In Howrah, BJP holds protest against lack of civic amenties, rise in dengue

According to sources, the BJP workers and supporters took out the protest rally from Panchanantala under the leadership of district leaders Sanjay Singh and Surojit Saha. When the rally reached near the corporation they were stopped by the police. Several barricades were put up to block the BJP supporters. The protesters alleged that the condition of roads, drinking water facilities and drainage system is not good in Howrah. 'Several persons have already died due to dengue, but the situation remains same,' said a protester. Attributing this to 'mismanagement', the party alleged that even after the expiry of the Howrah Municipal Board term in 2018, no fresh elections have been conducted till date. The BJP workers also burnt an effigy of Mayor and state minister Firhad Hakim. Police said the situation was under control. Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee on November 19 had confirmed 23 deaths due to the vector-borne disease in West Bengal this year. 'So far 23 people have died of dengue. As the nature of the virus has changed, we are having outbreaks of dengue in the past few years instead of malaria,' the Chief Minister had said, addressing an administrative meeting in Malda district. DailyhuntDisclaimer: This story is auto-aggregated by a computer program and has not been created or edited by Dailyhunt. Publisher: The Indian Expresshttps://visual.ly/users/zerodalmattwoods19891/portfolio

Defend the woman's autonomy, right to choose

The length of the gestation period and the opinion of the medical boards were common themes in cases of rejection. Neither factor considers the petitioner's medical report or the rejection's impact on the woman beyond the subjective interpretation of the Act. In the 20 cases overseen by the SC, MTP was permitted in 15 instances and rejected in five. All these cases involved pregnancies that had crossed 20 weeks. Of the five cases rejected, two pregnancies were due to rape, one of whom was a minor. In the case of the minor, the SC relied on the opinion of the medical board that a continued pregnancy was safer than termination. In the second case of rape, where the gestation period exceeded 36 weeks, the court denied the MTP request. It's important to note here that the doctor had earlier denied the woman MTP on account of her being HIV positive, despite the fact that she was only 17 weeks into the pregnancy — which is well before the 20-week limit set by the court. It forced her to go to the high court — which again rejected the plea — and then to the SC, by which time, the gestation period had reached 36 weeks. The three other rejections were cases of foetal abnormalities, in which the court's decision, again, was driven by the opinion of the medical board. The Act treats MTP as a public health issue, focusing more on its impact on family planning and potential criminal proceedings against medical professionals, while ignoring women and their right to choose. By giving medical professionals the space to be discretionary, the law often allows doctors to deny requests even before the permissible 20 weeks if the request is not accompanied by a court order. An inefficient process easily takes these cases past the prescribed gestation period, causing distress. The reliance on medical boards is another sticking point. Women who approach the court tend to do so armed with a medical opinion, and since the concept of the medical board was never part of the Act, their influence on the decision-making process makes things complicated. The problem with the Act is one of both legality and legitimacy. There have been multiple instances of attributing personhood to the foetus, as evidenced by the use of phrases like 'life of the foetus', opening up the implementation to moral subjectivity. The guidelines to implement the law must be more explicit and consistent across states, minimising the scope for discrimination masquerading as discretion. Furthermore, there is a clear need for the Act to keep pace with the times, an attribute it lacks on many counts. It cannot continue to prioritise the decision of the registered medical practitioner (RMP) based on outdated standards of medical risk that override every technological advancement that has reduced the risk associated with MTP. By adopting a narrow definition of physical health, the Act, in some instances, also ignores the socioeconomic implications of childbirth, placing women under intense physical, mental, and social duress. The Act also contradicts the SC's recognition of a woman's autonomy regarding her body, privacy, and live-in relationships. Given the advancements in technology, the restrictions on the term should be increased to 24-26 weeks. More importantly, cases under 20 weeks should be inadmissible in court and directed to registered medical professionals, with provisions for legal action in the event of refusal. Noting the trauma associated with assault, MTP must be available to all pregnancies in these circumstances, irrespective of the constraints in the Act. A discussion about women empowerment should be accompanied by a thorough assessment of the subjects' rights. By taking a medical stance at the cost of a legal perspective, the courts are denying women a facility that should be easy to access and easier to implement. DailyhuntDisclaimer: This story is auto-aggregated by a computer program and has not been created or edited by Dailyhunt. Publisher: Hindustan Timeshttp://www.dtt.marche.it/UserProfile/tabid/43/userId/10046449/Default.aspx

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Man tries to rape woman in Noida park, strangers intervene, then they rape her

According to the police, the woman, who lives with her family in Noida, had gone to Sector 63 to meet Ravi, who works as a peon at an export company and had called her there on the pretext of discussing a job opportunity. Ravi took her to a nearby park, where he tried to rape her, the police said. The woman started screaming, following which two men approached them. The two started beating up Ravi, who ran away. After Ravi fled, Guddu and Shamu raped the woman and called Brijkishore, Pitambar and Umesh who took turns to rape her. All the five then fled. The victim approached the police at around 9.30 pm and lodged a police complaint. Brijkishore, Pitambar, and Umesh worked as contract vegetable farmers at a farm in Bahlolpur village in Noida near Sector 65, the police said. The woman was taken to a district hospital, where she is undergoing treatment and was said to be out of danger on Friday. The woman was raped in an empty plot near the park where she was also beaten up by the men. 'The girl was bleeding and needed urgent medical attention when she approached the nearby police post; she was rushed to the hospital immediately. She is out of danger now but she was beaten up badly by the accused,' said Vaibhav Krishna, senior superintendent of police, Gautam Buddh Nagar. 'Two accused are still at large and will be arrested soon.' Chief medical officer of Gautam Buddh Nagar district Anurag Bhargava said on Friday that the victim was out of danger, but hadn't overcome trauma. 'A team of doctors are constantly monitoring her condition. We are trying our best to take her out of fear,' he said. When she was brought to the hospital, she was bleeding profusely, had external injuries and was unable to even walk, said Bhargava. Noida Police immediately formed two teams of police officers to catch the suspects. An additional team of police officers and informants was also formed to catch them. Noida Police arrested Ravi on charges of attempt to rape on the basis of information provided by the victim. Police then prepared the sketches of the other five men with the help of Ravi and the victim, and three were arrested within 12 hours of Ravi being caught . The police have announced a reward of Rs 25,000 for information that could lead to the arrest of each of the two men still at large. 'The park where the incident took place has a boundary around it and it is not developed properly like a park. It is next to the service lane. There are people who do small-time farming over there and few use the park as a shortcut to get to the other side,' said Devendra Singh, station house officer of the Phase 3 police station. The police plan to refer the victim for compensation under the government's Compensation Scheme for Women Victims/Survivors of Sexual Assault/Other Crimes. DailyhuntDisclaimer: This story is auto-aggregated by a computer program and has not been created or edited by Dailyhunt. Publisher: Hindustan Timeshttps://www.mobypicture.com/user/kaanewilloms

Humankind's ancestral 'homeland' pinpointed in Botswana

It has been long established that Homo sapiens originated somewhere in Africa before later spreading worldwide. 'But what we hadn't known until this study was where exactly this homeland was,' said geneticist Vanessa Hayes of the Garvan Institute of Medical Research and University of Sydney, who led the study published in the journal Nature. The oldest-known Homo sapiens fossil evidence dates back more than 300,000 years from Morocco. The new study suggests that early members of our species as represented by the Morocco remains may not have left any ancestors living today, the researchers said. 'There is no contradiction between the presence of an early Homo sapiens-like skull in northern Africa, which may be from an extinct lineage, and the proposed southern African origin of the Homo sapiens lineages that are still alive,' added study co-author Axel Timmermann, a climate physicist at Pusan National University in South Korea. The ancient lake Makgadikgadi began to break up about 200,000 years ago, giving rise to a sprawling wetland region inhabited by human hunter-gatherers, the researchers said. 'It can be viewed as a massive extension of today's Okavango Delta wetland area,' Timmermann said. Changes in Earth's axis and orbit caused climate, rainfall and vegetation shifts that set the stage for early migrations of this ancestral group of people away from the homeland region, first toward the northeast 130,000 years ago, then toward the southwest 110,000 years ago, Timmermann added. 'Our study provides the first quantitative and well-dated evidence that astronomically driven climate changes in the past caused major human migration events, which then led to the development of genetic diversity and eventually cultural, ethnic and linguistic identity,' Timmermann added. ... DailyhuntDisclaimer: This story is auto-aggregated by a computer program and has not been created or edited by Dailyhunt. Publisher: Deccan Chroniclehttp://knowledge.thinkingstorm.com/UserProfile/tabid/57/userId/387027/Default.aspx

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Meet Sagar Patil: Fittest school security guard in Mumbai

He works 6 days a week. He says, "Every marathon or a walkathon for me is an opportunity to prove myself over and over again. Such challenges excite me and make me do my best every time. Every race is a competition with myself and every win is my biggest achievement." Sagar Patil has seen tough times from a very young age, he was a farmer who moved to Mumbai in 2010 to find a job and support his family due to financial problems he was facing as a farmer. Since the past 6 years, he has been working as a security guard at DSB international school. Sagar has always been a fitness enthusiast from a young age and has been participating in many full and half marathons since the time he moved to Mumbai. He met his coach and mentor is Kranti Salvi 3 years back who is a Guinness book record holder for fastest marathoner dressed in a sari at the Berlin Marathon in 2018. This year Sagar Patil is partaking in Oxfam Trailwalker India an annual walkathon conducted by Oxfam India which is to be held next month. This walkathon is the biggest and longest in India and is stressful because one has to walk 100 km over two days. This walkathon is in Karjat and has top corporate and others partaking. Sagar did take the walkathon last year too and completed it. This goaded him to take on the challenge this year. Since he cannot afford much in life, two ex-pats who are walking with him are sponsoring his walk. The school is also okay to grant him two days of leave. Sagar does not have fancy shoes or clothes to walk and run but he has the spirit and that is what gets him far as people come forward to help him. ... DailyhuntDisclaimer: This story is auto-aggregated by a computer program and has not been created or edited by Dailyhunt. Publisher: Deccan Chroniclehttp://actionangler.net/ActivityFeed/MyProfile/tabid/62/UserId/182584/Default.aspx

Arctic in hot water: Sea ice minimal in Chukchi, Bering seas

n the new reality of the U.S. Arctic, open water is the November norm for the Chukchi. Instead of thick, years-old ice, researchers are studying waves and how they may pummel the northern Alaska coastline."We're trying to understand what the new autumn looks like in the Arctic," said Jim Thomson, an oceanographer at the UW Applied Physics Laboratory.Chukchi sea ice in early November was at its lowest level on record, said Rick Thoman, a climate expert at the University of Alaska Fairbanks' International Arctic Research Center and a former forecaster for the National Weather Service.Low ice is a problem for people of the coast. Communities north and south of the Bering Strait rely on near-shore ice to act as a natural sea wall, protecting land from erosion brought on by winter storms. Sea ice is a platform from which to catch crab or cod in Nome, a transportation corridor between villages in Kotzebue Sound and a work station on which to butcher walrus near Gambell.Sea ice is also a one of the most important physical elements of the Chukchi and Bering seas. The cold, salty water underneath ice creates structure in the water column that separates Arctic species from commercially valuable fish such as Pacific cod and walleye pollock. When sea ice melts, it creates conditions important for the development of microorganisms at the base of the food web.And then there's wildlife. Sea ice is the prime habitat for polar bears and the preferred location for dens where females give birth. Female walruses with young use sea ice as a resting platform and follow the ice edge south as it moves into the Bering Sea.The formation of sea ice requires the ocean temperature to be about 28 degrees (-1.8 C), the freezing point of saltwater. Historically, ice has formed in the northernmost waters and been moved by currents and wind into the southern Chukchi and Bering seas, where it cools the water, allowing even more ice to form, said Andy Mahoney, a sea ice physicist at the University of Alaska Fairbanks' Geophysical Institute. "I haven't seen any direct observations where ice has been transported into the Chukchi Sea and then melted," Mahoney said. "But the water temperature maps that I've seen, they're still significantly positive in Celsius. And you can't grow ice, even if you bring ice in, if the water temperatures above freezing, that ice is ultimately going to experience melting from the water temperature."Thomson and other scientists on the Sikuliaq will look at how the changes could affect coastlines, which already are eroding. Less ice and more open water translates to a significant threat. Ice acts as a smothering blanket, keeping down the size of waves. Open water increases fetch, the distance over which wave-generating winds blow."We know from other projects and other work that the waves are definitely on the increase in the Arctic," Thomson said.That means even more erosion, the chance of winter flooding in villages and increased danger to hunters in small boats and longer distances for them to travel to find seals and walruses.Forecasting sea ice is notoriously difficult but Thoman, the ex-weather forecaster, said he expects a less than robust year for sea ice."Maybe the horizontal extent conceivably gets up to normal, but it has to be extremely thin and it will be subject to rapid melting if we get into a stormy period in the winter or spring," Thoman said. "And even if that doesn't happen, because it's thinner, it means it's going to melt out sooner come next spring." Forecasters 20 years ago took it as a given that the water temperature would be cold enough to form sea ice."Even at the end of summer you couldn't get enough heat into the ocean to raise the water temperature significantly above freezing," Mahoney said. "So it didn't take much cooling to cool the ocean down to the freezing point."Climate warming has brought a harsh new reality. High summer temperatures have warmed the entire water column in the Bering and Chukchi seas. Water temperature from the surface to the ocean bottom remain above normal, delaying ice formation."We've got a cold atmosphere. We've got a strong wind. You'd think we'd be forming ice, but there's just too much heat left in the ocean," Mahoney said.The water potentially is warm enough to melt ice moving south from northern locations. DailyhuntDisclaimer: This story is auto-aggregated by a computer program and has not been created or edited by Dailyhunt. Publisher: The Telegraphhttp://krachelart.com/UserProfile/tabid/43/ctl/Profile/userId/235957/pageno/3/Default.aspx

Pruning scissors are out in Parliament

Her predicament has little to do with delay and uncertainty over a possible Shiv Sena-NCP-Congress alliance; it is over her own social media accounts. When Priyanka defected from the Congress Party during the 2019 Lok Sabha polls, the then AICC spokesperson had deftly deleted her anti-Sena-BJP tweets. The Sena was then an ally of the BJP. Now with prospects of the Sena joining hands with the Congress and the Sharad Pawar-led NCP, Priyanka is contemplating deleting her offensive posts against them as well. Her well-wishers wonder if Priyanka will be left with mere "good morning" and politically-correct posts. Tourism snub for Nath The political developments in Maharashtra managed to hurt Madhya Pradesh chief minister Kamal Nath's pride. It so happened that when the Congress decided to move its MLAs out of Maharashtra to avoid poaching, Bhopal and Jaipur were shortlisted as destinations as both have Congress governments. But Bhopal lost out to Jaipur on the ground of having better resorts, air connectivity and other facilities. It came as a shock to Nath who not only considers himself as a more senior and more astute political player than Rajasthan CM Ashok Gehlot, but also showcases Bhopal as a most tourist- and business-friendly place. It came as an unpleasant surprise to him that his own party thinks otherwise. Some like Rahul on top There is utter confusion within the Congress parivar over the choice of a new party president. Initially, Congressmen at various levels of hierarchy were pleased to see the back of Rahul Gandhi. However, the return of Sonia Gandhi included the old guard making a noisy comeback. The clout of Ahmed Patel and others is said to be so strong that even the anti-Rahul group within the Congress now wants the young Gandhi to be back in the saddle. Some confused souls are quietly humming a Ghalib couplet, 'Ab toh ghabra ke yeh kehte hai ki mar jayenge... marke bhi chain na paya toh kidhar jayenge...' The balance of Pawar What is Sharad Pawar up to with regard to the attempts at ministry formation in Maharashtra? The perception of trust deficit has been an important factor in Pawar's political journey. When young Pawar became Maharashtra CM for the first time at the age of 38 in 1978, he had treacherously toppled the Congress government led by Vasantdada Patil. Pawar helped Patil survive a vote of confidence in the house and then drove to Raj Bhavan withdrawing support and informing governor Sadiq Ali that he was forming a government in coalition with the Janata Party under the banner of the Progressive Democratic Front. Would Pawar prove his detractors wrong now? Not so achhe din for Khattar? Whodunnit? BJP circles are intrigued over Sanjay Joshi's front row presence at the swearing in of the M.L. Khattar ministry in Haryana. Joshi, once a towering RSS functionary, is considered a persona non grata in the present-day BJP. So who gave him the front row honour? Some insiders think it either signals achche din for Joshi or not-so-achche din for Khattar in the coming days. ... DailyhuntDisclaimer: This story is auto-aggregated by a computer program and has not been created or edited by Dailyhunt. Publisher: Deccan Chroniclehttp://www.cruzroja.es/creforumvolint_en/user/profile/58590.page

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