Odisha chief minister Naveen Patnaik had on Tuesday sent a letter to the Election Commission requesting withdrawal of the MCC from all coastal districts to make it easier for the government to handle the impending cyclonic storm "Fani" in the state.
'The PM of India was 20 km away from the Pakistan border and he is one of the persons under extreme threat from that country and they put his life in danger.'
The extremely severe cyclonic storm, which made landfall at Puri on Friday, unleashed copious rain and windstorm that gusted up to 200 kmph, blowing away thatched roofs of houses, swamped towns and villages, before weakening and entering West Bengal
Torrential rains in north Gujarat have caused flood in Banaskantha and Patan districts.
The massive earthquake in Sichuan struck at 9:19 pm (local time) on Tuesday and the epicentre was monitored at a depth of 20 km, state-run Xinhua new agency reported.
The Union Health ministry put the number of positive cases at 82, eight more since Thursday night, which includes the woman and a 76-year-old man from Karnataka who became the country's first coronavirus fatality besides 17 foreign nationals, Health Ministry officials said.
'The handling of the pandemic, under this totally constitutional and legal three-level dictatorship, has begun to show its downside,' observes Shekhar Gupta.
'A setback in UP will be nothing short of a political disaster on the eve of the 2024 general election.' 'Will it mean that Modi will be able to stay in his new house only for a year after it becomes ready?' asks Amulya Ganguli.
Teams of the National Disaster Response Force started landing in Gujarat with the help of the Indian Air Force to undertake preventive evacuation of people living on the west coast, an IAF official said.
On Tuesday night, the Tamil Nadu chief minister decides that enough is enough, and throws a challenge to Chinnamma.
Heavy rains in the last three days triggered flash floods in parts of Bihar, where 41 people have died so far, and inundated large areas in Assam and North Bengal, paralysing normal life and snapping rail link to the Northeast from the rest of the country.
The situation in the state was 'extremely grave', said Vijayan, who spoke to Prime Minister, Narendra Modi and Home minister, Rajnath Singh, this morning seeking more central assistance for relief operations.
'We will see a kind of disaster which the country has not seen in the last 100 years.'
Finance Minister P Chidambaram told reporters after the meeting that the situation in Uttarakhand is better than what it was on Tuesday and Food Minister K V Thomas is taking steps to rush more food grains to the flood-hit Uttarakhand and Himachal Pradesh.
At least 155 people have lost their lives and over 80 lakh people affected in fresh floods due to excessive rains in worst-affected Gujarat, Rajasthan, West Bengal and Odisha.
'China's opaque defence allocation processes are shrouded in mystery and have triggered security dilemmas among its neighbours and others,' notes China expert Srikanth Kondapalli.
The aid will directly benefit 25,000 people from some of the worst hit areas of the state, adding a humanitarian expert from the European Civil Protection and Humanitarian Operations has also been deployed to assess the situation in the state.
Flash floods triggered by incessant rains have claimed 26 lives in Gujarat in the past 48 hours while four lives have been lost in Rajasthan, authorities said on Wednesday.
The Delhi government had been forced to impose lockdown amid a steep rise in COVID-19 cases on April 20. Although, the cases have come down and positivity rate has reduced from the high of 35 per cent on April 26 to around 23 per cent now, but strictness is needed.
The Supreme Court on Friday said "a calamity and disaster" as huge as the one witnessed in Jammu and Kashmir floods "deserves national response" and asked the Centre to apprise it on Monday on the urgent steps undertaken to accelerate rescue, relief and rehabilitation operations.
State government announced ex gratia for kin of those who lost lives.
Babu R was trapped in a mountain gorge without food or water for two days till the Indian Army rescued him in a daring mission.
Rains will continue to batter Tamil Nadu for the next seven days and the next 48 hours are "very crucial", the IMD has said.
Tickets have been snapped up in Japan, with over three million sold during the first domestic lottery last May. Hot demand for later sales also left many potential buyers disappointed. Organisers have repeatedly said the July 24 to Aug. 9 Games will go ahead as scheduled but with the rapid spread of the coronavirus bringing the sports world to a virtual standstill fears are growing the Olympics may be cancelled or postponed.
Is anyone in the BJP listening -- to what Nitin Gadkari had to say, but possibly left unsaid? asks N Sathiya Moorthy.
The police lodged a suo motu case against unknown persons in connection with their involvement in the mishap, a police officer said.
The number of people infected with COVID-19 in teh US climbed to over 140,000 and the death toll reached 2,475.
Racing against time, rescuers on Sunday waded through tonnes of rubble of flattened homes and buildings in Nepal to look for survivors of the earthquake.
As India logged a world record of over four lakh coronavirus infections on Saturday, Congress leader Rahul Gandhi said the entire world is shaken by what is happening here and accused Prime Minister Narendra Modi of "dropping the ball and throwing it to states" after prematurely taking credit for having "won against COVID-19" when the second wave was already underway. "Rely on yourself is the motto. No one will come to help you. Definitely, not the prime minister," Gandhi said, while alleging that the COVID-19 situation has gone completely out of control for the Modi government, and wondered whether it was their way of making the states and the citizens truly 'Aatmanirbhar'.
As India's international role expands, so must our capabilities, says Brigadier Gurmeet Kanwal (retd).
The stage on which the Jammu and Kashmir flood disaster played out is littered with protagonists, most of whom did not receive the attention they deserve, says Ajai Shukla
Prima facie it appears that fractured railway track is the cause of accident as per local assessment.
'All parties and the government acknowledge that there we are in trouble and there is more trouble ahead,' observes Aakar Patel.
Although the Malabar is a routine exercise which has been carried out for several years now, security experts attach a lot of traction to it in view of China's assertive behaviour in the South China Sea, observes Rup Narayan Das.
The decision to suspend the operations was taken after shutters of the Idamalayar and Cheruthoni dams, part of Idukki reservoir, were opened on Tuesday evening to release excess water.
It has been also revealed that V G Siddhartha had written a letter to the Board of Directors and employees of Coffee Day Enterprises, saying he had 'failed as an entrepreneur'.
'If the government was serious about co-opting the corporate sector meaningfully in the fight against COVID-19, it could have specified activities beyond cheque-writing,' notes Kanika Datta.
As Cyclone Hudhud is closing in on the Andhra Pradesh coastline and is expected to make a landfall near Visakhapatnam by Sunday afternoon, about 1.11 lakh people in five coastal districts have been shifted to safer places.
According to sources, all private offices will work from home and only government offices and essential services will be open.
Massive rescue and relief efforts were mounted by India and other neighbours in Nepal, as two powerful aftershocks today rattled the country, adding to the misery of Saturday's devastation in which the casualties soared to 2,400 people dead and over 6000 others injured.
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