Moscow [Russia], January 11,2021: Brazil will begin manufacturing the Russian-developed Sputnik V vaccine against the coronavirus disease on January 15, according to the vaccine’s Twitter account.
“Brazil will start production of Sputnik V on January 15th,” the account said.
Sputnik V, developed by the Gamaleya Research Institute of Epidemiology and Microbiology, was registered by the Russian Health Ministry on August 11, becoming the first registered vaccine against COVID-19 in the world.
New Delhi , January 10 ,2021: Union Education Minister Ramesh Pokhriyal will chair a high-level meeting with top officials on Monday to review the progress of implementation of New Education Policy (NEP) 2020, informed ministry sources.
A senior official of the Education Ministry on condition of anonymity told ANI, “Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the implementation of NEP could not progress as per expectation. Now, the situation is getting normal and higher education institutes, as well as senior classes in schools, have started resuming. So, it is a good time to review the progress regarding NEP for faster implementation.”
NEP-2020, which will replace the National Policy on Education-1986, is an inclusive framework focusing on the elementary-level of education to higher education in the country.
The union cabinet had approved the NEP in July 2020 with an objective of universalisation of education from pre-school to secondary level. The policy also aims to enable an individual to study one or more specialised areas of interest at a deep level, and also develop character, scientific temper, creativity, the spirit of service, and 21st-century capabilities across a range of disciplines including sciences, social sciences, arts, and humanities, among others.
Pune, Jan 9,2021: Ten newborns were killed in a fire at the Bhandara District General Hospital in Maharashtra on Saturday morning.
Civil Surgeon of Bhandara District General Hospital, Dr Pramod Khandate said 17 children, aged between one and three months, were admitted to the sick newborn care unit.
“In the wee hours of Saturday, a nurse notice smoke emanating from this ward and altered doctors. The hospital staff tried their best to save the children. Ten children have died, seven are safe,” he added.
According to hospital sources, the fire broke out around 0200 hrs at the sick newborn care unit. The cause of the fire was not known immediately but the hospital administration said an electrical short circuit could be the possible reason.
Dr Khandate said the fire brigade was able to rescue seven babies from the ‘inbound ward’.
He added that the ward where the babies are kept requires a continuous supply of oxygen.
“There were fire extinguishers and staff used them while trying to douse the fire. There was too much smoke,” he said.
The hospital has informed parents of the deceased children about the tragedy and the seven newborn babies rescued in the blaze have been shifted to another ward.
Meanwhile, Maharashtra Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray spoke to the State Health Minister Rajesh Tope as well as District Collector and Superintendent of Police of Bhandara district over the fire tragedy.
The Chief Minister has also ordered a probe into the matter.
Washington, Jan 9,2021: A media house in the United States has reported that the White House coronavirus task force believes that a highly infectious variant of the coronavirus may have evolved in the United States.
The NBC News channel reported on Friday citing a document that it said was sent out to all 50 states of the country.
The news report claimed the new strain is already surging in several US communities in tandem with the United Kingdom, variant and could be 50 per cent more transmissible.
The news report claimed that the task force dispatched a report to all the states of the country on January 3 and called for aggressive mitigation measures to contain the spread of the new strain, measures advocated by it include imposing strict social distancing and use of ‘effective face masks’
The report claimed that a few details are available regarding the US strain, though it did not mention if the US strain is more lethal.
The United States has reported more than 21.7 million coronavirus cases and 367,143 virus-related deaths since January 2020, according to the Johns Hopkins University.
Jan 08,2021:The Centre will hold the eighth round of talks with the representatives of farmers’ unions in New Delhi today to address the issues concerning them. In the earlier meeting on 4th of this month, Agriculture Minister Narendra Singh Tomar had said that the government wanted farmer unions to discuss the three farm laws clause-wise, but they could not find any solution as farmer unions remained adamant on the repeal of these three laws.
The Government has repeatedly assured the farmers’ leaders that it is committed to address their issues and both sides need to take steps forward to arrive at an amicable solution. Mr Tomar had reiterated that Minimum Support Price (MSP) and the Mandi system will continue like before.
Jan 08,2021:The state-run Global Times says violence in US capital is the result of society’s ‘severe division’ and ‘failure to control’ the divide.
The assault on the US Capitol by supporters of President Donald Trump reflects a failure of leadership, as well as the deep divide running through American society, editorials in China’s state media said on Friday.
Hundreds of supporters of President Trump besieged the Capitol on Wednesday in what House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi described as “an armed insurrection against America”.
The Global Times, a tabloid run by the People’s Daily, the newspaper of the ruling Communist Party, described the riots as a sign of “internal collapse” that could not easily be reversed.
“The unprecedented mob in the Capitol, a symbol of the US system, is the result of the US society’s severe division and the country’s failure to control such division,” it said.
“As time goes by and with abuses of resources by generations of politicians, the US political system has degraded,” the paper said, adding that such politicians “deserve chaos, violence”.
It also lashed out at what it described as “double standards” among US politicians who expressed support for pro-democracy protesters, who forced their way into the territory’s Legislative Council in 2019.
“In Hong Kong, violent actions are described as a ‘beautiful sight,’ in the US, people involved in this chaos are called ‘mobs’,” it said.
False equivalence
The Hong Kong protesters, amid mass rallies against a proposed extradition law with mainland China that evolved into calls for universal suffrage, broke through police barricades and vandalised the legislative chamber.
Hong Kong media pushed back on the comparison between the two events, saying Hong Kong protesters were fighting for more freedom at the ballot box, while the pro-Trump supporters were staging a “violent insurrection” to undermine their country’s free and fair elections.
Hong Kong Free Press said the comparison between the turmoil in the US and Hong Kong protests amounted to “perverse propaganda”. China has since imposed a sweeping National Security Law on the territory under which more than 50 pro-democracy politicians, activists and even academics were this week arrested.
Meanwhile, the official China Daily newspaper said Trump’s “narrow nationalism” had taken a toll on the US.
“If the Biden administration can draw lessons from the ‘darkest day’ in US history, the pain the country experienced these days may come to be viewed as growing pains,” it said.
“The violence and chaos that have erupted in the US over the past year show what happens when a country’s leaders lose touch with reality,” it added.
Hua Chunying, a spokeswoman for China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, earlier said that Beijing hoped the American people could “regain peace, stability and safety”, following the chaos at the Capitol.
As the violence unfolded, Global Times also published reports claiming Chinese netizens had labelled the riot “karma”, juxtaposing images of the events in Hong Kong Legco and the US capital.
The publication quoted Chinese netizens as saying that they saw the “chaos in the US as revenge”.
“This is the first political coup to happen in the American continent without the involvement of US embassies,” Global Times quoted one unnamed commenter as saying.
On the Chinese social media platform, Sina Weibo, a photo of a pro-Trump supporter sitting inside the office of Speaker Nancy Pelosi also went viral.