INDIA'S LONGEST BRIDGE INAUGRATION TOMORROW BY NARENDRA MODI

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Guwahati: India's longest bridge, over nine kilometres long, will be inaugurated tomorrow in Assam by Prime Minister Narendra Modi as his government completes three years in office. The bridge is among a series of infrastructure projects that PM Modi has fast-tracked since taking charge after a landslide win in 2014. Launched a decade ago under the government of former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, PM Modi's biggest challenge is to see these projects to completion without the years-long delays that have beset many key endeavours in Asia's third largest economy.

The Dhola-Sadiya bridge is being built over the Lohit river, a tributary of the Brahmaputra.
In Assam, the bridge is located in Sadia, 540 kilometres from the state capital of Guwahati. Its other end is in Dhola, 300 kilometres from Itanagar, the capital of Arunachal.
It about 9.2 km in length - that's nearly 30 per cent longer that the famous Bandra-Worli Sealink in Mumbai.
Once opened, the bridge will reduce travel time between Assam and Arunachal Pradesh by up to four hours. There is no operational airport in Arunachal.
The strategic importance of the bridge for the military is huge. With the bridge, troops will be able to enter Arunachal Pradesh, which borders China, much more quickly and easily.
The bridge has been designed to withstand the weight of 60-tonne battle tanks.
There is no existing bridge in the region that is strong enough to allow the travel of tanks to Tinsukia, from where troops usually enter Arunachal.
Construction began in 2011, when the Congress governed Assam. The cost of the project is about Rs 950 crore.
So far, there is little road connectivity between Assam and Arunachal - a strategy aimed at making it difficult for military incursion from China. Currently, the only route for people looking to travel from this part of Assam to Arunachal is by boat.
Construction of this bridge was included in Rs 15,000 crore-package sanctioned by the centre in 2015 to improve road connectivity in the border state.

TERRORIST SALMAN ABEDI'S BROTHER ARRESTED IN LIBYA ON MANCHESTER'S ATTACK

 The investigation into a suicide blast that killed at least 22 people at a pop concert dramatically widened Wednesday, with security services on two continents rounding up suspects amid fears that the bombmaker who devised the bolt-spewing source of the carnage remains at large.

The arrests stretched from the normally quiet lanes of a northern English town to the bustling streets of Tripoli, where Libyan officials said they had disrupted a planned attack by the suspected bomber's brother.

But by day's end, British authorities acknowledged that they remained vulnerable to a follow-up attack, with the nation's state of alert stuck at "critical" - the highest possible level.
The sight of soldiers deploying at London landmarks such as Buckingham Palace and 10 Downing Street underscored the gravity of a threat that was known in general terms before Monday night's explosion but has come sharply into focus in the 48 hours since.
The morning after the attack, police had said they believed that the suspect, 22-year-old Salman Abedi, a British citizen, had carried it out alone and had died in the blast he triggered.
But in their statements Wednesday, authorities expressed growing confidence that Abedi - who had recently returned from a trip to Libya and may have also traveled to Syria - had been only one part of a web of plotters behind Britain's worst terrorist attack in more than a decade.

"It's very clear that this is a network we are investigating," Greater Manchester Chief Constable Ian Hopkins said.

Hopkins said police were moving quickly to disrupt the group, carrying out raids across the city and arresting four people, including Abedi's older brother, Ismail. A fifth suspect was later apprehended carrying "a suspicious package" in the town of Wigan, about 20 miles west of Manchester.

INDIA BECOMES THE LARGEST POPULATION IN THE WORLD CLAIMED BY RESEARCHERS

Yi Fuxian, a researcher's bold claim suggests India is now the world's largest country.

What's the most populous nation in the world? For years, the answer to that question was simple and rarely disputed: China. But this week an academic has sparked widespread discussion around the world by making a bold claim - that China's official population estimates were wrong and in fact India was now the world's largest country.

This potentially radical suggestion was made Monday by Yi Fuxian, a researcher at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, during an event at China's Peking University.

According to the South China Morning Post, Yi suggested that China had only 377.6 million new births from 1991 to 2016, far less than the official figure of 464.8 million. This meant that China's official population estimate, currently at 1.38 billion, was wrong, Yi said. Instead it should have been 90 million lower - a gap roughly the same as Germany and Belgium's population combined.

That would make it 1.29 billion, and lower than India's estimated 1.32 billion population, according to Yi. 

Multiple media outlets in China, India and beyond quickly picked up the news. If Yi was right, the implications would certainly be big. Not only would it mean that India had already overtaken China as the world's largest nation - something the United Nations had estimated to happen in 2022 - but that China's population growth slowdown was worse than many thought and being hidden from the public.

Reached via email, Yi said the controversy was "no surprise" to him, but added that he had already noted his belief that China's official estimates were wrong in the 2013 edition of his book, "Big Country with an Empty Nest," which took a critical look at China's family-planning policies.

In fact, Yi says he was sure the estimates were wrong far earlier. "In 2003, I knew China official announcement population data is much higher than the real population," Yi wrote from Taiyuan, China.

Among the many notable elements of Yi's claim is where he's making it from: mainland China.

The academic, born in Hunan province, had moved to the United States in 1999. After moving to take up graduate studies at the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities (he later worked as a fellow at the Medical College of Wisconsin and moved on to the University of Wisconsin Madison as a scientist in 2002), Yi quickly became a vocal critic of China's family-planning policies, including its "one-child" rule.

MODI'S MONETISATION EARNS 600 CRORES FROM BENAMI PROPERTY

Income Tax department last week set up 24 dedicated units across the country to track benami properties to intensify the operation against benami properties

Image credited to google

Scaling up the operation against black money and corruption, benami, or proxy-owned property worth 600 crores has been seized by the Income Tax department over the last six months under a refurbished law that lets the government takeover properties bought in fake names. In all, the tax authorities have detected over 400 benami transactions in 240 cases.

The benami prohibition law was first enacted 1988 back but was not implemented for over 28 years because of technical problems in the law. The gaps were finally fixed last year; it stipulates a seven year jail term for people who violate this law.

In the weeks after he made the surprise decision to scrap 86 per cent of the currency notes on November, Prime Minister Narendra Modi had declared the government would go after benami properties next.

Tax officials found a driver with land worth Rs 7.7 crore in Madhya Pradesh' Jabalpur, a professional in Mumbai who had been buying properties in the name of shell companies that exist only on paper and a former employee of a jeweller who had nine properties registered in his name, all of them belonging to the jeweller.

The tax department said immovable properties valued at 530 crores were attached in 40 cases alone. In these cases, the properties were located in Kolkata, Mumbai, Delhi, Gujarat, Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh.

But it is only during the last one month that the IT department has stepped on the gas.

IT department said searches had been carried out at locations linked to 10 "senior government officials" in the last one month to "unearth black money earned through corrupt practices and introduce accountability and probity in public life".

The list got longer on Wednesday. Over 100 tax officials carried out searches at premises of senior Uttar Pradesh officials including Vimal Kumar Sharma, the additional chief of the Greater Noida Industrial Development Authority and Mamta Sharma, regional transport officer in western Uttar Pradesh's Meerut.

PRESIDENT MUKHERJEE'S LETTER TO QUEEN ELIZABETH II RELATED TO TERRORIST ATTACK ON MANCHESTER

President Mukherjee condemn on the attack and said this "We stand in solidarity with the people and the Government of the United Kingdom in this difficult hour."

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President Pranab Mukherjee, in a written message to British Monarch Queen Elizabeth II on Wednesday conveyed his condolences over the terror attack in Manchester that killed 22 people, an official said.

Expressing shock and condemning the attack, President Mukherjee said: "We stand in solidarity with the people and the Government of the United Kingdom in this difficult hour." 

"This is not an attack just against the UK and its people; it is an attack against the humanity and the values that we all live for."

Calling the attack "a grim reminder" for a need to "intensify the global fight against terrorism", President Mukherjee said: "India is fully committed to working with the UK and the international community in defeating these evil forces."

Police named 22-year-old Salman Abedi as the suspected bomber behind the attack at Manchester Arena after an Ariana Grande concert that also injured 59 persons on Monday night.

The ISIS militant group has claimed responsibility for the second assault in Manchester in the last 20 years.

SONU NIGAM QUITS TWITTER AFTER HIS FRIEND ABHIJEET'S ACCOUNT IS SUSPENDED

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New Delhi: Singer Sonu Nigam has announced in 24 tweets posted this morning that he's quitting Twitter, citing a lack of respect for freedom of speech. Everyone is entitled to their opinion argued Mr Nigam, 43, a day after his colleague Abhijeet Bhattacharya's account was suspended for his abusive tweets against female Twitter users like Shehla Rashid, a JNU student and activist who has made allegations of sex trafficking by some BJP leaders. Sonu Nigam also referenced actor and BJP parliamentarian Paresh Rawal who has been lacerated online after tweeting that author Arundhati Roy should be 'tied to army jeep.' Mr Nigam said in his tweets that he is deleting his account because Twitter is 'one-sided' and 'everyone is angry.'

Sonu Nigam advised us to take screenshots of the 24 tweets he posted announcing his departure from Twitter - so we've done just that. Mr Nigam had nearly 6.5 million followers on the micro-blogging site.

Sonu Nigam only just recently weathered a storm online after complaining about being woken early morning by the azaan or the Muslim call to prayer, describing it as 'gundagardi' in a series of tweets. He refers to this controversy - which ended in him shaving his head on camera in defiance of a cleric's offer of a cash reward to anyone who tonsured the singer - in the tweets above that talk about him being labelled 'anti-Muslim.'

Mr Nigam's accounts on Facebook and Instagram are still active. Twitter, often accused of being soft on trolls and hate speech, suspended the account of Sonu Nigam's colleague Abhijeet Bhattacharya on Tuesday, after an offensive tweet about Shehla Rashid was reported.

WOMEN ABUSER ABHIJEET BHATTACHARYA'S TWITTER ACCOUNT SUSPENDED DUE TO HIS OFFENSIVE TWEETS

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New Delhi: Bollywood's renowned singer Abhijeet Bhattacharya is known for his controversial tweets. On Tuesday, micro-blogging site Twitter suspended his account after he posted a series of 'offensive tweets', especially against women, reports news agency PTI. On May 22, Abhijeet Bhattacharya reportedly abused some women Twitter users, including JNU student activist Shehla Rashid, after which a complaint was filed. "There is rumour she took money for two hours and didn't satisfy the client... Big racket," he tweeted about the JNU student. After the singer's account was suspended by Twitter, Shehla Rashid thanked everyone for their support. She wrote: "Sincere thanks to everyone for the support. Abhijeet had to delete his tweet. His Twitter account has also been suspended."

Abhijeet Bhattacharya told PTI that author Arundhati Roy and people supporting JNU were behind the suspension of his account. ""Yes, I just saw it. They are trying to block Paresh Rawal also. All Arundhati and JNU group behind this after Paresh Rawal and I tweeted against Arundhati for her anti-India stand," he said.

On being questioned on whether if he would try to reinstate his Twitter account, Abhijeet told PTI, "I (don't) care a damn... entire nation is with me."

However, several Twitter users have extended their support for Abhijeet Bhattacharya and questioned the micro-blogging site for its biased behavior.#IStandWithAbhijeet is trending on Twitter.

Written by INDIA'S EVERYTHING