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Archives for July 2018

Key suspect in Kerala SFI leader’s murder nabbed

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After being on the run for more than two weeks, the prime suspect in the brutal murder of an SFI member in a Kerala college has finally been nabbed, police said on Wednesday.

Mohammed Ali was nabbed from the Kerala-Karnataka border, on Tuesday and was being interrogated, a police officer said here.

According to the police, Ali was involved in the stabbing of 19-year-old Abhimanyu, when the Students’ Federation of India and the Campus Front of India groups clashed late on July 2, over graffiti space on the walls of the Maharajas College here.

Both Abhimanyu and Ali, the Alappuzha district president of Campus Front of India and its unit secretary studied at Maharajas College.

Soon after the July 2 incident, Ali along with his parents had gone missing from their home in Alappuzha.

The police had earlier pointed out that there were 15 people who were directly involved in the murder and had arrested four. Another six who were arrested had helped the main culprits.

Trouble had started after both groups wanted to put up their wall graffitis ahead of the commencement of the new academic year. The scuffle led to one death while another student was injured.

Scientists discover new ‘Maghalayan age’ in Earth’s history

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Geologists have classified the last 4,200 years as being a distinct Earth age and are calling it a new chapter — the “Meghalayan Age” — the onset of which was marked by a mega-drought that crushed a number of civilisations worldwide.

They divide up the 4.6-billion-year Earth existence into slices of time. Each slice corresponding to significant happenings — such as the break-up of continents, dramatic shifts in climate, and even the emergence of particular types of animals and plant life.

The current age in which we live is called the Holocene Epoch, which reflects everything that has happened over the past 11,700 years — since a dramatic warming kicked us out of the last ice age, the BBC reported on Wednesday.

But the Holocene itself can be subdivided, according to the International Commission on Stratigraphy (ICS).

The ICS is the official keeper of geologic time and it proposed three stages be introduced to denote the epoch’s upper, middle and lower phases. These all record major climate events.

The Meghalayan, the youngest stage, runs from 4,200 years ago to 1950. It began with a destructive drought, whose effects lasted two centuries, and severely disrupted civilisations in Egypt, Greece, Syria, Palestine, Mesopotamia, the Indus Valley, and the Yangtze River Valley, the BBC report added.

To win the classification, a slice of geological time generally has to reflect something whose effects were global in extent, and be associated with a rock or sediment type that is clear and unambiguous.

For the famous boundary 66 million years ago that marks the switch in period from the Cretaceous to Tertiary, this “golden spike” is represented by traces in sediments of the element iridium. This was spread across the planet in the debris scattered by the asteroid that wiped out the dinosaurs.

For the Meghalayan, the spike is epitomised in specific chemical signatures, the finest example of which can be seen in the layers of stalagmites on the floors of caves in the northeastern Indian state of Meghalaya.

It was likely triggered by shifts in ocean and atmospheric circulation, the ICS said.

The Meghalayan Age is unique among the many intervals of the geologic timescale. Its beginning coincides with a global cultural event produced by a global climatic event, said Stanley Finney, Professor at Long Beach State University and Secretary-General of the International Union of Geological Sciences (IUGS), which ratified the ICS proposal.

The middle phase of the Holocene will be referred to as the Northgrippian, and runs from 8,300 years ago up to the start of the Meghalayan. The onset for this age was an abrupt cooling, attributed to vast volumes of freshwater from melting glaciers in Canada running into the North Atlantic and disrupting ocean currents.

The oldest phase of the Holocene — the exit from the ice age — will be known as the Greenlandian.

The International Chronostratigraphic Chart, the famous diagram depicting the timeline for Earth’s history will be updated, the BBC reported.

Government ready to discuss any issue in house: Modi

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Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Wednesday urged the political parties to utilize maximum time available in Parliament’s monsoon session and said the government is ready to debate on any issue in the house.

“Welcome everyone to the monsoon session of Parliament. Lots of issues have to be discussed. I expect all the political parties to cooperate and let the session function smoothly,” Modi told reporters in the Parliament complex.

“The government is ready for discussion on all issues,” he said.

He also urged all political parties to make the most use of time in monsoon session and asked them to set an example for the state assemblies.

US lawmakers ask tech giants to ban more offensive accounts

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US lawmakers have asked tech giants Facebook, Google and Twitter to draw clearer limits and flush out hyper-partisan pages from their platforms.

In a three-hour hearing on Tuesday, Republicans and Democrats told the social media platforms to make it clearer when they would ban accounts of repeat offenders, The Verge reported.

Monika Bickert, Facebook’s Global Head of Policy Management, told the lawmakers that Facebook has regularly been removing hyper-partisan pages.

The hearing was a follow-up to an April hearing about “social media censorship”.

Representatives from Facebook, Google and Twitter said “their policies take neutral stances politically, and said it is in their best interest to host voices from across the ideological spectrum”.

According to the Washington Post, Facebook, Google and Twitter sought to defend themselves against accusations from Republican lawmakers who said the tech giants censor conservative news and views.

“Our success as a company depends on making Twitter a safe space for free expression,” replied Nick Pickles, a policy aide who testified on behalf of Twitter, to the lawmakers.

According to Juniper Downs, chief of policy issues at Google-owned YouTube, “We have a natural and long-term incentive to make sure our products work for users of all viewpoints”.

Democrats repeatedly questioned the point of the hearing, urging their Republican counterparts to turn their attention to more pressing issues.

“What a dumb hearing this entire hearing is,” said Rep. Ted Lieu (D-CA).

Lawmakers also said they will revisit Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, which offers social media platforms limited immunity for being sued over what their users post.

Guess who uses hatred, fear to maintain power: Rahul Gandhi

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A day after social activist Swami Agnivesh was attacked in Jharkhand by a group, Congress President Rahul Gandhi on Wednesday attacked the government using a pop quiz that asked people to the name the “perpetrator of hatred and fear”.

“I bow to the most powerful in the line. A person’s strength and power are all that is important to me. I use hatred and fear to maintain the hierarchy of power.

“I seek out the weakest and crush them. I rank all living beings based on their usefulness to me. Who am I?” Gandhi said on twitter attaching the video of Agnivesh being attacked in Jharkhand’s Pakur.

The 78-year-old activist was assaulted by suspected Bharatiya Janata Yuva Morcha (BJYM) activists shouting “Jai Shri Ram” slogans.

The incident happened on Tuesday when the group pounced on Agnivesh as he stepped out of a hotel to get into a car to take part in the 195th Damin Mahotsav at Littpara.

3 dead, many trapped in G.Noida twin-building collapse

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At least three persons have died in a twin-building collapse in Uttar Pradesh’s Greater Noida area, police said on Wednesday.

The incident in Shahberi village took place late on Tuesday, apparently due to “too much moisture in the walls of the basement and poor construction material used”, an official told IANS.

Three persons, including the builder Ganga Prasad Dwivedi, have been taken into custody, he added.

There were a dozen families living in the two buildings and it is feared that more than 50 persons, including laborers were still buried under the debris.

The National Disaster Response Force (NDRF) teams that had reached the spot immediately have pulled out three bodies from the rubble so far, the official added.

A state government spokesman said Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath has directed the District Magistrate (DM) to expedite the rescue and relief operations and ensure stringent action against those found guilty.

District Magistrate B.N. Singh, Superintendent of Police (Rural) Ashish Srivastava along with policemen from six police stations and NDRF teams requisitioned from Ghaziabad have been at the disaster site since the accident.

The rescue operations were hampered at night due to poor visibility. Union Minister and Noida Lok Sabha MP Mahesh Sharma also visited the crash site.

Rescue dogs, two hydraulic cranes and six bulldozers have been pressed into service to rescue the people trapped inside the debris.

An official told IANS that both the building had been built illegally and construction work on one had been completed after which a dozen families had shifted in it. The other was still under-construction.

(IANS)

Over 2 lakh pilgrims performed Amarnath Yatra so far

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A fresh batch of 1,983 pilgrims left Jammu on Wednesday to perform the Amarnath Yatra that has so far seen over two lakh pilgrims paid obeisance at the holy cave shrine, authorities said.

The pilgrims left the Bhagwati Nagar Yatri Niwas for the Kashmir Valley in an escorted convoy of 59 vehicles as 1,303 headed for Pahalgam while 680 proceeded towards the Baltal base camp,” the police said.

The Met has forecast rain and thundershowers along both the Baltal and Pahalgam routes during the day.

The yatra that started on June 28, will end on August 26 coinciding with the Shravan Purnima festival.

Rahul does not love anyone but power: BJP

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Launching a sharp attack on Rahul Gandhi, the BJP on Tuesday said that contrary to his claim in a tweet, the Congress President does not love anyone but power.

The Bharatiya Janata Party also alleged that there was a competition between AIMIM President Asaduddin Owaisi and the Congress to “usurp” the legacy of “divide and rule”.

“Rahul Gandhi has claimed in a tweet that he loves all living beings. The fact is that he doesn’t love any living being but only a non-living thing called the throne of power,” BJP spokesman Sambit Patra said at a press conference here.

He said when Gandhi says that Congress is the party of the Muslims, it is a breach of trust of the “last person in the last queue with whom Rahul Gandhi claims to be standing with”.

“You say you are with the last person in the queue, which is the ideology of Deen Dayal Upadhyay, but the Congress for so many years was not with this last person in the queue. So the last man is now also not with you,” Patra said.

“You cheated the last man for 70 years and now when you say that the Congress is a party of Muslims, it is also a breach of trust of the last person in the queue or the most marginalised,” he added.

A few hours earlier, Rahul Gandhi had said: “I stand with the last person in the line. The exploited, marginalised and the persecuted. Their religion, caste or beliefs matter little to me. I seek out those in pain and embrace them. I erase hatred and fear. I love all living beings. I am the Congress.”

The tweet, not directed at any individual or a party, apparently came in response to the BJP’s unabated criticism over his reported remark that the Congress was a party of Muslims.

Reacting to Gandhi’s tweet, Patra said: “There is a sense of competition between Rahul Gandhi and Asaduddin Owaisi as to who would usurp the ideology of (Muhammad Ali) Jinnah to a complete extent.”

“Owaisi has asked the percentage of the Muslims in the army and paramilitary forces. They are trying to divide the army and trying to bring religion into the army,” Patra said.

“Congress leader Veerappa Moily seems to second Owaisi by saying that Muslims are indeed underrepresented in the army. BJP rejects the politics of division and believes in ‘sabka sath, sabka vikas’,” he said.

Hima Das should be given financial support, says Vijender

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Indian boxing star Vijender Singh on Tuesday hailed athletics’ latest golden girl Hima Das’ performance, saying the Assamese lass should be supported financially from here on and not just eulogized.

Hima created history last week by winning the yellow metal in the women’s 400-metre event at the IAAF World U-20 Championships in Tampere, Finland.

Hima registered a time of 51.46 seconds in the final at the Ratina Stadium to become the first Indian athlete to win gold in a world championship across all age groups.

“She did a great job. It’s amazing,” Vijender told reporters on the sidelines of an interactive session with students of Newtown School here.

“People only congratulate her. But there should be people who will support her financially. She comes from a poor family and she needs financial support,” said the 32-year old Vijender who is now into pro boxing.

Born in a poor family, Hima is the last of five children of a rice-growing farmer in Kandhulimari village about five kilometers from Dhing town of Nagaon district in central Assam.

Since her unprecedented achievement, the 18-year old who wanted to be a football player has become the toast of the nation with India cricket team captain Virat Kohli and batting legend Sachin Tendulkar among the many to have congratulated her.

Talking about his own experience prior to Beijing Olympics where he was the last to qualify from the Asian qualifying tournament in Kazakhstan, Vijender said it doesn’t come easy and thus the toil should be recognised in Hima’s case.

“People had written me off as I made the cut at the last moment. It doesn’t come easy so I feel her effort should not go in waste and she should be supported properly.”

The 32-year-old 2008 Olympic bronze medallist was slated to take on Briton Lee Markham for the Commonwealth Super middleweight title but the latter got injured.

The fight was scheduled for July 13 and would have given Vijender a shot at his third title after having claimed the WBO Asia Pacific and Oriental Super Middleweight titles.

“We are planning to have the fight in September but the dates have not been decided yet,” Vijender informed.

“The opponent was supposed to be Lee Markham but he got injured so the fight got postponed. Now the Commonwealth committee will decide the opponent,” the Manchester-based pugilist added.

Vijender has been victorious in his 10 previous outings while Markham had the experience of 22 fights, 17 of them wins.

The fight would have been Vijender’s first in six months since he successfully defended his twin titles in the clash against Ghana’s Ernest Amuzu in Jaipur.

Asked about whether more boxers should take up pro boxing, Vijender said: “After a certain age, I feel boxers should attempt the pro level. There are boxers who go to Olympics and Asian Games. But what about the rest?”

“They can come to pro boxing. I am not saying the cream should opt for pro boxing, but those who feel they can do well at pro level should come.”

After turning pro Vijender inspired a lot of Indian boxers to take up professional boxing including Commonwealth Games champion Vikas Krishan who has already expressed his desire to turn pro.

Vijender signed off by urging upcoming boxers to be mentally strong as it’s an individual sport and one needs to push himself.

“People should think positive. It depends on the boxers as well since it’s not a team sport.”

Vijender, who turned to pro boxing in 2015, is ranked fourth in the WBO Super Middleweight category.

Indian hockey team jumps to fifth in FIH rankings

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The Indian hockey team’s silver medal-winning effort at the Champions Trophy in Breda, the Netherlands, earlier this month has propelled them to the fifth spot in the world rankings, released by the International Hockey Federation (FIH) on Tuesday.

India finished runners-up after losing the final to reigning world champions Australia, who meanwhile, consolidated their stay atop the world rankings.

Australia (1906 points) sit 23 points ahead of second-ranked Argentina (1883) and are followed by Belgium (1709) and the Netherlands (1654).

With 1484 points, India has pushed Germany (1456) to sixth from the fifth spot.

Most of the teams in the top 20 are non-movers, although 18th placed Austria and 19th ranked Egypt have climbed ahead of France, who now sit in the 20th position.

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