India isolated amid covid crisis as UAE, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, US, UK, Canada ban flights

News Network
April 24, 2021

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Newsroom, Apr 24: Hit hard by the second wave of the covid-19, India is almost isolated by its prominent global allies. While countries such as Saudi Arabia, United Kingdom, Canada, Hong Kong, New Zealand, UAE, Indonesia, Kuwait and Australia have banned flights from India. France has imposed mandatory quarantine for Indian passengers and the United States’ Centers for Disease Control (CDC) has advised against travel to India.

Daily cases in India have gone past the 300,000 mark and industry experts are doubtful that the flight bans will be lifted soon.

Who banned flights from India?

1) Kuwait: Kuwait's directorate general of civil aviation said early on Saturday in a tweet that it had suspended all direct commercial flights coming from India, effective April 24 and until further notice.

All passengers arriving from India either directly or via another country will be banned from entering unless they have spent at least 14 days out of India, the statement said. Kuwaiti citizens, their first degree relatives and their domestic workers will be allowed to enter. Cargo is unaffected.

2) Saudi Arabia: Saudi Arabia said that a halt to international flights will be lifted as of May 17, but will not apply to the countries with which travel is banned by a state committee tasked with tackling COVID-19 due to the outbreak of the virus, local media reported. The 20 countries on the ban list are Argentina, the UAE, France, Germany, the US, Indonesia, India, Japan, Ireland, Italy, Pakistan, Brazil, Portugal, the UK, Turkey, South Africa, Sweden, Switzerland, Lebanon, and Egypt.

3) UAE: “In short, the near collapse of India’s ability to deal with the COVID fallout almost certainly means that this temporary UAE ban will be extended if things do not improve,” said Saj Ahmad, chief analyst, StrategicAero Research.com.

“Further, it hampers the movement of labour between the UAE and India and further limits travellers from India using the UAE to transit to Africa, Europe and the USA,” he added.

4) US: US has issued a travel advisory for its people travelling to and from India. The body has asked citizens to avoid travelling to India. However, it has said that if anyone has to travel to India then he or she must get fully vaccinated.

5) UK: India was added to UK's travel red list on April 23rd, effectively banning travel. UK’s Health Secretary Matt Hancock Hancock said reason for this was the new ‘double-mutant’ strain of virus found in the country dubbed the ‘Indian variant." British and Irish nationals can travel to the UK from India, but they must now isolate in a government-approved hotel.

6) Australia: Prime Minister Scott Morrison said flights from India will be scaled back by 30 per cent. He said India was now a “high risk” country and only those with the most urgent needs would be allowed to travel to and from India.

7) Canada: Canada on Thursday said it was banning all flights from India and Pakistan for 30 days due to the growing wave of COVID-19 cases in that region. The ban took effect on Friday.

8) Hong Kong: On Tuesday last week, Hong Kong suspended all flights from India till May 3. The country has also suspended flights to and from Pakistan and the Philippines and made it mandatory for passengers to have a COVID-negative RTPCR result with them from a test done 72 hours before the journey.

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News Network
May 7,2024

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The International Criminal Police Organization (Interpol) on Monday responded to Karnataka’s Special Investigation Team (SIT) regarding a blue corner notice issued against JDS MP Prajwal Revanna.

In its response, Interpol said that all 196 member countries were alerted to identify and report if Prajwal Revanna is spotted at any port in their jurisdiction.

The Karnataka government issued a Blue Corner Notice on Sunday against Prajwal Revanna, who is facing allegations of sexual abuse by his staff members.

A Blue Corner Notice is issued by the international police cooperation body to collect additional information from its member countries about a person’s identity, location or activities about a crime.

The notice was issued after the 33-year-old Hassan MP reportedly flew to Germany soon after the Karnataka State Commission for Women chairperson Nagalakshmi Chowdhary wrote to the CM to order a probe into the sexual allegations against Prajwal.

Last week, the anticipatory bail application of Prajwal Revanna was also denied by Justice Santosh Gajanana Bhat’s bench of People’s Representative Court in Bengaluru.

Earlier, his MLA father and son of former Prime Minster HD Deve Gowda, HD Revanna was remanded to Karnataka SIT custody in a kidnapping-related sex scandal case.

His arrest came after the kidnapped victim was rescued from Revanna’s close assistant Rajasekhar’s farmhouse in Kalenahalli, Hunsur Taluk after the SIT conducted the rescue operation to find her, the police said.

The abduction case was filed by the son of a woman who worked at the Revannas’ house for nearly five years. He alleged that his mother was kidnapped from her home on April 29 by Satish Babanna a relative of Revanna.

The Karnataka Sex Scandal case pertains to explicit video clips allegedly involving the 33-year-old Prajwal, grandson of JD(S) patriarch and former Prime Minister H D Deve Gowda, which went viral on social media.

Those videos began to make rounds in Hassan in recent days, following which the state government constituted a Special Investigation Team (SIT) to probe the sexual abuse allegations against the MP.

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News Network
May 5,2024

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New Delhi, May 5: Actor-turned-politician Kangana Ranaut intended to target an opposition leader but mistakenly ended up attacking her BJP colleague instead. 

A similarity in names - Tejashwi and Tejasvi - was behind Ms Ranaut's fumble. "There's a party of spoilt princes... whether it's Rahul Gandhi who wants to grow potatoes on the Moon, or Tejasvi Surya who does hooliganism and eats fish," she had said.

RJD leader and former Bihar deputy Chief Minister Tejashwi Yadav was supposed to be the original target of her diatribe as one of his videos where he was seen eating fish became a major flashpoint between the BJP and the opposition recently.

Tejasvi Surya, incorrectly referred to by Ms Ranaut during an election rally yesterday, is BJP's Lok Sabha candidate from Bengaluru South constituency in Karnataka.

Meanwhile, Mr Yadav has responded to a clip of Kangana Ranaut's statement. "Ye mohtarma kaun hai?" (Who is this lady?), he posted on X.

Kangana Ranaut has been verbally bashing the Congress party since the BJP fielded her as their Lok Sabha candidate from Himachal Pradesh's Mandi. Congress leaders Vikramaditya Singh - her opponent in Mandi - and Rahul Gandhi have been the main targets on her dartboard.

While addressing a public rally in the Sundernagar area of Mandi Parliamentary Constituency yesterday, Ms Ranaut took a jibe at Mr Singh and Mr Gandhi over dynasty politics and said that both of them have a magic stick for development and talk only about non-practical things.

The Congress hit back saying the 37-year-old actor should first check the facts about her party leaders and speak about dynastic politics. National Media Coordinator for the Congress, Amrit Kaur, also questioned her qualifications on which she got a BJP ticket from Mandi.

The Mandi Lok Sabha constituency will go to polls on June 1, in the seventh phase of the 2024 Lok Sabha elections.

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News Network
May 7,2024

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Israeli military aircraft have heavily bombed the city of Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip accompanied with ground advances shortly after the Palestinian resistance movement Hamas said it had agreed to a proposal on ceasefire in Gaza.

A Palestinian journalist reported flares in the night sky, while locals said dozens of reconnaissance drones flew overhead.

The official Palestinian news agency Wafa and Egyptian media said Israeli military vehicles advanced towards the Palestinian side of the Rafah crossing with Egypt, as well as the Karem Shalom crossing with the Israeli-occupied territories.

A Palestinian security official and an Egyptian authority have told the Associated Press news agency that Israeli tanks have entered Rafah, reaching as close as 200 meters from Rafah’s border crossing with neighboring Egypt.

The Israeli military has said it was conducting “targeted strikes” against Hamas in eastern Rafah.

Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu's office has also said "Israel is continuing the operation in Rafah to exert military pressure on Hamas" in order to advance the release of captives and what it called "the other objectives of the war."

In the meantime, it described the proposal on ceasefire as "far from Israel's essential demands," but added that it would send negotiators for talks "to exhaust the potential for arriving at an agreement."

The military strikes on Rafah came ahead of talks in Egypt on Tuesday aimed at sealing a truce proposal accepted by Hamas, which was put forward by Qatari and Egyptian mediators. 

According to a copy of the proposal, there will be three phases to ending Israel’s onslaught against Gaza.

The first phase calls for a complete withdrawal of Israeli troops from the Netzarim corridor and the return of displaced Palestinians to their homes. The second phase involves an announcement of a permanent cessation of military operations. In the last phase, there would be a complete end to the blockade of the Gaza Strip. 

In return, Israel would be required to release an unspecified number of Palestinian prisoners, withdraw its troops from certain regions of the Gaza Strip, and allow Palestinians to travel from the south of the coastal sliver to the north.

About 1.5 million Palestinians are sheltering in Rafah, once designated a “safe zone” by the Israeli military. Palestinians are now struggling to evacuate the city, after the Israeli military dropped leaflets ordering them to leave as a large-scale assault on the city is planned.

UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres has said that a ground invasion of Rafah would be “intolerable” and called on Israel and Hamas “to go an extra mile” to reach a truce deal.

“This is an opportunity that cannot be missed, and a ground invasion in Rafah would be intolerable because of its devastating humanitarian consequences, and because of its destabilizing impact in the region,” Guterres told reporters on Monday ahead of a meeting with Italian President Sergio Mattarella in New York.

Jordanian Foreign Minister Ayman Safadi has also warned that Israel is “jeopardizing the deal by bombing Rafah.”

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