Ten persons were killed and rail, road and air traffic was disrupted in West Bengal as twin storms accompanied by rains lashed through the city on Tuesday night felling trees, uprooting electric poles and triggering house collapse.

Mobile and Internet services were hit with the storm snapping overhead wires and damaging mobile towers.

Of the ten persons killed, four each died in Kolkata and Howrah districts. One death was reported from Bankura and another from Hooghly following the twin norwesters that had gale speed of up to 98 km.

In Kolkata, two persons travelling in an autorickshaw died on Lenin Sarani near the city centre when a tree fell on the vehicle. One person was killed when a house collapsed in the Anandapur area in the eastern part while a pedestrian was killed when a tree fell on his head in Behala on the southern outskirts.

Three died in Belur and one in Dumurjola of Howrah district, state police control room officials told IANS.

One person died after being struck by lighting in Indus of Bankura district. Electrocution claimed one life in Hooghly district.

The metrological office said a norwester — seasonal storm common in this part of the world — with gale speed of 84 km per hour hit the city and other South Bengal districts around 7:42 p.m.. Another storm struck Kolkata and adjoining districts with a wind speed of upto 98 km soon after at 7:55 p.m..

The twin storms played havoc with the public transport system, as trams and trains halted on their tracks with the overhead wires snapping. Flight services were affected for 100 minutes at the NSCBI Airport as planes bound for Bhubaneswar, Delhi and Agartala took off late.

Suburban train services of South Eastern Railway and Eastern Railway went haywire as trains were stopped at various stations. In South Eastern Railway’s Howrah division, services were disrupted in Howrah-Bardhaman and Howrah-Tarakdewhar sections, badly inconveniencing thousands of passengers.

A flyover railing got uprooted and fell on platform numbers 19 and 20 of Howrah station. However, no one was injured.

Two mobile towers in Uttarpara and Hindmotor of Hooghy district gave way, throwing vehicular traffic off-gear.

In Eastern Railway’s Sealdah division, train movement was disrupted in various sections.

The Kolkata Metro Railway services were hit when a tee fell between Dum Dum and Noapara stations, as passengers got stuck in the tunnel.

(IANS)

With one in seven Indians at risk of contracting malaria and an unfortunate break in the “dramatic success” of the last decade, Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s commitment at the Commonwealth summit in London this week to beat the disease is eagerly awaited, say experts

“India is central to this achievement (eradication of malaria from Commonwealth countries). We look forward to hear the strategy India is working on to achieve its commitment of eliminating malaria by 2030,” said James Whiting, Executive Director, Malaria No More (MNM), UK.

Malaria is included as an issue in the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM) in London on April 19-20, which will be attended by Modi. A day before CHOGM on Wednesday, a Malaria Summit is being held to get political and financial commitments from the head of nations.

“We would also be looking forward to hear about the financing part of the Indian strategy to eradicate malaria,” Whiting told IANS. MNM is a global non-profit convening the campaign on behalf of the global malaria community and is registered as the Malaria Elimination Trust in India.

According to government estimates, it will cost Rs 10,653 crore to eliminate malaria in India by 2030.

India has the third largest burden of malaria incidence in the world after Congo and Nigeria. In India, Odisha is the biggest victim of malaria constituting close to 41 per cent of India’s malaria incidence as of 2016, the NGO said in a statement.

According to the World Malaria Report 2017, 60 per cent of global malaria deaths in 2016 occurred in eight Commonwealth countries and 90 per cent of the Commonwealth population (2.4 billion or two-third of global population) lives in malaria affected countries.

“The malaria campaign has seen a dramatic success in the last 10-15 years both in India and globally,” said Whiting, adding that there has been a fall of 60 per cent in global malaria deaths since 2000 saving nearly seven million lives.

In recent times, India has achieved remarkable progress in its fight against malaria as it has reduced its malaria burden by nearly half from two million cases in 2000 to one million cases in 2016, and malaria related deaths have gone down by two-thirds during this period.

However, for the first time in 15 years, progress towards ending the disease has stalled. The WHO’s malaria report confirmed cases and deaths are no longer falling. Malaria affected around 216 million people globally in 2016, an increase of five million cases over the previous year.

The MNM statement said: “Due to the nature of malaria, this fight can only go two ways: forwards or backwards. There is no standing still. We are currently on a cliff edge – continue to battle the disease or risk an acute and deadly resurgence.”

And, precisely for this the pressing decision the heads of Commonwealth nations, most importantly India, face is to either continue towards ending the disease with renewed financial and political commitments or put the hard fought progress in jeopardy.

A total of 24 members of the Commonwealth are actively tackling the disease, 20 have eliminated malaria and eight have never had malaria. Sri Lanka and Maldives have already eliminated malaria and Malaysia hopes to eliminate by 2020, the MNM said.

“The Malaria Summit 2018 will discuss on the amount of money required to eliminate malaria and the smart new ways of spending that money including new ways of gathering the data. Tomorrow’s summit will be attended by 16 heads of state,” said Whiting.

(IANS)

With Karnataka heading for the polls in May, Facebook has announced a third-party fact-checking programme in the state to fight spread of fake news on its platform.

The social media giant on Tuesday partnered with BOOM, an independent digital journalism initiative, for a pilot programme that will first roll out in the southern state.

Karnataka goes to election on May 12, and the counting of votes will take place on May 15.

“Starting today, BOOM, certified through the International Fact-Checking Network, non-partisan international fact checking network at Poynter, will be able to review English language news stories flagged on Facebook, check facts, and rate their accuracy,” Facebook said in a blog post.

Facebook has 217 million monthly active users in India.

“We are beginning small and know it is important to learn from this test and listen to our community as we continue to update ways for people to understand what might be false news in their News Feed,” it added.

Once a story is rated as false, Facebook has learned to reduce its distribution by 80 per cent.

“When a fact-checker rates a story as false, we will show it lower in News Feed, significantly reducing its distribution. This, in turn, stops the hoax from spreading and reduces the number of people who see it,” Facebook said.

Pages and domains that repeatedly share false news will also see their distribution reduced and their ability to monetise and advertise removed.

If the third-party fact-checkers write articles debunking a false news story, Facebook will show it in “Related Articles” immediately below the story in News Feed.

“We’ll also send people and Page Admins notifications if they try to share a story or have shared one in the past that’s been determined to be false,” Facebook noted.

According to Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, it is important to make sure no one interferes in any more elections, including in India.

“Our goals are to understand Facebook’s impact on upcoming elections — like Brazil, India, Mexico and the US midterms — and to inform our future product and policy decisions,” he said while testifying before the US Congress last week.

“The most important thing I care about right now is making sure no one interferes in the various 2018 elections around the world,” he told a panel of 44 Senators.

Zuckerberg said Facebook will ensure that its platform is not misused to influence elections in India and elsewhere.

Amid nationwide outrage over the recent cases of crime against women, a statement by a lawyer proves exactly why situation in the country is not going to change soon.

As hearings in the Kathua rape case are underway, several revelations seem to be taking place on daily basis. Recently, the defence counsel, representing five of the eight accused in the case, has not only raised questions on the probe conducted by the Jammu and Kashmir police but also questioned the capability of the senior investigating lady officer stating that it was beyond her “intelligence.” As per reports, the defence counsel, Ankur Sharma said that the case was investigated by a woman who is also a new officer. He added, “She was misguided by someone.”
Ankur Sharma said that the police officers involved in the investigation and also the bureaucrats are nothing but the ‘puppets’. The following claims by the lawyer come in after the officer, Shwetambri Sharma, talked about the hurdles and problems she faced while investigating the brutal murder and rape of an 8-year-old Bakerwal girl. Reports suggest that the Kathua rape case took place in January and the chargesheet was filed by the police some three months later. Reacting to the reports of lady officer being threatened, the lawyer asked, “If she had faced so many hurdles why didn’t she inform her superiors about it?”

At least 21 members of a wedding party were killed after a mini-truck they were travelling in fell into the Son river in Madhya Pradesh’s Sidhi district, an official said on Wednesday.

The accident in which more than 20 others were injured, occurred late on Tuesday when the driver lost control of the vehicle while crossing the Jogdaha bridge.

The mini-truck crashed through the railing and plunged into the river.

The wedding party was en route to Bahari in Sidhi from Deosar in Singrauli district.

Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan has expressed grief over the incident.

The relief and rescue operations continued through the night. All bodies have been recovered. The injured were in hospital.

Alleging that the party had given prominence to money over sincerity, Bagepalli Assembly Constituency ticket aspirant and former MLA N Sampangi who missed the race to the ticket came down heavily on Congress high command and MP Veerappa Moily.

Addressing media people, Sampagi communicated his mistake about the party offering ticket to S N Subbareddy, who defeated Congress candidate in the last poll. “After overcoming CPM in a Gram Panchayat elections in 1998, we sorted out the party from village level. I filled in as KPCC General Secretary too. In any case, seniors didn’t think about this,” he included.

“At the point when Veerappa Moily needed to challenge to Lokasabha from this locale in 2009, after confronting three continuous defeats from Mangalore, we coordinated with him to save the party. In spite of the fact that numerous local leaders were against him, we worked for him. Subsequently, he got 26,000 votes from Bagepalli supporters. Subsequent to being chosen as Union minister he additionally said that ‘Sampangi gave me political resurrection following 14 years gap’. In any case, this is the thing that we got from him,” he said.

“There are no corruption charges against me. If the party cheats sincere Congressmen like us, there are many followers who believe us. The party can still change the decision, otherwise, I will discuss with the followers regarding the next step,” Sampangi said emotionally.

In a veiled attack on the government, Congress president Rahul Gandhi on Wednesday said that no matter what attempt is made to stall the development of Amethi, no one can stop his Lok Sabha constituency from becoming a world-class education hub.

Addressing a gathering after inaugurating a school here in his parliamentary constituency, the Congress chief also accused the Centre and state government for halting the progress of the state by taking away the big projects.

“After 10-15 years, when people would mention Singapore and California, they will also mention Amethi in the same breath,” Rahul said.
On Monday, Rahul Gandhi hit out at Prime Minister Narendra Modi while he was on a visit to a school in Amethi.

On being asked about the implementation of laws in villages by school students in Amethi, the Congress president had said that they should ask the same to the Prime Minister instead.

Rahul Gandhi kick-started his Amethi visit On Monday.

On his arrival at the Chowdhary Charan Singh International Airport in Lucknow, he faced protests from a group of party workers, alleging that the party had fallen to middlemen and demanded that the leadership should take action against such people.

Gandhi gave them a patient hearing and assured them of necessary action before leaving for Amethi by road.

There, he went straight to Shuklabazaar where he paid his condolences at the house of a party worker who passed away some time back. His cavalcade thereafter drove to Zainabganj where he met locals and party workers.

Rahul Gandhi also laid the foundations of some development projects. He met farmers and inaugurated a passport seva kendra, a road project, and a private school.

Documenting of nominations for the upcoming get-together race will start from today. As parties will begin issuing B structures and candidates start to hand over nomination papers,

The office of the state chief election commissioner has made elaborate preparations under the guidance of Central Election Commission.

The authorities have made courses of action to get nomination papers, scrutinize them, and allow withdrawals thereof. The commission has trained the officials about the legal intricacies of filing of nominations, how to discover arrangements if there should be an occurrence of lawful entanglements,

April 24 will be the last date for recording of nominations. Nominations papers can be documented on all working days with the exception of occasions, from 11 am to 3 pm. The commission, which was occupied with changing voters list, conveying of election staff, giving preparing and making mindfulness among voters, has now started to focus on nominations, election battles by parties and candidates, consistency with set of principles, overseeing of peace circumstance and guaranteeing smooth polling.

The nominations will be examined on April 25, and April 27 is the last day for withdrawal of nominations. Polling will happen on May 12, including of votes will be on May 15, and the whole assembly election process will finish up on May 18 according to the schedule reported by the commission.

Congress, which has released the list of 218 candidates until this point, and BJP, which brought out two records containing 154 names, will battle in the race. JD(S), which released list of 125 candidates in February itself, is yet to turn out with names of different candidates.

Congress, BJP and JD(S) have likewise started the undertaking of issuance of B forms to competitors. It is said that Congress will start issuance of B forms in a resort in the outskirts of the city from Tuesday.