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LIVE! Shiv Sena will vote against Opposition’s trust vote on Friday

08:08  Shiv Sena will vote against Opposition’s trust vote on Friday:  

Shiv Sena, the most bothersome member of the BJP-led NDA coalition, will vote against the opposition’s no confidence motion that Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government will face on Friday, union minister Ananth Kumar has claimed. 

“The NDA is united and will vote against the motion.” the union minister said on Wednesday, responding to repeated questions about the Shiv Sena’s stand in Friday crucial vote.

The central government is comfortably placed in the Lok Sabha and there is no risk to its survival. The ruling NDA has 313 members in the 535-member Lok Sabha including the BJP’s 274, a lot more than the 268 that it needs to clear the test.

The opposition has been hoping that allies such as the Uddhav Thackeray’s Shiv Sena, which has 18 members in the lower house, embarrasses the government on Friday.

The Shiv Sena, known for acting as the proxy opposition, hasn’t spelt out its stand yet.

Over the last year and more, the Shiv Sena frequently hurled stinging darts and insults at the BJP who it has described as the Sena’s  “biggest political enemy”,, called the BJP arrogant and the NDA that it leads “almost dead” and showered praises on Congress boss Rahul Gandhi.

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00:06  Trump says no other president has been as tough on Russia:  

President Donald Trump has claimed that no American president has been as ‘tough’ on Russia as he has been, amid criticism of his Helsinki summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin.

After a Cabinet meeting in the White House, Trump was asked by a reporter if Russia was still targeting the US, and he responded, ‘No’, directly contradicting what his director of national intelligence, Dan Coats, said Monday.

This was his first Cabinet meeting after his return from a week-long European trip at the end of which he had a summit meeting  Putin in Helsinki.

His comments came a day after he said he misspoke during Monday’s Helsinki summit when he appeared to side with Putin over claims of Kremlin meddling in US elections.

“We’re doing very well, and let me tell you, we are doing very well, and we’re doing very well, probably as well as anybody has ever done with Russia. And there’s been no president ever as tough as I have been on Russia,” Trump told reporters during his Cabinet meeting at the White House.

“All you have to do is look at the numbers, look at what we’ve done, look at sanctions, look at ambassadors not there, look, unfortunately, at what happened in Syria recently. And I think President Putin knows that better than anybody; certainly, a lot better than the media,” Trump said.

Earlier in a tweet, Trump said that Russia has agreed to help with North Korea, where relationships with the US is very good and the process is moving along.

“While the NATO meeting in Brussels was an acknowledged triumph, with billions of dollars more being put up by member countries at a faster pace, the meeting with Russia may prove to be, in the long run, an even greater success,” Trump said.

Many positive things will come out of that meeting, he asserted.             Trump said so many people at the higher ends of intelligence loved his press conference performance in Helsinki.

“Putin and I discussed many important subjects at our earlier meeting. We got along well which truly bothered many haters who wanted to see a boxing match. Big results will come!” said the US president.  — PTI

Source: Rediff