‘Chief Minister had constituted 21-member committee headed by KDA chairman’ S.G. Siddaramaiah, Chairman, Kannada Development Authority, has said that the process of revising the Dr. Sarojini Mahishi Committee recommendations on providing jobs to Kannadigas has almost been completed and that it would be submitted to the State government in about a fortnight. Responding to questions from presspersons on Thursday at Goolyam, a Kannada-speaking border village in Kurnool district of Andhra Pradesh, Mr. Siddaramaiah said that the State government had constituted a 21-member committee, headed by the chairman of the authority, to revise the 32-year-old recommendations to suit the present day needs of providing employment to Kannadigas. “The committee, after a lot of discussion, had changed certain terminologies, so as to avoid legal hurdles, and was giving the final touches to the report. We will submit the report in about a fortnight with an appeal to the government to implement it as ...
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Delhi Lieutenant Governor Najeeb Jung put in his papers on Thursday, catching not only the state and central governments by surprise but even his own staff members. Officials said they had no inkling about Mr Jung’s decision until they were asked to convey the decision to the media through an official statement. A senior Home Ministry official said Mr. Jung would be required to continue in office till a successor is appointed. He took over as the L-G of Delhi from Tejendra Khanna in July 2013. A Raj Niwas statement said Mr Jung “would be returning back to his first love, which is, academics.” The L-G thanked Prime Minister Narendra Modi “for all the help and cooperation he received during his tenure as the Lt. Governor of Delhi.” He also thanked Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal “for his association in the last two years.” Mr Kejriwal called the resignation a surprise. “Sh Jung’s resignation is a surprise to me. My best wishes in all his future endeavours,” Delhi Chief Minister Arv...
About 45 per cent of all persons with disabilities (PWD) in India are illiterate, according to the India Social Development Report (SDR) 2016, whose theme this year is ‘Disabilities Rights Perspectives’. While 38 per cent of all male PWDs were illiterate, the illiteracy rate was 55 per cent for female PWDs. Interestingly, even in Kerala, a State long associated with near-total literacy, 33.1 per cent of the PWDs were illiterate. India’s literacy rate is 74 per cent. The report also found for that “each category of disability, a greater proportion of women in that category are illiterate than men, with 76 per cent of women with multiple disabilities being illiterate.” It estimated that of the 75 million children of primary school age who are out of school, “one-third are children with disabilities.” It called upon the State governments to ensure availability of minimum support such as accommodation, assistive devices and transport for the disabled children to complete their schooling. ...
The expedition was in tribute to martyrs of the 26/11 terror attack : It was exactly 3:56 p.m. on Thursday when the boat reached the Tannirbhavi beach in Mangaluru. Aboard it was a team of six tired, bruised and extremely happy swimmers, who walked onto the shore and into the open arms of hundreds of Mangalureans waiting eagerly for them. Amidst thunderous applause, the Sea Hawks stood smiling, having not only broken all world records in sea swimming, but also having accomplished their mission. The Sea Hawks, a mixed team of six servicemen and civilians, set their sights on the longest relay swimming expedition ever attempted as a tribute to the martyrs of the 26/11 attacks in Mumbai in 2008, as well as to the martyrs of the recent terror strikes in Uri and Pathankot. The team set off from the Gateway of India on November 26 and after swimming in a non-stop relay for 12 days, in which each team member swam for an hour, the Sea Haw...
A depression has formed over southeast Bay of Bengal and lay centred at about 1,320 km. southeast of Visakhapatnam at 2.30 p.m. on Tuesday. The system is likely to move initially west- northwest wards and then north-westwards in the next 72 hours. It is very likely to intensify into a deep depression during the next 24 hours and again into a cyclonic storm in the subsequent 24 hours, according to a spokesperson of the Cyclone Warning Centre (CWC) here. “Since the system is more than 1,300 km away south-southeast of Visakhapatnam, it would take at least three or more days to reach the north Andhra coast even if it travels at a speed of 300 or 400 km/hr... Heavy rain can be expected in parts of north Andhra and Odisha coasts on December 10” said the former Director of IMD, P.V. Rama Rao. Distant cautionary signal (DC-1), a type of storm warning signal, will be hoisted at Visakhapatnam, Machilipatnam, Krishnapatnam and Nizamapatnam ports and DC-1 with section signal no. 5 will be hoisted...
Chief Justice of India T.S. Thakur on Tuesday recommended the senior-most pusine judge in the Supreme Court, Justice Jagdish Singh Khehar, as his successor and the 44th Chief Justice of India. Justice Khehar, who led the Constitution Bench which scrapped the government’s National Judicial Appointments Commission law, will be the first Chief Justice from the Sikh community. He will be sworn in on January 4 and will hold the post for over seven months till August 27, 2017. Justice Khehar had also headed a bench which set aside the imposition of President’s Rule in Arunachal Pradesh in January this year. He was a part of the bench that sent Sahara chief Subrata Roy to jail, while hearing the matter relating to the refund of money invested by people in his two companies. He headed the bench that recently gave the significant verdict that the principle of “equal pay for equal work” must be made applicable to daily wagers and casual and contractual employees. He had recently said that the j...
Ousted Tata Sons chairman Cyrus Mistry has asked the government to intervene in the running of Tata Trusts, which hold majority stake in the holding company of the Tata group. Ahead of the extra-ordinary general meetings (EGMs) of Tata group firms, called to remove him as a director in those entities, Mr. Mistry also reached out to shareholders of six group companies to defend his position, spelling out why he should not be removed. Tata Sons, meanwhile, refuted Mr. Mistry’s allegations, stating that only “genuine selfless governance” had illuminated the path for the group in the past century. ‘Governance breakdown’ Seeking government intervention for alleged absence of an appropriate governance structure and ethical behaviour of trustees at the $103 billion Tata group, Mr. Mistry said, “It would be an inherent obligation for the government to remedy and repair breakdown in the governance of such trusts.” The government must ensure that “the working(s) of the Tata Trusts have a defin...
Researchers have developed a new cost-effective and portable pH-sensitive optical fibre to distinguish breast cancer tissue from normal tissue, a finding that can potentially help surgeons to be much more precise when removing breast cancer. The device could help prevent follow-up surgery, currently needed for 15-20 per cent of breast cancer surgery patients where all the cancer is not removed. “We have designed and tested a fibre-tip pH probe that has very high sensitivity for differentiating between healthy and cancerous tissue with an extremely simple setup that is fully portable,” said Erik Schartner, post-doctoral student at the University of Adelaide. “Because it is cost-effective to do measurements in this manner compared to many other medical technologies, we see a clear scope for this technology in operating theaters,” mr. Schartner said. Current surgical techniques to remove cancer lack a reliable method to identify the tissue type during surgery. Due to this, surgeons often...
First cargo train departs from south-western Yunnan province’s capital Kunming for Karachi. China and Pakistan on Thursday launched a direct rail and sea freight service with the first cargo train departing from China’s south-western Yunnan province. The service was launched with the first cargo train loaded with 500 tonnes of commodities left Kunming, capital of Yunnan, an inland province in south-west China departed for Karachi, state-run Xinhua news agency reported. “China, Pakistan launch direct rail & sea freight service between Kunming and Karachi, cutting transport cost by over 50 per cent,” according to a tweet by the news agency. Part of Maritime Silk Road The service is a part of China’s Maritime Silk Road initiative, of which $46-billion China-Pakistan Economic Corridor project (CPEC) is a part. The CPEC was launched in 2015 to link up north-western China with the Gwadar deep seaport in southern Pakistan. The two countries already started the trade acti...