Indian Sub-continent

Mumbai, Apr 15 (PTI) American banking major Citibank on Thursday announced that it will exit from the consumer banking business in India as part of a global strategy.

The business comprises credit cards, retail banking, home loans and wealth management.

Lucknow, Apr 15 (PTI) Samajwadi Party supremo Akhilesh Yadav on Thursday painted a gloomy picture of the Covid situation in Uttar Pradesh saying dead bodies have been queueing up at crematoriums in the state and no treatment is available to the ailing ones.

Yadav, himself in-home quarantine after testing positive for the infection, alleged that the dismal Covid-19 situation in the state has arisen because of the BJP's "cheap mentality" and its "malice" of undoing the work done by his government.

New Delhi, Apr 15 (PTI) A Delhi court on Thursday granted bail to former JNU student Umar Khalid in a case related to the communal violence in northeast Delhi in February last year, saying that he cannot be made to incarcerate in jail for infinity.

Further, the court said the investigation in the case has been completed and the charge sheet has been filed and it is the case in which Khalid was not physically present at the scene of the crime on the date of the incident.

Chandigarh, Apr 15 (PTI) Former Haryana chief minister and senior Congress leader Bhupinder Singh Hooda on Thursday accused the state's BJP-JJP government of failing on all fronts, from farmer's issues to the COVID-19 pandemic, and said its incompetence has been exposed.

The leader of opposition in the state also alleged delays in the entire process of wheat procurement, from lifting of purchased grains to payment to farmers.

LAHORE, Pakistan (AP) — Pakistan briefly blocked access to all social media on Friday, after days of anti-French protests across the country by radical Islamists opposed to cartoons they consider blasphemous.

Sites including Twitter and Facebook were blocked for four hours on orders from the country’s interior ministry, said Khurram Mehran, a spokesman for Pakistan’s media regulatory agency. He gave no further details.

Chandigarh, Apr 15 (PTI) Punjab Chief Secretary Vini Mahajan on Thursday issued instructions to the police and other departments to make foolproof arrangements for not allowing even a single grain of wheat from outside the state.

She said that enforcement teams should be deployed on inter-state borders to check the illegal trade.

She also directed to ensure the lifting of the crop within 72 hours after the procurement from the mandis and timely payment to farmers.

Chandigarh, Apr 15 (PTI) The UK variant of COVID-19 was found in 70 percent of 60 samples sent to the National Centre for Diseases Control, the PGIMER said on Thursday.

Seventy percent of the samples had UK variant of Covid-19 and 20 percent of the samples had 681 H mutant, said Jagat Ram, the director of the Post Graduate Institute of Medical Education and Research, in a statement here.

The majority of the samples were from Chandigarh, he added.

MUMBAI, India (AP) — Migrant workers are piling into rail stations in India’s financial capital Mumbai to head back to their home villages now that virus-control measures have dried up work in the hard-hit region.

“What do I do now?” asked Ramzan Ali, who’d been earning up to 500 rupees ($7) per day as a laborer but has been out of work for two weeks.

New Delhi, Apr 16 (PTI) Taking a dig at the government, Congress leader Rahul Gandhi on Friday said its strategy to fight the COVID-19 pandemic consisted of imposing a 'Tughlaqi lockdown, ringing bells and singing praises to the Lord.

The Congress-led opposition has been criticising the government over its handling of the pandemic and the vaccination drive, while the Centre has maintained that its timely steps have been instrumental in fighting COVID-19.

Kollam (Ker), Apr 16 (PTI): A 42-year-old Catholic nun was found dead inside the well of the St Joseph convent at Kureepuzha in this south Kerala district on Friday, police said.

The other inmates noticed the body of Mable Joseph, a native of Karunagappally here, inside the well of the sprawling convent campus in the morning.

They carried out a search after she failed to turn up for the usual morning prayers.

Police said prima facie it was a suspected case of suicide and other details could be known only after the post-mortem and investigation.