Senior BJP MLA quits party, blames state and central leadership
Jaipur, June 25: Senior Rajasthan BJP MLA and former Education Minister Ghanshyam Tiwadi on Monday resigned from the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) but said he will remain associated with the RSS.
He wrote a letter to BJP President Amit Shah holding Rajasthan Chief Minister Vasundhara Raje and the central leadership responsible for his decision.
Tiwadi has formed his own party, Bharat Vahini Party, and said he shall admit veteran leaders from both the Congress and the BJP.
He has also declared to contest upcoming Assembly election from Sanganer. Around 15 MLAs in the state were in touch with him, he said. His party will contest elections on all the 200 seats in the state.
Tiwadi said that in the last four years, there had been a state of lawlessness and turmoil in Rajasthan and an undeclared Emergency existed in the state.
Tiwadi has been an MLA six times, a Minister two times and has been associated with the RSS for many years.
Earlier, he had been openly speaking against the Chief Minister for which he was issued a notice by the party's Central Disciplinary Committee.
Meanwhile, BJP's former President Ashok Parnami said the party will not be affected by Tiwadi's resignation. "Many people have left the party but their political career has come to an end," he added.
The BJP state in-charge, Avinash Rai Khanna, said that the BJP was like a tree. If one fruit or leaf fell, the tree won't be impacted but the leaf and fruit will definitely be.
Disciplinary proceedings were on against him for the last many months but he has chosen to resign, Khanna said.
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Rare polar bear showed up on shores of Iceland. Police shot it
A rare polar bear that was spotted outside a cottage in a remote village in Iceland was shot by police after being considered a threat, authorities said Friday.
The bear was killed Thursday afternoon in the northwest of Iceland after police consulted the Environment Agency, which declined to have the animal relocated, Westfjords Police Chief Helgi Jensson told The Associated Press.
“It's not something we like to do,” Jensson said. “In this case, as you can see in the picture, the bear was very close to a summer house. There was an old woman in there.”
The owner, who was alone, was frightened and locked herself upstairs as the bear rummaged through her garbage, Jensson said. She contacted her daughter in Reykjavik, the nation's capital, by satellite link, and called for help.
“She stayed there,” Jensson said, adding that other summer residents in the area had gone home. “She knew the danger.”
Polar bears are not native to Iceland but occasionally come ashore after traveling on ice floes from Greenland, according to Anna Sveinsdóttir, director of scientific collections at the Icelandic Institute of Natural History. Many icebergs have been spotted off the north coast in the last few weeks.
Although attacks by polar bears on humans are extremely rare, a study in Wildlife Society Bulletin in 2017 said that the loss of sea ice from global warming has led more hungry bears to land, putting them in greater chance of conflicts with humans and leading to a greater risk to both.
Of 73 documented attacks by polar bears from 1870 to 2014 in Canada, Greenland, Norway, Russia, and United States — which killed 20 people and injured 63 — 15 occurred in the final five years of that period.
The bear shot on Thursday was the first one seen in the country since 2016. Sightings are relatively rare with only 600 recorded in Iceland since the ninth century.
While the bears are a protected species in Iceland and it's forbidden to kill one at sea, they can be killed if they pose a threat to humans or livestock.
After two bears arrived in 2008, a debate over killing the threatened species led the environment minister to appoint a task force to study the issue, the institute said. The task force concluded that killing vagrant bears was the most appropriate response.
The group said the nonnative species posed a threat to people and animals, and the cost of returning them to Greenland, about 300 kilometers (180 miles) away, was exorbitant. It also found there was a healthy bear population in east Greenland where any bear was likely to have come from.
The young bear, which weighed between 150 and 200 kilograms (300 to 400 pounds), will be taken to the institute to study. Scientists took samples from the bear Friday.
They will be checking for parasites and infections and evaluating its physical condition, such as the health of its organs and percentage of body fat, Sveinsdóttir said. The pelt and skull may be preserved for the institute's collection.
A Coast Guard helicopter surveyed the area where the bear was found to look for others but didn't find any, police said.
After the shot bear was taken away, the woman who reported it decided to stay longer in the village, Jensson said.
