Junior Digest

New Delhi, Apr 20,2016: Mother Dairy today said it will sell jute bags at its milk booths and Safal retail stores in the national capital region as part of its green initiative to discourage the usage of plastic bags.

The jute carry bags will be sourced from Bird Jute and Exports Ltd, a public sector undertaking under the Ministry of Textiles.

The jute carry bags will be priced at Rs 25 in the milk booths, while a larger size, suitable for carrying vegetables and groceries, will be available at Safal outlets for Rs 34.

This ‘green initiative’ was unveiled by Union Textiles Minister Santosh Kumar Gangwar in the presence of Mother Dairy officials at a ceremony here today.

“By offering jute carry bags to our consumers at a nominal cost, we not only address the need for an environment friendly alternative of carry bags but also benefit millions of our farmers engaged in cultivation of jute,” Mother Dairy MD S Nagarajan said in a statement.

@ Agency report.

A three-day-week gets the best performance from workers aged over 40, a study has found.

Researchers found the cognitive performance of middle-aged people improved as the working week increased up to 25 hours a week.

However, when the week went over 25 hours, overall performance for the test subjects decreased as “fatigue and stress” took effect.

The report, which was published in the Melbourne Institute Worker Paper series, invited 3,000 men and 3,500 women in Australia to complete a series of cognitive tests while their work habits were analysed.

It was found those working 25 hours a week performed best while those working 55 hours a week showed results worse than retired or unemployed participants.

One of the three authors, Professor Colin McKenzie from Keio University told the Times: “Many countries are going to raise their retirement ages by delaying the age at which people are eligible to start receiving pension benefits. This means that more people continue to work in the later stages of their life.

“The degree of intellectual stimulation may depend on working hours. Work can be a double-edged sword, in that it can stimulate brain activity, but at the same time long working hours can cause fatigue and stress, which potentially damage cognitive functions.

“We point out that differences in working hours are important for maintaining cognitive functioning in middle-aged and elderly adults. This means that, in middle and older age, working part-time could be effective in maintaining cognitive ability.”

The research comes amid moves to edge the British state pension age closer to 70.

Currently for someone born in 1989, a state pension begins at the age of 68.

The government, however, will now review the pension age every five years with many people working past the formerly default retirement age of 65 out of choice or necessity.

@ Agency report.

New Delhi: Drinking water supplied by the Delhi Jal Board is not safe for consumption as prescribed quality standards are not being met, Union Consumer Affairs Minister Ram Vilas Paswan said on Tuesday.

The Minister also urged consumers to complain if packaged drinking water is sold above maximum retail price at places like five star hotels, cinemas and airport so that the government can take strict action against such sellers.

“The issue of safe drinking water was discussed in the meeting today. Nobody can drink tap water in Delhi. Delhi’s water is not safe for drinking, though there are quality standards in place,” Paswan told reporters after the meeting of the Central Consumer Protection Council (CCPC).

Food safety regulator FSSAI informed in the meeting that Delhi’s municipal corporation is responsible for setting the quality standards of drinking water, he said.

“The Council was of the view that safe drinking water is the constitutional right of the people and the quality standards should be followed strictly,” he said.

The Minister said regulation of quality of piped water should come under the Food Safety and Standards Authority of India (FSSAI), while also regulates packaged drinking water.

At present, it is mandatory for companies to comply with quality standards of packaged drinking water unlike piped water. The Bureau of Indian Standards (BIS) under the Consumer Affairs Ministry is working on upgrading the quality standards for piped water and make it compulsory.

To protect consumers from overpricing of packaged drinking water at select places, the Minister said both the Delhi High Court and consumer courts have given several rulings that packaged drinking water should be sold at MRP at all places.

“There is lack of awareness among consumers on such issues. Be it cricket stadium or five star hotel or airport, if consumers see they are being charged more than MRP for packaged drinking water they should file complaint. We will take strict action,” Paswan added.

Paswan also said the government will set up additional 50 consumer helpline counters in the next 15 days, taking the total number of helpline counters to 62.

 

@ Agency report.

Mumbai: The country’s largest software exporter TCS today reported a stellar 72.7 per cent growth in net profit at Rs 6,413 crore for the fourth quarter of last fiscal ended March 31.

Kabul, Apr 19 ,2016: At least 28 people were killed and hundreds wounded when a Taliban truck bomb tore through central Kabul today, triggering a fierce firefight, a week after the insurgents launched their annual spring offensive.

The Taliban claimed responsibility for the attack in a densely crowded neighbourhood, which sent clouds of acrid smoke billowing into the sky and rattled windows several kilometres away.

The brazen assault near the defence ministry marks the first major Taliban attack in the Afghan capital since the insurgents announced the start of this year’s fighting season.

“One of the suicide attackers blew up an explosives-laden truck in a public parking lot next to a government building,” Kabul police chief Abdul Rahman Rahimi told reporters.

“As a result 28 people were killed, most of them civilians. The second attacker engaged security forces in a gunbattle before being gunned down.”

Rahimi said the attack also left 183 people wounded but the health ministry said that figure was almost 330, with many battling for their lives in hospital.

The gunfight appeared to die down several hours after the powerful explosion, but some security officials expressed concern that other bombers may still be on the loose.

The interior ministry denounced the attack as a “war crime” and pledged to track down the perpetrators.

Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid claimed their fighters had managed to enter the offices of the National Directorate of Security, the main spy agency.

Afghan officials denied that, saying the target of the attack was a government office responsible for providing security to government VIPs.

The Taliban are generally known to exaggerate battlefield claims.

Pitched gunbattles were ongoing near the building, which was cordoned off by security officials as ambulances rushed to the scene.

“(We) condemn in the strongest terms the terrorist attack in Puli Mahmood Khan neighbourhood of Kabul, as a result of which many of our countrymen were martyred and wounded,” President Ashraf Ghani said in a statement.

“Such cowardly terrorist attacks will not weaken the will and determination of Afghan security forces to fight against terrorism.”

The Taliban Tuesday last week announced the start of their “spring offensive” even as the government seeks to bring them back to the negotiating table to end the drawn-out conflict.

Pretoria, Apr 18 ,2016: Disgraced South African athlete Oscar Pistorius’s sentence for the murder of his girlfriend Reeva Steenkamp will be handed down in June, a judge said during a brief hearing in Pretoria today.

Pistorius’s lawyers last month failed in their final legal bid to reverse a Supreme Court of Appeal (SCA) ruling that upgraded his conviction from culpable homicide — the equivalent of manslaughter — to murder.

The double-amputee killed Steenkamp, a model and law graduate, on Valentine’s Day three years ago, saying he mistook her for an intruder when he shot four times through the door of his bedroom toilet.

“Your matter is postponed until June 13, and it will be heard until June 17, do you understand?” Judge Aubrey Ledwaba told Pistorius, who answered “Yes.”

Pistorius, wearing a black suit, black tie and white shirt, left the court and walked through a scrum of television camera crews outside to get into a vehicle.

The former Paralympic champion, 29, faces a minimum 15-year jail term for murder, which may be reduced due to time he has already spent in prison.

He was released from prison in October to live under house arrest at his uncle’s property in Pretoria after serving one year of his five-year prison sentence for culpable homicide.

The SCA judges in December described his testimony at his trial in 2014 as “untruthful” and delivered a damning indictment of the original verdict.

They found him guilty of murder, overruling the culpable homicide conviction.

@ Agency report.

New Delhi, April 18 : The prized Kohinoor diamond was a gift to the British crown and it cannot therefore be claimed by India, the Central Government told the Supreme Court on Monday.

“The diamond was neither stolen nor forcibly taken away. The diamond was handed over by Maharaja Ranjit Singh to the East India Company,” Solicitor-General Ranjit Kumar said, although he added it was the Culture Ministry’s opinion and that the Ministry of External Affairs had yet to respond.

Chief Justice T.S. Thakur asked the Central Government if it wanted the case dismissed and gave them six weeks’ time to submit a detailed reply.

The Supreme Court is hearing a petition by the All-India Human Rights and Social Justice Front to bring back the diamond.

The prized 105.6-carat stone Kohinoor diamond had been taken by Britain as part of war spoils in the Treaty of Lahore in 1850 after the East India Company won in a war fought with Sikh rulers of Panjab.

Both India and Pakistan claim the stone as their own.

@ Agency report.

New Delhi, Apr 20,2016: Government  made a U-turn on the Kohinoor issue saying it will make all efforts to bring back the valued diamond it had said in the Supreme Court was “neither stolen nor forcibly” taken by British rulers but given to it by erstwhile rulers of Punjab.
In a statement, the government claimed it has not yet conveyed its views to the court “contrary to what is being misrepresented” in the media.

In the last week ,there was report that the government  submitted in the Supreme Court that the Kohinoor was not stolen but gifted by the then Punjab government to the British government.

@ Agency report.

Dutch politicians have voted through a motion calling on the country to ban sales of new petrol and diesel cars starting in 2025.

The motion has only passed through the lower house of the Netherlands’ parliament, and would need to pass through the Dutch senate to become legally binding. But its success in a majority vote puts the earliest date yet on just when a major country might begin phasing out polluting transportation.

Initially, the motion – proposed by the Labour Party (PvdA), the junior member of the Netherlands’ coalition government – aimed to ban petrol and diesel cars entirely, but it was dialled back. As it stands, the proposal would allow existing cars to stay in use, but would “strive to prevent” the sales of any future ones, ensuring that Dutch roads gradually electrify over the next decade or so.

But the motion was opposed by the Labour Party’s coalition partners, the centre-right VVD, whose leader, Halbe Zijlstra, called the plan “unrealistic”, according to a report from the Dutch state broadcaster NOS. Zijlstra was particularly concerned about whether or not the proposed law would conflict with the country’s energy agreement, which commits the Netherlands to certain decarbonisation targets by 2020.

The leader of the PvdA, Diederik Samsom, says that the proposal would be feasible – and that the energy agreement wouldn’t conflict with it. “That agreement runs until 2023, we are free in what we do after that. We are ambitious, perhaps other parties are less so”, he said.

Electric car sales in the Netherlands currently stand at just under 10%.

@ Agency report.

Hackers have again demonstrated that no matter how many security precautions someone takes, all a hacker needs to track their location and snoop on their phone calls and texts is their phone number.

The hack, first demonstrated by German security researcher Karsten Nohl in 2014 at a hacker convention in Hamburg, has been shown to still be active by Nohl over a year later for CBS’s 60 Minutes.

The hack uses the network interchange service called Signalling System No. 7 (SS7), also known as C7 in the UK or CCSS7 in the US, which acts as a broker between mobile phone networks. When calls or text messages are made across networks SS7 handles details such as number translation, SMS transfer, billing and other back-end duties that connect one network or caller to another.

By hacking into or otherwise gaining access to the SS7 system, an attacker can track a person’s location based on mobile phone mast triangulation, read their sent and received text messages, and log, record and listen into their phone calls, simply by using their phone number as an identifier.

Nohl, who is currently conducting vulnerability analysis of SS7 for several international mobile phone networks, demonstrated the hack for the CBS show. He tracked a brand new phone given to US congressman Ted Lieu in California from his base in Berlin using only its phone number. Nohl pinpointed Lieu’s movements down to districts within Los Angeles, read his messages and recorded phone calls between Lieu and his staff.

The biggest issue for consumers is that there is little they can do to safeguard against this kind of snooping, short of turning off their mobile phone, as the attack happens on the network side, regardless of the phone used.

Nohl said: “The mobile network is independent from the little GPS chip in your phone, it knows where you are. So any choices that a congressman could’ve made, choosing a phone, choosing a pin number, installing or not installing certain apps, have no influence over what we are showing because this is targeting the mobile network. That, of course, is not controlled by any one customer.”

Hackers have proven that they can break into SS7, but security services, including the US National Security Agency, are also thought to use the system to track and snoop on target users.

@ Agency report.

Manta (Ecuador), Apr 18 ,2016: The desperation driving survivors of Ecuador’s powerful earthquake to find loved ones trapped under rubble could be seen in the tools many used in their amateur rescue attempts: none.

A small crowd of residents in Manta, a popular beach town in the disaster zone on Ecuador’s Pacific coast, clawed away yesterday at big blocks of broken cement and scraps of twisted metal with their bare hands.

“My husband is under there,” said Veronica Paladines, a tiny woman tearing at a mound of debris that used to be a hotel and throwing what she could aside, with fury and tears in her eyes.

Her 25-year-old spouse, Javier Sangucho, the father of their two young children, worked at the property.

“He did the painting. He had just gone down to rest a bit when it happened,” the 24-year-old woman told AFP.

“It” was the earthquake, a 7.8-magnitude monster that late Saturday toppled buildings along the coast and a ways inland, killing by last count more than 270 people and injuring at least 2,500.

The toll, authorities say, is certain to rise in the next days.

A dozen men, friends and relatives, helped Paladines pick away at the rubble.

The group had been at it for more than a day, ever since the earth shook and brought down the hotel and many other buildings along the town’s main road.

A helmeted fireman finally turned up with a jackhammer to chip apart the concrete floor that had collapsed on Paladines’ husband.

Energised by the mechanical aid, Paladines redoubled her own manual efforts. Tears flooded down her cheeks as she hurled debris aside.

The captain of the fire brigade, Javier Carpo, said he had just 30 men and women under his command to help in a town ravaged from end to end. The team has more pleas for help than they could handle.

“Yesterday, we brought out the bodies of three children from a hotel,” he said.

The quake destroyed and damaged homes, shops and hotels across this coastal town of some 200,000.

Cracks on buildings left standing hint that the structures may be too fragile to withstand the dozens of aftershocks rattling the region.

Some earthmovers and trucks arrived in Manta late Sunday to help remove debris.

“Throughout the town there are a lot of people trapped,” Carpo said, with a resigned air. “We don’t know how many.”

He left to inspect a set of ruins that had attracted the attention of several hungry cats.

Shakespeare is more popular and better understood in emerging economies such as Brazil, India, China, Mexico and Turkey than he is in the UK, a new report for the British Council suggests.

A survey of 18,000 people in 15 countries reveals, for example, that 88% of surveyed Mexicans like Shakespeare, compared with only 59% of British people; 84% of Brazilians said they found him relevant to today’s world, compared with 57% in the UK; and 83% of Indians said they understood him, far more than the 58% of Britons.

Overall, Shakespeare’s popularity abroad stands at 65%, compared with 59% in the UK.

Should this be a source of national shame? “I certainly don’t think we should beat ourselves up about it,” said Rosemary Hilhorst, director of the British Council’s Shakespeare Lives programme. “It is not a huge difference in terms of percentages.

“What we should do is think about how we make Shakespeare more relevant and accessible for youngsters today so they get in touch with the fantastic stories that are there in a way they feel is relevant for them.”

The research suggests it is experience of Shakespeare at school which plays the biggest part – studying the original text can put people off for life.

The report’s wider conclusions are that Shakespeare is good for the British economy and has a positive impact on Britain’s influence in the world.

For example, more than a third of people questioned said Shakespeare made them feel more positive about the UK in general, with the figures highest in India (62%) and Brazil (57%). Of those people, 70% were interested in visiting the UK as tourists.

Hilhorst said it was important to recognise Shakespeare’s global popularity. “We can often underestimate him,” she said. “It’s Elizabethan, it’s funny costumes, it’s all in the past, but actually the vast majority of education systems around the world do still have Shakespeare on the curriculum.

“People enjoy the stories, they take him seriously and many a politician will quote Shakespeare. We need to realise the fantastic archive we’ve got.”

The report, called All the World’s, was prepared as part of the British Council’s Shakespeare Lives programme that is taking Shakespeare to more than 140 countries on an unprecedented scale.

That includes a touring programme of 20 films from the BFI national archive, lots of debates, exhibitions and readings and a partnership with Voluntary Services Overseas, which will use Shakespeare to help more children in some of the world’s poorest countries to get an education.

The survey also found that Romeo and Juliet were Shakespeare’s best known characters and noted that people enjoyed and understood Shakespeare more when they saw a staged play or a film.

That, the British Council said, chimes with the ambitions of its Shakespeare Lives schools pack, available to download without charge. Made in partnership with the Royal Shakespeare Company, it includes specially commissioned films which can be seen on the Guardian’s website, including performance poet Laura Dockrill’s take on Romeo and Juliet and Pedro Martin-Calero’s three-minute Julius Caesar, filmed at the Treasury and the Foreign Office.

The research was commissioned by the British Council from the market research company YouGov and is one small part of a blizzard of events and performances being staged as part of the celebrations around the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare’s death, which reaches a peak this coming Saturday.

@ Agency report.

Tokyo: Scientists have successfully used stem cells for the first time to promote regeneration after injury to a specialised band of spinal chord nerve fibres that are important for motor function.

Researchers from Hokkaido University in Japan together with an international team of scientists implanted specialised embryonic stem cells into the severed spinal cords of rats.

The stem cells, called neural progenitor cells, were taken from rat embryos and directed to develop as spinal cord tissue.

The implants, or “grafts,” promoted extensive regeneration of the severed nerve fibres, with the rats showing improvement in their ability to move their forelimbs.

The team also used grafts of human neural stem cells in injured rats with similar results, demonstrating the potential of the success of this method across species.

The cortico spinal tract (CST) is a band of nerve fibres that travels from the brain, through the brain stem and into the spinal cord.

This structure is very important for motor function in humans.

Injuries to the CST can result in paralysis. Much research has been done, with some progress, on using stem cells to regenerate other bands of nerve fibres in the spinal cord.

But these have involved small gaps between the severed nerves in the presence of bands of bridging tissue. Lesions to nerve fibres located in the CST, however, and those involving large gaps and no bands of bridging tissue have proven largely resistant to regeneration.

The success of the current trial, reported in the journal Nature Medicine, is promising for the future treatment of humans with severe spinal cord injuries, researchers said.

But much work remains to be done before it can be translated into clinical treatments, they said.

@ Agency report.

The Kohinoor is one of the oldest and most famous diamonds in the world. The history of the Kohinoor goes back in history to more than 5000 years ago. The current name of the diamond, Koh-i-noor is in Persian and means “Mountain of Light”. Below you will find a timeline of this priceless diamond.

Up to 1500

It is believed that the diamond was first mentioned more than 5000 years ago in a Sanskrit script, where it was called the Syamantaka.

It is worth mentioning that there is only speculation that the Syamantaka and the Kohinoor are the same diamond. After this first written mention, for over 4,000 years the diamond is not mentioned.

Up until 1304 the diamond was in the possession of the Rajas of Malwa, but back then, the diamond was still not named Kohinoor. In 1304, it belonged to the Emperor of Delhi, Allaudin Khilji.

In 1339, the diamond was taken back to the city of Samarkand, where it stayed for almost 300 years. In 1306 in a Hindi writing, a curse is placed on the men who will wear the diamond: “He who owns this diamond will own the world, but will also know all its misfortunes. Only God, or a woman, can wear it with impunity.”

Babur

In 1526 the Mogul ruler Babur mentions the diamond in his writings, Baburmama.

The diamond was gifted to him by the Sultan Ibrahim Lodi.

He was the one who described the diamond’s value equal to half-day production costs of the world.

One of the descendants of Babur, Aurangzeb , protected the diamond diligently and passed it on to his heirs.

Mahamad, the grandson of Aurangzeb, however, was not a fear-inspiring and great ruler like his grandfather.

Nadir and Mahamad.

The Persian general Nadir Shah went to India in 1739. He wanted to conquer the throne, which had been weakened during the reign of Sultan Mahamad. The Sultan lost the decisive battle and had to surrender to Nadir.

It was him the one that gave the diamond its current name, Koh-i-noor meaning “Mountain of light”.

But Nadir Shah did not live for long, because in 1747 he was assassinated and the diamond got to one of his generals, Ahmad Shah Durrani.

A descendant of Ahmad Shah, Shah Shuja Durrani brought the Koh-i-noor back to India in 1813 and gave it to Ranjit Singh (the founder of the Sikh Empire). In exchange Ranjit Singh helped Shah Shuja get back the throne of Afghanistan.

British East India Company

In 1849, after the conquest of the Punjab by the British forces, the properties of the Sikh Empire were confiscated.

The Koh-i-noor was transferred to the treasury of the British East India Company in Lahore.

The properties of the Sikh Empire were taken as war compensations. Even one line of the Treaty of Lahore was dedicated to the fate of the Koh-i-Noor.

The diamond was shipped to Britain on a ship where cholera broke out and supposedly the keeper of the diamond lost it for some days and it was returned to him by his servant.

The diamond was handed to Queen Victoria in July 1850.

Queen Victoria

When Nadir Shah heard of the diamond, he decided he wants it in his possession.

After the diamond was handed to Queen Victoria, it was exhibited at the Crystal Palace a year later. But the “Mountain of Light” was not shiny as the other cut gemstones of that era and there was a general disappointment regarding it.

In 1852 the Queen decided to reshape the diamond and it was taken to a Dutch jeweler, Mr Cantor who cut it to 108.93 carats.

Queen Victoria wore the diamond occasionally afterwards. She left in her will that the Koh-i-noor should only be worn by a female queen.

If the head of state was a man, his wife would have to carry the diamond. After Queen Victoria’s death, the Kohinoor became part of the Crown Jewels.

The Dispute

People of India have longed for the return of Kohinoor for years. Many Indians demanded the return of the diamond when Elizabeth II made a state visit to India to mark the 50th anniversary of India’s independence from Britain in 1997.

The Indian government, believing the gem was rightfully theirs, made the first demand for the return of the Kohinoor diamond soon after independence. A second request followed in 1953, the year of the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II. Each time, the British government refuted the claims, saying that ownership was non-negotiable.

In 2000, several members of the Indian Parliament signed a letter calling for the diamond to be given back to India, claiming it was taken illegally. British officials said that a variety of claims meant it was impossible to establish the gem’s original owner.

A similar demand was made during UK President David Cameron’s visit to India. To which Cameron responded that he doesn’t believe in “returnism”.

Cameron said that it is not the right approach to return the diamond to India and said, “If you say yes to one you suddenly find the British Museum would be empty. I am afraid to say, it is going to have to stay put.”

What the Indian government has to say

On April 18, 2016, the government of India said that India should not stake claim to the diamond. According to reports ,  Solicitor General told the Supreme Court that the 105.602 carats diamond was handed over to the East India Company by Maharaja Ranjit Singh after he lost in the 1849 Sikh War.

Kumar cited a 43-year-old law that does not allow the government to bring back antiquities taken out of the country before independence. Under the provisions of the Antiquities and Art Treasure Act, 1972, the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) takes up the issue of retrieval of only such antiquities as have been illegally exported out of the country.

The matter finally goes to court

A petition was filed by All India Human Rights and Social Justice Front in the Supreme Court, asking the Centre to disclose its stand on bringing back the diamond. The petition had said that the government was not making efforts to bring the diamond back.

Solicitor General Ranjit Kumar, appearing for the government, said this was the stand of the Culture Ministry.

Who owns the diamond, anyway?

It is not just India that is claiming ownership of the diamond; the list includes Pakistan and Aghanistan, too.

@www.kohinoordiamond.org

@Business Standard.

 

London ,Apr 18, 2016: Mir Baquer Ali Rizvi, a resident of Hyderabad, died after a London Underground train hit him at Osterley station on April 12, it was announced on Monday.

The British Transport Police (BTP) said the death of Rizvi, 33, was not being treated as suspicious. Unconfirmed reports said he was in Britain since 2009 and was an MBA student at the time of the accident that occurred near Heathrow airport.

A BTP spokesperson said: “We were called to Osterley London Underground station at 7.45 pm on Tuesday, 12th April, following reports of a person being struck by a train.

“Colleagues from Metropolitan Police Service, London Ambulance Service and London Fire Brigade also attended, and a 33-year-old man was pronounced dead at the scene.

“The man’s death is not being treated as suspicious and his family have been made aware. A file will be prepared for the coroner.”

Osterley is served by the Piccadilly Line of London Underground that connects various terminals of Heathrow airport and other west London areas to central London.

Information about the incident was communicated to Indian authorities and Rizvi’s family in Hyderabad. Rizvi was from Miralam Mandi area of Hyderabad.

@ Agency report.

 

Rio de Janeiro, Apr 18 ,2016: Dipa Karmakar today created history by becoming the first Indian woman gymnast to qualify for Olympics as she booked a berth for the Rio Games after a strong performance at the final qualifying and test event here.

The 22-year-old garnered a total score of 52.698 points in the Olympics qualifying event to book a berth for artistic gymnastics in Rio Games to be held here in August.

Apart from being the first Indian woman, she will also be an Indian gymnast qualifying for the quadrennial extravaganza after 52 long years.

Since the independence of the country, 11 Indian male gymnast have taken part in the Olympics (two in 1952, three in 1956 and six in 1964) but this will be the first for an Indian woman at the Olympics.

The International Federation of Gymnastics (Federation Internationale de Gymnastique) has confirmed Dipa’s Rio Games qualification in its official release.

“Following the Women’s Qualification Competition at the Gymnastics Test Event in Rio, the International Gymnastics Federation (FIG) herewith confirms the list of nations and individual gymnasts that have qualified for the Rio 2016 Olympic Games,” the world body said in its release.

Dipa has been listed as the 79th gymnast among individual qualifiers in the list of women’s artistic gymnast who have qualified for the Rio Olympics.

Her first vault, the much difficult Produnova, gave Dipa 15.066 points, the highest among the 14 competitors. But a poor show in the uneven bars took her points down as she collected 11.700, the second worse among the 14 participants.

The Tripura girl secured 13.366 and 12.566 points in beam and floor exercises.

Deepak Kagra, an international referee, said that after’s Dipa’s strong performance it was certain that she would qualify for Rio Olympics.

“It was a very good score from Dipa and we were certain that she would qualify. Now the world body has published the names of the gymnasts who have qualified for the Olympics and her name is there. The gymnastics community is proud of Dipa’s achievements,” he told PTI.

The 22-year-old could not clinch an Olympic berth in the World Championships in November last as she finished outside the podium (fifth place).

She was earlier put as second reserve for the ongoing Olympic Test event in Rio but was informed last month that she had sneaked into the shortlist of participants.

Dipa had created history by becoming the first woman gymnast to win a medal — a bronze — in the Commonwealth Games in Glasgow in 2014. He then became the first Indian woman gymnast to feature in the finals of World Championships in November last.

The sport of gymnastics has been in turmoil in the country in the the last few years with rival factions holding elections and claiming to be the national federation. Even the camps for the gymnasts has been held under the aegis of Sports Authority of India.

As Ecuador digs out from its strongest earthquake in decades, tales of devastating loss are everywhere amid the rubble. The 7.8-magnitude earthquake left a trail of ruin along Ecuador’s normally placid Pacific Ocean coast, buckling highways, knocking down an air traffic control tower and flattening homes and buildings. At least 350 people died, reported Security Minister Cesar Navas.

President Rafael Correa said early Monday that the death toll would “surely rise, and in a considerable way.”

“The Ecuadorean spirit knows how to move forward, and will know how to overcome these very difficult moments,” Correa said.

Portoviejo, a provincial capital of nearly 300,000, was among the hardest hit, with the town’s mayor reporting at least 100 deaths. The Quinde family drove there from their home hours north up the coast to drop off Sayira at Estupinan’s house a week before she was to start classes at a public university on a scholarship to study medicine.

“She was my favorite niece,” Estupinan said, emotionally torn apart after waiting at the city’s morgue for hours. “I thought I was getting a daughter for the six years it was going to take her to earn a degree.”

“I never thought my life would be destroyed in a minute,” she added.

Estupinan watched as her loved ones were loaded onto a truck-sized hearse for the nighttime drive, the three older ones in dark mahogany coffins and 8-month-old Matias in a casket painted white. “It was supposed to be a short moment of family happiness but it converted into a tragedy,” she said.

She hoped to bury her relatives in Esmeraldas on Monday, but devastation there is also severe and she worried about whether the hearse could make it along roads ripped apart by the quake.

The Saturday night quake knocked out power in many parts along the coast and some who fled to higher ground fearing a tsunami had no home to return to, or feared structures still standing might collapse. The country’s Geophysics Institute said it recorded 230 aftershocks, some strong, as of Sunday night.

With makeshift shelters in short supply, many hunkered down to spend a second straight night outdoors huddled among neighbors.

Correa cut short a trip to the Vatican and flew directly to the city of Manta to oversee relief efforts. Even before touching Ecuadorean soil he signed a decree declaring a national emergency. Speaking from Portoviejo late Sunday he said the earthquake was the worst natural disaster to hit Ecuador since a 1949 earthquake in the Andean city of Ambato, which took over 5,000 lives.

“Our grief is very large, the tragedy is very large, but we’ll find the way to move forward,” Correa said. “If our pain is immense, still larger is the spirt of our people.”

As rescuers scrambled through the ruins near the epicenter, in some cases digging with their hands to look for survivors, humanitarian aid began trickling in. More than 3,000 packages of food and nearly 8,000 sleeping kits were being delivered Sunday. Correa’s ally, Venezuela, and neighboring Colombia, where the quake was also felt, organized airlifts. Mexico and Chile sent teams of rescuers.

Spain’s Red Cross said as many as 5,000 people may need temporary housing after the quake flattened homes, and 100,000 may need some sort of aid.

“For God’s sake help me find my family,” pleaded Manuel Quijije, 27, standing next to a wrecked building in Portoviejo. He said his older brother, Junior, was trapped under a pile of twisted steel and concrete with two relatives.

“We managed to see his arms and legs. They’re his, they’re buried, but the police kicked us out because they say there’s a risk the rest of the building will collapse,” Quijije said angrily as he looked on the ruins cordoned off by police. “We’re not afraid. We’re desperate. We want to pull out our family.”

On social media, Ecuadoreans celebrated a video of a baby girl being pulled from beneath a collapsed home in Manta.

But fear was also spreading of another night of looting after 180 prisoners from a jail near Portoviejo escaped amid the tumult. Authorities said some 20 inmates were recaptured and some others returned voluntarily.

Seeking security from any unrest, about 400 residents of Portoviejo gathered Sunday night on the tarmac of the city’s former airport, where authorities handed out water, mattresses and food. The airport was closed in 2011 and flights diverted to a larger facility in nearby Manta after Correa kicked out a U.S. drug interdiction operation stationed there.

Shantytowns and cheaply constructed brick and concrete homes were reduced to rubble along the quake’s path. In the coastal town of Chamanga, authorities estimated than 90 percent of homes had damage, while in Guayaquil a shopping center’s roof fell in and a collapsed highway overpass crushed a car, killing the driver.

The government said it would draw on $600 million in emergency funding from multilateral banks to rebuild.

But in the meantime, the digging and hoping against the odds continued.

In downtown Portoviejo, a few blocks from where a four-story hotel fell onto the Quinde family’s car, the six-story social security building was a pile of debris. Downed power cables were strewn across the street.

“The situation is heart-rending,” Jaime Ugalde, editor of El Diario, the city’s most-important newspaper, said as he surveyed the damage. “I’m going to return home and hug my wife and two kids. We’re the lucky ones. We’re alive.”

@ Agency report.

New Delhi: The Supreme Court  expressed anguish over inaction of authorities for allowing the existence of unauthorised places of worship on roads and pavements across the country, saying “it is an insult to god.”

“You have to demolish such structures. We know you are not doing anything. None of the states are doing anything. You have no right to allow it. God never intended to obstruct the path. But you are obstructing the path. It is an insult to god,” a bench comprising Justices V Gopala Gowda and Arun Mishra observed.

The remarks were made as the bench pulled up states and union territories for their failure to comply with its directions to file affidavits spelling out steps they have taken to remove illegal religious structures from public roads and pavements.

The apex court gave them a final chance with a direction to file the affidavit within two weeks failing which the Chief Secretaries of the concerned states will have to be present personally to explain non-compliance of various directions of the apex court passed from time to time since 2006.

“We don’t appreciate this type of attitude,” the bench said, adding that the orders and directions of the apex court “are not passed for keeping in the cold storage”.

“If this is the attitude of state administrations and the chief secretaries, why do we pass orders? Do we pass orders for keeping in cold storage? If you have no respect for court orders, we will deal with the states,” the bench said.

The bench, which was about to pass an order for summoning the Chief Secretaries at the first instance, modified it after a plea was made by some lawyers appearing for various states.

The apex court was hearing the petition filed in 2006 in which directions were passed to states to remove unauthorised structures, including places of worships, from public places.

It had on March 8 received a contempt petition against Chhattisgarh government, following which it had asked the state to ascertain the factual position on the basis of allegations made in it.

The apex court had directed all other states’ counsel to take instructions with regard to the compliance of the interim orders passed by it from time to time in this regard.

The bench in its order noted that despite the March 8 order “none of the states have filed affidavit”.

@ Agency report.