad wrote that there was an undeniable association between the growing violence and the ruling dispensation.
- Syrian rebel forces evacuate enclave outside Damascus after Army launches air, artillery attacks: Buses arrived in al-Rheibeh city to take the militants and their families to northern Syria.
- Andhra Pradesh MLA calls Narendra Modi a traitor, BJP demands action: TDP legislator N Balakrishna, who is the brother-in-law of Chief Minister Chandrababu Naidu, said the prime minister had cheated the state.
- Delhi court bars media from reporting on CBI’s FIR against former judge IM Quddusi: The judge said articles by a few media houses on the transcripts of calls among the accused were prima facie defamatory.
- Kangaroo dies after visitors at a China zoo pelt rocks to make it hop: The animal died in March, but details of the brutal attack came to light after a Chinese paper spoke to zookeepers this week.