A look at the headlines right now:

  1. 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.   
  2. ‘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.  
  3. 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.  
  4. 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’.  
  5. 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.  
  6. 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.  
  7. 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.  
  8. 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.  
  9. 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.  
  10. 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.