tribuneindia...Spotlight

			Monday, October 5, 1998
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Two blasts in Bihar town
PATNA, Oct 4 (UNI) — Paramilitary forces staged a flagmarch in the Biharsharif district headquarters town of Nalanda even as two fresh bomb explosions ripped a marketplace today fuelling further tension. The town witnessed clashes between two communities yesterday in which two persons were killed and several others injured when a procession carrying Durga idols for immersion was obstructed along a particular route. The bodies were today handed over to respective families and the police took possession of the idols left on the street and immersed them in a river.

Chhattisgarh Bill
BILASPUR, (MP), Oct 4 (PTI) — Union Home Minister L.K. Advani today said the Bill on formation of a separate Chhattisgarh state would be introduced in the winter session of Parliament. Addressing a press conference here, he said the new state would come into existence irrespective of the results of next month’s assembly elections in Madhya Pradesh.

Firing claims 2 lives
NAGPUR, Oct 4 (PTI) — Two persons were killed and 75 injured, 31 of them seriously, when the police opened fire on Shiv Sena activists demonstrating outside a police station at Andhalgaon near Bhandara in Maharashtra yesterday. An indefinite curfew has been imposed in Andhalgaon and a magisterial inquiry ordered into the incident, reports received here said today.

UN envoy in Iran
DUBAI, Oct 4 (PTI) — A UN special envoy arrived in Iran today for three-day of talks aimed at defusing mounting tension between Tehran and the Taliban over the killing of Iranian diplomats and alleged airspace violations. Former Algerian Foreign Minister Lakhdar Brahimi was greeted at Tehran’s Mehrabad international airport by Iran’s Deputy Foreign Minister for Asian Affairs Mohsen Aminzadeh.

UF meeting
JAIPUR, Oct 4 (UNI) — Talks to finalise the number of seats to be contested by the United Front constituent parties (the Janata Dal, CPI and the CPM in the November 25 assembly elections in Rajasthan, would be held here on October 14. Party sources said that at the last meeting of the front leaders there was an understanding that CPI should field 50 candidates from the state.

Schroeder’s offer
BONN, Oct 4 (DPA) — German chancellor-in-waiting Gerhard Schroeder has offered the post of German Ambassador to India or Serbia to Bonn’s bureau chief of the influential news magazine Der Spiegel, a media report said today. Mr Olaf Ihlau, who has been posted to both countries for Der Spiegel, has not yet decided if he will take up Mr Schoreder’s offer.

Brazilian poll
SAO PAULO, Oct 4 (Reuters) — Brazilians began voting today in a general election widely expected to give President Fernando Henrique Cardoso and unprecedented second term to tackle the nation’s worst economic crisis in years. Polling opened at 1100 GMT across Latin America’s largest nation, where 106 million voters were due to choose a President, congressmen and state governors.

11 die in Thane
MUMBAI, Oct 4 (PTI) — Eleven persons were killed and 16 injured in a kerosene cylinder blast in a hotel in suburban Thane here tonight. The dead included some of those who had come to have food at the Chinese restaurant of the Lakeview Hotel at Talaopali and some bystanders. The condition of some of the injured was serious.

Probe into firing
NAGPUR, Oct 4 (PTI) — A magisterial inquiry has been ordered into the police firing that killed two Shiv Sena activists and injured 75 others, 31 of them seriously, in Andhalgaon village in Bhandara district yesterday, by the district Guardian Minister Mahadeo Shivankar. Official sources said here today that the incident occurred when some Sena demonstrators resorted to 'raasta roko' to demand the arrest of culprits who had murdered a couple and their two children at the village in April last.

Gangrape case
BILASPUR, Oct 4 (PTI) — Union Home Minister L.K. Advani today suggested death sentence for rapists and said a decision on legislation for this would be taken in consultation with state governments as criminal law was not a central subject. Condemning the gangrape of four nuns in Jhabua district of Madhya Pradesh last month, he said raping a woman was a much more heinous crime than murder since "rape reduces a woman to a state of a living corpse."

Gandhi statue
GUWAHATI, Oct 4 (PTI) — Miscreants vandalised the statue of Mahatma Gandhi atop the Gandhi mandap on Sarania Hills of the city on October 2, official sources said today. The sources said that unidentified miscreants ransacked the Gandhi mandap where some mementoes were kept and vandalised the 20-foot statue of the Father of the Nation atop the building. The police was in search of the miscreants, sources added.