Telecom industry body COAI has approached the information technology ministry for removal of fake and misleading messages from social media platforms like Facebook, Whatsapp and Twitter linking spread of COVID-19 to 5G technology. The Cellular Operators Association of India (COAI), whose members include Reliance Jio, Bharti Airtel and Vodafone Idea, said the claims linking 5G with coronavirus are baseless as 5G networks have not yet been installed in the country and even 5G trials are yet to be started by the telecom operators. In a letter dated May 15 to MeitY additional secretary Rajendra Kumar, COAI director general S P Kochhar said: "To safeguard the national interest, we request your good office to kindly instruct all the social media platforms such as Facebook, Watsapp, Twitter, etc, to remove all such posts and misleading campaigns from their platforms on an urgent basis." People have been sharing audio and video messages on social media platforms in which 5G towers are being blamed for rise in casualties across the country even though none of the companies have installed 5G technology anywhere in India.
Railway officials also indicated that possible 'sabotage' and tampering with the electronic interlocking system, which detects the presence of trains, led to the Friday accident.
In the wake of 73 confirmed cases of coronavirus in India so far, the Union health ministry has made functional 52 laboratories for testing samples while 57 labs have been designated for helping in sample collection for Covid-19 to enhance capacity for diagnosis and detection of the disease. "Following the increase in load of screening samples from suspected cases with symptoms and travel history to the affected countries, the department of health research/ICMR has commissioned 52 laboratories for COVID-19 testing in India," an official said.
The Supreme Court on Wednesday granted bail to A G Perarivalan, serving life sentence in the Rajiv Gandhi assassination case.
"I used to say 'jab tak davai nahi dhilai nahi' but now our mantra for 2021 should be: Davai bhi, kadaai bhi (yes to medicine and yes to caution)," Modi said.
In a statement, the nonpartisan (CPD) confirmed on Friday that the second version scheduled to be held in Miamai, Florida, would be scrapped. The CPD said it was preparing for the next debate to held on October 22 in Nashville, Tennessee, less than two weeks ahead of the November 3 presidential election.
The number of people who have recuperated from the disease surged to 96,06,111, pushing the national recovery rate to 95.53 per cent, while the COVID-19 case fatality rate stands at 1.45 per cent, according to the data.
400 young Indians will make it to the prestigious National Defence Academy in Khadakvasla if they clear the NDA entrance exam on November 14.
Responding to a complaint by Right to Information activist Saket Gokhale, the commission said it has found no violation of the provisions of the model code in the issue.
The University Grants Commission (UGC) has asked vice chancellors of varsities across the country to 'encourage' students to take an online voluntary national-level exam to test their knowledge on 'gau vigyan' (cow science).
A special National Investigation Agency (NIA) court in Mumbai on Monday rejected the bail plea of human rights activist Gautam Navlakha, an accused in the Elghar Parishad-Maoist links case.
Politics, bureaucracy, ineptitude, double-standards and an attempt to politicise the fight in pseudo-nationalistic terms have all hampered the fight against this deadly virus, says Vir Sanghvi.
Food delivery apps Zomato and Swiggy reported a nationwide outage on Wednesday. Both the platforms witnessed technical glitches and were unresponsive for almost an hour. Downdetector, a platform that collects status reports from a series of sources, recorded about 3,619 reports of outage against Zomato at 2:05 PM and about 771 reports of outage against Swiggy at around 2:21 PM. According to the sources, the outage was caused by Amazon Web Services (AWS), a cloud-services platform, which runs both platforms. Though Swiggy and Zomato are working now, some customers reported that the issue has not been solved completely and they are not able to place orders and there are payment related issues.
The IOC chief said that holding events without spectators was clearly something the IOC did not want.
Suggestions have been invited from the public to improve the draft bill and July 19 is the last date for it.
'Has any prime minister spent so much time in one state holding election rally after rally?'
The Union Health Ministry has said in response to a Right to Information application that it does not know where records related to agenda circulated in meetings of the National Expert Group on Vaccine Administration for COVID-19 are held.
The additional director general of police (security), however, said in an order on Friday that the security personnel were 'being withdrawn on a purely temporary basis in connection with an emergent law and order duty'.
"Have you obtained the permission of the Supreme Court (which had upheld the NEET). Would it not amount to violation of the ruling of the apex court?" were among the questions raised by the first bench of Chief Justice Sanjib Banerjee and Justice Senthilkumar Ramamoorthy.
As some BJP pollsters concede, the Modi leadership's sweeping success in elections 2019, especially across central India, owed not to Hindutva ideology, but to welfare schemes, all of them borrowed from Tamil Nadu, reveals N Sathiya Moorthy.
Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman on Monday presented the Budget for 2021-22 in the Lok Sabha that is expected to provide relief to the pandemic-hit common man as well as focus more on driving economic recovery through higher spending on healthcare, infrastructure and defence amid rising tensions with neighbours, As India emerges from the COVID-19 crisis, the ninth Budget under the Modi government, including an interim one, is widely expected to focus on boosting spending on job creation and rural development, generous allocations for development schemes, putting more money in the hands of the average taxpayer and easing rules to attract foreign investments.
'Why he wasn't released, and why he had to die in custody?'
With elections elsewhere in India showing that multi-pronged contests usually work to the BJP's favour, the party can gain if it hangs on stubbornly. In the meantime, any additional support helps. That is why the archbishop's comment attracted political traction in Kerala, observes Shyam G Menon.
The move comes a day after China lifted the 76-day lockdown in Wuhan, where the pandemic originated. China's National Health Commission (NHC) on Thursday reported 63 new confirmed cases of the coronavirus, including 61 imported ones taking the total to 1,104 cases.
Bhagwat also expressed concern over Bitcoin and OTT platforms and asked the government to take efforts to regulate these things.
Four children died on December 30 while five on December 31, all mainly due to low birth weight, hospital superintendent Dr Suresh Dulara said.
The INS Jalashwa, the Navy's amphibious warship, reached Male on Thursday to undertake the massive repatriation mission named 'Operation Samudra Setu' (Sea Bridge).
India has declined assistance offered by the United Nations of its integrated supply chain for COVID19-related material, saying the country has a "robust system" to deal with the required logistics, a spokesperson for UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres said.
A UK Judge on Friday stated that the ruling in fugitive diamond dealer Nirav Modi extradition case will be made on February 25. The extradition trial of Nirav Modi has concluded today at Westminster Magistrates' court in London. District judge Samuel Goozee confirmed the timeline. Nirav Modi, who is wanted in India for allegedly defrauding Punjab National Bank (PNB) of an estimated $2 billion, was re-remanded on December 1 by a judge at Westminster Magistrate Court in London.
The Chief Election Commissioner pointed out that the exercise involved nearly 7.3 crore voters and over 1.06 lakh polling stations.
In its appeal, the doctors' body said the government should promote universal free vaccination to all above 18 years of age without leaving the vaccines to the extent of 50 per cent to the states and private hospitals.
Pollution is biggest reason behind the spike in COVID-19 cases in Delhi. We had situation under control until October 20, the CM said.
The real battle for NEET abolition can take much more time and energy, observes N Sathiya Moorthy.
Murthy, who currently is the top Indian-American advisor to President-elect Joe Biden on COVID-19, is a potential pick for the post of Secretary of Health and Human Services and Stanford University Professor Arun Majumdar for the post of Secretary of Energy, The Washington Post and Politico said in their reports on Tuesday that mentions a list of potential picks for various Cabinet-level positions in the Biden administration.
'Wherever in the world there is political instability, those countries are beset with severe crises today. But India is in a much better position than the rest of the world due to the decisions taken by my government in the national interest,' President Droupadi Murmu said in her address to both Houses of Parliament.
"As of now, there are no norms and regulations under the National Medical Commission to accommodate medical students, who were studying abroad and had to return to India midway, in Indian medical colleges in between an academic session," a health ministry official told PTI, on the condition of anonymity.
On Monday, around 5,000 nurses of the All India Institute of Medical Sciences in New Delhi went on a strike over their long pending demands, including those with regard to the Sixth Central Pay Commission.
On Tuesday, Modi will share his views with India Inc on 'Getting growth back'.
'The commission has taken a serious view of the laxity on the part of political parties and candidates, on the ground, in terms of maintaining crowd discipline'
The modus operandi for immunising the country's 1.35 billion population in stages has been thrashed out in more than one meeting among top government officials in the health ministry and the Prime Minister's Office.
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