At least 71 people have been killed and 127 others were still missing in floods and landslides triggered by the heaviest rains in Sri Lanka in over a quarter century even as an Indian aircraft and two naval ships arrived in Colombo on Saturday with relief supplies.
The staff and security personnel are performing their duties using mechanised and country boats to deal with any kind of eventualities, they said.
Three new categories -- all asymptomatic healthcare workers working in non-COVID hospitals/areas of COVID hospitals/blocks, asymptomatic frontline workers such as surveillance workers deployed in containment zones and paramilitary/police personnel involved in COVID-19 related activities -- have now been included.
An ex gratia of Rs 2 lakh will be given per person to the next of kin of those killed in the floods.
Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan said he ordered to stop the water outflow from the Bansagar dam so that the water level in the canal can go down, which will aid in rescue operations.
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
Tightening restrictions further in select urban areas to help prevent the spread of Covid-19, Tamil Nadu Chief Minister K Palaniswami on Friday announced a complete shutdown beginning Sunday in Chennai, Coimbatore and Madurai for four days, disallowing grocery shops as well and fully curtailing the movement of public. Also, Salem and Tirupur in western Tamil Nadu will be shut similarly, albeit for three days from April 26, and Palaniswami assured people that vegetables and fruits shall reach their doorsteps via mobile outlets.
After a long hiatus of more than 20 months, the government had on November 26 announced the resumption of scheduled international commercial flights from December 15.
In an order, Union Home Secretary Ajay Bhalla said buses shall be used for transport of such groups of stranded people and these vehicles will be sanitised and will have to follow safe social distancing norms in seating.
'Modi as chief minister did a superb job of rehabilitation after the Kutch earthquake of 2001. He can use that hard-earned expertise for the benefit of the people of Kashmir too -- but only if they let him do so,' says T V R Shenoy.
At least a dozen officers from Gujarat are handling key assignments in various important central positions
A devastating fire at a multi-storeyed building in Kolkata that claimed nine lives turned into the epicentre of a political slugfest on Tuesday, with the Trinamool Congress government and the Bharatiya Janata Party pointing accusatory fingers at the Railways and the state administration respectively, even as the bereaved families grieved at the loss of their near ones.
The hospital, in the commercial hub of Bandra-Kurla Complex, will serve as an isolation facility for non-critical COVID-19 patients. Expected to be ready in a fortnight, the new makeshift facility can be scaled up to 5,000 beds, if needed. The Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation will run the hospital that will have, among other things, oxygen facilities and pathological laboratories. Sohini Das reports.
More than 1.20 lakh Himachalis have already returned home in less than a week's time. There is a list of 21,000 others approved for return, and at least two lakh more are still awaiting official nod for their return. Will this influx see a spike in coronavirus numbers? That is the administration's main worry, reports Ashwani Sharma.
Releasing the 'Standard Operating Procedures', the ministry said that the period from October to December witnesses large gatherings for religious worship, fairs, cultural functions, processions, etc, and it is important that necessary preventive measures are followed for such events which may last a day, a week or more.
Rediff.com's Syed Firdaus Ashraf traces the journey of PM-CARES from its founding to finally admitting it is not a government fund.
In a zone-wise classification of districts in the country, the Union health ministry has designated all 11 districts of Delhi as red zone. The city has 272 wards.
'It is perplexing to see the leader of the First World with a first rate medical infrastructure come up short on its foresight to handle the pandemic,' notes Group Captain Murli Menon (retd).
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.
Banerjee said the state is targeting to shift at least 10 lakh people to safer places in a bid to avoid any loss of life.
Since the disastrous 2005 floods, that crippled Mumbai, little work has been done on disaster management and relief preparations.
'Tens of millions will be working from home for months at a time, which means the smartest brains in business will be focussed on creating more efficient WFH processes,' predicts Devangshu Datta.
A massive fire broke out on stage at an event for the Make in India week that's being held in Mumbai.
The 50 per cent capacity rule will not apply to offices dealing with health and other essential services.
A section of the over 50-year-old bridge on the arterial Diamond Harbour Road in south Kolkata collapsed on September 4 in which three people lost their lives.
This is the second time in a week that the Karnataka state capital is witnessing such severe waterlogging.
Responding to cyclone Hudhud, the armed forces have repositioned their resources to assist the civil administration to launch rescue and relief operations in the affected regions of Andhra Pradesh and Odisha.
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.
'When a person is capable of infecting 50 others, will you think about the privacy of the person or about protecting the lives of people?'
Cities are setting the rules that now carry life and death implications for their residents, and most of these rules are sought to be set by the municipal authorities who have never wielded such power, reports Subhomoy Bhattacharjee.
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.
'If a major earthquake of the kind that hit Nepal hits us in Delhi, 35 per cent of our homes would be destroyed.'
Chief Minister K Palaniswami announced a solatium of Rs 4 lakh to the kin of each of the victims
The panel will also recommend a fiscal consolidation road map for the central and state governments, study the impact of GST on the divisible pool, and propose performance-based incentives for states.
Hoping that the new state of Telangana will come into being by January, over a dozen Congress leaders from the region are said to be lobbying hard with the party high command for the chief minister's post.
Restoration of road and tele-communication network in the Kashmir Valley, ravaged by floods, will take three to five days. The Centre has directed free flow of transport via Manali and Leh to Srinagar, the only available surface network, a top central government official said on Monday.
The Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA), in its circular, had asked all employers to make payment of wages to their workers without any deduction for the period their establishments were under closure during the lockdown to contain COVID-19.
All educational institutions in Shimla and Kullu districts will remain closed on Monday as heavy to extremely heavy rains continue to lash the state, district officials said.
Top officers across various ministries participate in the meeting that started at 8 pm on Saturday. The meeting is currently underway. The country is currently witnessing a second and more severe wave of the pandemic.
Nepalese rescuers resumed their search on Monday for four persons still missing after a passenger plane with 72 people, including five Indians, crashed into a river gorge while landing at the newly-opened airport in the resort city of Pokhara, killing at least 68 people onboard.
