Leaking of Army recruitment question paper

Late night crackdown across Maharashtra, the Thane Police on Saturday arrested 18 people for allegedly leaking the Army recruitment question paper. The raids were conducted in Nashik, Nagpur, Pune and the neighbouring state of Goa.
The crime branch of Thane Police has detained 18 people from Pune, Nagpur and Goa late on Saturday night on the suspicion of leaking the Army recruitment question paper, a police official said. 8 of the detained are from Pune.
The exam that was held today got over at 11am. Post the exam, the police launched a probe to match the questions papers, an investigating officer said. Police had received a tip-off that around 350 candidates were made available with the leaked question papers by coaching institutes late on Saturday night in exchange for Rs 2 lakh.
The Army has been informed about the case by the police. An FIR will be registered and proper verification of the question paper will be done post the exam.

India will not allow any defaulter to escape law: Jaitley

Finance Minister Arun Jaitley has said, India is no longer willing to let defaulters escape the law. Mr Jaitley was speaking at a session on ‘Transforming India: Vision for the Next Decade’ organised by the London School of Economics’ South Asia Centre. The remarks were an apparent reference to liquor baron Vijay Mallya, who is wanted in India for loan default and other cases.
Mr Jaitley said, it is the first time that such strong action is being taken and defaulters are on the run. He referred to loan default as a major problem that needs to be addressed. Mallya, the chief of the now defunct Kingfisher Airlines, had moved to Britain in March last year after banks sued him to recover around 1.4 billion US dollars owed by the airline.
Earlier this month, India had formally requested Britain to extradite Mallya for standing trial. India and the UK have an extradition treaty since 1993, under which only one extradition from the UK to India has ever taken place, that of Samirbhai Vinubhai Patel in October, 2016, to stand trial for his alleged role in the 2002 riots in Gujarat.
Mr Jaitley refused to confirm if the issue of Mallya’s extradition would feature in his talks with senior British ministers. However, senior officials in London had indicated earlier that the issue is likely to be on the agenda.

Oscar expected to brace for political speeches

Image result for la la land
89th Academy Awards ceremony, presented by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS), will honor the best films of 2016 and will take place at the Dolby Theatre in Hollywood, California on February 26, 2017. During the ceremony, AMPAS will present Academy Awards (commonly referred to as Oscars) in 24 categories. The ceremony, televised in the United States by ABC, will be produced by Michael De Luca and Jennifer Todd and directed by Glenn Weiss.Comedian Jimmy Kimmel will host the ceremony for the first time.
Academy held its 8th Annual Governors Awards ceremony at the Grand Ballroom of the Hollywood and Highland Center on November 12, 2016. On February 11, 2017, in a ceremony at the Beverly Wilshire Hotel in Beverly Hills, California, the Academy Scientific and Technical Awards were presented by hosts John Cho and Leslie Mann.
89th Academy Awards, which is to be presented on Sunday, will attract millions of audience worldwide. Given the tone set by Hollywood stars at the previous shows, speeches against Trump were widely expected, while Trump’s supports were also ready to defend their leader.
During the presidential campaign last year, the Democratic-leaning Hollywood tried its best to help Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton. Many celebrities, including Madonna, Lady Gaga and Britney Spears, have campaigned for Clinton.
After Trump’s winning of the election, Hollywood’s anti-Trump sentiments have not quieted down. Meryl Streep, a three-time Oscar winner, rebuked the new president while giving a lifetime achievement acceptance speech at the Golden Globe awards in January.
“Disrespect invites disrespect. Violence incites violence. And when the powerful use their position to bully others, we all lose,” the veteran actress said.
Trump fought back the next day on Twitter by calling Streep “one of the most over-rated actresses in Hollywood.”
On Jan. 29, days after Trump’s inauguration, some winners of the 23rd Screen Actors Guild (SAG) Awards criticized Trump’s executive orders regarding immigration, climate change and other issues, at the award ceremony in Los Angeles.
“We’re in a really tricky time in our country, and things are very inexcusable and scary and need action,” said Emma Stone, who won the best leading actress award at the SAG for her performance in “La La Land”.
As both Streep and Stone were Oscar nominees this year, some daring speeches might be expected at the award ceremony.
Soon after taking office, Trump issued an executive order temporarily banning all entry to the United States from seven Muslim-majority nations. The order, which was blocked by an appeals court later, has sparked protest at home and abroad.
Iranian director Asghar Farhadi, whose film “The Salesman” has been nominated for the best foreign-language film, said last month that he would not travel to Los Angeles to represent the film because of Trump’s ban, even if he was exempted.
Cheryl Boone Isaacs, president of the Academy of Motion Pictures, Arts and Sciences, said that barriers to artistic freedom have “made Academy artists activists.”
Jimmy Kimmel, who will preside over the Oscar this year, pointed out that some of the best Oscar speeches were political, while sometimes they were just annoying. “I think it depends on what’s said, and who’s saying it,” the Hollywood Comedian told USA Today.
Although the White House has already said that Trump will likely be too busy to watch the Oscar ceremony, there’s still a chance that the former producer and host of a popular reality show will have some sort of reaction to it.
The Hollywood Reporter has found out that Trump tweeted many times about the Oscars since 2012, with very strong opinions. He called the 2014 Oscars “terrible”, tweeting “Was President Obama in charge of this years Academy Awards?””I should host the Oscars just to shake things up.”
Meanwhile, Trump also has supporters among Hollywood celebrities. Clint Eastwood, the 86-year-old four-time Oscar winner, was one of them. “He (Trump) is onto something because secretly everybody’s getting tired of political correctness,” the actor said.
Many audiences also showed their loyalty to the new U.S. leader. Members of the Association of Mature American Citizens, a group that represents conservative seniors, even threatened a theater boycott if the Oscars “turn into a Trump bashing affair.”
“The Oscars are an international show,” Richard Anderson, an Oscar winner and member of the Academy, told Xinhua, “it is supposed to be about art.”

Park Geun-hye not to attend final court hearing

South Korean President Park Geun-hye has decided not to attend a final hearing of the constitutional court, which is deliberating Park’s impeachment motion, local media reported on Sunday.
The final hearing is scheduled to be held Monday. The court had asked the impeached leader to decide whether to appear at the last pleading session by Sunday to testify in court as a defendant.
During the first pleading session on Jan 3, the impeached president refused to appear in court.
Under the constitution, the defendant is not obliged to appear at the hearing, but possibility had been raised for Park to testify as the previous sessions were not favorable to her.
Instead, Park’s legal team was quoted as saying that her written statement would be submitted to the court. They haven’t given any detail on the reason for nonattendance.
The court’s ruling on the impeachment bill, which was passed in the parliament on Dec. 9, is widely forecast to be made around March 13, the date when the acting chief justice is set to retire. It takes 10-14 days for the court to reach a final conclusion following the final session.
To uphold the motion, at least six of the remaining eight justices are required to approve it. The retirement of one more judge can danger the legitimacy of the court’s decision. The former chief judge resigned in late January as his tenure ended.
President Park is suspected of allowing her longtime confidante Choi Soon-sil, who is a private citizen and has no public position, to meddle in state affairs behind the scenes and take bribes from business conglomerates.
Park has been identified by prosecutors as an accomplice to Choi, who is at the center of the corruption scandal that led to Park’s impeachment.Media agencies

EU Members call for UK, to pay multibillion-euro Brexit ‘divorce bill’

A number of EU states, including Germany, Italy, France and the Czech Republic have expressed their approval for the European Commission’s plan to demand that the UK pays a hefty compensation bill before the Brexit talks will even start.
French Prime Minister Bernard Cazeneuve, Italian Minister for EU affairs Sandro Gozi and a number of senior German diplomats have backed the European Commission’s calls for the UK to come to an arrangement on the “divorce settlement” before any negotiations on the future of British relations with the EU could take place.

France’s Hollande fires back at Trump over Paris comments

French President Francois Hollande fired back at Donald Trump on Saturday after the US president remarked in a speech that a friend thought “Paris is no longer Paris” after attacks by Islamist militants. Hollande said Trump should show support for US allies. “There is terrorism and we must fight it together. I think that it is never good to show the smallest defiance toward an allied country. I wouldn’t do it with the United States and I’m urging the US president not to do it with France,” Hollande said. “I won’t make comparisons but here, people don’t have access to guns. Here, you don’t have people with guns opening fire on the crowd simply for the satisfaction of causing drama and tragedy,” Hollande said. During a speech at the Conservative Political Action Conference on Friday, Trump repeated his criticism of Europe’s handling of attacks by Islamist militants saying a friend “Jim” no longer wanted to take his family to Paris.RT news

Saudi king begins multi-nation tour of Asia

Saudi King Salman has arrived in Malaysia to kick off a multi-nation tour aimed at boosting economic ties with Asia. The official Saudi Press Agency reported Sunday that the monarch’s tour will also take in Indonesia, Brunei, Japan, China and the Maldives. Salman will also visit Saudi Arabia’s neighbor Jordan before returning home. OPEC kingpin Saudi Arabia is the world’s largest oil exporter, with much of its crude destined for customers in Asia. The kingdom is eager to attract investment as it diversifies its economy, including for its upcoming initial public offering of part of state oil giant Saudi Aramco