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by Nasheman
New Delhi: RJD leader and former Bihar chief minister Lalu Prasad Yadav was admitted to the emergency department of AIIMS, Delhi, on Friday, hospital sources said.
The veteran politician is learnt to be suffering from fever and is drowsy.
His condition is not serious and is stable. His blood samples have been sent for investigations and reports are awaited, a source said.
by Nasheman
New Delhi: Congress president Sonia Gandhi will address a public rally here on December 12 as part of her party’s drive against price rise and inflation.
The Congress president and the party have decided to draw the country’s attention to price rise and inflation’ by holding a massive “Mehngai Hatao rally” in Delhi on December 12, AICC general secretary K C Venugopal said.
The rally will be addressed by Congress president Sonia Gandhi and former party chief Rahul Gandhi and other Congress leaders from across the country.
“It will give a decisive warning to the present Modi Government to stop its loot and reduce the backbreaking prices. We shall continue our struggle until the Modi Government backs down,” he said in a statement.
The Congress leader said “Modi and ‘Mehngai’ have become the bane of people’s lives” and the unprecedented price rise and inflation have demolished the earnings, the household income and budget of every family in the country.
He said the people of India are suffering unbearable cruelty and untold misery on account of the BJP government-driven price rise and inflation.
The budget of every household bleeds, even minimum nutrition suffers and people are finding it difficult to buy and consume day-to-day food articles as also other consumables, he alleged.
“The Modi government remains oblivious to this insurmountable pain and suffering of people. Backed by a section of the electronic media, the only solution offered by Modi government is a divisive religious discourse or sporadic diversionary statements to reset the agenda from fundamental issues affecting the lives of the people,” he said in the statement.
The Congress has been protesting on the issue of price rise and inflation and have called for a check on them.
The Congress leader said the real issues affecting the people of India are the backbreaking prices of petrol, diesel and cooking gas, which have had a spiralling effect on the prices of all foods and other consumable items.
He said every home is affected by the merciless rise in prices of cooking oil, pulses and other food items and it is perhaps for the first time, price of tomato has surpassed the price of petrol and diesel in India.
He also alleged that price of construction material such as cement, iron and steel has seen a rise of nearly 40 per cent to 50 per cent.
by Nasheman
New Delhi: Bihar, Jharkhand and Uttar Pradesh have emerged as the poorest states in India, according to Niti Aayog’s first Multidimensional Poverty Index (MPI) report.
As per the index, 51.91 per cent population of Bihar is poor, followed 42.16 per cent in Jharkhand, 37.79 per cent in Uttar Pradesh. While Madhya Pradesh (36.65 per cent) has been placed fourth in the index, Meghalaya (32.67 per cent) is at the fifth spot.
Kerala (0.71 per cent), Goa (3.76 per cent), Sikkim (3.82 per cent), Tamil Nadu (4.89 per cent) and Punjab (5.59 per cent) have registered the lowest poverty across India and are at the bottom of the index.
Among union territories (UTs), Dadra and Nagar Haveli (27.36 per cent), Jammu & Kashmir, and Ladakh (12.58), Daman & Diu (6.82 per cent) and Chandigarh (5.97 per cent), emerged as the poorest UTs. Puducherry having 1.72 per cent of its population as poor, Lakshadweep (1.82 per cent ), Andaman & Nicobar Islands (4.30 per cent) and Delhi (4.79 per cent) have fared better.
Bihar has the highest number of malnourished people followed by Jharkhand, Madhya Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh and Chhattisgarh.
Bihar is also placed at the bottom when it comes to percentage of population deprived of maternal health, percentage of population deprived of years of schooling, school attendance and percentage of population deprived of cooking fuel and electricity.
Uttar Pradesh ranked the lowest in child and adolescent mortality category, followed by Bihar and Madhya Pradesh, while Jharkhand performed the worst when it comes to percentage of population deprived of sanitation, followed by Bihar and Odisha.
According to the report, India’s national MPI measure uses the globally accepted and robust methodology developed by the Oxford Poverty and Human Development Initiative (OPHI) and the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP).
Importantly, as a measure of multidimensional poverty, it captures multiple and simultaneous deprivation faced by households, it added.
The report said India’s MPI has three equally weighted dimensions, health, education and standard of living – which are represented by 12 indicators namely nutrition, child and adolescent mortality, antenatal care, years of schooling, school attendance, cooking fuel, sanitation, drinking water, electricity, housing, assets and bank accounts.
The Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) framework, adopted by 193 countries in 2015, has redefined development policies, government priorities, and metrics for measuring development progress across the world.
The SDG framework, with 17 global goals and 169 targets, is significantly wider in scope and scale relative to the Millennium Development Goals (MDG), its predecessor.
Niti Aayog Vice Chairman Rajiv Kumar in his foreword said, “The development of the National Multidimensional Poverty Index of India is an important contribution towards instituting a public policy tool which monitors multidimensional poverty, informs evidence-based and focused interventions, thereby ensuring that no one is left behind.”
Kumar further said this baseline report of India’s first ever national MPI measure is based on the reference period of 2015-16 of the National Family Health Survey (NFHS).
The national MPI measure has been constructed by utilising 12 key components which cover areas such as health and nutrition, education and standard of living, he said.
The report said the national MPI, an aggregate measure which defines poverty, in simple terms, as the deprivation in crucial and basic parameters of health, education, and living standards, is a significant departure from the way poverty has been understood and conceptualised historically.
“While this report is an indispensable first step in mainstreaming MPI, it is based on a dataset which is five years old. The success of numerous development interventions in the recent past have resulted in progress in key parameters on health, education, and standard of living,” it added.
In early 2020, the Cabinet Secretariat, Government of India, identified 29 global indices to monitor, analyse and evaluate with the aim of improving India’s position in global rankings.
Under this mandate, also known as the Global Indices for Reforms and Growth (GIRG) mandate, Niti Aayog was identified as the nodal agency for the Multidimensional Poverty Index (MPI).
by Nasheman
Jerusalem: Prime Minister Naftali Bennett said on Friday that Israel is “on the threshold of an emergency situation after authorities detected the country’s first case of a new coronavirus variant in a traveller who returned from Malawi.
The Health Ministry said the traveller and two other suspected cases, all of whom had been vaccinated, were placed in isolation.
A new coronavirus variant has been detected in South Africa that scientists say is a concern because of its high number of mutations and rapid spread among young people in Gauteng, the country’s most populous province.
At a Cabinet meeting convened Friday to discuss the new variant, Bennett said it is more contagious and spreads more rapidly than the delta variant. He said authorities were still gathering information on whether it evades vaccines or is deadlier.
We are currently at the threshold of an emergency situation, he said. “I ask everyone to be prepared and to fully join in the work around the clock.
Late Thursday, Israel declared South Africa and six other African nations to be red countries from which foreign nationals are barred from traveling to Israel. Israelis are prohibited from visiting those countries and those returning from them must undergo a period of isolation.
Israel launched one of the world’s first and most successful vaccination campaigns late last year, and nearly half the population has received a booster shot. Israel recently expanded the campaign to include children as young as 5.
But the country only recently managed to contain a wave of infections driven by the highly contagious delta variant.
Israel, with a population of more than 9 million, has reported at least 8,182 deaths since the start of the pandemic. It currently has more than 7,000 active cases, including 120 who are seriously ill, according to the Health Ministry.
by Nasheman
New Delhi: Scheduled international flights to and from India will be resumed from December 15, the Civil Aviation Ministry said on Friday.
Scheduled international flights have been suspended in India since March 23 last year due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
However, special international passenger flights have been operating since July last year under air bubble arrangements formed with approximately 28 countries.
In an order, the Civil Aviation Ministry stated: “The matter of resumption of scheduled commercial international passenger services to and from India has been examined in consultation with the Ministry of Home Affairs, the Ministry of External Affairs and the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare and it has been decided that scheduled commercial international passenger services to and from India may be resumed from December 15, 2021.”
by Nasheman
Kanpur: Tim Southee bowled an incisive morning spell to take five wickets which was then brilliantly complemented by openers Will Young and Tom Latham as New Zealand dominated India to reach 129 for no loss on the second day of the opening Test here on Friday.
The only highlight for India in an otherwise disappointing day was Shreyas Iyer’s (105 off 171 balls) debut hundred.
Playing his 80th Test match, Southee (5/69) took his 13th five-wicket haul on an unresponsive track to send India packing for 345 after they started the day at 258 for 4.
Young then held centre-stage in his fourth Test appearance as he looked composed and unperturbed during his unbeaten knock of 75 off 180 balls.
Latham (50 batting off 165 balls), the seasoned campaigner, survived three on-field decisions (two leg before and one caught behind), negated by DRS, and decided to frustrate the two Indian spinners with a gritty defensive game.
The Green Park track became better for batting on the second day and the turn that was on offer was minimal. The variable bounce wasn’t also there for the better part of the 57 overs that they batted.
Since it was slow turn, the Black Caps duo mostly plonked their front-foot and neutralised the turn. And when they played on the back-foot, there was enough time to manoeuvre on both sides of the wicket.
Both were able to adjust on the back-foot against Ravindra Jadeja (14-4-28-0) and Ravichandran Ashwin (17-5-38-0), both of whom didn’t look threatening on the day.
Also what made it worse for India was that hardly any delivery kept dangerously low, which could have brought the leg-before into the equation.
The most disappointing of all was Axar Patel (10-1-26-0), whose accuracy on the leg stump line was of little or no value and it was once again proved that without assistance from the track, he is not even half the bowler that he is with some help from surface.
Young, in particular, got as many as 12 boundaries while Latham helped himself to four hits to the fence.
While Indian spinners can come back on the third day if the pitch considerably deteriorates but New Zealand would like to take the game deep by getting somewhere close to India’s first innings total and take it from there.
In the morning, Iyer became the 16th Indian cricketer to score a hundred on Test debut but the home side’s lower-middle order caved in meekly save Ashwin (38 off 56 balls), whose counter-attacking effort took them close to 350.
The credit for that went primarily to Southee (27.4-6-69-5), who was tirelessly bowling an extended spell of more than 10 overs from one end, causing extensive damage. The seasoned campaigner’s 13th five-wicket haul came in his 80th Test.
Resuming on his overnight score of 75, Iyer followed the great Gundappa Vishwanath in reaching the milestone at this ground.
Ashwin did the bulk of scoring in the morning session as India added only 87 runs, losing six wickets in the process.
Southee was on target with the second new ball first up as he sent back Ravindra Jadeja (50) on his overnight score.
He used the width of the crease cleverly to trouble Jadeja and got the ball to move from length which was too much for the lower-order players to negotiate.
Wriddhiman Saha and Axar Patel nicked at those deliveries that moved away at drivable lengths.
Sensing that he is now batting with the tail as Saha (1 off 12 balls) is no longer a batter on whom one can repose his faith, Iyer hit a flurry of boundaries but the best shot was a cover drive off Kyle Jamieson (22.2-6-85-3) which took him to 96.
A glide towards wide of third man off Jamieson got him a double and the moment that every batter dreams of.
His century in India whites which would definitely increase the pressure on his captain for the game, Ajinkya Rahane.
Iyer’s innings had 13 fours and two sixes which showed that he was always looking at ways to score runs rather than merely surviving.
He was finally out for 105 when he tried to drive a slower one from Southee but it landed straight in the hands of the cover fielder.
by Nasheman
NEW DELHI: India added 9,283 new coronavirus infections taking the country’s total tally of COVID-19 cases to 3,45,35,763 while the active cases declined to 1,11,481, the lowest in 537 days, according to the Union Health Ministry data updated on Wednesday.
The daily rise in new coronavirus infections has been below 20,000 for 47 straight days and less than 50,000 daily new cases have been reported for 150 consecutive days now.
The active cases comprise 0.32 per cent of the total infections, the lowest since March 2020, while the national COVID-19 recovery rate was recorded at 98.33 per cent, the highest since March 2020, the ministry said.
A decrease of 2,103 cases has been recorded in the active COVID-19 caseload in a span of 24 hours.
India’s COVID-19 tally had crossed the 20-lakh mark on August 7, 2020, 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, crossed 80 lakh on October 29, 90 lakh on November 20 and surpassed the one-crore mark on December 19.
India crossed the grim milestone of two crore on May 4 and three crore on June 23.
The 437 new fatalities include 370 from Kerala and 19 from Maharashtra.
Of the 370 deaths, 57 were reported over the last few days and 313 were designated as COVID-19 deaths after receiving appeals based on the new guidelines of the Centre and the directions of the Supreme Court, a state govt release said on Tuesday.
A total of 4,66,584 deaths have been reported so far in the country including 1,40,766 from Maharashtra, 38,182 from Karnataka, 38,045 from Kerala, 36,401 from Tamil Nadu, 25,095 from Delhi, 22,909 from Uttar Pradesh and 19,407 from West Bengal.
The ministry stressed that more than 70 per cent of the deaths occurred due to comorbidities.
by Nasheman
NEW DELHI: The cryptocurrency markets in India recovered after falling by over 20 per cent in the early morning on Wednesday after the news that the government may present a bill in the parliament to ban most digital currencies in India.
Ethereum was trading at Rs 3 lakh after losing 9 per cent in the past 24 hours. Another popular cryptocurrency which is known for sharp movements – Shibu Inu – had fallen by almost 19 per cent in the past 24 hours.
The government is going to table the Cryptocurrency Bill in the winter session of parliament. The bill seeks to “create a facilitative framework for creation of the official digital currency to be issued by the Reserve Bank of India”.
However, the Bill also seeks to prohibit all private cryptocurrencies in India. It also allows for certain exceptions to promote the underlying technology of cryptocurrency and its uses.
The news has led to widespread panic among investors, many of whom rushed to pull-out their investments. As per reports, websites and apps of some crypto exchanges crashed after the reports of the bill became viral.
However, the recovery shows that there is still some doubt that the government may go on to ban all cryptocurrencies.
Sathvik Vishwanath, co-founder & CEO, Unocoin, one of the country’s oldest bitcoin trading platforms, says that there is no exact definition for private cryptocurrency, and it is anybody’s guess which regulator would define private cryptos.
“It could be one of multiple things. If it is managed by a particular founder or a company or a fund, we can call it private. Or whatever is not issued by the government, they could be called private,” he says.
Vishwanath feels that the agenda of the bill, which could not be tabled in the parliament in the last session, remains unchanged, and the same has come for reconsideration in the next session. However, he feels it is important to know the content of the bill and not the ‘unchanged’ agenda or title of the bill.
Subhash Chandra Garg, former secretary, department of economic affairs, ministry of finance, also has similar views. “Only the object of the Bill has been put out in the public domain, not the bill. It is going to be extremely challenging for the Government to ensure that it does not end up throwing the baby with the bath water,” he says.
He further says that cryptocurrencies don’t function and provide services as currencies only. “When you ban crypto currencies, what exactly do you ban or what are the permissible exemptions,” Garg asks. India is one of the major crypto markets with over 100 million investors. The year 2021 saw a sharp jump in the number of investors.
One of the crypto exchanges WazirX has recorded a trading volume of over USD 36 billion in 2021 with an average of 44 per cent month-on-month growth. The platform witnessed
by Nasheman
BEIJING: Fewer people are getting married in China in addition to the falling birth rates, hastening the demographic crisis in the world’s most populous country, according to an official data.
A total of 5.87 million couples got married in China in the first three quarters of 2021, down slightly from the same period of last year, according to the data released by the Ministry of Civil Affairs.
It is expected that the number of marriage registrations in China will continue to decline in 2021, state-run China Daily reported on Wednesday.
This is in addition to the falling birth rates.
The birth-rate in China last year was 0.852 percent, falling below one percent for the first time since 1978, figures from the China Statistical Yearbook 2021 book revealed.
As the demographic crisis deepened, China has permitted all couples to have two children in 2016, scrapping the draconian decades-old one-child policy and revised it this year permitting three children, which however drew a poor response.
The decision to permit the third child came after the latest once-in-a-decade census showed that China’s population grew at the slowest pace to 1.412 billion amid official projections that the decline may begin as early as next year.
Outlining the reasons for the falling marriage registrations, He Yafu, a demographic expert identified decline in the number of young people in China as one of the reasons.
The population of the post-80s, post-90s and post-2000s in China has been on the decline, he said, citing the National Bureau of Statistics.
Also, the desire of young people to get married has generally fallen due to reasons such as high work pressure and great improvement in women’s education level and economic independence, he told the China Daily.
Another major reason is the unbalanced ratio of male and female population.
In China, men outnumber women by 34.9 million as per the seventh National Census.
Among them, there are 17.52 million more men in their 20s than women of marriageable age.
In addition, the high cost of living, including soaring housing prices, is also a big obstacle to young people wanting to get married and have children, he said.
In China, marriage and childbirth are closely linked, and the proportion of children born out of wedlock is low, He said.
So the decline in marriage registration is bound to have a negative impact on the birth rate, he said.
Thus, remedial measures should be stepped up, He said.
Local governments’ reduction of housing costs for the young is one example.
To encourage young people to get married and have children, marriage and maternity leave should also be extended, He said.
The falling fertility rate, relatively early retirement age and the three-child policy have become a major concern for China as the country is greying faster than earlier predictions.
The number of people aged 60 or above has already touched 264 million, accounting for 18.7 percent of the total population.
The average annual elderly population growth has been about 6.3 million for 21 years, according to the latest census.
China will see even more rapid growth of its greying population and a significant transition in the population age structure from 2023, as about 10 million people will join the elderly population every year.
In fact, senior citizens are likely to account for 29.1 percent of China’s total population in 2036, the China Daily report said.
by Nasheman
MUMBAI: BJP’s Bhopal MP Pragya Singh Thakur, an accused in the 2008 Malegaon blast case, appeared before a special NIA court here on Wednesday.
She appeared before special judge P R Sitre, hearing cases related to the National Investigation Agency (NIA).
Thakur’s lawyer said that although the court had not summoned the MP, she appeared on her own as she was in Mumbai for her medical treatment.
The BJP leader had last appeared before the court in the case in January this year.
Seven persons, including Thakur and Lt Col Prasad Purohit, are facing trial in the case.
A total of eight witnesses have turned hostile in the case so far.
Six people were killed and over 100 injured when an explosive device strapped to a motorcycle went off near a mosque in Malegaon town in north Maharashtra, on September 29, 2008.
According to police, the motorbike was registered in Thakur’s name and that led to her arrest in 2008.
The Bombay High Court had granted bail to her in 2017.
She is being tried under the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act (UAPA) and other relevant laws.