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India’s navy chief, Admiral D.K. Joshi resigned as chief
of the Indian navy, owning “moral responsibility for the accidents and
incidents during the past few months”.
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Admiral Joshi is the first Indian military commander to
have resigned since General Kodandera Subayya Thimmaiah in 1959 -- and the
only to have his resignation accepted by the government.
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The naval chief's resignation came hours after a fire on
board the newly-refitted Sindhuratna claimed the lives of two naval officers
and injured seven -- the third in a series of submarine accidents, including
an explosion on the Sindhurakshak which exploded and sank in Mumbai’s naval
dockyard in August, 2013, killing 18 crew. Last month, the Sindhughosh ran
ground on its way to Mumbai harbour, though without loss of life.
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The Navy has long complained of delays in submarine fleet
modernisation, at a time when regional navies, notably China, are
dramatically expanding their fleets. India also does not have a full-fledged
submarine rescue vessel.
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Arizona’s governor vetoed a bill that would have
protected people who assert their religious beliefs in refusing service to
gay and lesbian customers, ending a proposal that put America’s deep
polarisation over gay rights on stark display.
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The bill backed by Republicans in the state’s Legislature
set off a national debate over religion and discrimination, and opponents
called it an open attack on gay people.
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Similar bills are making their way through several state
legislatures. Some are intended to protect gay-marriage bans, others to
protect individuals or businesses who, for religious reasons, don’t want to
serve same-sex couples.
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Three Republicans who voted for the bill last week
changed course and urged Ms. Brewer to veto it. They said in a letter to
Brewer that while the intent of their vote “was to create a shield for all
citizens’ religious liberties, the bill has been mischaracterized by its
opponents as a sword for religious intolerance.”
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The Center for Arizona Policy, a powerful social
conservative group that backs conservative Christian legislation and is
opposed to gay marriage, argues the law is needed to protect against
increasingly activist federal courts and simply clarifies existing state
law.
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Arizona’s voters approved a ban on gay marriage as a
state constitutional amendment in 2008. A lawsuit challenging the ban is
still in its early stages.
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Arizona is one of 29 states with such constitutional
prohibitions, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.
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NASA's Kepler mission has announced the discovery of 715
new planets.
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These newly verified worlds orbit 305 stars, revealing
multiple-planet systems much like our own solar system.
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Since the discovery of the first planets outside our
solar system roughly two decades ago, verification has been a laborious
planet-by-planet process.
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Four of these new planets are less than 2.5 times the
size of Earth and orbit in their sun's habitable zone, defined as the range
of distance from a star where the surface temperature of an orbiting planet
may be suitable for life-giving liquid water.
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One of these new habitable zone planets, called
Kepler-296f, orbits a star half the size and 5 percent as bright as our sun.
Kepler-296f is twice the size of Earth, but scientists do not know whether
the planet is a gaseous world, with a thick hydrogen-helium envelope, or it
is a water world surrounded by a deep ocean.
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This latest discovery brings the confirmed count of
planets outside our solar system to nearly 1700.
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Launched in March 2009, Kepler is the first NASA mission
to find potentially habitable Earth-size planets.
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