New Delhi: The cent per cent cut-offs of Delhi University colleges have left many aspirants who have scored above 90 per cent dejected and are now scouting for alternatives as they feel that their dream of getting admissions into DU might not become reality.

DU on Friday announced its first cut-off list for undergraduate admissions with prominent colleges like Shri Ram College of Commerce and Hindu College pegging the cut-offs at 100 per cent for various courses.

Bhavika, a Chandigarh-based aspirant, has 95.5 per cent in her best of four and wants to pursue BA (Honours) Economics from either Lady Shri Ram College or Shri Ram College of Commerce.

“Seeing the cut-offs, DU looks like a distant dream at the moment. I have applied under the ECA quota, for which the admissions will happen after seats under the various cut-offs are filled. There is a lot of time to go for that. As a backup plan, I have taken admission in Symbiosis Law School, Pune but DU is my first preference,” she said.

Her friend Ishita Mehra, who has scored 93.6 per cent in best of four, has taken admission in SD College, Chandigarh as a backup option.

“They should have held the central universities common entrance test for aspirants. I didn’t get enough marks and had there been exams, I am sure I would have scored 96 per cent or 97 per cent. I want to get into BCom(Honours) in a good North Campus college. I will wait for the remaining cut-offs but I won’t settle for a lesser college in DU,” she said.

Roshni Zahoor, a resident of Rataul in Uttar Pradesh, has 94.75 per cent in her best of four subjects and wishes to pursue BA(Honours) History at a prominent North Campus college.

“The cut-offs are quite high and I won’t be able to make it in the first list in the campus colleges. However, I am meeting the cut-offs in Deshbandhu College and Aryabhatta College. I will take admission in Deshbandhu College and then migrate to the college I want if I manage to meet the scores in any of the subsequent lists,” Zahoor said.

Riya Sharma, who has scored 94.8 per cent in her Best of Four, wants to pursue BSc (Hons) Biomedical Science, which is offered in three colleges — Acharya Narendra Dev, Bhaskaracharya College of Applied Sciences and Shaheed Rajguru College of Applied Sciences.

“At Bhaskaracharya, the cut-off for the course is 99 per cent while at Acharya Narendra Dev it is 97 per cent. I am meeting the eligibility at Shaheed Rajguru where the cut-off is 94 per cent. I will take admission to that college and wait for the cut-off at Acharya Narendra Dev to come down,” she said.

Another DU aspirant Prishya Jain, who has scored 98.25 per cent in best of four subjects, wants to pursue BCom Honours in Shri Ram College of Commerce and Lady Shri Ram College but the high cut-offs have put a spanner.

“I will wait for the subsequent cut-offs for these colleges. I have taken admission in a college in my hometown as a backup option,” Jain said.

The Delhi University Teachers’ Association treasurer Abha Dev Habib said students should not lose heart and wait for subsequent cut-offs.

Dr Babli Moitra Saraf, the principal of Indraprastha College For Women, said students should not be in despair even if they are not able to meet the cut-offs in the first list.

“The first and the second cut-offs are higher because colleges do not want to run the risk of excessive admissions. The rule is that everyone within the cut-off has to be accommodated irrespective of the number of seats,” she said.

Saraf added that there are many colleges and universities in Delhi like the Indraprastha University and Ambedkar University.

Lima: Indian shooters claimed the gold medal in the women’s skeet team event and the bronze in the men’s team finals of the ISSF Junior World Championship here.

The trio of Areeba Khan, Raiza Dhillon and Ganemat Sekhon finished at the top of the podium in the women’s event after shooting an aggregate score of 6.

In the gold medal round on Friday, the Indian women were pitted against the Italian team of Damiana Paolacci, Sara Bongini and Giada Longhi.

In the men’s section, the Indian team of Rajveer Gill, Ayush Rudraraju and Abhay Singh Sekhon won the bronze medal after prevailing over Turkey’s Ali Can Arabaci, Ahmet Baran and Muhammet Seyhun Kaya 6-0, the same’s scoreline as the women’s gold medal contest.

A day earlier, rising Indian woman skeet shooter Sekhon had won the silver medal in the tournament’s individual women’s skeet competition.

The Chandigarh shooter, who picked up her first senior ISSF World Cup stage medals in New Delhi earlier this year, went down in a shoot-off to American Alisha Fayth Layne, after both were tied on 46 hits in the 60-shot final.

In the men’s individual skeet none of the three Indians in the fray — Rajveer Gill, Abhay Singh Sekhon and Ayush Rudraraju — could make it to the six-man finals but they shone in the team event.

India are currently place second in the pecking order with two gold, three silver and two bronze for a total of seven medals in the tournament.

The USA tops the chart with seven medals including three gold.

This is the first multi-discipline shooting event since the Tokyo Olympics, with as many as 32 nations and nearly 370 athletes participating in the championship.

Abdulla Shahid

United Nations: President of the 76th session of the UN General Assembly Abdulla Shahid has said he had received the two doses of the Covishield vaccine manufactured in India, as have a large portion of other countries around the world.

The Covishield vaccine, which has been developed by British-Swedish pharmaceutical company AstraZeneca, is manufactured in India by Pune-based Serum Institute of India.

“On vaccines, that’s a very technical question you have asked me. I got Covishield from India, I’ve got the two doses. I don’t know how many countries would say that Covishield is acceptable or not, but a large portion of the countries have got Covishield, Shahid said at his first press conference here on Friday.

He was responding to a question on whether any COVID vaccine should be recognised and considered or the ones that have been validated by the World Health Organisation or any other group.

And I’ve survived. But let someone else, a medical person make that call, not me, he added with a laugh.

India has exported over 66 million vaccine doses to nearly 100 countries through grants, commercial shipments and the COVAX facility. The Maldives, home country of Shahid, was among the first nations to receive the India-made vaccines in January when 100,000 doses of Covishield were dispatched to Male.

In all, the Maldives has received a total of 3.12 lakh doses of Made-in-India Covid vaccines through grants, commercial shipments and the COVAX facility.

The UK had initially refused to recognise Covishield, manufactured by the Serum Institute of India. However, following India’s strong criticism of the decision, the UK on September 22 amended its new guidelines and included the vaccine.

However, the move did not provide any relief from quarantine rules for Indian travellers vaccinated with two doses of Covishield. Later, British officials said the UK has issues with India’s vaccine certification process and not with the Covishield vaccine.

Under the new British rules that are coming into effect from Monday, fully vaccinated Indians will have to undergo 10-day quarantine as the UK has issues with India’s Covid-19 vaccine certification.

India has decided to impose reciprocal curbs against all British nationals arriving in the country, official sources in New Delhi said on Friday, as the contentious issue relating to the UK not recognising Indian vaccine certificates could not be resolved despite holding a series of technical-level talks.

Shahid, who plans to convene a high-level meeting of the General Assembly in January to take stock of the global vaccination effort and equity, said the messages that he had received so far on vaccines in listening to world leaders at the General Debate, has been most positive from the United States, from China, from India, from many, many corners of the world, from the vaccine producers themselves 

And I intend to utilise the convening power of the President of the General Assembly to bring all of them together in January, and my desire is to make sure that we all come out of the January meeting with a much more optimistic timeline where hereby we will be able to vaccinate the entire world by end of 2022, he said.

Lucknow: The Uttar Pradesh government on Friday named actor Kangana Ranaut as the brand ambassador of its ambitious ‘one district-one product’ programme.

The actor met Chief Minister Adityanath at his official residence here.

The UP government has launched the one district-one product (ODOP) programme with the aim to create product-specific traditional industrial hubs across 75 districts of the state.

In a tweet , Additional Chief Secretary (Information) Navneet Sehgal said, “Famous actress Kangana Ranaut met…Chief Minister of UP, who presented her with an ODOP product. Kangana ji will be our brand ambassador for the ODOP.”

According to a senior official, the actor praised the works being done by the chief minister during the meeting.

The CM requested her to pay a visit to Ram temple in Ayodhya.

New Delhi: Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Saturday paid tributes to Mahatma Gandhi on his 152nd birth anniversary, saying his life and ideas will inspire every generation to walk the path of their duties.

“I bow to respected Bapu on Gandhi Jayanti. His noble principles are globally relevant and give strength to millions,” he added.

The prime minister visited Raj Ghat and Vijay Ghat, memorials to Gandhi and India’s second prime minister Lal Bahadur Shastri, respectively, to pay floral tributes to them.

He paid homage to Shastri on his 117th birth anniversary. His life based on values and principles will always be a source of inspiration for all citizens, Modi tweeted.

An interfaith prayer meeting was held at Raj Ghat, where Mahtma Gandhi’s favourite devotional songs were rendered.

Dubai: After eight years of planning and billions of dollars in spending, the Middle East’s first world’s fair opened Friday in Dubai, with hopes that the months-long extravaganza will draw both visitors and global attention to this desert-turned-dreamscape.

The coronavirus pandemic pushed back Expo 2020 a year and could affect how many people flock to the United Arab Emirates. But the six-month-long exhibition still offers Dubai a momentous opportunity to showcase its unique East-meets-West appeal as a place where all are welcome for business.

Not long ago, the site of the 1,080 acre (438 hectare) Expo was barren desert. Now, it’s a futuristic landscape buzzing with robots that dance and bark automated orders at bare-faced visitors to mask up, a new metro station, multi-million dollar pavilions and so-called districts with names like sustainability and opportunity” all built, like much of the Gulf, by low-paid migrant workers.

More than 190 nations are using their pavilions to spotlight their greatest tourist attractions, discoveries and ambitions.

The U.S. pavilion, paid for by the UAE after America struggled to come up with funding, boasts a replica of the Space X Falcon 9 rocket and takes visitors on a conveyor belt past multimedia infomercials for American inventions. It also displays a Quran that belonged to the nation’s third president, Thomas Jefferson, as an example of how religious freedom is woven into the very fabric of American society.

China’s vast, lantern-shaped pavilion focuses on the nation’s space ambitions and future invention plans, featuring a Transformer-like car that SAIC Motor hopes will function one day also as a submarine and helicopter.

Draped over Italy’s pavilion is 70 kilometers (40 miles) of rope made from 2 million plastic bottles. The main attraction, though, is a 3-D replica of Michelangelo’s biblical hero, David, made from marble dust. The 5.2 meters (17 feet) high nude giant is not easily accessible visitors must must enter separate floors of a building to view it at eye-level or peer up from its feet. Public nudity is outlawed in the UAE, where traditional Muslim norms largely prevail.

The UAE’s falcon-shaped pavilion, by far the site’s largest, takes visitors on a two-hour-long immersive experience through dunes of real orange sand and footage from the country’s 50-year history.

Other attractions include an African food hall, a royal Egyptian mummy, concerts and performances from around the world, and the option to dine on a 500 three-course meal with glow-in-the-dark cuisine.

Isabel Fu, 50, said she flew in for Expo all the way from Beijing to see the kind of changes that we’ll see in the future, the technology that makes us look forward to the next era. Upon her return to China, she faces 21 days of quarantine.

Since first making a splash in London in 1851, world fairs have long served as an opportunity for nations to meet, exchange ideas, showcase inventions, promote culture and build business ties.

For more than a century, these global exhibitions have captured the imagination and showcased some of humanity’s most important innovations. The first world’s fair held in the United States in 1876 debuted Alexander Graham Bell’s telephone, the typewriter, a mechanical calculator and Heinz Ketchup. One of its main buildings, Memorial Hall, is now a museum.

Other fairs introduced inventions like the sewing machine, the elevator, carbonated soda, the Ferris wheel and, in 1939 in New York, the television.

This year’s Expo is unfolding as the virus continues to course across the world, with untold numbers still working and studying remotely and connecting to the world virtually. It’s unclear how many visitors Dubai can attract, and how much the Expo will stimulate its tourism-driven economy especially in the blistering early autumn heat, which on Friday caused tempers to flare, some visitors to faint and most people to sweat through their shirts.

We’re dying! Humans can’t tolerate this weather, exclaimed 35-year-old Warda Abadi from Saudi Arabia as she shepherded her limping mother into the shade.

To enter the Expo site, visitors must show a negative PCR test or proof of COVID-19 vaccination.

Dubai’s ruler and the force behind the emirate’s transformation, Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, described Expo 2020 as a chance to showcase the best of human excellence.

It offers a platform to forge a united worldwide effort to build a more sustainable and prosperous future for all of mankind, he told guests at the Expo’s opening ceremony.

Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, crown prince and de-facto ruler of the UAE’s seat of power, Abu Dhabi, emphasized the ethos of this land as a meeting point for cultures and tolerance.

Whether Iran or Israel, every nation is welcome at Dubai’s Expo. The space marked on maps for Afghanistan’s pavilion, however, appeared vacant weeks after the Taliban takeover of Kabul.

It makes me very proud to see so many different kinds of cultures, countries and traditions coming to my country for the first time, said Isa Nuaimi, a 25-year-old government pilot from the Emirati city of Al Ain.

Human Rights Watch, however, said that the UAE’s efforts to promote itself as an open and tolerant country remain at odds with a raft of human rights abuses, including the suppression of peaceful criticism, jailing of activists and pervasive government surveillance.

The UAE has embarked on a decades-long effort to whitewash its reputation on the international stage, the rights group said.

The Expo site will attempt to dazzle visitors with a centerpiece dome, marketed as the world’s largest 360-degree projection screen.

Some world’s fair structures remain iconic markers of the human journey and our industrial evolution. None more so than the Eiffel Tower, which was constructed in Paris, not only to be the tallest structure in the world at the time, but to serve as the entrance to the 1889 world’s fair. The Space Needle in Seattle, Washington, built for the 1962 world’s fair, also continues to enjoy global prominence.

While most fairs were held in Europe and the United States, none have been hosted in the Middle East until now.

Mumbai: Veteran lyricist Javed Akhtar submitted in a court here on Friday that actor Kangana Ranaut’s petition seeking transfer of the criminal defamation case filed by him against her was “devoid of any merits” and aimed at delaying the proceedings.

Ranaut had last month filed the petition before the chief metropolitan magistrate seeking transfer of hearing into the complaint to another court, saying she had “lost faith” in the magistrate’s court as it indirectly “threatened” her of issuing a warrant if she failed to appear before it in a bailable offence.

In his written reply, filed through lawyer Jay Bharadwaj, Akhtar said “The present transfer petition is devoid of all merits and is liable to be dismissed at the very threshold.”

The same is only filed to delay the proceedings before the Andheri metropolitan magistrate’s court (which is currently presiding over the case), he said.

“The grounds mentioned in the present application were raised for the first time after more than seven months of summoning of the applicant (Ranaut) with the sole intent to delay the matter,” it said.

Multiple petitions filed by the actor against the magistrate court’s proceeding have been rejected by both – the sessions court and the Bombay High Court.

She had also filed a transfer petition before the Supreme Court. However, the petition had some defects and was declared “infructuous” for not following the required procedures, Akhtar said.

This clearly goes on to show that the present petition is an orchestrated tactic to delay the proceedings pending, it added.

The matter has been posted for hearing on October 18.

Akhtar (76) had filed the complaint in the court in November last year, claiming that Ranaut had made defamatory statements against him in a television interview, which allegedly damaged his reputation.

In his complaint, Akhtar claimed that Ranaut dragged his name during an interview while referring to a ‘coterie’ existing in Bollywood, following the alleged suicide committed by actor Sushant Singh Rajput in June last year.

Ranaut has also moved a counter complaint in the court against Akhtar for alleged “extortion and criminal intimidation” before the metropolitan magistrate court.

The actor in her complaint against Akhtar said following her public dispute with her co-star, the lyricist had called her and her sister Rangoli Chandel to his house with “malafide intentions and ulterior motives and then criminally intimidated and threatened” her.

As per the complaint, Akhtar had forced Ranaut to tender a written apology to her co-star.