Thursday 20 December 2012

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Police in India have arrested six men after they allegedly gang-raped a woman on a bus, just weeks after a similar attack shocked the nation.
The latest assault is said to have taken place in the northern state of Punjab. The police are searching for a seventh suspected attacker.
Last month, a 23-year-old student died of her injuries after the being raped in the capital Delhi.
Five men have been charged with her murder and are facing trial.

If convicted, they face the death penalty.

A sixth suspect, who is thought to be 17, will be tried separately in a youth court if it is confirmed he is a minor.

The Delhi attack prompted mass protests which prompted the government to set up special fast-track courts to exclusively deal with rape cases and also consider strengthening sexual assault laws, the BBC's Sanjoy Majumder reports.

BJP Tuesday hit out at Congress president Sonia Gandhi for defending Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on the coal blocks issue and demanded that the original CBI affidavit on the status report and emails reportedly sent to the agency by the PMO be made public.

Hours after Gandhi dismissed opposition demand for Singh's resignation, Leader of Opposition in Rajya Sabha Arun Jaitley said he was not surprised by her response. He said that Gandhi may see Singh's alleged role in the coal allocation case as a "virtue" but BJP feels this is nothing less than a scam.

related story Coalgate: BJP asks PM to quit, Sonia says 'let them ask'Jaitley sought to know what was the need for the law minister to call the CBI director, Law officers and others to see the report and make changes in it.

Deputy leader of BJP in the Upper House Ravi Shankar Prasad found the government contention that law minister Ashwani Kumar was only making "grammatical corrections" as surprising."This is the first time that the CBI needed tutorship of the law minister. BJP demands that the original affidavit of the status report and the report after grammatical corrections were made by the law minister as a tutor be made public. These should also be submitted to the Supreme Court," Prasad said.

Jaitley maintained that what changes were made in the report is immaterial but this definitely shows government interference in the CBI's functioning.He demanded that the emails exchanged by the CBI and the PMO in regard to the coal scam issue be made public. He maintained that the government will have to concede that emails were exchanged as technology will prove there was interference.
Union Finance Minister P. Chidambaram on Thursday said that the Indian Rupee has overshot its true value.

Mr. Chidambaram during his speech in the Lok Sabha said that the correction in rupee will take place and a number of measures are being taken to ensure it finds its correct value.

Mr. Chidambaram added that Indian economy is going through period of stress and the growth in first quarter is quite disappointing.

Mr. Chidambaram asserted that “There should be no room for gloom and pessimism and India will bounce back.”
The Reserve Bank on Saturday said it is not contemplating any proposal to buy idle gold and convert it into bullion.
“The RBI clarifies that no such proposal is under its consideration at this juncture,” the apex bank said in a statement.

There have been media reports that the RBI is considering various options of converting idle gold, including that available with temple trusts, into bullion.
Bullion usually stands for gold in form of bars before coining.
Demand for gold is the reason for rise in import of the precious metal. The rising gold import is one of the main reason for the Current Account Deficit (CAD), which widened to a record 4.8 per cent of GDP in 2012-13 fiscal.
The RBI and the government have already taken various steps to control the import of gold with a view to check CAD.
The government recently raised customs duty on gold to 10 per cent.

Import of gold went up by a huge 87 per cent from 205 tonnes in April-July 2012 to 383 tonnes during the corresponding period this year. In value terms, the increase was 68 per cent from Rs 56,488 crore to Rs 95,092 crore.
The government has targeted a CAD at 3.7 per cent of GDP, or $ 70 billion, in the current financial year. India’s CAD, which indicates the excess of imports of goods, services and transfers over exports, touched a record 4.8 per cent of GDP, or $ 88.2 billion, in 2012-13.



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