Fresh guidelines issued by the Union home ministry on Wednesday permit industries operating in rural areas to run from April 30 with strict social distancing norms.
Cyclone Nisarga slammed Maharashtra coast with wind speeds of up to 120 kmph, making landfall at 12.30 pm at Alibaug near Mumbai. The process was completed by 2.30 pm, a senior India Meteorological Department official said. Alibaug witnessed wind speeds of up to 120 kilometres per hour. It weakened into a 'deep depression' late on Wednesday evening, the IMD said.
After a brief suspension due to bad weather early in the morning, the rescue operations in rain-hit Uttarakhand resumed on Sunday on a war footing to evacuate 22,000 pilgrims still stranded in high altitude areas amid a MeT department warning of light to moderate rains in the region from Monday.
Alert to the looming threat from the 'Omicron' variant, states began to re-tighten curbs and urgently trace people who arrived from abroad in the last one month while a demand to not allow flights from the affected countries was made by Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal and Karnataka Chief Minister Basavaraj Bommai.
The chief minister said the Delhi government was implementing from November 19 its decision to reserve 80 per cent of ICU beds in private hospitals for COVID-19 patients.
'There's also a possibility of the cyclonic system changing its course, thus avoiding a landfall in Odisha'
The Indian contingent of more than 300 navy personnel was assisting in the relief, with divers searching the brackish waters and medical teams seeing patients in makeshift tents set up at shelters.
At least 200 people were killed and more than 1,300 others injured today as a powerful 7.5- magnitude earthquake -- the strongest in 10 years --rocked Pakistan, sending severe shock waves as far as Punjab and PoK.
Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister Y S Jagan Mohan Reddy announced an ex gratia payment of Rs 1 crore each to the kin of those killed in the incident.
'Not only have we rescued 1,700 fishermen but on the morning of November 30, we evacuated 1,044 fishing folk, otherwise the missing numbers would have been much higher.'
The South Central Railway as well as the East Coast Railway cancelled several trains while some were terminated midway, officials said, adding a few express trains were also diverted.
There has been a decline in foreign direct inflow from China in the last three years, with FDI coming down to USD 163.77 million in 2019-20, Minister of State for Finance Anurag Singh Thakur informed the Lok Sabha on Monday. Giving details of the total foreign direct investment (FDI) inflow from Chinese companies in India, he said, it was USD 350.22 million in 2017-18, while it declined to USD 229 million in the following year.
'The COVID-19 pandemic must push the military into a long-term reconsideration of its primary challenges.' 'There must be greater emphasis on humanitarian aid and disaster relief including the management of contagious illnesses and impending crises caused by climate change,' notes Ajai Shukla.
The cyclone is expected to intensify into a very severe cyclonic storm by Tuesday, a home ministry statement said.
Over 20,000 people have been displaced with officials warning the situation could get worse.
A day after the first Ebola case was reported in India, Health Minister J P Nadda on Wednesday said arrangements similar to the one at Delhi airport, which helped detect the virus in a man returning from Liberia, have been put in place at 24 airports and stressed the situation was under "complete control".
Heavy rains lashing Mumbai since Sunday have thrown rail, air and road traffic out of gear, with several trains and flights being cancelled. With IMD forecast of heavy rains for Tuesday, the authorities declared a holiday in the city and adjoining regions, asking people to avoid stepping out of their houses.
The army, SDRF and NDRF are assisting the district administrations in evacuating the affected population to safer places, the authority said.
The NDRF has engaged all its resources for rescue of those trapped under the debris of an under-construction bridge which collapsed in Kolkata.
On Thursday, eight coronavirus patients died in a fire at a private hospital in Ahmedabad.
In a minor relief for residents of flood-hit Chennai, the rains have stayed away for the last few hours.
Experts say poor city planning and inefficient administration turned an unusually high rainfall into a disaster.
Flight operations at the Mumbai airport were suspended for nearly half an hour as visibility dropped well below the required 550 meter-mark
'Did the government learn any lesson from the disasters of 2008, 1987, 1975?' 'Certainly not!' 'They are making people believe that the 2017 flood was unexpected, so no preventive effort towards reducing the loss of human lives was to be expected from the government,' says Mohammad Sajjad.
Today, half the lakes in Bengaluru are encroached upon.
Heavy rains pummelled Mumbai and its suburbs in which two persons died of electrocution and bringing normal life to a grinding halt on Friday with several areas waterlogged.
"As so far, 12 people died and another 125 were injured," China Daily reported.
Rescue and relief operations continued in full swing in Chennai with over a hundred people taken to safety by teams of Army, IAF and NDRF, including a seven-month pregnant woman who was airlifted on Thursday from one of the worst-affected areas in the flooded city.
The COVID-19 tests will be started at every polling station in the containment zones of Delhi in a few days
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A photograph of Kumar snapped while scurrying across the bridge with the child two days ago, has gone viral on the social media with people showering praise on him.
In an unprecedented measure, the Maharashtra government requested defence officials to arrange airlift of the stranded passengers of the 17412 Mahalaxmi Express.
As many as 108 flights cancelled and another 51 diverted to nearby airports.
Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan, who undertook an aerial survey of rain ravaged areas of Idukki and Wayanad, said Kerala was in the midst of an unprecedented flood havoc and the calamity has caused "immeasurable misery and devastation."
The floods that engulfed the state of Jammu and Kashmir have been unprecedented in its history. In fact, the deluge of rains suffered by the state was at par --- and in some case, far worse --- than what was witnessed in Uttarakhand in June last year.
In Chennai, rains are expected to start early Thursday morning and intensify gradually. Government schools in the city have been shut down for the next two days
The intensity of the impact increased as many cars parked along the wall inside the society too fell on the shanties, officials said.
Though no peripheral burning is taking place at the moment at the well's site at Baghjan, the company has declared an area up to 1.5 km radius as "red zone" to avoid any untoward incident and harm to the general public.
Thousands of people living in over hundreds of villages in different district of Bihar and Sahebganj district of Jharkhand state in India are facing serious threat to their health due to alarmingly high quantity of arsenic present in the ground water.
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