Former Japanese Prime Mister Shinzo Abe has died after he was shot earlier in the city of Nara on Friday, 8 July, officials said.

After being shot, Abe (67) was not showing any vital signs. He was not breathing, and his heart stopped while being airlifted to the hospital for a gunshot wound, a fire official was quoted as saying.

The fire department said that the former prime minister was in a state of cardiorespiratory arrest, a term often used in Japan before a death can be confirmed by a coroner.

A man, identified as Yamagami Tetsuya (41), has been arrested for attempted murder and a gun has been confiscated

Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister Y S Jagan Mohan Reddy’s mother Y S Vijayamma on Friday resigned as honorary president of YSR Congress party to stand by her daughter Sharmila, who is now heading the YSR Telangana party in the neighbouring state.

Announcing her decision to quit, she said she would always be close to Jagan Mohan Reddy.

“As a mother, I will always be close to Jagan,” Vijayamma maintained, announcing her decision to quit the YSRC, at the party plenary that began here on Friday.

“Sharmila is waging a lone battle in Telangana, to carry forward her father’s ideals. I have to support her. I was in a dilemma whether I could be a member of two political parties (in two states). It is difficult for me to continue as honorary president of YSRC, Vijayamma said.

“I never imagined such a situation would ever arise. I don’t know why it happened, but I feel it is a decision of God,” she remarked.

Vijayamma said she was stepping down as YSRC honorary president to avoid any unwanted controversy over her role.

For some time now there have been reports that all is not well between Jagan Mohan Reddy and his sister over property related issues. The acrimony between the two had escalated in recent times and Vijayamma has been staying away from her son

Mumbai: Shiv Sena leader Sanjay Raut on Thursday met NCP president Sharad Pawar at the latter’s residence here.

Raut, who has been the target of the rebel Shiv Sena legislators, did not speak to the media.

The Sena rebels have accused the Rajya Sabha member of being closer to the NCP chief than the leaders of his own party.

Both Pawar and Raut were instrumental in the formation of the erstwhile Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) government led by Shiv Sena president Uddhav Thackeray.

The two-and-a-half-year old dispensation comprising Sena, NCP and Congress collapsed on June 29 after Thackeray resigned as the chief minister following a rebellion within his party.

Rebel Sena leader Eknath Shinde took oath as the state chief minister last Thursday.

The regular ‘band, bajaa, baraat’ were missing but the festivities seemed intact as Punjab Chief Minister Bhagwant Mann turned groom for his wedding with a doctor from Kurukshetra at his home on Thursday.
It was a private ceremony without the usual crowds, so much a part of the big, fat Indian wedding. Though few details were available, visuals on television and Twitter showed Mann and his bride dressed in red at the Anand Karaj ceremony.

Aam Aadmi Party colleague Raghav Chadha also shared some images on Twitter showing Mann, in his regular yellow turban and a gold coloured kurta-pyjama, with party chief Arvind Kejriwal and others.

Mann (48), the first chief minister of the state to get married while in office, is tying the knot with Dr Gurpreet Kaur from Pehowa in Kurukshetra in Haryana.

This is Mann’s second marriage. He separated from his first wife in 2015, they have two children, daughter Seerat Kaur (21) and son Dilshan (17).

Tight security arrangements were in place at the chief minister’s home in Sector 2.

Gurpreet Kaur (30) shared a picture of herself on Twitter and wrote, “Din Shagna Da Chadya (the day of marriage has arrived)”.

She also thanked AAP leaders for their congratulatory messages.

According to party insiders, the wedding, being solemnised according to Sikh rituals, was attended by Mann’s mother and sister and just a few guests, including Kejriwal and his family.

Kejriwal told reporters at the airport, Today is a day of immense happiness that my younger brother and Punjab Chief Minister Bhagwant Mann ji is getting married and is making a new beginning.

“May God bless him with a happy married life and both (the couple) always remain happy.

AAP MP Chadha shared several pictures on his Twitter handle, one post showing Mann and himself on a sofa. He quoted a Punjabi song of celebration, “Saade veer da vyah, Saanu gode gode chah”, as the caption.

There were also pictures of the groom at his festooned home, walking under a canopy held up by Chadha among others, and at the ceremony.

Chadha said, A new chapter in CM Bhagwant Mann’s life is going to start today. I congratulate Mann saab’s family, his mother and sister. It will be a small function. Only family members will attend.”

“We all are happy that happiness has returned to Mann saab’s family after a long time. It was his mother’s dream to see her son getting settled again. Today, that dream is going to come true,” he told reporters.

Gurpreet Kaur completed her MBBS from a private university in Haryana in 2018. She has two elder sisters who are settled abroad.

India logged 18,930 new coronavirus infections taking the COVID-19 tally to 4,35,66,739, while the active cases increased to 1,19,457, according to the Union health ministry data updated on Thursday.

The death toll climbed to 5,25,305 with 35 new fatalities, the data updated at 8 am showed.

The active cases comprise 0.26 per cent of the total infections, while the national COVID-19 recovery rate was recorded at 98.53 per cent, the ministry said.

An increase of 4,245 cases has been recorded in the active COVID-19 caseload in a span of 24 hours.

A total of 86.53 crore tests have been conducted so far with 4,38,005 tests conducted in the last 24 hours.

The daily positivity rate was recorded at 4.32 per cent while the weekly positivity rate stood at 3.86 per cent.

India’s COVID-19 tally had crossed the 20-lakh mark on August 7, 2020, 30 lakh on August 23, 40 lakh on September 5 and 50 lakh on September 16.

It went past 60 lakh on September 28, 70 lakh on October 11, 80 lakh on October 29, 90 lakh on November 20 and the one-crore mark on December 19.

The country crossed the grim milestone of two crore on May 4 and three crore on June 23 last year. It crossed four crore on January 25 this year.

The Tibetan spiritual leader Dalai Lama will visit the Union territories of Jammu and Kashmir and Ladakh next week.

He will be in Jammu on July 14, and Ladakh on the following day.

This will be the first visit by the Buddhist leader in over two years from his abode in Dharamshala in Himachal Pradesh.

The visit takes place even as the Buddhist leader’s birthday on Wednesday witnessed a major celebration in Dharamshala and Delhi and greetings by Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

The  PM Modi tweeted: “Conveyed 87th birthday greetings to His Holiness the @DalaiLama over phone earlier today. We pray for his long life and good health.”

The Chief Minister of Himachal Pradesh Jai Ram Thakur was the chief guest at the celebration organized in Dharamshala, which hosts the headquarters of the Tibetan government in exile.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi will speak at the first ‘Arun Jaitley Memorial Lecture’ here on Friday in which Tharman Shanmugaratnam, a senior minister of the Singapore government, will deliver the keynote address on ‘Growth through Inclusivity, Inclusivity through Growth,’ the PMO said.

The event will see a panel discussion involving OECD Secretary-General Mathias Cormann and Arvind Panagariya, a professor at the Columbia University.

The PMO said the Ministry of Finance has organised the lecture in recognition of Jaitley’s invaluable contribution to the nation.

A leading BJP functionary, Jaitley was the finance minister in the first Modi government. He was also a close associate of the prime minister. He died in 2019 at the age of 66.

During the event, Modi will also interact with delegates participating in the Kautilya Economic Conclave (KEC), a three-day event being organised from July 8 to 10.

The economists Modi will meet include Anne Krueger of the John Hopkins University, Nicholas Stern of the London School of Economics, Robert Lawrence of the Harvard Kennedy School, John Lipsky, former acting managing director, IMF and Junaid Ahmed, World Bank country director for India among others.

KEC is being organised by the Institute of Economic Growth with support from the Ministry of Finance, it said.

RJD president Lalu Prasad on Wednesday was taken to Delhi in an air ambulance, a couple of days after falling critically ill.

The 74-year-old former Bihar chief minister was accompanied by a team of doctors and his eldest daughter Misa Bharti, a Rajya Sabha MP who is also an MBBS. His wife Rabri Devi and younger son Tejashwi Yadav had left a few hours earlier to oversee the arrangements in the national capital.

Prasad left for Delhi at around 8.15 PM, nearly 45 minutes behind schedule. The delay was attributed to the air ambulance not reaching here in time.

Crowds were seen at the Paras hospital, where Prasad had been admitted since Monday morning, besides both sides of the road that led to the airport which was a 15-minute drive.

At the Jai Prakash Narayan Airport, slogans in praise of the messiah of the poor rent the air as the ambulance carrying Prasad sped past the crowds, waiting for their leader despite a drizzle.

Prasad, who turned 74 last month, has been suffering from multiple ailments including renal and cardiac problems besides diabetes. On Sunday last, he had a fall and fractured his shoulder after which the affected area was bandaged.

However, the pain worsened and he was rushed to the hospital hours later. He had been in the ICU and on oxygen support.

Visitors in the past couple of days included Chief Minister Nitish Kumar, his political arch-rival, and Chirag Paswan whose late father Ram Vilas Paswan had been an old associate.

Tejashwi Yadav, who is the RJD’s heir apparent, expressed his gratitude while speaking to reporters earlier in the day to leaders including Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Congress bigwigs Sonia Gandhi and Priyanka Gandhi Vadra who had telephoned him to enquire about his father’s health.

Yadav said that his father’s condition had shown improvement here, but the decision to take him to Delhi was taken in view of the fact that he had been under treatment of doctors at AIIMS who knew his medical history better.

He also said that the family would like to go ahead with its plan to take Prasad abroad, to Singapore for a kidney transplant, if the doctors permitted the same in view of the shoulder fracture.

Yadav also urged supporters, in a statement he gave before leaving for Delhi, to hope for the best and not let their enthusiasm sag.

Meanwhile, prayer congregations are being held at various temples across the city by supporters of Prasad for the well-being of their leader who is often credited with having given a voice to the underdogs of the state, allegations of corruption and rampant misrule notwithstanding.

Cooking gas LPG price on Wednesday was hiked by Rs 50 per cylinder, the eighth increase in rates in the last one year that took the cumulative rise to Rs 244.

Non-subsidised LPG now costs Rs 1,053 per 14.2-kg cylinder in the national capital, up from Rs 1,003 previously, according to a price notification of state-owned fuel retailers.

Firming international energy prices have led to non-subsidised cooking gas (LPG) prices being increased on eight occasions in the past year. In all, rates have gone up by Rs 244 per cylinder or 30 per cent.

Common households pay non-subsidised rates for the cooking gas they buy after the government restricted subsidy to just poor beneficiaries who got connections under the Ujjwala scheme.

This is the fourth increase in the LPG rate since the Ukraine war. The price was hiked by Rs 50 per cylinder on March 22 and again by the same quantum on May 7. Rates went up by Rs 3.50 per cylinder on May 19.

Of the Rs 244 per cylinder hike in the past year, Rs 153.50 increase happened since March 2022.

Opposition Congress termed the increase “anti-people” decision and asked if this is the “cost” of toppling the Maharashtra government.

In a tweet in Hindi, Congress general secretary Priyanka Gandhi Vadra said the BJP spoke of the welfare of the poor at its national executive meeting while imposing a 5 per cent “Gabbar Singh Tax (GST)” on flour, cereals, curd and paneer, and then broke the back of the poor and middle class by increasing the price of domestic cooking gas by Rs 50.

Petrol and diesel prices, however, continue to be on freeze for the third straight month. The pause followed rates being hiked by a record Rs 10 per litre in a matter of 16 days beginning March 22.

In May, the government cut excise duty on petrol by Rs 8 per litre and diesel by Rs 6 per litre to cool soaring inflation.

At that time, the government also stated that Rs 200 per cylinder subsidy on cooking gas will be limited to only 9 crore poor women and other beneficiaries who got free connections under the Ujjwala scheme and the remaining users including households will pay the market price (also known as non-subsidised rate).

Originally, non-subsidised cooking gas was the one that consumers used to buy after exhausting their quota of 12 cylinders at subsidised or below-market rates. However, the government stopped paying subsidy on LPG to households in mid-2020.

Non-subsidised LPG costs Rs 1,052.50 per 14.2-kg cylinder in Mumbai, while it is priced at Rs 1,079 a bottle in Chennai and Rs 1,068.50 in Kolkata.

Rates differ from state to state depending on the incidence of local taxes such as VAT. Prices are higher in states with higher taxes.

Alongside, oil firms also reduced the price of commercial LPG cylinders — the ones used by establishments like hotels and restaurants. It now costs Rs 2,012.50 per 19-kg cylinder in the national capital, down from Rs 2,021 per cylinder.

Industry sources said that commercial LPG prices were almost aligned with cost while the cooking gas used in the household kitchens was being sold at a discount. The reduction in commercial LPG rates reflects softening in Saudi CPP prices while domestic LPG rates are being adjusted upwards to align them closer to cost.

Domestic LPG rates are about Rs 300 short of their actual cost.

International oil prices have been on the rise this year. They jumped to a 13-year high of USD 140 per barrel in March before shedding some of the gains. Brent was trading at USD 103.92 per barrel on Wednesday.

To compound things, the Indian rupee tumbled to Rs 79.24 to a dollar, making imports costlier.

India relies on overseas purchases to meet about 85 per cent of its oil requirement, making it one of the most vulnerable in Asia to higher oil prices.

While India has surplus oil refining capacity, it does not manufacture enough LPG to meet domestic demand and imports significant quantities from nations such as Saudi Arabia.