M A I N   N E W S

SHO thrown into pond by farmers

MOGA, Oct 25 (UNI) — Assistant police sub-inspector Mangat Singh was seriously injured and an SHO dragged out of his official vehicle and thrown into a nearby pond and the windowpanes his vehicle smashed by irrate farmers blocking traffic on the Moga-Ludhiana road this evening.

District Police Chief Dr Sharad Sayta Chohan said that some 50 farmers including women, led by Bharati Kisan Union (Ekta) vice-president Sukhdev Singh were stopped while proceeding to Ajitwal grain market to protest against delay in paddy purchases. Following this, the farmers turned violent and the police used mild force to disperse the crowd.

The BKU spokesman on the phone from Ajitwal alleged that police had resorted to an unprovoked lathicharge resulting in injuries to five farmers, one of whom was admitted to Dhodike hospital in a serious condition.

He said that the police had arrested some half-a-dozen farmers including Mr Sukhdev Singh. 

CBI names 7 foreign cricketers

NEW DELHI, Oct 25 (PTI) — A Pakistani, three Australians, two West Indians and one English player are among the foreign cricketers named by bookies in the report on match-fixing to be submitted by the CBI to the government early next week, agency sources said here tonight. Bookies, who were examined by the CBI, have named several foreign players being involved in match-fixing which include former Pakistani cricket captain Salim Malik and disgraced South African skipper Hansie Cronje.

Indian filmmaker bags global awards

NEW DELHI, Oct 25 (UNI) — Well-known wildlife film-maker Mike H. Pandey, who won the Panda Award also known as the Green Oscar for his film “Shores of Silence — Whale Sharks in India” earlier this month, has added another feather to his cap by winning two more global awards.

While “Shores of Silence — Whale Sharks in India” has bagged the Honour of Knowledge Award at the Ekotopfilm 2000 Festival at Bratislava in the Slovak Republic, another film “Honey Hunters of the Blue Mountains” has received an award at the Earth Vision 2000 Festival in Santa Cruz in the USA.

This is the second time that Mike Pandey has won the Green Oscar at the Wildscreen International Film Festival for Environment and Conservation. An earlier film, “The Last Migration — Wild Elephant Capture in Sarguja” had become the first Asian film to win the Wildscreen Panda in 1994. This film had later gone on to win five other international awards.

“Shores of Silence — Whale Sharks in India”, the first Indian film to focus on a large marine species, is a hard-hitting account of the slaughter and trade of whale sharks on the western coast of India. It was made under difficult conditions and took almost three years to make. The film was produced, directed and filmed by Mike Pandey of Riverbank Studios assisted by his core crew Rita Banerji and Shibani Chaudhary and backed by veteran technicians Lalman and Rajinder Pratap.

The film is supported by the Earth Matters Foundation which has begun an awareness campaign to save the whale shark, which is the largest fish on earth. Though their existence on Indian shores has been denied by experts, “Shores of Silence — Whale Sharks in India” proves that whale sharks not only exist but are brutally hunted on the west coast.

Russian military plane crashes, 75 killed

TBILISI, Oct 25 (AFP) — All 75 persons aboard a Russian military plane died today when their Soviet-era propeller-driven craft crashed into a mountain in Caucasus Republic of Georgia, senior regional officials said.

The II-18 plane crashed 25 km east of the city of Batumi, which is home to one of four Russian military based in the former Soviet republic.

The office of Aslan Abashidze, who heads Georgia’s Adzharia region where the crash occurred, said the plane went down in heavy fog just as it was set to land in Batumi at 1900 hours IST.

MOSCOW (Reuters): A spokeswoman for Russia’s Emergency Ministry said there were 64 passengers and 11 crew on board the four-engine propeller-driven IL-18 plane which was flying from a military airport outside Moscow to Batumi.