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Archives for August 2021

Man arrested for ‘objectionable’ comments about RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat on WhatsApp message

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RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat

A case was registered against the man under the Indian Penal Code (IPC) and he was arrested based on a complaint filed by the district coordinator of the RSS-backed student organisation Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP), the officer said.

“Vishal Maurya of Ganesh Colony here made some objectionable comments about Bhagwat. A complaint was filed by ABVP district coordinator Akash Kumar stating that his comments hurt their feeling and that the youth also misbehaved with him,” Superintendent of Police Chakresh Mishra said.

The man’s mobile phone has been seized and a detailed probe into the matter is underway, the officer said.

COVID-19 India Update:records 42,625 cases and 562 deaths in a day

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NEW DELHI: With 42,625 people testing positive for the coronavirus infection in a day, India’s total tally of COVID-19 cases rose to 3,17,69,132 and the active caseload increased to 4,10,353, according to data updated by the Union Health Ministry on Wednesday.

The number of active cases increased to 4,10,353 and accounted for 1.9 per cent of the total infections, while the national COVID-19 recovery rate rose to 97.37 per cent, the data updated at 8 am showed.

An increase of 5,395 cases has been recorded in the active caseload in a span of 24 hours.

As many as 18,47,518 samples were tested on Tuesday taking the number of tests conducted so far for detection of COVID-19 in the country to 47,31,42,307.

According to the Union Health Ministry, India recorded 42,625 new #COVID19 cases, 36,668 discharges & 562 deaths in the last 24 hours.

The daily positivity rate stood at 2.31 per cent, while the weekly positivity rate was recorded at 2.36 per cent, according to the ministry.

The number of people who have recuperated from the disease surged to 3,09,33,022, while the case fatality rate stood at 1.34 per cent, according to the data.

Cumulative vaccine doses administered in the country so far has reached 48.52 crore.

India’s COVID-19 tally had crossed the 20-lakh mark on August 7; 30 lakh on August 23; 40 lakh on September 5; and 50 lakh on September 16.

It went past 60 lakh on September 28; 70 lakh on October 11; 80 lakh on October 29; 90 lakh on November 20; and the one-crore mark on December 19.

India crossed the grim milestone of two crore coronavirus cases on May 4 and three crore cases on June 23.

Antibody cocktail centres in Karnataka will blunt Covid third wave edge: Experts

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BENGALURU: While Karnataka’s 13-member Technical Advisory Committee under Dr Devi Shetty has given a preparedness list to mitigate the third wave, clinical doctors, including pulmonologists, say the state should also think of opening monoclonal antibody daycare centres.

“Every district, or at least major cities, should have monoclonal antibody daycare centres along with triage centres. I have administered it to more than 100 patients now, and seen tremendous results,” said Dr Satyanarayana Mysore, pulmonologist, Manipal Hospitals.

Monoclonal antibodies are synthetic versions of the body’s natural line of defence against severe infection, now deployed after the virus has broken past the vaccine’s barrier of protection. The therapy is meant for Covid patients early on in their infection, and those who are at high risk of getting even sicker to help keep them out of hospital. This risk group includes people aged 65 and older, who have diabetes, high blood pressure, cardiac disease, obesity, asthma or who are immuno-compromised.

According to Dr Gopikrishna, consultant physician, Sevakshetra Hospital, availability of this treatment at subsidised rates will definitely help those who cannot afford it. “The drug will cost around Rs 1 lakh. The cocktail drug has definitely been a miracle,” he said.

Recently, Biocon Biologics, in collaboration with US-based Adagio Therapeutics, applied for an exclusive licence to manufacture and commercialise antibody treatment, for prevention and treatment of Covid-19.
“Recently, FDA permitted the use of such treatment in breakthrough infections too. It makes a lot of sense for the government to invest in treatment of Covid-19 and not just in prevention,” said Dr Sanjay Gururaj, consultant physician at Shanti Hosptial.

29 ministers to take oath, says Karnataka CM Bommai BSY’s son BY Vijayendra not on the list

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Karnataka chief minister Basavaraj Bommai

BENGALURU: At 2.15 PM on Wednesday, 29 legislators of the BJP will take oath as ministers in the Basavaraj Bommai cabinet.

In an unusual press conference ahead of the cabinet expansion, Bommai said that the central leadership of the BJP has decided not to have any Deputy Chief Ministers.

“The list has been finalised and I have sent it to the Governor. Twenty-nine ministers will take oath of office. Unlike last time when there were three DCMs, the high command has decided that there will be no DCMs this time,” Basavaraj Bommai told the press. He added that his 30-strong cabinet, including himself, will have three Dalits, one ST, seven OBC, Eight Lingayat, seven Vokkaligas and two Brahmin ministers. 

While new faces have been inducted, senior leaders and former ministers like Jagadish Shettar, Suresh Kumar, Arvind Limbavali, Laxman Savadi, CP Yogeshwar, R Shankar and Srimanth Patil have been dropped from the cabinet.

Dr CN Ashwath Narayan, KS Eshwarappa, Shivaram Hebbar, Byrathi Basavaraj, Dr K Sudhakar, B Sriramulu, R Ashok, V Somanna, B C Patil, Umesh Katti, Araga Jnanedra, S Angara, Munirathana, V Sunil Kumar,  MTB Nagaraj, Shankar Patil Munenakoppa, Govind Karjol, ST Somshekar, Shashikala Jolle, Narayan Gowda, Prabhu Chauhan, Kota Srinivas Poojary, Gopalaiah, BC Nagesh, Halappa Achar, Maadhuswamy, Anand Singh, CC Patil, Murgesh Nirani are set to be inducted into the cabinet.

Notorious Rowdy-Sheeter Syed Naseer booked under Goonda Act

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Pramesh Jain

The Shivajinagar police booked a 31-year-old rowdy under goonda Act on Tuesday and remanded to judicial custody.

The accused Syed Naseer is a habitual offender involved in over 11 criminal cases.

Senior officer told reporters,Though the accused is on bail he continued to be involved in antisocial activities disturbing law and order and creating fear psychosis among the members of the general public,violating the bail conditions.

The police prepared a detailed report and submitted it to the city police commissioner seeking necessary directions.

Based on his directions,the police arrested Naseer and remanded him to judicial custody to keep him in the prison without bail for at least one year .

Meanwhile the Bengaluru district police conducted a rowdy parade and carried surprise checks on their houses on TUesday.

Several teams of police raided and inspected the houses of habitual offenders and escorted them to the Nelamangala ground to be produced before the Superintendent of Police,Vamshi Krishna .

The police inquired about their activities and took details of the residence and mobile numbers .

SP,Vamshi Krishna addressing the habitual offenders warned them to med their ways and abide the law or face strict action.This is the first and last warning given and henceforth anyone involved in antisocial activities will be strictly dealt with,he said .

Road closed in Bengaluru’s Good Shed road for white-topping: Alternate routes here:

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Pramesh Jain

The Traffic movement on Goodshed road and TCM Royan road has been restricted following white topping work initiated by BBMP from Thursday.

Kamal Pant,city police commissioner while issuing orders on the traffic restriction said that  restriction of traffic movement on the above roads is in force from August 5th 2021 till the completion of the work.

According to the orders,due to white topping work roads including goodshed road,old Mysore road,market flyover from Dr.B R Ambedkar down ramp to TCM Royan road junction will be affected .

The Chickpet traffic police have made alternative arrangements for the vehicles.

Alternative routes are here :

Vehicles coming on this road to reach Majestic  can proceed on Mysore road bodybuilders junction,service road,Sirsi junction, take left turn to road connecting to JJ Nagar junction,Binny mill tank bund road,Balakaimandi junction,Binny mill circle,right turn to proceed on TCM Royan road  junction,proceed on goodshed road to reach shanthala junction to move further .

The traffic police have been instructed to put up required signages to make alternative arrangements and help the motorists to reach to their destination safely.

White topping is a new technology of providing cement concrete overlay on the existing damaged and distressed bitumen roads with a purpose either to restore or to increase the load carrying capacity, or both.

COVID-19 virus leaked from China’s Wuhan lab: US Republican report

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WASHINGTON: A Republican lawmaker’s report investigating the origins of COVID-19 released on Monday has concluded that the pandemic outbreak stemmed from a genetically modified virus that leaked from the Wuhan Institute of Virology, first detected in December 2019.

McCaul, in statements alongside the release of the report, has called for Congress to pass legislation sanctioning scientists at the Wuhan lab and Chinese Communist Party officials who were determined to have obstructed efforts to respond to the pandemic quickly and effectively.

The GOP investigation parallels efforts by the Biden administration and the international community to determine the origins of the pandemic outbreak, which has killed more than 4.2 million people across the world, infected nearly 200 million and upended global stability.

The Republican report is based on open-source material and draws conclusions from circumstantial reporting, also raises concern that the lab was conducting “gain of function” research, controversial medical research where scientists genetically modify a bacteria or virus to make it more infectious in an effort to study better preventative measures, in an unsafe environment, reported The Hill.

“We know gain-of-function research was happening at the WIV and we know it was being done in unsafe conditions,” McCaul said.

National security experts also raised the concern that the US must discipline China for failing to quickly and cooperatively alert the international community to the virus outbreak and its ongoing obstruction into the investigation into the origins of COVID-19, reported The Hill.

“The Biden administration has already — working through the World Health Organisation (WHO) and with the G-7 and with other countries — used diplomacy and tried to urge the Chinese to cooperate. They’ve given us their answer, their answer is no,” said Anthony Ruggiero, a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies.

McCaul also called on the House Foreign Affairs Committee to subpoena Peter Daszak, an American scientist who has come under scrutiny for his connection with the Wuhan lab and involvement in publishing an open letter in February 2020 that rejected the lab theory as a xenophobic distraction from the pandemic response.

The letter, which was published in the Lancet medical journal, has since come under criticism as an attempt to divert attention from China’s responsibility for the virus outbreak.”Now is the time to use all of the tools the US government has to continue to root out the full truth of how this virus came to be,” McCaul said.

“That includes subpoenaing Peter Daszak to appear before the House Foreign Affairs Committee to answer the many questions his inconsistent — and in some instances outright and knowingly inaccurate — statements have raised. It also includes Congress passing legislation to sanction scientists at the WIV [Wuhan Institute of Virology] and CCP [Chinese Communist Party] officials who participated in this coverup. This was the greatest coverup of all time and has caused the deaths of more than four million people around the world, and people must be held responsible.”

The Republican report doubles down on the idea that the virus likely emerged from the Wuhan laboratory, a theory that has gained increasing legitimacy, reported The Hill.

The lab leak theory is the idea that the virus emerged from the Wuhan scientific lab either due to a series of missteps and lax safety procedures or Chinese government and military tampering.

The Chinese government and Wuhan lab scientists have dismissed these allegations and maintain that the first cases likely emerged from animal-to-human transmission at a wet market in the city of Wuhan.

Leaked State Department cables from 2018 documented that American diplomats raised concern about safety and management procedures at the Wuhan lab that did not raise the level of need for the lab’s status as a BSL-4, the highest level of international bioresearch safety. The cables were first reported by The Washington Post in April 2020, reported The Hill.

The Republican report adds to this by raising concern over maintenance and renovation taking place at the Wuhan Institute of Virology and the adjacent lab, the Wuhan National Biosafety Laboratory, related to its hazardous waste treatment system and air conditioning systems while carrying out research on coronaviruses. Such instances were taking place in the months preceding the first known cases of COVID-19, the report stated.

US to evacuate at-risk citizens including journalists, aid workers from Afghanistan

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WASHINGTON: The Biden administration on Monday expanded its efforts to evacuate at-risk Afghan citizens from Afghanistan as Taliban violence increases ahead there of the US military pullout at the end of the month.

Current and former employees of the U.S. government and the NATO military operation who don’t meet the criteria for a dedicated program for such workers are also covered.

However, the move comes with a major caveat: applicants must leave Afghanistan to begin the adjudication process that may take 12-14 months in a third country, and the U.S. does not intend to support their departures or stays there.

Nevertheless, the State Department said the move will mean that “many thousands” of Afghans and their immediate families will now have the opportunity to be permanently resettled in the US as refugees.

It did not offer a more specific number of those who might be eligible for the programme.

“The US objective remains a peaceful, secure Afghanistan,” it said in a statement.

“However, in light of increased levels of Taliban violence, the US government is working to provide certain Afghans, including those who worked with the United States, the opportunity for refugee resettlement to the United States.”

The creation of a “Priority 2” category for Afghans within the US Refugee Admissions Program is intended for Afghans and their immediate families who “may be at risk due to their US affiliation” but aren’t able to get a Special Immigrant Visa because they did not work directly for the US government or didn’t hold their government jobs long enough.

To qualify for the Priority 2 category, Afghans must be nominated by a US government agency or by the most senior civilian US citizen employee of a US-based media outlet or nongovernmental organization.

The first group of Afghan Special Immigrant Visa applicants, most of whom served as translators or did other work for U.S. troops or diplomats, who have cleared security vetting arrived in the US on Friday.

That group of 221 people are among 2,500 who will be brought to the US in the coming days.

Another 4,000 SIV applicants, plus their families, who have not yet cleared the security screening are expected to be relocated to third countries ahead of the completion of the US withdrawal.

Roughly 20,000 Afghans have expressed interest in the programme.

Germany to offer Covid booster shots from September as Delta variant sparks concern

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WORLD: Germany will start offering Covid booster shots from September and make it easier for 12-to-17 year olds to get a jab, the health ministry said Monday, amid concerns about the spread of the Delta variant.

Mobile vaccination teams should be sent into care and nursing homes, the text says, to offer Pfizer/BioNTech or Moderna booster shots to residents, regardless of which vaccine they had originally.

Doctors will also be able to administer booster jabs to those who qualify, including people with weakened immune systems.

A booster shot will also be offered to anyone who received the two-dose AstraZeneca or single-dose Johnson & Johnson vaccines, the document released by Spahn’s ministry said, “in the interests of preventative healthcare”.

Both AstraZeneca and Johnson & Johnson are viral vector vaccines, whereas the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines use novel mRNA technology that has shown high efficacy in studies.

The ministers also agreed to make the coronavirus vaccine more widely available to over-12s, going a step further than the country’s STIKO vaccines regulator.

The regulator currently only recommends the coronavirus vaccine for 12-17 year olds if they have pre-existing conditions or live with people at high risk from Covid.

Although adolescents who do not fall into those categories are still allowed to get vaccinated, in consultation with their parents and doctors, the cautious STIKO guidance has slowed take-up.

Germany’s health ministers agreed on Monday to encourage vaccination among teens by opening all the country’s vaccination centres to 12-17 year olds, alongside the possibility to get vaccinated at regular clinics.

The ministers stressed that the jab was voluntary but said getting children and teenagers vaccinated could “contribute significantly to a safe return to classrooms after the summer holidays”.

Although Germany is currently enjoying relatively low infection rates compared with neighbouring countries, case numbers have been creeping up in recent weeks mainly because of the more contagious Delta variant.

There are also concerns about a slowdown in the country’s vaccination rate, with just over 52 percent of the population fully inoculated. 

Within the European Union, the European Medicines Agency has approved the Pfizer/BioNTech and Moderna shots for all over-12s.

STIKO head Thomas Mertens told public radio MDR that the body was still waiting for data from longer-term studies before deciding on issuing a more general vaccine recommendation for over-12s.

The problem, he added, “is not so much the children’s vaccinations”.

What is needed to help suppress a fourth Covid wave in Germany “is a high vaccination rate among 18-to-59 year olds”.

Ravi and Deepak get good draw; European Champion awaits Anshu Malik in her 57kg opener

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Indian wrestler Ravi Dahiya in action against Hikmatullo Vohidov of Tajikistan in men's 57kg bout during Asian Senior Wrestling Championship at Indira Gandhi Stadium in New Delhi Saturday Feb. 22 2020.

TOKYO: Indian wrestler Ravi Dahiya on Tuesday got a good draw as he will open his 57kg campaign in the Tokyo Olympics against Colombia’s Tigreros Urbano and going by form, he should not face much difficulty in reaching at least the semifinals.

If Ravi, the 2019 World Championship bronze medallist and reigning Asian champion, wins his opener against the Colombian then he will take on either Algeria’s Abdelhak Kherabache or Georgi Valentinov Vangelov from Bulgaria.

In the semifinals, he is likely to face either Serbian top seed Stevan Andria Micic or Japan’s Yuki Takahashi, after they were drawn to meet in the opening round.

In the men’s freestyle 86kg, Deepak Punia is pitted against Nigeria’s Ekerekeme Agiomor, the African championship bronze medallist.

If the 2019 worlds silver medallist wins, he will be up against either China’s Zushen Lin or Peru’s Edinson Ambrocio Greifo, the 2020 Pan American silver winner.

Provided she wins, next up for her would be either Rio Olympics silver medallist from Russia, Valeria Koblova, or Mexico’s Alma Jane.

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