7 injured in Paris knife attack
Paris, Sep 10: Seven people have been injured in an attack by a man armed with a knife and an iron bar in the French capital, the police said.
The incident that took place on Sunday night on the banks of a canal in the 19th arrondissement, in the northeast of the capital, was not initially being treated as terrorism, officials were cited as saying by the BBC.
The attacker, said to be an Afghan national, was later arrested by the police. The man's motives and identity were not immediately known. Two British tourists were among the injured.
The assailant attacked strangers, initially stabbing two men and a woman near the MK2 cinema on the Quai de Loire, along the Ourcq canal, shortly before 11 p.m, according to the newspaper Le Parisien and the news channel BFM TV.
A group of men playing pétanque nearby tried to stop him -- one of them threw his pétanque ball at him -- but the attacker continued down a side street and attacked more people, including the British tourists, the reports said.
"We are urgently investigating this incident and are in close contact with the French authorities," the UK Foreign Office said in a statement.
"Solidarity with the victims and profound gratitude for the firefighters and the emergency services who immediately arrived, and for the police forces who enabled the arrest," Mounir Mahjoubi, the junior minister for digital affairs in the French government, tweeted.
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Supreme Court rejects plea for reverting to ballots in elections
New Delhi (PTI): The Supreme Court on Tuesday dismissed a petition seeking to revert to ballot paper voting in elections in the country.
"What happens is, when you win the election, EVMs (electronic voting machine) are not tampered. When you lose the election, EVMs are tampered (with)," remarked a bench of Justices Vikram Nath and P B Varale.
Apart from ballot paper voting, the plea sought several directions including a directive to the Election Commission to disqualify candidates for a minimum of five years if found guilty of distributing money, liquor or other material inducement to the voters during polls.
When petitioner-in-person K A Paul said he filed the PIL, the bench said, "You have interesting PILs. How do you get these brilliant ideas?".
The petitioner said he is the president of an organisation which has rescued over three lakh orphans and 40 lakh widows.
"Why are you getting into this political arena? Your area of work is very different," the bench retorted.
After Paul revealed he had been to over 150 countries, the bench asked him whether each of the nations had ballot paper voting or used electronic voting.
The petitioner said foreign countries had adopted ballot paper voting and India should follow suit.
"Why you don't want to be different from the rest of the world?" asked the bench.
There was corruption and this year (2024) in June, the Election Commission announced they had seized Rs 9,000 crore, Paul responded.
"But how does that make your relief which you are claiming here relevant?" asked the bench, adding "if you shift back to physical ballot, will there be no corruption?".
Paul claimed CEO and co-founder of Tesla, Elon Musk, stated that EVMs could be tampered with and added TDP chief N Chandrababu Naidu, the current chief minister of Andhra Pradesh, and former state chief minister Y S Jagan Mohan Reddy had claimed EVMs could be tampered with.
"When Chandrababu Naidu lost, he said EVMs can be tampered with. Now this time, Jagan Mohan Reddy lost, he said EVMs can be tampered with," noted the bench.
When the petitioner said everybody knew money was distributed in elections, the bench remarked, "We never received any money for any elections."
The petitioner said another prayer in his plea was the formulation of a comprehensive framework to regulate the use of money and liquor during election campaigns and ensuring such practices were prohibited and punishable under the law.
The plea further sought a direction to mandate an extensive voter education campaign to raise awareness and importance of informed decision making.
"Today, 32 per cent educated people are not casting their votes. What a tragedy. If democracy will be dying like this and we will not be able to do anything then what will happen in the years to come in future," the petitioner said.
