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At Delhi’s current R-value, every COVID-positive person infects two others: IIT Madras

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NEW DELHI: Delhi’s R-value, which indicates the spread of COVID-19, was recorded at 2.1 this week, implying that every infected person is infecting two others in the national capital, according to an analysis by IIT-Madras.

The preliminary analysis by computational modelling was done by IIT-Madras’ Department of Mathematics and Centre of Excellence for Computational Mathematics and Data Science headed by Prof Neelesh S Upadhye and Prof S Sundar.

India’s R-value, at present, stands at 1.3, the analysis found.

Asked if it can be deduced that this is the beginning of the fourth wave of COVID-19 in Delhi, Dr Jayant Jha, Assistant Professor, Department of Mathematics, IIT-Madras, said it would be too early to declare an onset of another wave.

“We can only say right now that every person is affecting two others…. but we need to wait a bit to declare onset… we don’t know about the immunity status and whether the people who got affected during the third wave in January are getting affected or not again,” he told PTI.

For other metro cities — Mumbai, Chennai and Kolkata, Jha said the number of cases are too low to ascertain a trend.

Delhi is witnessing an uptick in the number of COVID-19 cases.

The city logged 1,042 fresh Covid cases with a positivity rate of 4.64 per cent on Friday.

The Omicron sub-lineage BA.2.12 has been detected in a majority of the samples sequenced from Delhi in the first fortnight of April and it could be behind the recent surge in COVID-19 cases in the city, sources said on Thursday.

However, an Indian SARS-CoV-2 Genomics Consortium (INSACOG) source has claimed that Omicron variant derivative BA.2.12.1 has also been found in a few samples in Delhi which is said to be contributing to the recent rise in cases in the US.

But officials have not confirmed that it indeed was found in some samples in Delhi.

An official source said, “New sub-variants BA.2.12 (52 per cent samples) and BA.2.10 (11 per cent samples) are showing high transmission and have been found in over 60 per cent of the total samples from Delhi sequenced recently.”

‘Propagandist’ newspaper distributed on train, alleges passenger; Railway initiates enquiry

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New Delhi: A “propagandist” newspaper distributed on board the Bangalore-Chennai Shatabdi Express has snowballed into a controversy, drawing political reactions and prompting the IRCTC to initiate an enquiry in the matter.

The IRCTC has admitted that the paper — “The Aryavarth Express” — was “unauthorised”.

The matter was raised by passenger Gopika Bakshi, a gender justice campaigner, on Twitter.

“This morning I boarded the Bangalore-Chennai Shatabdi Express only to be greeted by this blatantly propagandist publication on every other seat – The Aryavarth Express. Had never even heard of it. How is @IRCTCofficial allowing this?” Bakshi wrote on the microblogging site on Friday.

Congress MP B Manickam Tagore also questioned how such a newspaper found its way on board a train.

“Will Hon’ble Rail minister order an inquiry into it? Whether it’s the proved policy of the @RailMinIndia to allow propaganda material in the Shatabdi express? Will write and raise the issue in Loksabha.#IndiaAgainstHate,” he tweeted.

Another Congress MP, Karti Chidambaram, also questioned how such a newspaper got into the list of the publications subscribed by the IRCTC.

Sources said the IRCTC, the ticketing-and-catering arm of the railways, has approved Deccan Herald and one other local paper as the two publications to be distributed on board trains in the region. These newspapers are distributed on board by IRCTC licensees.

“We have ordered an enquiry into this and action will be taken against those found responsible. This paper is not among the IRCTC-approved publications,” IRCTC spokesperson Anand Jha said.

The divisional railway manager, Chennai said an enquiry in the matter is being conducted by the DRM Bangalore.

“The latest update is that DRM Bangalore is investigating the issue on how an unauthorised newspaper found its way into the train. We like to inform everyone that the train belongs to Bengaluru division and the incident happened there. We are sure they would take appropriate action,” he said in a tweet.

In a tweet later, IRCTC said the newspaper in question was found inside the regular, approved newspapers as an insert.

“The newspaper vendor has been strictly advised to avoid any such inserts in future. Onboard monitoring staff will keep a strict vigil of the same. The licensee of the train has also been counselled,” it said.

In a reply to the IRCTC tweet, Bakshi countered the claim made by the rail subsidiary, saying “it was not an insert – it was on my seat when I boarded. Deccan Herald was on the next seat”.

It may be a stray incident: CM Bommai on two students skipping exam for not allowing hijab-wearing

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It may be a stray incident: CM Bommai on two students skipping exam for not allowing hijab-wearing
Karnataka Chief Minister Basavaraj Bommai

Kalaburagi/Bengaluru: Karnataka Chief Minister Basavaraj Bommai on Friday termed as stray incident two students not appearing for the second PUC (class 12) exam after being denied permission to enter the examination hall as they were wearing hijabs.

“I’m not aware of it, it may be a stray incident. Our Education Minister will look into it,” the Chief Minister, who was in Kalaburagi district to attend BJP meetings, told reporters when asked about the girls not writing the exam after not being allowed to do so as they had the hijabs on.

Asked if the two students would be given another chance to write the exam, he said, “Whatever the Education Minister will say on this will be our (govt) stand.”

The two girls arrived at the exam centre by wearing hijab. They insisted that they be allowed to write the exam wearing hijab but the college authorities, citing the High Court order, denied them entry.

Later, the girls returned home.

As there is a ban on hijab or any cloth linked to religious identity, the authorities made arrangements at exam centres for the Muslim girls to remove their headscarves before entering the halls.

The girls who turned up at the examination wearing hijabs said they would remove them in the separate enclosure and wear them again after the exam is over.

The second-year pre-university examinations started in the State today amid tight security and in the shadow of the hijab row.

Niti Aayog VC Rajiv Kumar steps down: Report

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Niti Aayog VC Rajiv Kumar steps down: Report
Niti Aayog VC Rajiv Kumar

New Delhi: Niti Aayog Vice Chairman Rajiv Kumar has stepped down, sources said.

The reason behind his move could not be immediately ascertained.

Kumar, an eminent economist, took over as vice chairman of Niti Aayog in August 2017 after the then VC Arvind Panagariya exited the government think-tank to return to academics.

Kumar holds a DPhil in economics from Oxford University and a PhD from Lucknow University. He was also a senior fellow at the Centre for Policy Research (CPR).

Buttler hits his 3rd ton of ongoing IPL season to power RR to 222/2 against DC

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Buttler hits his 3rd ton of ongoing IPL season to power RR to 222/2 against DC

Mumbai: Jos Buttler smashed his third century in the ongoing IPL to power Rajasthan Royals to the highest team total of the season, 222 for 2, against Delhi Capitals here on Friday.

Buttler, enjoying the form of his life, smashed 116 off 65 balls with the help of nine boundaries and as many hits over the fence to lay the foundation of the imposing total in the company of Devdutt Padikkal, who hit 54 off 35 balls with seven fours and two sixes.

DC skipper Rishabh Pant’s decision to field first backfired big time as the duo of Buttler and Padikkal struck 155 runs in 15.5 overs for the opening stand.

After reaching 50 in 6.5 overs, the duo opened up. Buttler started slowly before picking up the pace and dealt mostly in fours and sixes against the DC spin duo of Kuldeep Yadav and Axar Patel to bring up his fifty in 36 balls.

It was raining fours and sixes for both Buttler and Padikkal as both the batters played confidently to deny success to DC bowlers.

Buttler looked in ominous form and was particularly severe on Yadav, hitting the off-spinner for two sixes and one four to pick up 18 runs from the 13th over.

DC’s spin attack cut a sorry figure as Axar and Kuldeep too leaked runs with Buttler and Padikkal going hammer and tongs.

Padikkal brought up his fifty in 31 balls with a boundary, cutting Axar behind square on the off side.

High on confidence after two centuries in the ongoing edition of the IPL, Buttler continued his onslaught, smacking in-form Kuldeep Yadav for two maximums in consecutive balls and a four in the 15th over.

Power-hitting was at its best display as Buttler, in particular, treated all the DC bowlers with disdain.

Padikkal soon perished, caught plumb in front of the wicket by Khaleel Ahmed in the 116th over as DC got their first breakthrough, albeit late in the innings.

Buttler finally got out in the penultimate over, holing out to David Warner at long-on off Mutafizur Rahman.

Towards the end, skipper Sanju Samson (46 not out off 19 balls) played a little cameo to help RR cross the 200-run mark and register the highest score of the season.

Brief Scores:

Rajasthan Royals: 222 for 2 in 20 overs (Jos Buttler 116, Devdutt Padikkal 54, Sanju Samson 46 not out; Khaleel Ahmed 1/47, Mustafizur Rahman 1/43).

Saudi Arabia greenlights Haj travel, India’s quota of pilgrims fixed at 79,237, say officials

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New Delhi: Saudi Arabia has informed India that pilgrims will be able to travel to that country for Haj this year and the Indian quota has been fixed at 79,237 pilgrims due to Covid limitations, Ministry of Minority Affairs officials said on Friday.

The Saudi government has also told the Indian side that only those aged below 65 will be able to travel for Haj this year, they said.

Minority Affairs Minister Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi said all preparations are in order for the pilgrimage and interviews for those deputed for Haj duty have also been completed.

RT-PCR test and two doses of vaccination are required by Saudi Arabia and all preparations have been made to facilitate the pilgrims, officials said.

This will be the first time since the outbreak of the Covid pandemic that pilgrims from India will travel to Saudi Arabia for Haj.

The Saudi side has informed India that the quota this year will be 79,237 pilgrims, officials said.

Out of these, 56,601 pilgrims will go through the Haj Committee of India while 22,636 will go through Haj Group Organizers.

In 2019, Saudi Arabia had increased India’s Haj quota by 25,000, taking the number of pilgrims from the country who can perform Haj to 2 lakh.

But because of the Covid restrictions and limitations, the quota of countries was reduced by Saudi Arabia, officials said.

There will be 10 embarkation points instead of the 21 in pre-Covid times. These are Delhi, Mumbai, Hyderabad, Lucknow, Ahmedabad, Kolkata, Guwahati, Srinagar, Bengaluru and Kochi.

Officials said this year over 5,000 women will be going for Haj without Mehram (male companion).

Digital Health Card, ‘E-MASIHA’ health facility and “E-luggage pre-tagging”, providing all information regarding accommodation and transportation in Mecca-Madina, will be provided to all the Haj pilgrims.

Arrangements for special training on Covid protocols as well as health and hygiene have been made in India and Saudi Arabia for the Haj pilgrims, officials said.

After getting bail in COVID violation case, D K Shivakumar attacks BJP

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After getting bail in COVID violation case, D K Shivakumar attacks BJP

Bengaluru: Karnataka Congress President D K Shivakumar on Friday said he has got bail in connection with a case filed against him and five other party leaders for a pro-farmers protest they had staged in January 2021, in violation of COVID-19 curbs.

He accused the ruling BJP of indulging in “politics of hate”.

“The protest was at Freedom Park (in Bengaluru) where over 10,000 people had gathered, while a case was registered against six people including me intentionally under the Disaster Management Act…it is a different matter that we have to respect the law. We had gone to the civil court for elected representatives and got the bail,” Shivakumar told reporters here.

Pointing out that no cases were booked against BJP leaders who violated COVID curbs, he alleged that “politics of hate” is being practiced, aimed at creating legal trouble for him and Congress leaders.

While Shivakumar was accused number one in the case, the others include state working presidents Saleem Ahmed, Eshwar Khandre, former NSUI president H S Manjunath, former Youth Congress president Basanagouda Badarli and party leader Shafiulla.

MP police bid to serve warrant to Sahara Group head Sahara Subroto Roy, wife fails

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BHOPAL:  A Madhya Pradesh Police team which went to Uttar Pradesh capital Lucknow on Thursday in search of Sahara Group head Subroto Roy and others, including his wife Swapna Roy, for executing a non-bailable warrant (NBW) in 14 cases of cheating, breach of trust and criminal conspiracy, will have to return empty-handed.

According to additional SP  Kamal Maurya, a team led by Datia Kotwali in-charge Devendra Sharma conducted searches at the Sahara India Group’s premises in the Sahara Estate and the Sahara India Tower in Lucknow, but couldn’t find any of the eight accused, including the Roy couple, in the cases.

Subsequently, the MP Police pasted the summons at both properties, asking the accused to be present personally with desired documents at the Datia Kotwali police station of MP’s Datia district on May 5.
The Sahara Group head, his wife and six other directors of the group are accused in 14 cases of alleged chit fund fraud. More than 2,000 investors of Datia district had reportedly lost money in the fraud. 

These cases were registered at the Datia Kotwali and Badoni police stations of Datia district in 2020, 2021 and 2022 and a local court in Datia issued NBW against the accused, after the notices issued by police asking them to cooperate in investigations met with no response. According to Datia police sources, the alleged cheating and fraud of the 2000-plus investors is worth over Rs 10 crore.

Ukraine war: Possible mass graves near Mariupol shown in satellite images

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New satellite images show what appear to be mass graves near Mariupol, and local officials accused Russia of burying up to 9,000 Ukrainian civilians there in an effort to conceal the slaughter taking place in the siege of the port city.

The images emerged Thursday, just hours after Russian President Vladimir Putin claimed victory in the battle for Mariupol, despite the presence of an estimated 2,000 Ukrainian fighters who were still holed up at a giant steel mill. Putin ordered his troops to seal off the stronghold “so that not even a fly comes through” instead of storming it.

Satellite image provider Maxar Technologies released the photos, which it said showed more than 200 mass graves in a town where Ukrainian officials say the Russians have been burying Mariupol residents killed in the fighting. The imagery showed long rows of graves stretching away from an existing cemetery in the town of Manhush, outside Mariupol.

Mariupol Mayor Vadym Boychenko accused the Russians of “hiding their military crimes” by taking the bodies of civilians from the city and burying them in Manhush.

The graves could hold as many as 9,000 dead, the Mariupol City Council said Thursday in a post on the Telegram messaging app.

Boychenko labeled Russian actions in the city as “the new Babi Yar,” a reference to the site of multiple Nazi massacres in which nearly 34,000 Ukrainian Jews were killed in 1941.

“The bodies of the dead were being brought by the truckload and actually simply being dumped in mounds,” an aide to Boychenko, Piotr Andryushchenko, said on Telegram.

There was no immediate reaction from the Kremlin. When mass graves and hundreds of dead civilians were discovered in Bucha and other towns around Kyiv after Russian troops retreated three weeks ago, Russian officials denied that their soldiers killed any civilians there and accused Ukraine of staging the atrocities.

In a statement, Maxar said a review of previous images indicates that the graves in Manhush were dug in late March and expanded in recent weeks.

After nearly two lethal months of bombardment that largely reduced Mariupol to a smoking ruin, Russian forces appear to control the rest of the strategic southern city, including its vital but now badly damaged port.

But a few thousand Ukrainian troops, by Moscow’s estimate, have stubbornly held out for weeks at the steel plant, despite a pummeling from Russian forces and repeated demands for their surrender. About 1,000 civilians were also trapped there, according to Ukrainian officials.

Ukrainian officials have repeatedly accused Russia of launching attacks to block civilian evacuations from Mariupol.

At least two Russian attacks on Thursday hit the city of Zaporizhzhia, a way station for people fleeing Mariupol. No one was wounded, the regional governor said.

Among those who arrived in Zaporizhzhia after fleeing the city were Yuriy and Polina Lulac, who spent nearly two months living in a basement with at least a dozen other people. There was no running water and little food, Yuriy Lulac said.

“What was happening there was so horrible that you can’t describe it,” said the native Russian speaker who used a derogatory word for the Russian troops, saying they were “killing people for nothing.”

“Mariupol is gone. In the courtyards there are just graves and crosses,” Lulac said.

The Red Cross said it had expected to to evacuate 1,500 people by bus, but that the Russians allowed only a few dozen to leave and pulled some people off of the buses.

Dmitriy Antipenko said he lived mostly in a basement with his wife and father-in-law amid death and destruction.

“In the courtyard, there was a little cemetery, and we buried seven people there,” Antipenko said, wiping away tears.

Instead of sending troops to finish off the Mariupol defenders inside the steel factory in a potentially bloody frontal assault, Russia apparently intends to maintain the siege and wait for the fighters to surrender when they run out of food or ammunition.

All told, more than 100,000 people were believed trapped with little or no food, water, heat or medicine in Mariupol, which had a prewar population of about 430,000. Over 20,000 people have been killed in the siege, according to Ukrainian authorities.

The city has seized worldwide attention as the scene of some of the worst suffering of the war, including deadly airstrikes on a maternity hospital and a theater.

Boychenko rejected any notion that Mariupol had fallen into Russian hands.

“The city was, is and remains Ukrainian,” he declared. “Today our brave warriors, our heroes, are defending our city.”

The capture of Mariupol would represent the Kremlin’s biggest victory yet of the war in Ukraine. It would help Moscow secure more of the coastline, complete a land bridge between Russia and the Crimean Peninsula, which Russia seized in 2014, and free up more forces to join the larger and potentially more consequential battle now underway for Ukraine’s eastern industrial heartland, the Donbas.

At a joint appearance with Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu, Putin declared, “The completion of combat work to liberate Mariupol is a success,” and he offered congratulations to Shoigu.

Shoigu predicted the Azovstal steel mill could be taken in three to four days. But Putin said that would be “pointless” and expressed concern for the lives of Russian troops in deciding against sending them in to clear out the sprawling plant, where the die-hard defenders were hiding in a maze of underground passageways.

Instead, the Russian leader said, the military should “block off this industrial area so that not even a fly comes through.”

The plant covers 11 square kilometers (4 square miles) and is threaded with some 24 kilometers (15 miles) of tunnels and bunkers.

“The Russian agenda now is not to capture these really difficult places where the Ukrainians can hold out in the urban centers, but to try and capture territory and also to encircle the Ukrainian forces and declare a huge victory,” retired British Rear Adm. Chris Parry said.

Russian officials for weeks have said capturing the mostly Russian-speaking Donbas is the war’s main objective. Moscow’s forces opened the new phase of the fighting this week along a 300-mile (480-kilometer) front from the northeastern city of Kharkiv to the Azov Sea.

While Russia continued heavy air and artillery attacks in those areas, it did not appear to gain any significant ground over the past few days, according to military analysts, who said Moscow’s forces were still ramping up the offensive.

A senior U.S. defense official, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss the Pentagon’s assessment, said the Ukrainians were hindering the Russian effort to push south from Izyum.

Rockets struck a neighborhood of Kharkiv on Thursday, and at least two civilians were burned to death in their car. A school and a residential building were also hit, and firefighters tried to put out a blaze and search for anyone trapped.

Elsewhere, Ukrainian Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk said Russian troops kidnapped a local official heading up a humanitarian convoy in the southern Kherson region. She said the Russians offered to free him in exchange for Russian prisoners of war, but she characterized that as unacceptable.

Vereshchuk also said efforts to establish three humanitarian corridors in the Kherson region failed Thursday because Russian troops did not hold their fire.

In the U.S., President Joe Biden pledged an additional $1.3 billion for new weapons and economic assistance to help Ukraine, and he promised to seek much more from Congress to keep the guns, ammunition and cash flowing.

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