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Congress seeks probe into TRAI releasing 1 mn e-mail IDs

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TRAI

New Delhi: The Congress on Tuesday asked the government to investigate as to why the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) put up on its website the names of over one million people who had written to it on net neutrality.

Raising the issue during zero hour in the Lok Sabha, Congress member Gaurav Gogoi said: “TRAI putting up the list of names and e-mail addresses of net activists on its website is akin to a bank making the account details of its customers public.”

“This will expose these net activists to hackers,” he said.

Gogoi asked the government to probe as to why and who in the TRAI had leaked the names.

TRAI on Tuesday released the names and email IDs of over one million people who gave their comments on the consultation paper on net neutrality.

Congress vice president Rahul Gandhi had last week accused the government of floating a “trial balloon” on net neutrality even as Communications and IT Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad said his regime was in favour of free and fair access to the World Wide Web.

Network neutrality, or open inter-working, means that in accessing the World Wide Web, one is in full control over how to go online, where to go and what to do as long as these are lawful.

It advocates that firms that provide internet services should treat all lawful internet content in a neutral manner.

(IANS)

Nepal quake toll could reach 10,000, govt on 'war footing' – Nepal PM

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nepal

Katmandu: The death toll in Nepal’s earthquake could reach 10,000, Prime Minister Sushil Koirala told reporters on Tuesday, ordering intensified rescue efforts and appealing for foreign supplies of tents and medicines.

“The government is doing all it can for rescue and relief on a war footing,” Koirala said in an interview. “It is a challenge and a very difficult hour for Nepal.”

A home ministry official put the latest death toll at 4,349. If the death toll does reach 10,000, that would be even higher than the 8,500 killed in a massive 1934 quake, the Himalayan nation’s worst disaster to date.

Koirala was abroad when the 7.9 magnitude quake struck on Saturday. He returned on Sunday. He has issued orders to his government to improve coordination of the relief effort and will address the nation later on Tuesday, an aide said.

Appealing for foreign assistance, Koirala said Nepal needed tents and medicines. Many people are sleeping out of doors because their homes have been destroyed or may not withstand the dozens of aftershocks that have hit the country, he said.

“The government needs tents, much medicine. People are sleeping in fields and rains,” he said. “There are more than 7,000 people injured. Their treatment and rehabilitation is going to be a big challenge.”

(Agencies)

RCB demolish Delhi Daredevils at Kotla

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RCB-IPL

by Arun Gopalakrishnan

New Delhi: Royal Challengers Bangalore’s bowlers won their team a match for the second game in a row after they dismissed the Delhi Daredevils for a paltry total at the Ferozeshah Kotla Stadium in Delhi. After winning the toss and opting to bowl first, RCB’s bowlers were relentless right through the innings and dismissed the hosts for 95 – the lowest total of Pepsi IPL 2015. The opening pair then knocked off the runs comfortably, taking the team home with 57 balls to spare. The 10-wicket win – as commanding as they come – propelled RCB to fourth in the points table.

Mitchell Starc struck first blood for the visitors in the first over when he dismissed Shreyas Iyer LBW. Varun Aaron conceded 21 runs in his first two overs as DD moved to 34 for one at the end of five overs. David Wiese, introduced into the attack in the sixth over, struck immediately when he had the DD skipper JP Duminy nicking one to the wicket-keeper.

Aaron returned to bowl the seventh over and struck two deadly blows by dismissing Yuvraj Singh and Angelo Mathews off consecutive deliveries. Yuvraj Singh chased a fairly wide delivery, bowled back of a length and at good pace, only for the ball to take the outside edge on the way to the keeper. Mathews was at the receiving end of a snorter; the Sri Lankan was taken by surprise at the pace and direction of the ball directed at him, was in no position to play the ball and ended up fending it to the man at short midwicket.

Opener Mayank Agarwal (27 from 34 balls) added 28 runs in the company of Kedar Jadhav, before his decision to step out against Iqbal Abdulla cost him his wicket; wicket-keeper Dinesh Karthik effected the stumping with the batsman way out of the crease.

From 67 for 5 in 12.1 overs, DD collapsed to 95 all out, adding only 28 runs in the next 6.1 overs. Kedar Jadhav, who batted at six, would be top-scorer in the innings with 33. The Maharashtra batsman faced 29 balls and struck four boundaries before he holed out to Starc at midwicket. There were ten balls remaining in the allotted twenty overs when Domnic Joseph was run out by a throw from AB de Villiers.

The RCB bowlers had a field day, and barring the first two overs bowled by Varun Aaron, there was never a let up in the intensity. Starc finished as the most successful of the bowlers returning figures of three for 20, while Aaron and Wiese returned with two wickets each. Harshal Patel and Iqbal Abdulla, who bowled a maiden over too, picked up one wicket apiece.

RCB’s run-chase was a mere formality given the target they were faced with. Though the first over produced only four runs, Chris Gayle cut loose in the second over hitting Domnic Joseph for a six and two boundaries. The left-hander kept his foot on the accelerator right until the field restrictions were eased, by which time RCB had raced to 50 for no loss; Gayle had 43 runs from 27 balls at that stage, while Kohli had contributed six runs from nine balls.

Kohli joined the party when Amit Mishra was introduced into the attack in the seventh over; he hit the leg-spinner for consecutive boundaries – one inside-out shot that raced to the cover boundary, followed by a whip to the midwicket.

Gayle brought up his half-century with a slog-sweep off Imran Tahir in the eighth over and remained unbeaten on 62 (40 balls, 6 fours and 4 sixes) when Kohli struck a straight-drive to take his team past the finish line. The RCB captain remained unbeaten on 35.

Brief Scores

Delhi Daredevils 95 all out in 18.2 Overs (Kedar Jadhav 33, Mitchell Starc 3-20) lost to Royal Challengers Bangalore 99-0 in 10.3 Overs (Chris Gayle 62*, Virat Kohli 35*)

Man of the Match: Varun Aaron, for his spell of 2 for 24

Guantanamo Bay detainee Shaker Aamer to be released in June

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shaker-aamer

Guantanamo Bay detainee and UK resident Shaker Aamer is expected to be freed in June, US government sources have revealed.

The UK has made repeated calls since 2007 for the release of the 48-year-old, who was born in Saudi Arabia but who has a British wife and four children in London, reports the Daily Mail.

Mr Aamer, who has been held at Guantanamo without charge for more than 13 years, is likely to be transferred to an undisclosed country over the summer, probably in June, along with up to 10 other detainees, a US government official said.

The official told AFP that the transfer will take place after a 30-day notice period to Congress, following a sign-off from Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter.

A total of 122 detainees remain at Guantanamo, 57 of whom have been deemed “releasable” by a review committee, including those slated for release this summer.

“The goal is to transfer all 57,” said Lieutenant Colonel Myles Caggins, a Pentagon spokesman. “We’re going to support the President’s mission of closing Guantanamo through transfers of detainees and prosecutions through military commissions,” he said.

US President Barack Obama has repeatedly vowed to close the prison at the US naval base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

According to human rights group Reprieve, which represents Shaker Aamer, he was volunteering for a charity in Afghanistan in 2001 when he was abducted and sold for a bounty to US forces.

Reprieve says he was then tortured, and eventually cracked, agreeing to whatever his captors accused him of doing. Satisfied with the confession of an abused and broken man, US forces took him to Guantanamo Bay in February 2002.

He cleared for release in 2007, but this process required no fewer than six US government agencies to agree that he had done nothing wrong, yet he still remained imprisoned.

 

Sudan's Bashir re-elected with 94 percent of vote

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Omar al-Bashir, who faces war-crimes charges, declared winner by election commission, extending his 25-year rule.

The Election Commission put turnout at 46.4 percent and denied widespread reports of low participation [Reuters]

The Election Commission put turnout at 46.4 percent and denied widespread reports of low participation [Reuters]

by Al Jazeera

Sudan’s Election Commission says President Omar al-Bashir has won re-election with 94 percent of the vote, extending his 25-year rule despite war-crimes charges and domestic rebellions.

The Election Commission put turnout at 46.4 percent and denied widespread reports of low participation.

Mokhtar al-Assam, the head of the commission, announced the results on Monday, saying reports of low turnout were “not accurate”.

The four-day vote began on April 13. Nearly 13 million people were registered to vote at nearly 11,000 polling centres. Polling stations in the capital, Khartoum, were largely deserted.

Bashir, who took power in a bloodless coup in 1989, is the only sitting head of state facing genocide charges at the International Criminal Court. The charges stem from the conflict in the Darfur region.

Railway launches mobile app for public complaints

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indian-railways

Bengaluru: A portal on Complaint Management has been launched by Railways in English and Hindi on Android platform.

The public complaints and suggestions are being monitored on a real time basis. Necessary instructions have been issued to concerned officials to finalize the complaints at the earliest.

Bonafide passengers can send their valuable suggestions also through this newly launched portal.

The Railway Mobile App has currently received wide publicity through Indian Railways and via social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter.

Minister of State for Railways Manoj Sinha has urged public to make use of thie app.

(Agencies)

Thirty-eight Indian cities in high risk earthquakes zones

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Representational image

Representational image

New Delhi: At least 38 Indian cities lie in high-risk seismic zones and nearly 60 percent of the subcontinental landmass is vulnerable to earthquakes. Barring rare exceptions, such as the Delhi Metro, India’s hastily-built cities are open to great damage from earthquakes.

The earthquake that devastated Nepal on saturday and jolted northern India, damaging buildings as far apart as Agra and Siliguri, was expected by geologists, who have warned of more Himalayan earthquakes caused by the growing pressures of the sub-continent grinding into the Asian mainland.

Very few buildings in India meet the standards prescribed in “Indian Standards Criteria for Earthquake Resistant Design” – first published by the Bureau of Indian Standards in 1962, the latest revision being in 2005. These are not enforced, so almost no one knows such earthquake-resistant standards and guidelines for home-owners exist.

The Delhi Metro is one of the few Indian structures built to withstand a quake. Many of the houses built in Bhuj after the Gujarat quake of 2001 are now earthquake-resistant. The rare building and high-rise may be designed for quakes.

But nothing has changed since 1993, when a relatively milder earthquake of magnitude 6.4 in Maharashtra’s Latur district killed nearly 10,000 people in what was considered a non-seismic zone. Most died because shoddily constructed houses collapsed at the first major shake, as they did in Gujarat eight years later.

The government of India today lists 38 cities in moderate to high-risk seismic zones. “Typically, the majority of the constructions in these cities are not earthquake-resistant,” notes a 2006 report written by the United Nations for the ministry of home affairs. “Therefore in the event of an earthquake, one of these cities would become a major disaster.”

The earth’s landmasses ride like gigantic rafts on “plates”, or sections of the earth’s outermost layer, the crust. These plates frequently slip and slide, causing earthquakes. We don’t feel the small ones. The big ones, literally, shake us up.

The Himalayas and north India are on particularly shaky ground. Sometime in the geological past, before humans, India broke off from an ancient supercontinent called Gondwana, a name still used for what is now Chhattisgarh.

The Indian plate skewed north, displaced an ancient sea, travelled more than 2,000 km – the fastest a plate has ever moved – and slammed into the Eurasian plate, creating the Himalayas.

India still grinds northeast into Asia at roughly 5 cm every year. The last significant – but not geologically significant – quake in this area was the 2005 temblor in Pakistan-administered Kashmir, which sits directly atop the clashing Indian and Eurasian plates. Around 80,000 people died.

About 60 percent of India is vulnerable to earthquakes caused by the great, northward grind of the Indian subcontinental landmass.

The only serious earthquake that modern India remembers is the temblor that killed about 20,000 in Gujarat in 2001. The 2004 tsunami, which resulted from the third-most most severe quake ever recorded, 9.3 on the Richter scale, occurred when the Indian plate slid with greater violence than it normally does under the neighbouring Burma plate, upon which rest the Andaman and Nicobar Islands.

It caused a 100-km-long rupture in the crust, thrusting the seafloor upwards and pushing up masses of water, setting off tsunamis that killed 230,000 people in 14 countries.

No Indian metropolis has witnessed a serious earthquake, although Delhi lies in high-risk Seismic Zone 4. Srinagar and Guwahati are in the highest-risk Zone 5, and Mumbai, Chennai and Kolkata lie in Zone 3. History serves a warning that a big one may come at any time. Those lessons come from Bihar in 1934 and Assam in 1950.

Although its epicentre was 10 km south of Mount Everest, the Bihar earthquake of 1934 was felt from Mumbai to Lhasa, flattening almost all major buildings in many Bihar districts and damaging many in Calcutta, now Kolkata. At 8.4 on the Richter scale, it was pretty severe, killing more than 8,100 (Mahatma Gandhi said it was punishment for the sin of untouchability).

The 1950 Assam earthquake may have geologically set the stage for a really big one in the Himalayas, according to geologists. Now that 65 years have passed, it may be time for a big one.

(IANS)

CM slams TV channels for promoting superstitions and blind beliefs

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Photo: The New Indian Express

Photo: The New Indian Express

Hassan: Chief Minister Siddaramaiah has expressed concern over the telecast of programmes in many TV channels that promote superstitions and blind beliefs in people.

Speaking at the 32nd State conference of the Karnataka Union of Working Journalists (KUWJ) here, he suggested presspersons to spread awareness about scientific reasoning among the public.

“Do you believe in the existence of ghosts even in the 21st century?,” he asked the presspersons and said the role of the media was to promote scientific reasoning among people. “If you provide undue importance to soothsayers, how can you bring about a change in society,” he asked.

In recent years, the media had been giving more space for imaginative reporting. “You are more interested in imagining what might have happened than what has actually happened. This is a bad trend and it affects both the media and the society. This cannot serve the media for long. People gradually lose confidence in media houses that attach undue importance to illusions and imagination,” he said.

In the pre-Independence era, newspapers used to focus on Freedom Movement. They played a major role in prompting the people to join the national movement. In the first two-three decades of post-Independence India, newspapers provided the much needed push for development programmes. “In recent years, however, corporate companies have taken over several media houses. Big companies hire journalists on a contract basis. In small organisations, journalists face many problems and hence they need job security,” he said and added that his government would soon launch a health insurance scheme for journalists and their family members.

A.S. Kiran Kumar, ISRO chairman, said that it was essential for journalists to keep updating themselves with the ever-expanding technology. “Nowadays, people access news through their mobile phones. This has become possible only because of the advancement being witnessed in communication technology. Media people should get used to the advanced technology to remain in the field,” he said. Veteran journalists and former presidents of the union H.S. Doreswamy, N. Arjun Dev, G.K. Sathya, Venkatesh and Gangadhar Mudaliar were felicitated. Information Minister R .Roshan Baig, Minister for Public Works H.C. Mahadevappa, Health and Family Welfare Minister U.T. Khader, Vijaya Karnataka Editor Thimmappa Bhat, KUWJ psresident N. Raju, Indian Federation of Working Journalists president K.Vikram Rao, Hassan Daistrict Working Journalists’ Association president Ravi Nakalgudu and others were present.

Hassan district Association of Working Journalists had organised an exhibition of photographs and cartoons. Photo journalists Ateek Ur Rahman, Janekere Paramesh, B.M. Ravish and Srinivas exhibited the photos taken by them. Noted cartoonist M.V. Shivaram displayed cartoons.

(Agencies)

CFI holds nationwide campaign against 'State terrorism'

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CFI

Kalaburagi: “How can you remain silent when government goes on killing own people?” was the question raised in the protest against State-sponsored terrorism and fake encounters organized by students belonging to different colleges under the banner of Campus Front of India. The protest marked the inauguration of the 5-day national campaign against State Terrorism.

Coming down heavily on the extra judicial killings, CFI National Secretary Talha Hussain Gulbargavi said fake encounters are a tool to oppress the marginalized communities. “It is used to subdue the marginalized people when all the other forms of oppression like black laws (UAPA, AFSPA etc) and other tactics like mental harassment and illegal arrest and torture fail to get the results. It is one of most gruesome form of State terrorism. It’s one of the fundamental duties of the state to   protect its citizens, but in case of fake encounters the state not just abdicates and fails the citizens those who trust it, but also acts as an enemy.”

In his presidential address, Karnataka State President of CFI Abdul Raheem Saeed remarked countless number of people is being killed in Border States where draconian security laws like AFSPA are in effect. A people’s movement should erupt against encounters that take place on suspicious occasions like either government is in some crisis and desperately in need of an issue to divert people’s attention or security agencies want more funds.

CFI SEC member Dr Suhail Naik said encounter killings are becoming a daily occurrence in our country. It has been a while since this new trend began that our police kill citizens in cold blood and fabricate stories labelling them terrorists afterwards. Muslims, Dalits and Adivasis are mostly the victims of these state sponsored murders. Such sporadic encounters are being staged at specific intervals in order to serve the vested interests of police and security agencies. The latest examples are the killings of 5 Muslim under-trails in Telengana and the massacre of 20 Tamil Dalit laborers in Andhra Pradesh. The government keeps parroting the police version that the youth who were found handcuffed and locked to the seat in the police vehicle were shot at because they tried to snatch guns and attack police, he said.

Students were also addressed by Bahujan Vidhyarthi Sangh Dist Coordinator JaiBheem Shinde. The programme ended with vote of thanks by Basith Arsalan, who said: “Being a vital part of society, students cannot sit idle in campuses.”

Nepal earthquake toll rises above 3,600

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Nepal_quake

Kathmandu: Rescue workers today intensified efforts to locate survivors trapped under tonnes of rubble of flattened homes and buildings in earthquake-hit Nepal amid concerns that death toll could rise from more than 3,600 with rescue teams reaching remote mountainous areas.

Racing against time, multi-national rescue teams with sniffer dogs and advanced equipment are desperately trying to locate survivors as hundreds of people are still missing.

More than 700 disaster relief experts drawn from the National Disaster Relief Force have been deployed by India.

In a statement, Nepalese police today said the death toll had risen to 3,617 people. That does not include the 22 people killed in the avalanche on Mount Everest.

Nepalese Home ministry’s national disaster management division said more than 6,830 people were injured.

1,053 people are reported killed in the Kathmandu Valley alone and 875 in Sindhupalchowk, it said.

Officials and aid agencies have warned that the casualties could rise as rescue teams reach remote mountainous areas of western Nepal.

“Villages are routinely affected by landslides, and it’s not uncommon for entire villages of 200, 300, up to 1,000 people to be completely buried by rock falls,” aid agency World Vision spokesman Matt Darvas said.

The blocked roads, downed power lines and overcrowded hospitals along with fresh tremors are hampering rescue efforts to locate survivors of the Saturday’s 7.8 magnitude quake that had its impact in several cities in Bihar, West Bengal and UP northeast India.

It was also felt in Southern and Western parts of India, China, Bhutan and as far as Pakistan and Bangladesh.

Officials said five Indians, including the daughter of an Indian embassy employee, were among those killed in the quake.

Tens of thousands of people were forced to spend the two consecutive nights sleeping in open in makeshift plastic tents barely shielding them from the pouring rain.

Earlier:

Nepal quake: Death toll crosses 3,200; sick and wounded lay out in the open

Kathmandu: Thousands of desperate Nepalese huddled under tents and sought scarce food and medical supplies on Monday, two days after a massive quake killed more than 3,200 people and overwhelmed authorities struggled to cope with the disaster.

The sick and wounded lay out in the open in the capital, Kathmandu, unable to find beds in the devastated city’s hospitals. Surgeons set up an operating theater inside a tent in the grounds of Kathmandu Medical College.

“We are overwhelmed with rescue and assistance requests from all across the country,” said Deepak Panda, a member of the country’s disaster management.

Across Kathmandu and beyond, exhausted families whose homes were either flattened or at risk of collapse laid mattresses out on streets and erected tents to shelter from rain.

People queued for water dispensed from the back of trucks, while the few stores still open had next to nothing on their shelves. Crowds jostled for medicine at one pharmacy.

High in the Himalayas, hundreds of foreign and Nepalese climbers remained trapped after a huge avalanche ripped through the Mount Everest base camp, killing 17 people in the single worst disaster to hit the world’s highest mountain.

A total of 3,218 people were confirmed killed in the 7.9 magnitude quake, a police official said on Monday, the worst in Nepal since 1934 when 8,500 died. More than 6,500 were injured.

Another 66 were killed across the border in India and at least another 20 in Tibet, China’s state news agency said.

The toll is likely to climb as rescuers struggle to reach remote regions in the impoverished, mountainous country of 28 million people and as bodies buried under rubble are recovered.

“The rescue workers are in a really bad shape. We are all about to collapse. We have worked two straight nights,” said home ministry official Laxmi Prasad Dhakal.

With so many people sleeping in the open with no power or water and downpours forecast, fears mounted of major food and water shortages. Across Nepal, hundreds of villages have been left to fend for themselves.

“There is no electricity, no water. Our main challenge and priority is to restore electricity and water,” Dhakal said.

“The next big challenge is the supply of food. Shopkeepers are unable to go in and open their shops. So people are facing difficulty buying food.”Several countries rushed to send aid and personnel.

India flew in medical supplies and members of its National Disaster Response Force. China sent a 60-strong emergency team. Pakistan’s army said it was sending four C-130 aircraft with a 30-bed hospital, search and rescue teams and relief supplies.

A Pentagon spokesman said a U.S. military aircraft with 70 personnel left the United States on Sunday and was due in Kathmandu on Monday. Australia, Britain and New Zealand said they were sending specialist urban search-and-rescue teams to Kathmandu at Nepal’s request.

Britain, which believes several hundred of its nationals are in Nepal, was also delivering supplies and medics.

However, there has been little sign of international assistance on the ground so far, with some aid flights prevented from landing by aftershocks that closed Kathmandu’s main airport several times on Sunday.

AVALANCHE TERROR

In the Himalayas, hundreds of climbers felt tremors on Sunday powerful enough to send snow and boulders cascading towards them. Another was felt early on Monday.

The huge and deadly avalanche on Saturday triggered by the earthquake caused panic at the Everest base camp, a sprawling “city” of tents from where mountaineers set off for the world’s highest peak.

“It was a monstrous sound, like the demons had descended on the mountain,” Khile Sherpa, a Nepalese guide, told Reuters, recalling the moment the avalanche hit.

He was one of the lucky few airlifted to the relative safety of Kathmandu but the disaster has underlined the woeful state of Nepal’s medical facilities.

Nepal has only 2.1 physicians and 50 hospital beds for every 10,000 people, according to a 2011 World Health Organization report.

“The earthquake has exposed that Nepal’s best public hospital infrastructure has crumbled at a time when it should serve more people in a hurry,” said Sarvendra Moongla, a senior surgeon at Bir Hospital’s Trauma Center in Kathmandu, which opened in February.

At the Tribhuvan University Teaching Hospital, bodies, including that of a boy aged about seven, were heaped in a dark room. The stench of death was overpowering.

Rajiv Biswas, Asia Pacific chief economist at business research firm IHS, said long-term reconstruction costs in Nepal using proper building standards for an earthquake zone could be more than $5 billion, or around 20 percent of the country’s GDP.

“With housing construction standards in Nepal being extremely low … the impact of the earthquake has been devastating based on initial reports,” he said in an early analysis of the likely damage.

In crowded Kathmandu, many buildings were flattened or badly damaged.

Among the capital’s landmarks destroyed in the earthquake was the 60-metre (200-foot) Dharahara Tower, built in 1832 for the queen of Nepal.

(Agencies)

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