My precise view

The Kerala Assembly on Thursday passed a resolution demanding withdrawal of the three central farm laws. The resolution was moved by Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan. He also attacked the BJP-led NDA government at the Centre over the three laws against which farmers are agitating in Delhi.

https://ift.tt/3n6kcP7 CANBERRA, Australia — This New Year’s Eve is being celebrated like no other, with pandemic restrictions limiting crowds and many people bidding farewell to a year they’d prefer to forget. Australia will be among the first nations to ring in 2021 because of its proximity to the International Date Line. In past years 1 million people crowded Sydney’s harbor to watch fireworks that center on the Sydney Harbor Bridge. Authorities this year are advising revelers to watch on television. People are only allowed in downtown Sydney if they have a restaurant reservation or are one of five guests of an inner-city apartment resident. People won’t be allowed in the city center without a permit. Some haborside restaurants are charging up to 1,690 Australian dollars ($1,294) for a seat, Sydney’s The Daily Telegraph newspaper reported Wednesday. Sydney is Australia’s most populous city and has its most active community transmission of COVID-19 in recent weeks.

A total of 25 cases of mutant United Kingdom virus have been detected in India after genome sequencing, Union Ministry of Health informed on Thuesday. Out of the five fresh cases, four have been traced by National Institute of Virology in Pune and CSIR-Institute of Genomics and Integrative Biology in Delhi. The infected individuals have been kept in physical isolation at state health facilities.

On the last trading day of 2020, the National Stock Exchange breached the 14,000-mark for the first time to trade at 14007.5 at 10:40 am. 

The Assam Assembly has passed a Bill paves the way to convert all the government-funded Madrassas into general schools. The bill was cleared amidst a walkout by the opposition.

Liquor shops will remain open till midnight on Thursday in Telangana in view of new year eve celebrations, the state Prohibition and Excise Department said. Shops selling Indian Made Foreign Liquor are usually allowed to function till 11pm and the extension by an hour has been given in view of the new year celebrations.

The Special Cell of Delhi Police on Thursday arrested Khalistani terrorist Sukh Bikriwal at the Delhi airport following his deportation from Dubai.

The Uttar Pradesh Health Department has cautioned people against falling prey to tricksters seeking Aadhar card numbers, one-time-passwords and bank details telephonically on the pretext of getting them registered for anti-Covid vaccination.

India's COVID-19 caseload rose to 1,02,66,674 with 21,821 new infections being reported in a day, according to the Union Health Ministry data updated on Thursday. The death toll increased to 1,48,738 with 299 new fatalities while the number of people who have recuperated from the disease surged to 98,60,280 lakh with 26,139 new discharge, the data updated at 8 am showed.

The Union Cabinet has approved construction of multi-modal logistics and transport hub at Greater Noida in Uttar Pradesh with an estimated cost of Rs 3,883.80 crore. The Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs, chaired by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, on Wednesday also approved proposals of the Department of Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade (DPIIT) for construction of various trunk infrastructure components for Krishnapatnam Industrial Area in Andhra Pradesh and Tumakuru Industrial Area in Karnataka at estimated costs of Rs 2,139.44 crore and Rs 1,701.81 crore, respectively.

A Mexico man, who built a tunnel to his lover's home to meet her secretly, was tragically caught by the lady's husband.

It is possible that the new UK strain of coronavirus could have entered our country even before December, AIIMS director Randeep Guleria has said as he underlined that the mutant strain was first reported in Britain in September. Speaking to news agency ANI, Guleria said that the new Covid-19 strain is "more infectious" and is a matter of concern. According to him, it is 70 per cent more infectious than the existing disease. 

Prime Minister Narendra Modi will lay the foundation stone of the upcoming campus of All India Institute of Medical Sciences in Rajkot in Gujarat on Thursday through video conferencing. The campus is coming up on an area of over 201 acres near Khandheri village on the outskirts of Rajkot city at a cost of Rs 1,195 crore.

CBSE Class 10, 12 Board Exam Dates: Union Education Minister Ramesh Pohkriyal 'Nishank' will announce the CBSE class 10, 12 board exam dates on Thursday at 6 pm. The minister had earlier ruled out considering online examinations. "The exams, as and when they are conducted, will be in the written mode and not in online mode. The exams will be conducted following all COVID protocols," the CBSE had said earlier this month. Here are the live updates related to the CBSE class 10, 12 board exam dates announcement:

https://ift.tt/2JxR5Xx WASHINGTON — Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell all but shut the door Wednesday on President Donald Trump’s push for $2,000 COVID-19 relief checks, declaring Congress has provided enough pandemic aid as he blocked another attempt by Democrats to force a vote. The GOP leader made clear he is unwilling to budge, despite political pressure from Trump and even some fellow Republican senators demanding action. Trump wants the recent $600 in aid increased threefold. But McConnell dismissed the idea of bigger “survival checks” approved by the House, saying the money would go to plenty of American households that just don’t need it. McConnell’s refusal to act means the additional relief Trump wanted is all but dead. “We just approved almost a trillion dollars in aid a few days ago,” McConnell said, referring to the year-end package Trump signed into law. McConnell added, “if specific, struggling households still need more help,” the Senate will cons

Ahead of the 2021 new year's eve celebrations, Delhi Disaster Management Authority on Thursday imposed a night curfew in the national capital. The authority issued a circular stating that not more than five persons to be allowed to assemble at public places. Moreover, no new year celebration events or gatherings are permitted at public places from 11 pm on December 31 to 6 am on January 1 and 11 pm on January 1 to 6 am on January 2.

Terming the approval for Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine for use in the UK as a "big step forward", AIIMS Delhi Director Dr Randeep Guleria on Wednesday said that India will have the COVID-19 vaccine within days. On Wednesday, the UK approved a cheaper and easy-to-handle COVID-19 vaccine developed by scientists at Oxford University and produced by AstraZeneca for human use. This is the second coronavirus vaccine to be cleared for rollout in Britain after the Pfizer/BioNTech jabs.

Samples of eight of 14 UK returnees, who arrived in Delhi between December 21 and 22, have tested positive for the new strain of the coronavirus detected in that country, official sources said on Wednesday. The samples were tested at National Centre for Disease Control (NCDC) in Delhi, they said.

The Kolkata Police have taken measures to ensure that all COVID-19 safety protocols are maintained and there is no large gathering for celebrating the New Year eve, as ordered by the Calcutta High Court to check a spike in infections, an officer said on Wednesday. Security has been beefed up in and around the city to avoid any untoward incident on that day, he said.

https://ift.tt/3hty98G BEIJING — China has given conditional approval to a coronavirus vaccine developed by state-owned Sinopharm. The vaccine is the first one approved for general use in China. Chen Shifei, the deputy commissioner of China’s Medical Production Administration, said at a news conference Thursday that the decision had been made the previous night. The vaccine is an inactivated, two-dose vaccine from the Beijing Institute of Biological Products, a subsidiary of state-owned conglomerate Sinopharm. The company announced Wednesday that preliminary data from last-stage trials had shown it to be 79.3% effective. Sinopharm is one of at least five Chinese developers that are in a global race to create vaccines for the disease that has killed more than 1.8 million people.

https://ift.tt/38O1Ux9 LONDON — Lewis Hamilton is now a “Sir” as well as a seven-time Formula One champion. Hamilton received a knighthood Wednesday as part of Queen Elizabeth II’s New Year’s honors list, which also recognized British performers, politicians, public servants and people outside the limelight who worked to defeat the coronavirus and its devastating impacts. Hamilton, who secured his seventh F1 title last month to equal Michael Schumacher’s record, has said his recent success was partly inspired by the Black Lives Matter movement. The 35-year-old race car driver took the knee on the grid and wore anti-racism slogans during the season. Hamilton told the BBC last week that “it was a different drive than what I’ve had in me in the past, to get to the end of those races first so that I could utilize that platform” against racism. Supporters have suggested Hamilton would have been knighted sooner if not for his tax status. Hamilton’s knighthood was awarded in

https://ift.tt/3pz6pSY California on Wednesday announced the nation’s second confirmed case of the new and apparently more contagious variant of the coronavirus, offering a strong indication that the infection is spreading more widely in the United States. Gov. Gavin Newsom announced the infection found in Southern California during an online conversation with Dr. Anthony Fauci, head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. “I don’t think Californians should think that this is odd. It’s to be expected,” Fauci said. Newsom did not provide any details about the person who was infected. The announcement came 24 hours after word of the first reported U.S. variant infection, which emerged in Colorado. That person was identified Wednesday as a Colorado National Guardsman who had been sent to help out at a nursing home struggling with an outbreak. Health officials said a second Guard member may have it too. The cases triggered a host of questions about h

https://ift.tt/3rIqW9G The chef’s hats were never going to arrive at the actors’ houses on time. In early December, Seaview Productions announced that they would transform a viral TikTok phenomenon into Ratatouille: The TikTok Musical, a professional production featuring veteran performers like Wayne Brady and Tituss Burgess, in just under a month. Musicals, even virtual ones, typically take months, if not years, to produce. And with the holidays looming, Seaview couldn’t ship microphones, green screens or tiny rat ears to the cast in time to record their scenes. “Our costume consultant, Tilly Grimes, looked through the actors’ closets over video chat,” says producer Greg Nobile, who produced Jeremy O. Harris’ Tony-nominated Slave Play and the Jake Gyllenhaal starrer Sea Wall/A Life . “We just asked, ‘Do you have gray?’ ‘Do you have makeup so you can put whiskers on your face?’ ‘Can you make those mittens look like rat’s feet?’ The point was to really lean into the aesthe

The counting of votes in the Haryana for the municipal polls is underway amid tight security. Polling to elect mayors and members of all the wards of Ambala, Panchkula and Sonipat municipal corporations took place on December 27. Polling also took place to elect the president and members of the municipal council of Rewari and municipal committees of Sampla (Rohtak), Dharuhera (Rewari), and Ukalana (Hisara).

Vice President-elect Kamala Harris has received the first dose of the Moderna COVID-19 vaccine live on television as part of efforts to build public trust in the inoculation and urged Americans to get vaccinated for the virus. Harris and her husband Doug Emhoff were administered the vaccine at United Medical Center in Washington, DC.

The Delhi Police has arrested a man for allegedly murdering his friend for money. According to police, the incident took place in Prem Nagar area of the national capital earlier this week.

Deep in the lush mountain valleys of southern China lies the entrance to a mine shaft that once harbored bats with the closest known relative of the COVID-19 virus.

Seven people who returned to Karnataka from the UK, were found to be infected with the mutated strain of coronavirus, state Health Minister K Sudhakar said on Wednesday. The swab samples of 26 people who tested positive for COVID-19 were sent to NIMHANS to ascertain whether it is the new strain.  The 26 were among the 1,614 UK returnees, who were subjected to the tests. "Of the seven people, three are in Bengaluru and four in Shivamogga. All of them have been admitted to designated hospitals," Sudhakar told reporters. Forty six primary contacts of the seven people have been quarantined.

A militant was killed in an overnight encounter in the Parimpora area of Jammu and Kashmir, police said on Wednesday. Militants had opened fire on security forces during a cordon and search operation in the Parimpora area on Tuesday evening, a police official said. He said the cordon was strengthened after and the two sides exchanged fire intermittently throughout the night. One militant has been killed so far, the official said, adding the operation was in progress. 

Several key flyovers across Thane city will be shut during the New Year celebrations. The decision taken by the local police comes in a bid to curb accidents caused due to rash or drunken driving. The police have also instructed the housing societies in the city to avoid holding any public celebration of the New Year during the intervening night of Thursday and Friday in view of the COVID-19 pandemic and also ordered that the terraces of buildings be kept shut during this period, he said.

https://ift.tt/37YB4mR (LONDON) — Britain has authorized use of a second COVID-19 vaccine, becoming the first country to greenlight an easy-to-handle shot that its developers hope will become the “vaccine for the world.” The United Kingdom government says the Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency has made an emergency authorization for the vaccine developed by Oxford University and UK-based drugmaker AstraZeneca. AstraZeneca chief executive Pascal Soriot said “today is an important day for millions of people in the U.K. who will get access to this new vaccine. It has been shown to be effective, well-tolerated, simple to administer and is supplied by AstraZeneca at no profit. He added: “We would like to thank our many colleagues at AstraZeneca, Oxford University, the UK government and the tens of thousands of clinical trial participants.”

Union civil aviation minister Hardeep Singh Puri announced on Wednesday that the Centre has extended the temporary suspension of flights to and from the United Kingdom till January 7, 2021. The flights operations were suspended because of a new strain of the Sars-CoV-2 virus. The development came after 20 people, who have returned from the UK to India, have tested positive for the new Covid-19 variant

The year 2020 began with the fight against coronavirus, and it came with one of the most impactful changes in all our lives - the lockdown. As the novel coronavirus began settling itself in India and the number of positive cases reached nearly 500, Prime Minister Narendra Modi, on March 24, announced a nationwide lockdown for 21 days. In his order, the prime minister mandated a restriction on all non-essential travel and services. Observers have even stated that the lockdown had actually slowed the growth rate of the pandemic by April 6. 

The Centre and the protesting farmer unions will hold talks on Wednesday. This will be the sixth round of dialogue between the two sides to resolve the deadlock over the three farm laws.

India on Wednesday recorded as many as 20,550 new coronavirus cases in a span of 24 hours, pushing the total tally to 1,02,44,853, according to the Union Health Ministry data. The recoveries crossed 98 lakh with 26,572 new discharge, while the death toll increased to 1,48,439 with 286 new fatalities, the data updated at 8 am showed  

https://ift.tt/3aTJqOA (BATON ROUGE, La.) — Luke Letlow, Louisiana’s incoming Republican member of the U.S. House, died Tuesday night from complications related to COVID-19 only days before he would have been sworn into office. He was 41. Letlow spokesman Andrew Bautsch confirmed the congressman-elect’s death at Ochsner-LSU Health Shreveport. “The family appreciates the numerous prayers and support over the past days but asks for privacy during this difficult and unexpected time,” Bautsch said in a statement. “A statement from the family along with funeral arrangements will be announced at a later time.” Louisiana’s eight-member congressional delegation called Letlow’s death devastating. “Luke had such a positive spirit, and a tremendously bright future ahead of him. He was looking forward to serving the people of Louisiana in Congress, and we were excited to welcome him to our delegation where he was ready to make an even greater impact on our state and our nation,” th

https://ift.tt/3n3c2Hf China sentenced Hong Kong activists detained on the mainland to up to three years in jail after a dozen attempted to flee the city by speedboat, defying international calls for their release. China sentenced Tang Kai-yin to three years and Quinn Moon to two years for organizing an illegal border crossing, the Yantian District People’s Court in Shenzhen said in a statement on Wednesday. Eight other people who participated in the attempt were handed lighter terms of seven months, it said. Shenzhen police said the two other, minor members of the group had been deported, without giving further details. Their Hong Kong counterparts were scheduled to hold a briefing at 12 p.m. local time on the turnover of two suspects from China. The group of 12 Hong Kong activists were captured in August by coast guard authorities from China’s Guangdong province as they attempted to flee to the democratic island of Taiwan. Their ages range from 16 to 33 and include 11 men

Union Defence Minister Rajnath Singh on Wednesday said that no "meaningful solution" has come out of diplomatic and military level talks with China to resolve the standoff along the Line of Actual Control (LAC) in eastern Ladakh, news agency ANI reported.

A total of 20 people in India now have the new coronavirus strain, according to ministry data on Wednesday. This includes results of the six who tested positive and were announced to have the new strain on Tuesday. The samples that tested positive for the new strain were 8 from NCDC, Delhi; 7 from NIMHANS, Bengaluru; 2 from CCMB, Hyderabad; 1 from NIBG, Kolkata; 1 from NIV, Pune and 1 from IGIB, Delhi.

A committee set up the Delhi government has recommended lowering the legal drinking age in the national capital. If the recommendations are implemented, the legal age for consuming liquor could soon be 21 from the present 25, according to a report in The Times of India. It added that 'soft' liquor like beer and wine might be allowed at departmental stores.

Karnataka Gram Panchayat Election Results 2020 Live Updates: The results of the just-concluded Gram Panchayat elections in Karnataka will be declared on Wednesday. Elections were announced for a total of 91,339 seats in 5,728 Gram Panchayats of 226 talukas in the state, out of which candidates have been elected unopposed for 8,074 seats. Elections were held for 43,238 seats in the first phase on December 22, while voting took place for 39,378 seats in the second phase on December 27. A total of 2,22,814 candidates were in the fray.

Two more contacts of people who were found infected with COVID-19 after returning from the United Kingdom have tested positive for the disease, officials said on Tuesday.

The first reported U.S. case of the COVID-19 variant that’s been seen in the United Kingdom has been discovered in Colorado, Gov. Jared Polis announced Tuesday, adding urgency to efforts to vaccinate Americans.

https://ift.tt/2WWjvgY (WASHINGTON) — The Justice Department announced Tuesday that it would not bring federal criminal charges against two Cleveland police officers in the 2014 killing of 12-year-old Tamir Rice, saying video of the shooting was of too poor a quality for prosecutors to conclusively establish what had happened. In closing the case, the department brought to an end a long-running investigation into a high-profile shooting that helped galvanize the Black Lives Matter movement and that became part of the national dialogue about police use of force against minorities, including children. The decision, revealed in a lengthy statement, does not condone the officers’ actions but rather says the cumulative evidence was not enough to support a federal criminal civil rights prosecution. Tamir was playing with a pellet gun outside a recreation center in Cleveland on Nov. 22, 2014, when he was shot and killed by Officer Timothy Loehmann, who is white, seconds after Lo

https://ift.tt/34S3uge (LOS ANGELES) — The Duke and Duchess of Sussex have dropped their first podcast. Prince Harry and Meghan Markle and guests from Elton John to their son, Archie, appear on the royal couple’s first audio release Tuesday for Spotify, a 34-minute special featuring reflections on 2020. The couple who stepped down from their royal duties in spring invited friends and people they admire to record audio diaries that were excerpted for the show. “It’s been a year, and we really we want to honor the compassion and kindness that has helped so many people get through it,” the Duke of Sussex says to introduce the podcast. “And, at the same time, to honor those who’ve experienced uncertainty and unthinkable loss,” the Duchess of Sussex adds. John, 73, was among the many musical artists who was in the middle of a tour when the pandemic struck. “All of the sudden we ground to a halt,” he says in his audio diary. Other contributors include tennis player Naomi Os

https://ift.tt/3pD3VTt (DENVER) — The first reported U.S. case of the COVID-19 variant that’s been seen in the United Kingdom has been discovered in Colorado, Gov. Jared Polis announced Tuesday, adding urgency to efforts to vaccinate Americans. The variant was found in a man in his 20s who is in isolation southeast of Denver in Elbert County and has no travel history, state health officials said. Elbert County is a mainly rural area of rolling plains at the far edge of the Denver metro area that includes a portion of Interstate 70, the state’s main east-west highway. Colorado Politics reported there is a second suspected case of the variant in the state according to Dwayne Smith, director of public health for Elbert County. Both of the people were working in the Elbert County community of Simla. Neither of them are residents of that county — expanding the possibility of the variant’s spread throughout the state. The Colorado State Laboratory confirmed the virus variant