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The Morning Wrap: Kashmiri Separatists Refuse To Meet All-Party Delegates; Conjoined Twins Surprise Mumbai Doctors

Our selection of interesting news and opinion from the day's newspapers.
Home Minister Rajnath Singh arrives for All-party delegation meeting at Sher-i-Kashmir International Conference Centre (SKICC).
Hindustan Times via Getty Images
Home Minister Rajnath Singh arrives for All-party delegation meeting at Sher-i-Kashmir International Conference Centre (SKICC).

The Morning Wrap is HuffPost India's selection of interesting news and opinion from the day's newspapers. Subscribe here to receive it in your inbox each weekday morning.

Mother Teresa, who took in the destitute and gave them a place to die with dignity, was canonised as a saint by Pope Francis in Vatican City on the eve of the 19th anniversary of her death. She is now Saint Teresa of Calcutta. At the ceremony on Sunday, Pope Francis described Mother Teresa as a "tireless worker for mercy."

In a horrific incident in Delhi, an 11-month-old baby was allegedly raped for two hours by a 36-year-old construction worker in the locality of Vikaspuri in west Delhi on Friday night. The baby was then abandoned in some bushes by the culprit. The police reportedly found the construction worker's cellphone at the scene of the crime, and tracked him to a nearby settlement for labourers. On sustained questioning, he reportedly confessed.

A HuffPo-CVoter survey in Uttar Pradesh shows if assembly elections were held today, the Bhartiya Janata Party and the Samajwadi Party would be locked neck and neck, winning around 134-150 seats each. That would mean no party would get a clear majority in the 403-seat strong assembly. You can check the seat projections here.

Raghuram Rajan, whose tenure as RBI governor ended on September 4, has issued fresh warnings about the threats that Indian economy faces. In an interview to New York Times, he mentioned that "low interest rates globally could distort markets and it would be difficult to abandon." Rajan, who stepped down after intense criticism from the ruling party leaders said his monetary policy had helped bring India's rate of inflation down.

Kashmiri separatists shut the door on members of the all-party delegation on Sunday, literally in some instances, as they went to meet them as part of efforts to end the two-month-long unrest in the Valley following Hizbul Mujahideen terrorist Burhan Wani's killing. Hurriyat hardliner Syed Ali Shah Geelani, under house arrest since July, refused to meet Sitaram Yechury, D Raja, Sharad Yadav and Jay Prakash Narayan when they went to his residence. They faced an angry slogan-shouting group of Geelani's supporters outside his house. Meanwhile, around 400 people were injured in yesterday's clashes in Kashmir with the security forces, among them were two local photojournalists.

Spiralling cases of Chikungunya and Dengue have sent alarm bells ringing and the "season" has only just begun. Until August 31, 2016, 12,255 cases of chikungunya have been reported in the country – a little less than half of what was reported in all of 2015. There have been 27,879 cases of dengue and 60 deaths because of dengue haemorrhagic fever.

In Mumbai, conjoined twins have surprised the doctors. Gurfan and Mohamed are now a month old. They are joined sideways, with a fused thorax, common heart, abdomen, stomach and pelvis. Their faces and vertebrae are separate, and between them, they have three hands and two legs. "See, they are breathing. It's God's will," said the mother.

Soon, and probably right on time before the elections, it has been announced that a Taj Mahal airport has been planned. The Defence Ministry, which controls the lone Air Force airport in the Taj city, has cleared a proposal over the weekend to expand it to an international airport. The Uttar Pradesh government has announced that it would provide 150 acres of land and even foot the bill for the expansion. The upgradation of the runway alone is expected to cost Rs. 100 crore.

Google is celebrating Teacher's Day with the perfect doodle today. The doodle comprises of a bespectacled teacher pencil reading and teaching out of a book, while five student pencils follow suit β€” walking, skipping and jumping.

In a piece on Mother Teresa, and his childhood memories, Derek O'Brien writes, "Mother Teresa wasn't a conventional achiever." "She left behind no vast properties, award-winning books or sizeable bank balance. Yet, if you consider the fact that she was very good at what she did - charitable works and looking after the destitute - ran a multinational empire (the Missionaries of Charity) with an iron grip and an easy smile and was ever focused on her goals and the tools she needed to achieve them, you would begin to think of her differently," he wrote for NDTV.

Defending Rahul Gandhi's flip-flop on the RSS, Meghnad Desai, in his column for Indian Express titled, 'Who is afraid of the RSS?' says that in the end, Gandhi has done the right thing. "Lessons in history are always good for aspirants to power," he writes. The Emergency thus secured the reputation and the future of the BJP/ RSS as nationalist movements. "The Congress lost its secular liberal patina, though it suffers from amnesia about the Emergency. The RSS did what originally the Communist parties were supposed to do. They penetrated into society β€” schools, colleges, temples, civil society groups β€” and spread their message diligently. It was a simple message: Secularism as practised by the Congress was fraud, pseudo secularism and it was anti-Hindu. Maharashtra was its home. Gujarat became a test bed and a very successful one," he writes.

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This article exists as part of the online archive for HuffPost India, which closed in 2020. Some features are no longer enabled. If you have questions or concerns about this article, please contact indiasupport@huffpost.com.