Indian Sub-continent

COLOMBO, July 21 (Xinhua) -- Sri Lankan President Maithripala Sirisena attended a groundbreaking ceremony on Saturday to launch the construction of a China-Sri Lanka friendship hospital in Polonnaruwa in north central Sri Lanka.

The National Nephrology Specialist Hospital is being constructed following a request by President Sirisena to the Chinese government.

The 25,517-square-meter hospital, which will be the largest kidney hospital in South Asia, will include 200 inpatient beds and 100 hemodialysis beds.

Jaipur, Jul 21 (PTI); A 19-year old youth was today given death penalty by a court for raping a seven-month-old child in Alwar district of Rajasthan in May, the first such sentencing in the state after a law entailing capital punishment to those convicted of raping a child below 12 years of age came into force, according to police.

A special court hearing cases of SC/ST Act and POCSO Act in Alwar sentenced to death Pintu, who was found guilty of raping the infant in Laxmangarh area in Alwar on May 9.

Mumbai, Jul 21 (PTI); Senior Congress leader Kapil Sibal said today that Prime Minister Narendra Modi's reply to the Lok Sabha debate on the no-confidence motion was "full of hatred".

"The country cannot run on hatred. Our country is a family. Modi's speech in the Lok Sabha yesterday was full of hatred. The need of the hour is to protect the country and its Constitution," Sibal said at a 'Bharat Bachao' meeting organised here by the Youth Congress.

"It is not the BJP, but the RSS that is ruling the country," he alleged.

New Delhi, Jul 20 (PTI); The Supreme Court Collegium has brushed aside the reservations of the government over its decision to elevate Uttarakhand Chief Justice K M Joseph to the apex court as a judge and reiterated his name along with two other recommendations.

The Collegium said "nothing adverse" regarding "suitability" of Justice Joseph has been pointed out in two letters of Law Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad.

New Delhi, Jul 19 (PTI) Voicing dissatisfaction over the steps taken by the Uttarakhand government to clean the Ganga, the National Green Tribunal (NGT) today said the situation was extraordinarily bad and hardly anything effective has been done to clean the river.

A bench headed by NGT chairperson Justice A K Goel said despite claims by authorities, the work done on the ground for Ganga rejuvenation was not adequate and regular monitoring was required to improve the situation.

New Delhi, July 18 (PTI) The Government today said it is concerned about the imposition of additional duties by the US on items from India and has moved the WTO Appellate disputes settlement committee which will hear both sides on July 19 and 20.

Replying to supplementaries in the Rajya Sabha, Minister of State for Commerce and Industry C R Chaudhary said India as a retaliatory action to the US has also slapped additional duties of 10 to 20 per cent on as many as 29 items which would come into force on August 4.

New Delhi, Jul 18 (PTI) The Supreme Court today said women have the constitutional right to enter Sabarimala temple in Kerala and pray like men without being discriminated against.

A five-judge Constitution bench headed by Chief Justice Dipak Misra, which is hearing a petition challenging the decision of the Devaswom board banning entry of women of age group 10-50 years, said that even if there was no law, the women cannot be discriminated against with regard to offering prayer in a temple.

PTI; New Delhi, Jul 17 : The Supreme Court today asked Parliament to consider enacting a new law to effectively deal with incidents of mob lynching, saying "horrendous acts of mobocracy" cannot be allowed to become a new norm.

A bench headed by Chief Justice Dipak Misra also passed a slew of directions to provide "preventive, remedial and punitive measures" to deal with offences like mob violence and cow vigilantism.

PTI; Balasore (Odisha), Jul 16 : Supersonic cruise missile BrahMos was today successfully test fired from the Integrated Test Range (ITR) at Chandipur.

The missile was launched at about 10.15 am from the launch complex three of the ITR and successfully flew in its pre-set trajectory meeting its mission objectives, Defence Research and Development (DRDO) sources said.

PTI; Sambhal (UP), July 16 : Two of the five people accused of burning a woman alive after raping her in Rajpura area of Sambhal district have been arrested, the police said today.

The woman was allegedly burnt alive inside a temple premises after she was raped by the five people in her house on Saturday.

Superintendent of Police R M Bharadwaj said, "The prime accused in the case, Aram Singh and Bhona alias Kunwar Pal, have been arrested. Both of them are being interrogated."