Mamata announces 'Modi hatao’ protests from Jan 1 Kolkata, December 22 (IANS): Launching another all-out attack on Prime Minister Narendra Modi, West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee on Thursday said her Trinamool Congress will hit the streets from January 1 with the slogan "Modi hatao, desh bachao (remove Modi, save country)". "This is the only slogan of the day. We will be on the streets from Janauary 1 holding meetings across the state with this slogan. "The country is not at all safe in the hands of someone who got initiited into politics through communal riots," she said, in an indirect reference to the Gujarat riots of 2002 when Modi was the state Chief Minister. Speaking to media persons afrer an extended core committee meeting of her party, Banerjee announced that the Trinamool would send a list of job losers due to demonetisation of high value currency to President Pranab Mukherjee. Indian child's custody: Sushma contacts envoy in Norway New Delhi, December 22 (IANS): External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj on Thursday got in touch with India's Ambassador to Norway following reports that a five-year-old Indian child was separated from his parents, who have been accused of beating him up. "I have asked the Indian Ambassador in Norway to send me a report," Sushma Swaraj tweeted. According to reports, the child was taken from his kindergarten school on December 13 without the parents being informed and is being kept at a children's welfare home some 150 km away from Norwegian capital Oslo. His mother, Gurvinderjit Kaur, was also taken into custody and was subjected to interrogation. The child's father, Anil Kumar, who runs an Indian restaurant, has denied all the allegations and said that his son was asthmatic. This is the third such case in Norway involving Indian children. In 2011, a three-year-old and and a one-year-old were separated from their parents but were later reunited when the UPA government took up the issue with Norwegian authorities. In another case of alleged child abuse in December 2012, a seven-year-old and a two-year-old were separated from their parents. The mother got a 15-month prison term and the father was jailed for 18 months. The two children were sent to the custody of their grandparents in Hyderabad. UN chief calls for India, Pakistan dialogue United Nations, December 22 (IANS): The outgoing UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has again called for India and Pakistan to resolve their differences through dialogue and has expressed concern over the tensions along the Line of Control. Ban, whose term ends this month, encourages the South Asian neighbors to continue their efforts to deal with their disputes peacefully and through dialogue, Farhan Haq, the Secretary-General's Deputy Spokesperson, told reporters on Wednesday. Haq was replying to a Pakistani journalist who said that Ban has neither been outspoken on the Kashmir issue and the human rights situation on the Indian side of the line of control, nor endorsed the demand for sending human rights investigators made by UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid Ra'ad Al Hussein.Haq denied that Ban had ignored the Kashmir issue. "I would disagree with you on that. We have had statements including on the situation between India and Pakistan and specifically on Kashmir," he said. "All I can say is that the secretary-general has had a very consistent position," he added. "One fact which we expressed last month is to say he is following concern the recent tensions along the Line of Control." Ban "continues to encourages them to continue their efforts to peacefully and resolve their difference through dialogue," he said. Ban has avoided becoming embroiled in the Kashmir dispute, which India has said is a bilateral issue and recognised as such by the two countries in the 1972 Simla Agreement. Ban has offered his "good offices" to help the two countries resolve their difference if he is assed by them. Other UN bodies like the Security Council and the General Assembly also sidelined Islamabad's attempts to raise the Kashmir issue. Zeid is the only official to forcefully get involved in the Kashmir issue. He criticised India in September for not responding to his request to send a team from his office to Kashmir to carry out an "independent, impartial and international mission" on both sides of the line of control.
