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  • Coronavirus | Tablighi Jamaat centre chief faces culpable homicide case

    An FIR was registered against Maulana Muhammad Saad Khandalvi on March 31 on a complaint of the Station House Officer of Nizamuddin.

    PTI

    The Delhi Police on Wednesday said they have charged the chief of the Delhi-based Tablighi Jamaat centre Maulana Muhammad Saad Khandalvi, under the Section for culpable homicide not amounting to murder.

    IPC Section 304 (culpable homicide not amounting to murder) has been added to the FIR that was registered against Mr. Saad and six other office-bearers of the centre, after people who attended the religious gathering in Nizamuddin, died due to COVID-19.

    The quarantine period of Mr. Saad has ended and he should join the investigation. Police would again sent notice to all persons named in the FIR, an officer said.

    The Nizamuddin centre, attended by thousands, turned out to be a hotspot for the spread of Coronavirus not only in the national capital but the entire country.

    More than 2,000 foreign nationals, who attended the religious congregation in Nizamuddin in Delhi and have completed their quarantine period, would undergo investigation, a senior police officer said on Wednesday.

    As the foreign nationals have successfully completed the quarantine period and their COVID-19 reports were negative, the police would record their statements at the quarantine centres. Sections under the Foreigners Act for the violation of visa norms would also be added, the police officer said.

    “As most of the foreigners have completed their quarantine period and their test reports are negative, we will connect with other authorities concerned to accommodate them because Look Out Circular has been issued against all of them and no one will be allowed to go out of the country till further orders,” said the officer.

  • Coronavirus | U.S. has ‘passed the peak’, says Trump

    The country has recorded the highest number of cases in the world, with over 6,37,000 confirmed Covid-19 cases and over 30,826 deaths.

    PTI

    The United States has “passed the peak” on new Coronavirus cases, President Donald Trump has said and predicted that some states would reopen this month.

    The U.S. has over 637,000 confirmed Covid-19 cases and over 30,826 deaths, the highest for any country in the world.

    At the daily White House coronavirus briefing on Wednesday, Mr. Trump said new guidelines to reopen the country would be announced on Thursday after he speaks to governors.

    “We’ll be the comeback kids, all of us,” he said. “We want to get our country back.”

    The Trump administration has previously fixed May 1 as a possible date to reopen the world’s largest economy, but the president said some states may be able to return to normalcy earlier than that.

    “The battle continues, but the data suggest that nationwide we have passed the peak on new cases. Hopefully, that will continue, and we will continue to make great progress,” Mr. Trump said.

    These encouraging developments, he said, has put the US in a very strong position to finalise the guidelines for states on reopening the country.

    “Hopefully that will continue, and we will continue to make great progress,” Mr. Trump said.

    Dr. Deborah Brix, a member of the White House Task Force on Coronavirus, said that over the last five or six days there has been decline in new cases across the country.

    “This has been very reassuring for us. At the same time, we know that mortality and the fatalities that we are facing across the United States continue,” she said.

    Reduced cases in 9 States

    Nine States have less than 1000 cases and less than 30 new cases per day. Some states like California and Washington State, Oregon never really had a peak because of so much work that their populations did to decrease and keep the new cases down, she said.

    Two states, Rhode Island and Providence are in a unique situation, she said. First, they had increasing cases from the New York City area and now they have new increasing cases from the Boston area. They are caught between two incredible hotspots in the country, she said.

    Reiterating that this is a highly contagious virus, Ms. Brix said in social gatherings and coming together there is always a chance that asymptomatic person can spread the virus unknowingly.

    No one is intending to spread the virus. We know if you are sick you will stay home. But to all of you that are out there that would like to join together and just have that dinner party for 20 don’t do it yet. Continue to follow the presidential guidelines. We really appreciate the work of the American people,” Ms. Brix said.

    Asked why the U.S. accounted for such a significant proportion of the global death toll of 136,908, Mr. Trump accused other countries of lying about their mortality rate.

    “Does anybody really believe the numbers of some of these countries?” he said, in an apparent reference to China where the pandemic originated and spread across the world.

    Noting that this has been a horrible time to see such death and destruction in the country, the President said the medical and healthcare advances the US has made are critical to the continued progress.

    Rapid tests

    The U.S. has rapidly developed the most expansive and accurate testing system anywhere in the world and have completed more than 3.3 million tests.

    “To date, we have authorised 48 separate coronavirus tests and the FDA is working with 300 companies and labs to widen our capacity still further,” Mr. Trump said.

    The Abbott Labs on Wednesday announced that it is has developed an antibody test that will determine if someone has been previously infected with the coronavirus and potentially developed immunity.

    “It is a great test. The company says these tests could be available to screen up to 20 million people in a matter of weeks,” he added.

    The administration, he said, is also distributing vast amounts of medical supplies to states across the country. Through project air bridge, which has been an amazing success they have completed 44 flights, and an additional 56 like scheduled in the near future. he said.

    In total, through all channels, the federal government has developed and delivered 39.4 million N95 masks, 431 million gloves, 57 million surgical masks and 10.2 million gowns. It ordered 500 million masks and they will be coming shortly and have distributed 100 million masks, he said.

    Mr. Trump said his administration is using every available authority to accelerate the development, study and develop therapies and treatments. “Ultimately, what we want to come up with is a safe vaccine, but frankly, the therapies to me are the most important because it takes care of people right now,” he said.

    “The vaccines have to be tested because it takes a longer period of time, but we have some great potential therapies already, and we will see how they are working. We will be able to report on that over the next week or two,” he said, adding that at least 35 clinical trials of promising therapies are now underway.

  • Nearly 2,600 U.S. coronavirus deaths in 24 hours: Johns Hopkins tally

    AFP

    This brings the total number of deaths to 28,326 — higher than any other nation

    The United States on April 15 posted nearly 2,600 additional deaths from COVID-19 in 24 hours, a new record and the heaviest daily toll of any country, Johns Hopkins University said.

    A running tally from Johns Hopkins showed 2,569 victims at 8:30 pm Eastern Time (0030 GMT Thursday), compared with the same time the previous evening, bringing the total number of U.S. deaths to 28,326 — higher than any other nation.

    The figures came after President Donald Trump earlier in the evening said “the data suggests that nationwide we have passed the peak on new cases,” and he will announce Thursday the first plans for lifting coronavirus lockdowns.

    According to Johns Hopkins, the number of cases in the U.S. reached 636,350.

  • WHO regrets Trump funding halt as global coronavirus cases top 2 million

    After gradually becoming more hostile toward the Geneva-based WHO, U.S President Donald Trump accused it of promoting Chinese “disinformation” about the virus.

    Reuters

    The head of the World Health Organization (WHO) said on Wednesday he regrets U.S. President Donald Trump’s decision to pull funding for the agency, but that now is the time for the world to unite in its fight against the new coronavirus.

    Mr. Trump’s move prompted condemnation from world leaders as global coronavirus infections passed the 2 million mark.

    The United States is the world’s worst-affected country and its coronavirus death toll topped 30,000 on Wednesday, according to a Reuters tally. The fatalities have doubled in just a week and set a record single-day increase for the second day in a row.

    New U.S. cases have been rising by about 25,000 a day, down from a peak of 35,000, according to a Reuters tally.

    Mr. Trump said the data suggests the nation has passed the peak of new coronavirus infections and that he will announce guidelines for reopening the economy on Thursday.

    After gradually becoming more hostile toward the Geneva-based WHO, Mr. Trump accused it on Tuesday of promoting Chinese “disinformation” about the virus, saying this had probably worsened the outbreak.

    WHO Director General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told a news conference that the United States “has been a long-standing and generous friend of the WHO, and we hope it will continue to be so.”

    “WHO is reviewing the impact on our work of any withdrawal of U.S. funding and we will work with partners to fill any gaps and ensure our work continues uninterrupted,” Mr. Tedros added.

    Global health campaigner and donor Bill Gates tweeted that ”Halting funding for the World Health Organization during a world health crisis is as dangerous as it sounds … The world needs WHO now more than ever.”

    But Washington showed no sign of softening its stance, as Secretary of State Mike Pompeo pressed China’s top diplomat on the need for full transparency and information sharing to fight the pandemic.

    There was a sign of global unity among the Group of 20 major economies, including the United States, which agreed to suspend debt service payments for the world’s poorest countries from May 1 until the end of the year. Meeting host Saudi Arabia said this would free up more than $20 billion for them to spend on their health systems.

    Redistributing the funds

    The United States contributed more than $400 million to the WHO in 2019, roughly 15% of its budget.

    A senior administration official said Washington would stop a $58 million “assessed contribution” that it was due to pay for 2020.

    The United States also traditionally provides several hundred million dollars a year in voluntary funding tied to specific WHO programs. “That money will be spent with other partners,” said a second senior Trump administration official.

    The WHO has appealed for more than $1 billion specifically to fund operations against the pandemic, which reached 2 million confirmed cases on Wednesday, including more than 131,000 deaths, according to a Reuters tally.

    New York City, center of the U.S. epidemic, revised its COVID-19 death toll sharply higher to nearly 11,000 — around a third of the overall U.S. total — to include victims presumed to have died of the disease but who were not tested.

    But declines in hospitalisations and need for intensive care for coronavirus patients across New York state prompted Governor Andrew Cuomo to say on Wednesday that fears of its healthcare system becoming overwhelmed had not materialised.

    Easing the lockdown

    The WHO said the world stood at a “pivotal juncture” and countries that eased restrictions should wait at least two weeks to evaluate the impact before easing further.

    Some 94% of Americans have been under government stay-at-home orders, but a top U.S. health official said governors of about 20 states spared the worst of the coronavirus outbreak may start reopening their economies by Mr. Trump’s May 1 target date.

    Mr. Trump is forming advisory groups on how to open up the country. On Wednesday, Amazon.com Chief Executive Jeff Bezos and Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg participated in White House conference calls, their firms said.

    In a vivid reminder of the economic damage wrought by efforts to curb the health crisis, data showing the U.S. economy in a deep downturn and reports of persistent crude oil oversupply and collapsing demand sent global shares falling.

    The MSCI gauge of stocks around the world fell 2.4% after the International Energy Agency forecast a 29 million barrel per day dive in April oil demand to levels not seen in 25 years, and U.S. retail sales plunged 8.7% in March.

  • India to receive normal monsoon, forecasts IMD

    ‘Above normal rain likely in in August and September’

    PTI

    India will likely have a normal monsoon, with a chance of ‘above normal’ rain in August and September, the India Meteorological Department (IMD) said on Wednesday.

    The IMD issues a two-stage forecast: the first in April, followed by a more detailed one in the last week of May, which will also illustrate how the monsoon will spread over the country.

    The IMD’s confidence stems largely from global weather models pointing to negligible chances of El Nino, a warming of the central equatorial Pacific that’s associated with the drying up of monsoon rain.

    It has also officially redefined the definition of what constitutes ‘normal’ rainfall and reduced it by 1 cm to 88 cm. The June-September rainfall accounts for 75% of the country’s annual rainfall. “Quantitatively, the monsoon seasonal rainfall is likely to be 100% of the Long Period Average (LPA) with a model error of ± 5%. The LPA of the season rainfall over the country as a whole for the period 1961-2010 is 88 cm,” it said.

    The expectation of excess rain comes from a forecast by the dynamical model or the Monsoon Mission Coupled Forecast System — that relies on supercomputers, mathematically simulating the physics of the ocean and the atmosphere. According to this forecast, there is a “high probability (70%)” for the rainfall to be “above normal to excess”.

    Last year, the IMD said in April that the monsoon would be ‘near normal’ or a tad below normal. India instead ended up with excess rainfall — or the maximum rainfall in a quarter century — largely owing to torrential rain in August and September from the unusual warming in the Indian Ocean.

    The dynamical model, while better at forecasting the state of the weather a week or two in advance, isn’t yet considered reliable by meteorologists in forecasting the monsoon.

    The statistical models, which the IMD relied on to make its forecasts, had a 41% forecast probability of normal monsoon. In any given year, there is a 33% chance which is why, said Madhavan Rajeevan, Secretary, Ministry of Earth Sciences, there was “high confidence” that the monsoon this year would be normal.

    The Indian Ocean Dipole, a temperature anomaly in the ocean that can increase monsoon rain, was also expected to be in a “neutral” state during the monsoon, the forecast added.

    The odds of excess rain or a drought are 9% each.

  • Coronavirus | Students need not pay college fees till lockdown is lifted, says AICTE

    AICTE and the University Grants Commission (UGC) will also issue a revised academic calendar soon and Prof. Rajive Kumar directed colleges to continue online classes for the current semester under the extended lockdown

    PTI

    Colleges should not demand fee payments from students until the ongoing COVID-19 lockdown is lifted, the All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE) said on Wednesday.

    “It has come to knowledge of AICTE that certain standalone institutions are insisting that students should pay the fees, including admission fees, during the lockdown,” said a letter to all AICTE institutions from Member Secretary Rajive Kumar. “It is clarified that colleges/institutions should not insist on payment of fees till the ongoing lockdown is lifted and normalcy is restored.”

    Prof. Kumar added that AICTE would issue further guidelines on the revised fee payment timelines. All institutions were directed to display this information on their websites and communicate it to students via email as well.

    AICTE and the University Grants Commission (UGC) will also issue a revised academic calendar soon and Prof. Kumar directed colleges to continue online classes for the current semester under the extended lockdown. UGC has constituted a committee to make recommendations on the conduct of semester examinations, award of marks and passing criteria, the letter said.

    Students who are not able to pursue their summer internship requirements due to the lockdown have been advised to try internships via work from home, but AICTE has also extended the deadline for fulfilling internship requirements until December 2020.

  • No 4G in Kashmir till April 27

    In its review order on Wednesday, JK Home department has decided to continue keep the mobile internet restrict to 2G only till April 27.

  • J&K Government puts cap on weight of school bags, no homework upto class 2nd

    Srinagar: No homework for students of classes upto 2nd standard and prescribed weight limit for each class are part of the rules unveiled by School Education department on Wednesday.

    The department today came up with rules under Jammu & Kashmir School Education Act, 2002 to put cap on weight of school bags and ban homework for students upto class 2nd.

    According to the rules, it shall be duty of school heads to ensure that no homework is assigned to students upto 2nd standard. They have also been directed that no formal books should be prescribed for students of nursery, LKG and UKG.

    “However, students of these classes may be prescribed two notebooks/workbooks to be kept in the teachers custody in school itself,” reads the notification.

    According to the order available with news agency—Kashmir News Observer (KNO), students of pre-primary level shall not be asked to carry any bag except light carrier for lunch box.

    The schools have also been directed not to prescribe any other subject except language and arithmetic for class Ist and 2nd; language, environmental science and arithmetic for class 3rd and 4th and language, social science, mathematics and science for class 6th and 7th or as prescribed by the affiliating authority.

    According to the rules, students upto UKG shall be exempted from carrying school bag. It states that weight of school bag for students of class Ist and 2nd shall not exceed 1.5 kilogram while the weight of school bag for students from class 3rd to 5th shall not be more than 3 kilogram.

    The weight of school bag shall not exceed 4 kilogram for students of class 6th to 7th while it shall not be more than five kilograms for those studying in 8th to and 9th class.

    The government has ordered that weight of school bag of class 10th students shall not exceed 5.5 kilograms — (KNO)

  • Samples of Beggar who died at Dalgate test negative for COVID-19

    Srinagar: The samples of a beggar, who recently died outside Chest Disease hospital, have returned negative for novel coronavirus.

    The deaf and dumb beggar’s body was recovered near Chest Disease Hospital, one among the health facilities presently used exclusively for the Covid-19 management.

    Sources told GNS that samples were taken to see if the person had contracted the dreaded disease. “The man was always encircled by dogs and he would feed them also. Since cases of coronavirus transmission to animals cannot be ruled out, the samples were taken to confirm if he died of the virus and incase it turned to be so, the dogs in the area would have to be culled to prevent the spread of the disease,” they said.

    Police have already sought information regarding the deaf and dumb whose body was recovered at Malteng Dalgate.

    “He was begging in the area since last 15 years. Age about 40-45 years, Complexion – black (beard on face) & height 5 feet 5 inch. The dead body was sent for the autopsy to PCR and legal formalities have been initiated,” a police spokesman had said, adding, “If anybody has any information regarding the identity of the dead body may kindly inform Police Station R.M.Bagh Srinagar on 9596770853 or PCR Srinagar on 9596222550, 9596222551, or Police Control Room Kashmir on ” Dial 100″. (GNS)

  • Amid COVID-19 scare: Clashes rock in Red Zone area in Kashmir’s Budgam

    It was anti-encroachment drive on Govt land, some miscreants’ pelted stones, situation under control: SSP Budgam

    Budgam: Clashes erupted when a group of villagers assembled and pelted stones at the security forces near the spot were encroachment drive was going on in Central Kashmir’s Soibugh, Budgam on Wednesday.

    Sources told news agency—Kashmir News Observer (KNO), police was inspecting the land where they had to build a police station. “People gathered at the spot and made a noise and some even pelted stones at the police triggering clashes,” they said.

    Locals said that in the afternoon heavy stone pelting erupted between army and residents in Soibugh, Budgam as they (locals) alleged agriculture land occupied by police forces and were trying to construct the police station on that land.

    It is pertinent to mention that the Soibugh has been declared as red zone by district administration as four Covid19 positive cases were found there.

    However, when KNO contacted SSP Budgam Amod Nagpure said: “It was government land and some people had illegally occupied it. Today police went there for anti-encroachment drive. On this there was heated argument between group of villagers and security forces. Some miscreants’ pelted stones, triggers the clashes and now situation is under control in the area.”— (KNO)