External affairs minister S Jaishankar will visit Qatar this week for meetings with the West Asian country’s top leadership to review bilateral ties and discuss regional issues.
Jaishankar will be in Qatar from December 30 to January 1, when he will meet the Prime Minister and foreign minister, Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman bin Jassim Al Thani, the external affairs ministry said.
The visit will enable the two sides to review various aspects of bilateral relations, including political, trade, investment, energy, security, cultural, and people-to-people ties, and regional and international issues, the ministry said. Jaishankar will travel to Qatar after a six-day visit to the US, where he met officials of the outgoing Joe Biden administration and members of the transition team of president-elect Donald Trump. This will be Jaishankar’s second visit to Qatar since the two sides resolved an imbroglio last year over eight former Indian Navy personnel who were detained in the West Asian country, reportedly on charges of espionage, and sentenced to death.
4 die after inhaling toxic gas at chemical plant in Gujarat
Four workers died after inhaling toxic fumes following a gas leak at a chemical plant at Dahej in Gujarat’s Bharuch district, police said on Sunday, December 29.
The company said all four were given immediate medical care but could not be saved. It has announced Rs 30 lakh ex gratia to the kin of each victim.
A company employee and three contractual workers fell unconscious after poisonous fumes leaked from a pipe at a production unit of the Gujarat Fluorochemicals Limited (GFL) on Saturday night, Dahej police station inspector BM Patidar said. They were rushed to a private hospital where all four of them died, he said.The bodies were sent for postmortem and further probe into the incident was underway, the official said.
The deceased have been identified as Rajesh Kumar Maganadiya (48), (hailing from Bharuch), Mudrika Yadav (29) (from Adhaura in Jharkhand), Suchit Prasad (39) and Mahesh Nandlal (25) (both from Sonbhadra in Uttar Pradesh), police said. In a media statement, GFL said the incident occurred around 8 pm on Saturday and the gas leak was “immediately detected and contained by the team”. “However, (four) individuals in the windward direction experienced adverse health effects and were promptly given due primary treatment at our onsite Occupational Health Center. They were referred to Bharuch Hospital for advanced medical care. Unfortunately, despite all our efforts, the four individuals succumbed to complications,” it said.