Indian cabbie ‘racially abused’, assaulted in Aus

CANBERRA: An Indian cab driver was assaulted and beaten unconscious in the Australian state of Tasmania by two passengers who yelled racial slurs at him.

Pardeep Singh, 25, was beaten by two passengers at the Sandy Bay Mcdonald’s drivethrough on Saturday night. Singh said he was attacked when he asked the woman passenger to step outside the cab as she was going to throw up, Mercury newspaper reported on Monday.

“Please get out of the car... If you mess up the car you have to pay a cleaning fee,” Singh told the woman.

Singh said the passengers started abusing him and the woman told him in an expletive-filled rant that she wouldn’t pay the fare or cleaning fee.

The female passenger then started screaming racial slurs at the Indian driver calling him a “bloody Indian,” as the cab driver filmed their violence.

The taxi driver reported that the male passenger subsequently punched him from behind, and pushed him to the ground.

He was repeatedly kicked and punched on the ground as the male passenger said, “You f ****** Indian, you deserve it.”

Subsequently few people came to his rescue, as police and ambulance reached the spot. The victim was admitted in the hospital overnight due to his injuries.

The victim has alleged that the police have not registered the seriousness of the matter and have not checked the CCTV footage from the drive-thru.

Another witness has come forward to testify on behalf of the cab driver and has presented a video footage of the incident. Singh was admitted overnight to the Royal Hobart Hospital. Police offical Ian Whish-wilson said the two passengers were charged in relation to the assault on Singh.

“There was a dispute over payment and it is alleged the passengers assaulted the driver and damaged the vehicle,” said the police official.

“It was alleged a racial comment was made during the assault but it does not appear that the incident was racially motivated,” he said.

The passengers— a 21-yearold Sandy Bay woman and a 25-year-old Kingston man — were charged with assault and injuring property and will appear in the Hobart Magistrates Court on June 26.

In March, Indian cab driver Li Max Joy was assaulted by four teenagers in Tasmania and a third driver of the community was assaulted by four men in June last year.

The police official said the charges in this case were laid in relation to the March assault on Joy but no “special investigative unit” was established.

Singh, who is studying hospitality, said he will not drive taxis again “because it’s so dangerous”.

The bashing is the third attack on Indian taxi drivers in less than a year. BRASILIA: Brazil’s bar association has called President Michel Temer’s impeachment, after a tape revealed in which he agreed to bribe former Speaker Eduardo Cunha into silence. In a statement, the Order of Attorneys of Brazil (OAB) said that its federal council decided on Sunday to call for Temer’s impeachment and urged the Chamber of Deputies to begin the process, Xinhua news agency reported.

The OAB’S federal council has representatives from Brazil’s 27 states, among which 25 voted for impeachment, one against and one abstained.

The legal body also said it had formed a commission to analyse the documents released last week by the Supreme Court, after the tape was turned over by business mogul Joesley Batista, owner of the JBS meat- packing giant. The Supreme Court has also opened an investigation against Temer for alleged obstruction of justice. The OAB’S rapporteur, Flavio Pansieri, said that Temer had forsaken his duty to report crimes that he had heard during his meeting with Batista in March. In 1992, the OAB called for the impeachment of thenpresident Fernando Collor de Mello, who resigned before being impeached on corruption charges.

In 2016, the legal body also called for the impeachment of Dilma Rousseff. By Sunday, the Chamber of Deputies had received at least nine requests for Temer’s impeachment.

However, Temer has refused to resign, claiming that Batista’s tape had been doctored and that he has done nothing wrong. LONDON: Theresa May has said that the Conservative government would set an “absolute limit” on the amount that people pay for social care in a U-turn on the policy put forward in her party’s election manifesto last week.

The prime minister claimed that the inclusion of a cap was a clarification that she was making because of attacks by the Labour leader, Jeremy Corbyn, that she described as “fake claims” and “scaremongering”.

“So I want to make a further point clear. This manifesto says that we will come forward with a consultation paper, a government green paper. And that consultation will include an absolute limit on the amount people have to pay for their care costs,” she said.

May argued that the plans put forward by her party that triggered a controversial backlash were the “right funding model” – but the original plans made no mention of a cap.

Speaking at the launch of the Tory party manifesto in Wales, she added: “Jeremy Corbyn wants to duck this reality – and play politics. But there will be 2 million more people over 75 years old in Britain over the next decade alone. Our social care system will collapse unless we make some important decisions now about how we fund it.” The Conservatives have suffered through the weekend with a negative reaction to their social care plans, which have been dubbed a “dementia tax” and caused negative headlines in supportive newspapers. The Sunday Times said the decision had tightened the polls and caused a “Tory wobble” while the Mail on Sunday said it had triggered a fierce backlash.

The policy alarmed Conservative MPS because it included a person’s property in an assessment for social care within their home, although there is a £100,000 cap and a promise that people will not have to sell their homes while they are alive.

However, the money would have to be paid by offspring who could be forced to sell their parents’ property and lose huge amounts . The fear is that the policy will claw away at the inheritance of the children of Alzheimer’s sufferers, while those whose parents have conditions such as cancer that qualify for NHS care would not be affected.

At the launch in Wrexham, the marginal north Wales seat held by Labour’s Ian Lucas, May made clear that the plans would be included in a consultation paper, and would include a cap - which had not been mentioned. She also sought to change the narrative from social care to the imminent Brexit negotiations, saying a deal could not be delivered by those “uncertain or unsure” about leaving the EU.

Upping her attack on Corbyn, May said Labour had “taken people in Wales for granted for decades – just as it has in other communities across Britain.”

The driver was repeatedly kicked and punched on the ground as the male passenger said, ‘You f ****** Indian, you deserve it’. Subsequently few people came to his rescue