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Agra: Four people were arrested here on Monday after they waved saffron flags at the Taj Mahal complex, police said.
The CISF personnel deployed at the historic place apprehended them after which they were handed over to police.
Tajganj police station Inspector Umesh Chandra Tripathi said three people waved flags at the Taj Mahal complex under the leadership of right-wing leader Gaurav Thakur.
Police have registered a case against them, he said.
Bengaluru: Three more people who returned from the United Kingdom have tested positive for the mutant strain of coronavirus, taking the total of such cases to ten in Karnataka, Health Minister Dr. K Sudhakar said on Monday.
He also said 75 people who returned from the UK were yet to be traced and the Home department and the city corporation authorities have assured to locate them soon.
“Thirtyfour UK returnees tested positive for COVID-19.
Mutant coronavirus is found in ten people among them and all of them are recovering in government hospitals,” Sudhakar told reporters here.
On tracing of the other returnees from the UK, where the new strain has been detected recently, he said three of them have given foreign addresses and efforts were on to reach them.
Speaking about the indigenously developed COVID-19 vaccine Covaxin, the Minister said it was a matter of pride for Indians as the country has developed vaccines in a record time ahead of many developed nations.
All the corona warriors will be administered vaccines in the first phase, the Minister said.
“I have personally spoken to the scientists involved in the research and development of vaccines and it is safe. This is a gift to the world by India,” Sudhakar said.
The Minister said the preparations were on to distribute the vaccine and private hospitals will also be roped in if required.
The Drugs Controller General of India (DCGI) on Sunday approved Oxford COVID-19 vaccine Covishield, manufactured by the Serum Institute, and Covaxin of Bharat Biotech for restricted emergency use in the country, paving the way for a massive inoculation drive.
Bengaluru: Underprivileged school children in rural Karnataka and Tamil Nadu are to get 100 tablets for distance learning.
For this, the Consulate General of Israel to South India has partnered with The Art of Living, a spiritual organisation.
With the COVID-19 forcing schools to switch to distance learning, children in remote areas with limited internet access experience a larger challenge than those in urban areas, the Art of Living said in a statement on Monday.
The partnership aims to enable teachers to lend support to these students and bridge the literacy gaps, the statement said.
The Consulate looks forward to assisting students with limited resources to navigate this academic year.
Commenting on it, Sri Sri Ravi Shankar of the Art of Living said, We welcome this first-of-its-kind partnership between the Art of Living and the Israeli government.
Online learning will reach marginalised students from vulnerable communities and help them a lot.”
The Consul General Jonathan Zadka said, “This partnership with a like-minded organisation allows us to share this view with our host country, India.”
“We pray that the pandemic situation will be over soon and that these children could go back to their education routine,” Zadka said.
Banda (UP): A Dalit family has left their home in a village here after they were allegedly beaten up and threatened with dire consequences by local strongmen for using a government hand pump, a family member claimed on Monday.
The police have booked three people in connection with the incident. However, they did not comment on the family’s claim of leaving their house.
A member of the Dalit family from Tendura village under Bisanda police station told PTI that on December 25, he along with his father had gone to get water from the hand pump. Some strongmen living in their neighbourhood beat him and his 80-year-old father with sticks for using the hand pump.
He claimed the strongmen also threatened to burn him and his father alive in their home.
The family member said they left their home because of the fear of the strongmen and are now living in a hut in a farm.
In an application to the superintendent of police, the family alleged that though the local police has registered a case, there is no mention of injuries sustained by the octogenarian father.
SHO of Bisanda police station Narendra Pratap Singh told PTI that it is a case of beating that is being investigated by the Baberu circle officer. On the basis of the complaint lodged by the family, a case has been registered against three people.
Washington: US President Donald Trump has nominated Indian-American advocate Vijay Shanker for the position of Associate Judge of the District of Columbia Court of Appeals.
In a communique to the Senate on Sunday, Trump said the nomination of Shanker is for a period of 15 years.
If confirmed by the Senate, Shanker will replace John R Fisher, who has now retired. The District of Columbia Court of Appeals is the highest court for Washington DC.
Trump had first announced Shaker’s nomination last June. Currently, he serves as Senior Litigation Counsel in the Department of Justice, Criminal Division, and as Deputy Chief of the Appellate Section.
Before joining the Department of Justice in 2012, Shanker was in private practice with the Washington, DC, offices of Mayer Brown, LLC and Covington and Burling, LLP.
Upon graduation from law school, Shanker served as a law clerk to Judge Chester J Straub on the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit.
Shanker completed his bachelors, cum laude, from Duke University and his Juris Doctor from the University of Virginia School of Law, where he served as a Notes Editor for the Virginia Law Review and was inducted into the Order of the Coif.
Mumbai: BJP MP Pragya Singh Thakur, an accused in the Malegaon blast case of 2008, appeared before a special NIA court here on Monday.
Thakur remained in the box reserved for accused persons at the back of the courtroom along with four other co-accused in the case, which is being probed by the National Investigation Agency (NIA).
On December 19, 2020, Special Judge P R Site had given “last chance” to Thakur to appear before the court. He had expressed displeasure over her failure to appear before the court twice last month.
Earlier, in 2019, the court had said the seven accused persons in the case, all of whom are out on bail, should appear before it at least once a week.
On Monday, Thakur and four other accused – Lt Col Prasad Purohit, Sameer Kulkarni, Ramesh Upadhyay and Sudhakar Chaturvedi – appeared before the court.
The two other accused – Ajay Rahirkar and Sudhakar Dwivedi – were absent.
One witness was also present in the court, but his cross-examination could not be done as the advocate for accused Dwivedi was not available.
The court posted the trial for hearing on Tuesday.
After the regular functioning of the court resumed in November last year, following easing of the coronavirus- induced restrictions, the court had directed all the seven accused in the case to remain present before it on December 3.
However, most of the accused, including Thakur, skipped the court that day, citing the pandemic situation. The court then asked them to appear before it on December 19.
Thakur again did not appear that day and her lawyer told the court that she was admitted to the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) in Delhi for treatment.
The court then directed Thakur to appear before it in January 4, and said this was the last chance given to her.
Thakur, who is the BJP MP from Bhopal, had last appeared before the court in June 2019 after it ordered the seven accused to remain present once a week.
However, she had sought exemption from appearance on various occasions since then.
The trial in the case came to a halt in March last year following the lockdown imposed across the country due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Last month, the special NIA court resumed the trial. So far, around 140 witnesses out of the total 400 have been examined.
On September 29, 2008, six people were killed and over 100 others injured when an explosive device strapped on a motorcycle went-off near a mosque in Malegaon, a town about 200 km from Mumbai in north Maharashtra.
The court framed terror charges against Purohit, Thakur and five other accused in October 2018.
The accused in the case have been charged under Sections 16 (committing terrorist act) and 18 (conspiring to commit terrorist act) of the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act (UAPA).
They have also been charged under Indian Penal Code (IPC) Sections 120 (b) (criminal conspiracy), 302 (murder), 307 (attempt to murder), 324 (voluntarily causing hurt) and 153 (a) (promoting enmity between two religious groups), and relevant provisions of the Explosive Substances Act.
New Delhi: The seventh round of talks between protesting farmer unions and three central ministers got underway here on Monday afternoon to break the over-a-month-long deadlock on recent farm laws.
Union Agriculture Minister Narendra Singh Tomar, Railways, Commerce and Food Minister Piyush Goyal and Minister of State for Commerce Som Parkash, who is an MP from Punjab, are holding the talks with the representatives of 40 farmer unions at the Vigyan Bhawan.
The meeting began with paying respects to the farmers who lost their lives during the ongoing protest, sources said.
On December 30, the sixth round of talks was held between the government and the farmer unions, where some common ground was reached on two demands — decriminalisation of stubble-burning and continuation of power subsidies.
However, no breakthrough has been reached so far on the two main demands of the protesting farmers — a repeal of the three recent farm laws and a legal guarantee to the MSP procurement system.
On Sunday, Tomar met Defence Minister Rajnath Singh and discussed the government strategy to resolve the current crisis at the earliest, sources said.
Tomar discussed with Singh “all possible options” to find a “middle path” to resolve the crisis, they added.
Thousands of farmers, mainly from Punjab, Haryana and western Uttar Pradesh, are protesting at various Delhi borders for over a month against the three laws. They have stayed put despite heavy rains and waterlogging at protest sites over the last couple of days, besides severe cold weather conditions prevailing in and around the national capital.
Enacted in September 2020, the government has presented these laws as major farm reforms and aimed at increasing farmers’ income, but the protesting farmers have raised concerns that these legislations would weaken the MSP and “mandi” (wholesale market) systems and leave them at the mercy of big corporations.
The government has maintained that these apprehensions are misplaced and has ruled out repealing the laws.
While several opposition parties and people from other walks of life have come out in support of the farmers, some farmer groups have also met the agriculture minister over the last few weeks to extend their support to the three laws.
Last month, the government had sent a draft proposal to the protesting farmer unions, suggesting seven-eight amendments to the new laws and a written assurance on the MSP procurement system. The government has ruled out a repeal of the three agri laws.
Beijing: Over two months after Chinese Tech Billionaire and Alibaba co-founder Jack Ma gave a controversial speech in October 2020, he is yet to make a public appearance, fueling speculations of him being “missing” across social media platforms.
Jack Ma, in a speech on October 24, criticized China’s “pawnshop financial regulators and state-owned banks.” He also called for a reform of China’s regulation system for stifling business innovation and likened global banking regulations to an ‘old people’s club’.
Jack Ma also did not appear for the final episode of his own talent show, Africa’s Business Heroes in November and was replaced by Lucy Peng, an Alibaba executive to judge the show. An Alibaba spokesperson had told Financial Times that Jack was unable to attend the final episode of the show as a judge due to the conflict in schedule time.
“Today’s financial system is the legacy of the Industrial Age. We must set up a new one for the next generation and young people. We must reform the current system,” Ma said in the speech. According to The Wall Street Journal, officials in Beijing dressed down Ma and suspended the $37billion initial public offering of his Ant Group on the direct order of President Xi in November.
Bloomberg noted that Ma was advised to remain in China after which an anti-monopoly investigation was launched into Ma’s Alibaba Group Holding on Christmas Eve. Beijing also ordered Ma’s financial tech company Ant Group to scale back its operations. The anti-monopoly investigation caused Alibaba’s shares to drop by a quarter since their peak shortly after the October speech, wiping more than $10billion from Ma’s fortune, Daily Mail UK reported. This resulted in Jack Ma landing in third place on the list of China’s richest people, behind Pinduoduo chief executive Colin Huang and Tencent Holdings’ Pony Ma Huateng. Ma now has an estimated current net worth of $63.1billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.
Reports speculate that Ma’s speech angered the Chinese government, which viewed his criticisms as an attack on the authority of the Communist Party. Ma’s business empire, Ant Group, has been under scrutiny by Beijing ever since the speech. Jack Ma was involved in charity work and has donated millions of face masks to Europe, the US, and the World Health Organisation in the backdrop of coronavirus. He also donated 2000 ventilators to New York hospitals.
Nelyadi: In a tragic incident of suicide, a young woman poured kerosene and set herself on fire at Nelyadi in the district.
The deceased young woman has been identified as Navya Joseph (21), daughter of V.J Joseph, resident of Nelyadi and owner of Nelyadi Naveen Interlock.
It is learned that Navya had completed her BBA degree from Mangaluru’s St Aloysius College in the previous academic year and was spending her day at home. On Sunday night, around 10.30 pm, she had retired into her room to sleep and the family found that the door to her room remained closed until 8 am on Monday. Alarmed by this, her mother tried calling her mobile phone, which went unanswered. Navya’s father, V.J Joseph then broke open the door and found that she had ended her life.
It is being said that Navya had allegedly poured kerosene over her body and lit herself on fire.
Uppinangady police, who visited the site of the accident have undertaken an investigation.
The investors have complained that they have been waiting for their returns for the last five years and the company has not been responding to their pleas.
BENGALURU: A new Ponzi scam has surfaced with four investors filing separate complaints against Chennai-based Vishwapriya Financial Services, whose seven promoters allegedly siphoned off investors’ funds before absconding.
The investors have complained that they have been waiting for their returns for the last five years and the company has not been responding to their pleas.
The police said that the company raised money by offering non-secured debentures.
So far, four investors have filed complaints at Girinagar and Siddapura police stations, saying that they have lost a total of Rs 1 crore.
More complaints are expected and the amount involved is likely to go up further, the police said.
DCP South Harish Pandey said that the FIRs name company officials Subramanian R, Narayanan R, Raja Rathnam, Raghavan T S, Srimathi, Rajendra Kumar and Sadananda P as the accused.
He said that the firm collected deposits from several people but did not repay either the interest or principal amounts as promised.
It is not like the I Monetary Advisory (IMA) scam of 2019, where chain link and commission-based transactions were done, he added.
A senior police officer from Girinagar police station said that two people, including a woman, filed complaints at the police station.
The company had a branch on MG Road, but was shut a few months ago, he added.
One of the victims, Indira, said, “I did not receive the interest for the deposit. When I enquired, the agents, who had collected the amount, told me that Subramanian and the other accused had swindled the money and had absconded.”