To begin with, the Muslim ‘Modi Mitras’ (those who are voluntarily joining this campaign without being members of the BJP for empowering the community) will be visiting 65 Muslim-dominated parliamentary constituencies. Speaking to this newspaper, Jamal Siddiqui-national president of BJP Minority Morcha said, He said this campaign will cover all assembly segments in 65 identified Muslim-dominated parliamentary constituencies till the date of the upcoming 2024 elections is announced. He said that 20 non-political Muslims will be involved in each assembly segment and each of them will be involving 30 Muslims as ‘Modi Mitras’.

Over 40,000 women went missing in Gujarat over the course of five years, as per official statistics. According to National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) data, 7,105 women went missing in 2016, 7,712 in 2017, 9,246 in 2018, and 9,268 in 2019.

In 2020, 8,290 women were reported to have gone missing. The total number adds up to 41,621.

Just a day after its nationwide theatrical release, the controversial Adah Sharma-starrer The Kerala Story was declared tax free in BJP-ruled Madhya Pradesh.

The decision by the Shivraj Singh Chouhan government to give tax breaks to the movie (which focuses on the alleged forced religious conversion of women in Kerala before they were inducted into the terror outfit ISIS) happened six months before the next assembly polls in the central Indian state.   

The Indian Army has decided to ground its fleet of Advanced Light Helicopter (ALH) Dhruv helicopter fleet, following the crash landing of the Army Aviation Helicopter in the Kashmir valley, killing a technician and injuring two pilots.

The whole fleet will undergo “checks and procedures” as prescribed by the manufacturer Hindustan Aeronautics Limited (HAL). The final clearance for the fleet to get airborne also will come from HAL.

The Arab League on May 7  welcomed back Syria's government, ending a more than decade-long suspension and securing President Bashar al-Assad's return to the Arab fold after years of isolation.

In Nov 2011, the body suspended Damascus over its crackdown on peaceful protests, which had begun earlier that year and which spiralled into a war that has killed more than 500,000 people, displaced millions and battered the country's infrastructure and industry.

While the front lines have mostly quietened, large parts of the country's north remain outside government control, and no political solution has yet been reached to the 12-year-old conflict.

Ahmed Aboul Gheit is  head of the 22-member Arab League

The last Arab League summit Assad attended was in 2010, while the opposition attended the pan-Arab group's summit in Doha in 2013, to Damascus's fury.

The United Arab Emirates, which re-established ties in late 2018, has been leading the recent charge to reintegrate Damascus into the Arab fold

A February 6 earthquake that wreaked devastation in Turkey and Syria sparked Arab outreach to Assad's government, while intensified regional diplomatic activity has been underway since a March decision by rivals Saudi Arabia and Iran to resume ties.

Wanted Khalistani terrorist Paramjit Singh Panjwar was shot dead by unidentified gunmen while he was out for a morning walk on May 7 near his residence in Lahore, the provincial capital of Pakistan's Punjab province.

Panjwar, 63, was heading the Khalistan Commando Force-Panjwar group and was designated as a terrorist by India under the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act in July 2020.

Panjwar, along with his guard, was walking in the park at Sun Flower Housing Society in Jauhar Town in Lahore, where he was residing, when the two assailants opened fire at them and fled on a motorcycle.

Pakistan's intelligence agencies including the ISI, Military Intelligence (MI) and Counter Terrorism Department (CTD) cordoned off the area and launched an investigation while the media was not allowed at the crime scene.

The killing is the latest instance of terror kingpins being targeted outside India.

In February this year, Bashir Ahmad Peer, a self-styled commander of the terror outfit Hizbul Mujahideen, was shot dead by unidentified assailants in Pakistan's Rawalpindi.

Also in the same month, former commander of Pakistan-based terror outfit Al Badr, Syed Khalid Raza, was killed in a similar manner outside his residence in Karachi while Kashmir-born terrorist Aijaz Ahmad Ahanger alias Abu Usman Al-Kashmiri, who had joined the Islamic State( IS), was reportedly killed in Kunar province of Afghanistan.

Panjwar joined the KCF in 1986.

He later headed this outfit and crossed over to Pakistan.

In 1986, the KCF was headed by Sukhdev Singh alias Sukha Shapai who was then serving as a police constable in Punjab, India.

In 1989, Sukha Shapai was killed in a police encounter at Tanda in Hoshiarpur and thereafter, Kanwarjit Singh of Sultanwind in Amritsar became the chief of KCF while Paramjit Singh Panjwar became its deputy chief.

After the death of Kanwarjit Singh Sultanwind, Panjwar became the chief of the KCF.

Before he escaped to Pakistan in 1995-96, Panjwar was involved in a number of killings in Punjab.

Though he was inactive for the last couple of years, Panjwar had been operating from Lahore and was involved in arranging arms training for youths in Pakistan.

Chile's far-right Republican Party finished in first place on  May 7  in a nationwide vote to choose the 50 members of a committee that will draft a replacement to the country's dictatorship-era constitution, according to an official count.

The Servel election authority reported that with almost all ballots counted, the Republican Party had won 35 percent of the vote, corresponding to 22 seats on the constitutional rewrite committee.

Traditional right-wing parties won a further 21 percent, giving conservatives an additional 11 seats, while the left-wing coalition supported by President Gabriel Boric finished with 29 percent, or 11 committee members.

It is the second time that voters in the South American country have been called to take part in the rewriting of the 1980 constitution, adopted under the Augusto Pinochet dictatorship.

There were 350 people vying to be elected to the 50-member constitutional committee.

US President Joe Biden renewed his call on May 7 for a national assault-weapons ban and other gun safety measures, a day after eight people were murdered at a Texas shopping mall in the latest mass shooting to shake the nation.