Third and final phase of the civic polls in Kerala began at 7 a.m. on Monday in the northern districts of Kerala. Malappurram, Kozhikode, Kannur and Kasargod districts go to the polls, while the other 10 districts had polls on December 8 and 10. In the third and final phase, polls are being held to elect new office bearers in 354 local bodies for 6,867 wards. The fate of 22,151 candidates will be decided by 89,74,993 voters at 10,842 polling booths which is being manned by 52,285 poll officials. Despite the Covid cases showing a consistent hike, people were coming…
Author: Our Correspondent
Uttarakhand Farmers’ Group met Union Agriculture Minister Narendra Singh Tomar on Sunday and to say that they supported farm legislation. They said that the three farm laws enacted by the Centre in September will bring about revolutionary changes in the agricultural sector. “The farmers from Uttarakhand met today, understood the agricultural reform bills and gave their suggestions. I thank all of them on behalf of the government. The doors of the government are always open for the farmers,” Union Agricultural Minister Narendra Singh Tomar told media after the meeting. Farmer leaders at Uttarakhand assured the Union Agriculture Minister that the…
The day after the Delhi police arrested an 18-year-old man named Shoyab Khan on serious charges of impersonation, abduction and forced marriage of an underage child, new details of the case emerged. The case contributes to the already deteriorating condition of ‘Grooming Jihad,’ where sections of extremist Muslims specifically threaten non-Muslim women shielding their own identities. Shoyab is a resident of Mewat in Rajasthan, as mentioned. He used to be a fan of the girls on Facebook under the nickname of SK Sinha. In July 2019, the accused submitted a friend’s invitation to the 15-year-old suspect. They’re going to talk…
The Supreme Court is scheduled to hear a petition on 16 December seeking guidance from the authorities to immediately evict farmers who are protesting against three new farm legislation at several border points in Delhi, claiming that commuters are facing difficulties as a result of road blockades and the gatherings could lead to a rise in the number of COVID-19 incidents. According to the website of the supreme court, Chief Justice S A Bobde and Justices A S Bopanna and V Ramasubramanian will hear the plea filed by law student Rishabh Sharma, who has also sought instruction from the authorities…
The MP state government has accused the opposition Congress of “misleading” the peasants on the farmer’s issue. Now that the BJP has agreed to hold farmers’ conventions at the divisional and district level in the state, Minister of Agriculture Kamal Patel conducts ‘chaupals’ or meetings with panchayat members and others in various villages. Patel insists that the farmers in Madhya Pradesh are satisfied with these laws because they would benefit. As thousands of farmers from Punjab, Haryana, western Uttar Pradesh and Rajasthan, etc have taken part in ongoing protests along the border with Delhi, only farmers from Gwalior-Chambal Belt and…
With a daily increase of 30,254 in total cases, India’s tally of coronavirus cases has risen from 9,826,775 on Saturday to 9,857,029 – an increase of 0.3%. Death toll has reached 143,019, with 391 fatalities in a day. The eighth-most-affected country by active cases, third by fatality, and second by total and recovered cases, India has added 212,807 cases in the past 7 days. India now accounts for 1.78% of all active cases globally (one in every 56 active cases), and 8.87% of all deaths (one in every 11 deaths). Backwards from here, the last 1 million cases for India…
Ahead of Farmer’s ‘hunger strike’ declaration on 14 December at the Singhu border, Union Information and Broadcasting Minister Prakash Javadekar said on Sunday that the government’s doors are still open to farmers and ready to address their problems. “Government’s door is always open to have conversation with farmers on their issues. The procedure is continuously moving forward. The government is keeping proper monitoring of the current situation and ongoing developments,” Javadekar said. Javadekar’s initiative is also important at a time when farmers have announced their plans to extend their protests to the ‘pan-India’ scale, appealing to all sections of society,…
The Earth is going to witness a breathtaking meteor shower this weekend. This spectacular show — the Geminid meteor shower — is expected to go on till December 14. NASA has revealed that the shower will be prominently visible in the Northern Hemisphere. The best line-up is expected to turn up on the night of December 13, which will continue through the next day. Geminids are a trail of dust that left behind comet 3200 Phaethon, a couple of thousand years ago. They are mostly seen in the star constellation Gemini, hence the name. The comet is known to travel…
Scientists have developed a compact saliva-based mobile interface for rapid Covid-19 testing, which they say can produce results within 15 minutes without a resource-intensive laboratory test. The new technique outlined in the journal Science Advances combines a fluorescence microscope readout kit with a smartphone to detect viral load from a CRISPR/Cas12a assay. The latest test works as well as the well-established quantitative reverse transcriptase polymerase chain reaction.The new test works as effectively as the well-established quantitative reverse-transcriptase polymerase chain reaction method, the experiments in a small number of participants showed. “We believe this smartphone platform, a similar future application, offers…
Bharatiya Janata Party national president JP Nadda has tested positive for coronavirus. “On getting the initial symptoms of corona, I got the test done and the report came back positive. My health is fine, following all the guidelines in home isolation on the advice of doctors,” tweeted Nadda. “My request is, whoever has come in contact in the last few days, please isolate yourself and get yourself checked,” urged the national president. Recently, JP Nadda’s convoy was pelted with stones by TMC goons at Sirakol in Diamond Harbour area of South 24 Parganas district, where he had gone to address…