Melkar Degree College holds 9th graduation day

Iran’s Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian has held talks with Hamas politburo chief Ismail Haniyeh in Doha where he has traveled as part of a regional tour for consultations amid the Israeli invasion of Gaza.

The meeting on Thursday night (November 23) came as a breakthrough four-day truce in the war will start on Friday morning and an exchange of captives and prisoners will follow hours later.  

Qatari foreign ministry spokesperson Majed Al Ansari said Palestinian prisoners held in Israeli jails will be released on Friday, adding a list of names has been approved, without saying how many.

Qatar’s Foreign Minister Mohammed bin Abdulrahman bin Jassim Al Thani discussed the plan with Amir-Abdollahian and thanked Iran for its “pivotal role and valuable efforts in helping to achieve a humanitarian cessation of the war against Gaza”, Fars news agency reported.

“We have reached a good stage,” the Qatari minister said, adding the first priority is the ceasefire, and then “our effort is to extend the temporary ceasefire and stop the war and killing of Palestinians completely and prevent a return to war”.

Amir-Abdollahian welcomed the ceasefire, saying if the Israeli regime continues the war, “the situation in the region will become more tense and the reactions will be more widespread”.

He said Israel is not able to continue the war without the support of the United States.

Amir-Abdollahian said what had happened against the United States in the region in the last six weeks was the reaction of the resistance groups to US support for the genocide in Palestine and had nothing to do with Iran.

US forces in Iraq and Syria have seen an uptick in attacks since Israel launched its invasion of the besieged Gaza Strip, leaving scores of American troops injured, including over two dozen soldiers diagnosed with traumatic brain injuries.

Amir-Abdollahian said Hamas is a liberation movement which has emerged from within the civil society of the Palestinian nation.

Hamas, he said, cannot be eliminated and its enemies should not think they can achieve through political means what they failed during more than a month and a half of war.

At least nine Palestinians have been killed and several others injured after the Israeli regime carried out airstrikes on two refugee camps in the besieged Gaza Strip.

The official Palestinian news agency WAFA reported that the victims, including children, were killed as a result of Israeli occupation air raids on a house in the Nuseirat refugee camps in central Gaza early on Wednesday.

Sources also told Wafa that several people lost their lives in another Israeli strike on the Jabalia refugee camp in northeastern Gaza.

Israelis kill five Palestinians in West Bank

The Israeli military also killed five Palestinians in a drone missile attack on the occupied West Bank city of Tulkarm.

The occupation forces stormed the Tulkarm refugee camp and bombed a house and a gathering of Palestinian residents in the area with a drone, leaving at least three Palestinians inured, according to WAFA.

The Israeli regime forces also imposed a siege on Thabet Hospital in the city of Tulkarm and surrounded the entrances to the hospital with their vehicles, which hindered the arrival of the injured at the medical facility to receive treatment.

“The occupation army chased the ambulances that were traveling in the city of Tulkarm, obstructed their work and prevented them from moving freely,” WAFA cite eyewitnesses as saying.

Palestine’s Shehab news agency said the occupation forces also arrested one of the wounded after storming the emergency department at Thabet Hospital.

The latest casualties came hot on the heels of an agreed-upon ceasefire deal that would bring about a halt in a 47-day-long Israeli aggression on Gaza.

Israel waged the bloody war on Gaza on October 7 after the Palestinian resistance movement Hamas launched Operation Al-Aqsa Storm in the occupied territories in retaliation for the Tel Aviv regime’s incessant crimes against Palestinians in the occupied West Bank.

Since the start of the aggression, the Tel Aviv regime has killed 14,128 Palestinians, including 5,840 children and 3,920 women, and injured at least 33,000 others.

The illegal entity has also imposed a “complete siege” on the coastal sliver, cutting off fuel, electricity, food and water to the more than two million Palestinians living there.

Chief Minister Siddaramaiah has shot off a letter to Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman expressing concerns and seeking clarification on Rs 798 crore from the Integrated Goods & Services Tax (IGST) being deducted from Karnataka. 

“The information at our disposal indicates that an amount of Rs 798.03 crore has been adjusted out of the IGST settlement as ‘adjustment of advance apportionment to make up shortfall in IGST balance as on 26.12.2022’,” Siddaramaiah stated. 

Siddaramaiah asked Sitharaman to explain the “rationale” behind “huge negative balances of Rs 34,000 crore to accumulate”. He said the accumulation of negative IGST balances would impact treasury management of state finances. 

“In order to facilitate better understanding and transparency, the state of Karnataka seeks information on the total amount of negative IGST balance and the methodology employed for distributing this among the states for recovery,” Siddaramaiah stated. 

Siddaramaiah also asked the union government to make deductions in instalments. “Given the pressing need for resources and the potential challenges associated with lump-sum deductions...we propose a phased approach, preferably in ten instalments, to mitigate the immediate impact on state finances,” he stated. 

“We believe that a transparent and collaborative approach in addressing these concerns will contribute to the effective functioning of the financial ecosystem,” Siddaramaiah stated.

Meanwhile Karnataka GST collection at Rs 11,970 crore finished in second place all India behind Maharashtra. 

Karnataka’s collection was more than Rs 1,000 crore higher than Gujarat, which managed Rs 10,853 crore. 

Tamil Nadu stood at fourth place with Rs 10,255 crore, while Haryana stood a distant fifth with Rs 9,732 crore. UP stood at sixth place with Rs 8,973 crore.