The rains in Delhi reminded him of his ‘kachcha’ home in his paternal village, President-elect Ram Nath Kovind said today and sent out the emotive message that he represented all those getting drenched or sweating it out so they could get a meal.
In his first comments after his election, Kovind, 71, who will be only the second Dalit to occupy the highest constitutional position, asserted that protecting the Constitution and maintaining its dignity would be his duty.
He said he never thought or aspired to be the president but his “tireless service” to his society and country had brought him to this position.
This sense of tireless service was an “Indian tradition” and his election as the president was a symbol of the greatness of Indian democracy, Kovind told reporters at his Akbar Road residence.
“It is a very emotional moment for me personally. It is raining a lot in Delhi today and it reminds me of days when I would stay in my paternal village. It was a ‘kachcha’ home of mud walls. The straw roof would not be able to stop water during rains. We all brothers and sisters would huddle around a wall, waiting for the rains to stop,” he said.
“There would be so many Ram Nath Kovinds in the country today, getting drenched in rains, doing farm work, labour and sweating it out so that they can get their evening meals. I want to tell them that this Ram Nath Kovind of Paraunkh village is going to Rashtrapati Bhavan as their representative,” the president-elect continued.
His election to a position held by distinguished personalities like Rajendra Prasad, Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan, A P J Abdul Kalam and Pranab Mukherjee had given him a sense of huge responsibility, he said.
An emotional but poised Kovind said his election was a message to all those who were discharging their duties with honesty and integrity.
Citing a Sanskrit proverb, he said he would assure every citizen of the country that he would work relentlessly to serve the country and make everyone happy.
The former Bihar governor and two-term Rajya Sabha member thanked the people of India and elected representatives for showing their confidence in him.
He also sent his good wishes to Meira Kumar, his rival in the election and the opposition’s candidate.
Paris, Jul 21: AIDS claimed a million lives in 2016, almost half the 2005 toll that marked the peak of the deadly epidemic, said a UN report today proclaiming “the scales have tipped”.
Not only are new HIV infections and deaths declining, but more people than ever are on life-saving treatment, according to data published ahead of an AIDS science conference opening in Paris on Sunday.
“In 2016, 19.5 million of the 36.7 million people living with HIV had access to treatment,” said the UNAIDS global roundup.
This marked the first time that more than half of infected people were receiving anti-retroviral treatment, which subdues the AIDS virus but does not kill it.
“AIDS-related deaths have fallen from 1.9 million in 2005 to one million in 2016,” said the authors, adding that “for the first time the scales have tipped.”
The year 2016 saw 1.8 million new infections, almost half the record number of some 3.5 million in 1997, said the report.
In total, 76.1 million people have been infected with HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, since the epidemic started in the 1980s. Some 35 million have died.
“Communities and families are thriving as AIDS is being pushed back,” said UNAIDS executive director Michel Sidibe.
“As we bring the epidemic under control, health outcomes are improving and nations are becoming stronger.”
As yet, there is no HIV vaccine or cure, and infected people rely on lifelong anti-retroviral therapy to stop the virus replicating.
Without treatment, HIV-infected people go on to develop AIDS, a syndrome that weakens the immune system and leaves the body exposed to opportunistic infections such as tuberculosis, and some types of cancer.
Treatment carries side effects and is costly, but allows infected people to be healthier for longer.
Most progress has been made in east and southern Africa, the region that was hardest hit by the epidemic and where many interventions were focused.
Since 2010, AIDS-related deaths in the region declined by 42 per cent. The region accounts for half the world’s infected population, with women and girls disproportionately affected at 60 per cent.
Sixty per cent of all people who receive anti-retroviral therapy live in east and southern Africa which, along with west and central Europe and the Americas, is on target to meet the so-called 90-90-90 targets set by the UN, said the report.
By 2020, states the plan, 90 percent of infected people must know their status, of whom 90 percent must be on treatment. In 90 per cent of those, the virus will be “suppressed” by medicine to the extent that it cannot function or replicate.
By 2016, 70 per cent of infected people knew their status, said the new report. Of those, 77 per cent were on treatment, and 82 per cent had virus suppression.
UNAIDS expressed concern about two regions with worsening AIDS trends: the Middle East-North Africa, and eastern Europe-central Asia. Both are areas marred by conflict and political uncertainty.
Derby, Jul 20 : Opting to bat, India posted a challenging 281-4 against Australia in the rain-truncated second semifinals of the ICC Women’s World Cup at County Ground here today.
Harmanpreet Kaur blasted an unbeaten 115-ball 171 to anchor the Indian innings after the match was reduced to 42- overs-a-side due to rain delay.
Brief Score:
India: 281-4 in 42 overs (Harmanpreet Kaur 171 not out; A Gardner 1/43).
Australia was colonised about 20,000 years before humans first arrived in Europe, according to new research.
The discovery of the world’s oldest stone axes with ground edges, ochre used to make “spectacular rock art” and other artefacts in northern Australia pushes back the earliest known presence of humans to 65,000 years ago.
Despite the relative closeness of Europe to Africa, where modern humans first evolved about 200,000 to 3000,000 years ago, the first concrete signs of Europeans are about 45,000 years old.
In addition to their sophisticated axes, the people who first arrived on Australia’s shores may also have been armed with spears.
The objects were found at Madjedbebe within the traditional lands of the Mirarr clan, an area of land that was excluded from the surrounding Kakadu National Park after a lease to mine uranium in the area was granted in 1982.
Representatives of the Mirarr said the research showed the “universal importance” of the area and called for it to receive the “highest level of conservation and protection”.
Writing in the journal Nature, the researchers said: “The settlement of Madjedbebe around 65,000 years ago … sets a new minimum age for the human colonisation of Australia and the dispersal of modern humans out of Africa and across south Asia.
“The final stages of this journey took place at a time of lower sea level, when northern Australia was cooler and wetter.
“Our chronology … extends the period of overlap of modern humans and Homo floresiensis [the hominin species better known as hobbits] in eastern Indonesia to at least 15,000 years and, potentially, with other archaic hominins – such as Homo erectus – in southeast Asia and Australasia.”
In addition to changing the story of our species’ expansion across the globe, the new much older date challenges theories that Australia’s astonishing megafauna – a two-tonne wombat, giant kangaroos that were so big they couldn’t hop and a two-metre-tall bird – were quickly wiped out by humans.
“Our chronology places people in Australia more than 20,000 years before continent-wide extinction of the megafauna,” the Nature paper said.
Professor Chris Clarkson, who led the research, stressed how significant the site was.
“The site contains the oldest ground‐edge stone axe technology in the world, the oldest known seed grinding tools in Australia and evidence of finely made stone points which may have served as spear tips,” he said.
“Most striking of all in a region known for its spectacular rock art are the huge quantities of ground ochre and evidence of ochre processing found at the site, from the older layer continuing through to the present.”
Justin O’Brien, chief executive of the Gundjeihmi Aboriginal Corporation, which represents the Mirarr clan, echoed this point.
“This study confirms the sophistication of the Australian Aboriginal toolkit and underscores the universal importance of the Jabiluka area,” he said.
“These findings reinforce the need for the highest level of conservation and protection for this site.”
An article in Nature commenting on the research by Professor Curtis Marean, of Arizona State University, noted how quickly humans had reached Australia after they first began to leave Africa.
“We now know that modern humans, after they left Africa around 70,000 years ago, dispersed rapidly to a coastal area that became the departure gate for their journey to Australia,” he wrote.
“From that launch pad, perhaps some of them envisaged other lands across the water that they could not see.
“They decided to take a chance and built boats, loading them with both new and tested technologies.
“Then, with their families, they boarded to embark on a journey of discovery. Sounds familiar – sounds like humans reaching for the stars.”
Bhopal, Jul 20: Over 15,000 “farmers and people associated with farming” have committed suicide in Madhya Pradesh in the last thirteen years ending 2016, the Legislative Assembly was informed .
“As many as 15,129 farmers and the people associated with farming have killed themselves in the last 13 years ending December, 2016,” Madhya Pradesh Home Minister Bhupendra Singh said in response to a question raised by Leader of Opposition Ajay Singh, who had sought to know the exact number of suicides by farmers during 2004 to 2016.
Singh said his reply was based on the figures available with the State Crime Record Bureau (SCRB).
The BJP has been ruling Madhya Pradesh since December, 2003.
Citing the data, the minister said the disturbing trend has been on a decline since 2005 when 1,248 such suicides had occurred.
While 1,638 such cases were recorded in 2004, the figures for subsequent years are (bracket mentions the year): 1,248 (2005), 1,375 (2006), 1,263 (2007), 1,379 (2008), 1,395 (2009), 1,237 (2010), 1,326 (2011), 1,172 (2012), 1,090 (2013), 826 (2014), 581 (2015) and 599 (2016), stated the reply.
Madhya Pradesh was on the boil last month after cultivators in various parts of the state held protests for their demands including a complete loan waiver and a better remuneration for agri produce.
The state government yesterday clarified that six persons were killed and as many were injured in the police action during the farmers’ stir in Mandsaur district on June 6, which had triggered a political firestorm in the BJP-ruled state
London, Jul 20: An Indian-origin doctor is set to become the UK’s youngest physician to start work at a hospital in north-east England.
Arpan Doshi graduated with his Bachelor of Medicine and Bachelor of Surgery degree from the University of Sheffield on Monday aged 21 and 335 days and is due to start work as a junior doctor in York next month.
He will beat the previous record for the youngest doctor to start work in the country by 17 days.
“I didn’t realise I was the youngest person to qualify until a friend checked on the internet. I haven t even told my parents yet but I know they will be very proud,” the Sun quoted India-born Doshi as saying.
Arpan originally went to a local school in Gandhinagar, Gujarat, until he was 13.
Then his mechanical engineer father, Bharat, got a job in Aix en Provence as part of an international Fusion project and the whole family moved to France.
Arpan, who speaks English, Hindi and Gujarati, continued his education at an English speaking International School.
“The following year I realised that I already knew a lot of what was being taught so I skipped a year,” he recalls.
He started applying to universities just weeks after his 17th birthday and despite a rejection from one university, three others offered him places.
The University of Sheffield was so impressed with his credentials that they gave him a scholarship worth 13,000 pounds.
He received financial support from his parents and also took part-time jobs as a lunch supervisor at a local school and in the careers service to fund his degree.
“My dream is to become a heart surgeon but it is a very competitive field. It is not really a surprise I have ended up as a doctor,” said Doshi.
The previous youngest doctor to qualify was Rachael Faye Hill, who received her medical degree from Manchester University when she was 21 and 352 days in 2010.
Doshi is now set to overtake that record when he starts his two-year training as a junior doctor at York Teaching Hospital in August.
Life on Earth may have begun on land rather than in the sea, suggests a study that pushes back the time for the emergence of microbial life on land by 580 million years. Researchers at the University of New South Wales in Australia scoured the landscape of the Pilbara region of Western Australia looking for clues to how ancient microbes could have produced the abundant stromatolites that were discovered there in the 1970s.
Stromatolites are round, multi-layered mineral structures that range from the size of golf balls to weather balloons and represent the oldest evidence that there were living organisms on Earth 3.5 billion years ago. Scientists who believed life began in the ocean thought these mineral formations had formed in shallow, salty seawater.
However, researchers found the evidence that the stromatolites had not formed in salt water but instead in conditions more like the hot springs. The discovery pushed back the time for the emergence of microbial life on land by 580 million years and also bolsteres a paradigm-shifting hypothesis that life began, not in the sea, but on land, researchers said.
The model for life beginning on land rather than in the sea could not only reshape our idea about the origin of life and where else it might be, but even change the way we view ourselves, researchers said.
For four decades, ever since the research vessel Alvin discovered deep-sea hydrothermal vents that were habitats for specialised bacteria and worms that looked like something out of a science-fiction novel, scientists have theorised that these mineral- and gas-pumping vents were just what was needed for life to begin.
However David Deamer from University of California – Santa Cruz in the US thought the theory had flaws. For instance, molecules essential for the origin of life would be dispersed too quickly into a vast ocean, he said and salty seawater would inhibit some of the processes he knew are necessary for life to begin.
Trekking to volcanoes from Russia to Iceland and hiking through the Pilbara desert, Deamer and his colleagues’ observations of volcanic activity suggested the idea that hot springs provided the right environment for the beginning of life. According to him, ancient Earth consisted of a huge ocean spotted with volcanic land masses. Rain would fall on the land, creating pools of fresh water that would be heated by geothermal energy and then cooled by runoff.
Some of the key building blocks of life, created during the formation of our solar system, would have fallen to Earth and gathered in these pools, becoming concentrated enough to form more complex organic compounds. Deamer and his team believe the first life emerged from the natural production of vast numbers of such membrane- encased “protocells.”
While there is still debate about whether life began on land or in the sea, the discovery of ancient microbial fossils in a place like the Pilbara shows that these geothermal areas – full of energy and rich in the minerals necessary for life – harboured living microorganisms far earlier than believed, researchers said. The study was published in the journal Scientific American.
Colombo, Jul 19 : Unlike the previous Rajapaksa regime, the current Sri Lankan government will not follow the policy of confrontation with the UN over the human rights violations committed during the three-decade long civil war, government spokesman Rajitha Senaratne said today.
Senaratne, who is also the Health Minister, was responding after Minister of Justice Wijeyadasa Rajapakshe severely criticised the conclusions made by United Nations Special Rapporteur on human rights and counter-terrorism Ben Emmerson at the end of his four-day visit last week.
“We are aware how the former government was sidelined by the international community as a result of its policy of clashing with the UN. We will not follow the same policy,” Senaratne said.
He said the government’s policy will be diplomatic engagement and not clashes with the UN.
Rajapakshe told Emmerson that he had been misinformed on the situation and that government would not cooperate with the UN rapporteur.
The UN Rapporteurs were not welcomed during former President Mahinda Rajapaksa’s time who even failed to cooperate with the UN Human Rights Council resolutions passed against Sri Lanka.
Senaratne was asked about President Maithripala Sirisena’s reported unhappiness about Emmerson’s meeting the Tamil prisoners arrested under the Prevention of Terrorism Act (PTA) during his visit.
He said Sirisena had raised concerns on the fact that the Ministry of Defence which he holds had not been kept informed on Emmerson’s meeting the Tamil prisoners.
Emmerson criticised Sri Lanka’s slow progress to address key human rights related issues. He even dubbed Sri Lanka as among one of the world’s worst countries for torture in custody.
Emmerson said that Sri Lanka’s transitional justice commitments were inadequate to ensure real progress, and there was little evidence that perpetrators of war crimes committed by members of the Sri Lankan armed forces were being brought to justice.
According to UN figures, up to 40,000 civilians were killed by security forces during Rajapaksa’s regime that brought an end to the brutal civil war with with the defeat of Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) in 2009.
Washington, Jul 19: The Trump administration has announced a one-time increase of 15,000 additional H-2B visas for low-wage foreign workers after determining that the needs of US businesses cannot be satisfied with Americans willing and qualified to do the work.
This is being done in the best interest of the businesses, Trump Administration has argued.
US businesses in danger of suffering irreparable harm due to a lack of available temporary nonagricultural workers will be able to hire up to 15,000 additional temporary nonagricultural workers under the H-2B programme, the Department of Homeland Security said yesterday.
To qualify for the additional visas, petitioners must attest, under penalty of perjury, that their business is likely to suffer irreparable harm if it cannot employ H-2B nonimmigrant workers during fiscal year (FY) 2017.
H-2B visas are mostly for foreign farm workers. US businesses hire people from Latin American countries.
H-1B visas, which are the most sought after by Indian IT professionals, is for highly-skilled persons. H-1B has a Congressional cap of 65,000 visas.
The Trump administration is currently reviewing its H-1B policy.
Most of the American businesses, in particularly, those in the Silicon Valley say that there is a huge shortage of highly skilled people in the US and have been urging the Trump administration to increase the visa cap. The Trump administration has not come out with its policy on H1B visas yet.
But unlike H-2B visas, there is no provision to increase the visa cap of H-1B work visas.
The Department of Homeland Security on Monday said that it arrived at the decision on increasing H-2B cap after consulting with Secretary of Labour Alexander Acosta.
Secretary of Homeland Security John Kelly determined there are not enough qualified and willing US workers available to perform temporary nonagricultural labour to satisfy the needs of some American businesses in FY 2017.
H-2B Temporary Nonagricultural Worker program was designed to serve US businesses unable to find a sufficient number of qualified US workers to perform nonagricultural work of a temporary nature.
Congress has set the annual H-2B cap at 66,000.
A maximum of 33,000 H-2B visas are available during the first half of the fiscal year, and the remainder, including any unused H-2B visas, is available starting April 1 through September 30.
The Income Tax Department has identified another 5.56 lakh individuals whose tax profiles are found inconsistent with the money deposited by them post demonetization.
In the second phase of ‘Operation Clean Money’ launched in April with an aim to detect black money generation post demonetization, the I-T department has used information received under the Statement of Financial Transactions (SFT) from banks to identify additional cases. “These are persons whose tax profiles were found to be inconsistent with the cash deposits made by them during the demonetization period,” a finance ministry statement said.
All identified persons are being informed through email and SMS for submitting their response online, it added. Another 1.04 lakh persons who did not disclose all bank accounts during e-verification in the first phase of operation clean money have also been identified. In the first phase of Operation Clean Money launched on January 31, 17.92 lakh persons had been identified for e- verification of large cash deposits, of which 9.72 lakh people had submitted online response.
At the time of launch of the second phase of Operation Clean Money, the I-T department had said it will investigate over 60,000 individuals, including 1,300 high risk persons. The Central Board of Direct Taxes (CBDT), policy-making body of the department, had then said it has detected undisclosed income over Rs 9,334 crore between November 9, 2016 and February 28, 2017. The information in respect of the cases and accounts identified has been made available in the e-filing window of the PAN holder in the e-filing portal of the I-T department.
The PAN holder can view the information using the link ‘Cash Transactions 2016’ under ‘Compliance’ section of the portal. The taxpayer will be able to submit online explanation without any need to visit income tax office. The tax department had in April notified the new ITR forms which added a new column seeking information on cash deposits above Rs 2 lakh made during the 50-day demonetisation period.
This information will be matched with the information in possession of the I-T department. “The taxpayer should ensure that ITR is compliant with amount deposited in bank accounts during the period of demonetization and while computing income, the amounts so deposited are considered/ taken into account while paying taxes,” the statement said. Cash deposits made in the above period may thus be fully and truly disclosed in the ITR, it added.
Chandigarh, Jul 14 : The Punjab government today gave in-principle nod for allotment of about 10 acre land at village Dhaulkalan in Amritsar district to set up the centrally-sponsored Post Graduate Institute of Excellence in Horticulture.
This was disclosed by an official spokesperson after a meeting of the Horticulture Department chaired by Chief Minister Captain Amarinder Singh, to identify and finalise the land for the proposed institute which had been announced by Union Finance Minister Arun Jaitley.
The land that has been identified is located between Guru Nanak Dev University and Ram Tirath, the Horticulture Department informed the meeting.
An official spokesperson said that another 100 acre had been identified at Attari in December 2015 for horticulture research.
The additional land now identified for allotment would be used to develop the educational institute.
To be established by the Indian Council for Agriculture Research (ICAR) in collaboration with the Punjab government, the institute will help boost crop diversification — a key agenda of Captain Amarinder — who has been proactively promoting this as a means for bolstering farmer income and permanently resolving the state s agrarian crisis, he said.
Captain Amarinder has directed Additional Chief Secretary (Horticulture) Himmat Singh to share details of the land with ICAR authorities and has also asked him to invite an ICAR team to inspect the site.
He also instructed the Deputy Commissioner, Amritsar, to get all other requisite formalities/permissions cleared for handing over immediate possession of the land to ICAR so that the project can be started at the earliest.
With farmers caught in a vicious wheat-paddy cycle and trapped by mounting debts, the state government is pursuing crop diversification, including horticulture, as a means for creating a new agricultural ecosystem, he said.
London, Jul 13 : The “ladies and gentlemen” greeting on the London Underground will be scrapped to become more gender-neutral, Transport for London (TfL) announced today.
TfL said the move was to ensure all passengers felt “welcome”.
Staff of London Underground have been told to say “hello everyone” in an effort to become more gender-neutral, the BBC reported.
The revised phrasing will be applied to all new pre- recorded announcements made across the British capital’s transport network.
Mark Evers, director of customer strategy at TfL, said: “We want everyone to feel welcome on our transport network.
“We have reviewed the language that we use in announcements and elsewhere and will make sure that it is fully inclusive, reflecting the great diversity of London.”
The London Underground is a public rapid transit system serving London and some parts of the adjacent counties.
London Mayor Sadiq Khan said he was “keen” TfL speak in a “more neutral way”.
He said: “TfL serves a vibrant, diverse and multicultural city, and provision of an inclusive transport service is at the heart of TfL’s purpose.
TfL said it had briefed staff on use of the new language “though from time-to-time, well-meaning staff may still use the term ‘ladies and gentlemen”.”
“If this happens frequently, we will issue reminders to staff,” it added.
LGBT campaign group Stonewall welcomed the decision.
Stonewall said: “Language is extremely important to the lesbian, gay, bi and trans community, and the way we use it can help ensure all people feel included.
“We welcome gender neutral announcements to be rolled out across TfL as it will ensure that everyone – no matter who they identify as – feels accounted for,” it added.
New Delhi, Jul 13 : A team of Indian astronomers has discovered an extremely large supercluster of galaxies — as big as 20 million billion suns — which they have named Saraswati, Pune-based Inter University Centre for Astronomy and Astrophysics (IUCAA) said today.
This is one of the largest known structures in the neighbourhood of the universe, 4,000 million light-years away from Earth and roughly more than 10 billion years old, IUCAA said.
Its mass extends over the scale of 600 million light years, it said.
Scientists of this institute were also involved in the path-breaking discovery of gravitational waves last year.
The supercluster was discovered by Shishir Sankhyayan, a PhD student at the Indian Institute of Science Education and Research (IISER), Pune, Pratik Dabhade, IUCAA research fellow, Joe Jacob of the Newman College, Kerala, and Prakash Sarkar of the National Institute of Technology, Jamshedpur.
Their findings were published in the latest issue of The Astrophysical Journal, the premier research journal of the American Astronomical Society.
“Superclusters are the largest coherent structures in the cosmic web. They are a chain of galaxies and galaxy clusters, bound by gravity, often stretching to several hundred times the size of clusters of galaxies, consisting of tens of thousands of galaxies,” the IUCAA said in a statement.
Sankhyayan said this “newly-discovered Saraswati supercluster” extends over a scale of 600 million light-years and may contain the mass equivalent of over 20 million billion suns.
A cluster could roughly have galaxies ranging from 1000 to 10,000. A supercluster could have clusters ranging from 40 to 43, he added.
“Our own galaxy is part of a supercluster called the Laniakea supercluster,” the IUCAA said.
Joydeep Bagchi from IUCAA, the lead author of the paper in the journal, and co-author Sankhyayan said they were “astonished to spot this giant wall-like supercluster of galaxies”, visible in a large spectroscopic survey of distant galaxies, known as the Sloan Digital Sky Survey.
Sankhyayan said the data was then analysed, following which the discovery was made.
“This supercluster is clearly embedded in a large network of cosmic filaments traced by clusters and large voids,” Bagchi said.
He said previously “only a few comparatively large superclusters” had been reported, such as the Shapley Concentration or the Sloan Great Wall in the nearby universe.
“The Saraswati supercluster is far more distant,” Bagchi said.
The two hoped that the work would help shed light on “perplexing questions” like how such matter-density clusters had been formed billions of years ago.