Today’s blog posts will be filled with visuals, including the protests in London against a lockdown, Brazil’s demand that its president quit, a stunning image from NASA and possibly, the smallest flower you have ever seen!
CORONAVIRUS NEWS
🦠🇻🇳 Vietnam Variant: Combination of UK and Indian variants.
🔐 Local Lockdowns: Businesses may not have been adversely hit by the 2nd wave as they were by the 2020 lockdown, but are still vulnerable: low vaccination among the larger, younger population, demand is low.
🚆✈️ Meter Down: Just 32.7mn people travelled in trains last April (in 04/2019, it was 300 mn), just 39K people flew on May 25 (Feb peak was 300K).
👶🏻 PM CARES for Children: New GoI scheme to provide Rs 10 lakh to each orphan that will be a monthly stipend once they reach 18 years. At 23, they will get the entire cash lump sum. Those younger than 11 will be admitted to a KV or private school free of cost.
👨💼👩💼 Review Groups: Centre reorganises Empowered Group of Ministers set up to look into Covid management into 10 groups that will now be responsible for O2 management and vaccinations. Eight-member panel to look into GST relief for Covid materials.
🙏 Dead: The last Maharaja of Kutch, Maharrao Pragmalji III (85), Assam MLA Leho Ram Boro (63), ex-Chhattisgarh minister Shakrajit Nayak (78)
🇪🇺 Covid Measures: Greece has unveiled the first EU Covid passport. It’ll include details of vaccination, PCR test results and past infection. In London, people see measures such as lockdown as an infringement on civil liberties, and led massive protests.
🚷 Lockdown: Kerala till June 9, Puducherry, Manipur, Goa & Delhi till June 7, Mizoram till June 6
🚫 No More Cancellations: Airbnb no longer offers refunds over Covid, saying it cannot be said to be an “unforeseen” incident any longer.
INDIA NEWS
“🇺🇸🇮🇳🇦🇺🇯🇵Quad today fills a very important gap that has emerged in contemporary times, where there are global or regional requirements, which cannot be filled by a single country. It cannot even be filled by one bilateral relationship, and which is not being addressed at the multilateral level”
S Jaishankar, Minister for external affairs in the US over Quad’s role
🏆 Declines Prize: Tamil Poet Vairamuthu has declined the ONV Kurup prize after the awarding committee decided to review its decision following allegations of sexual harassment against him.
☠️ Spurious Liquor: 22 dead in Aligarh and may rise further.
🛩️ Birds of a Feather: Indian Air Force’s aerial acrobatics team Suryakiran completes 25 years.
WORLD NEWS
🇨🇦😱 Canada Horror: Bodies of 215 Indigenous kids found beneath a residential school. Cause and timing of deaths unknown. It was set up by Roman Catholic Church in 20th century and closed in 1978 to forcibly assimilate them.
🇧🇷 Brazil Anger: Thousands of people have come out onto the streets to demand the ouster of President Jair Bolsonaro over his mishandling of the pandemic.
EU’s Bribe: Without outrightly calling for a “regime change”, the EU has offered Belarus €3bn if it made a “transition” to democracy.
“So far, you have blatantly ignored the democratic choice of the Belarusian people. It is time to change course. When – and we believe it is a case of when, not if – Belarus starts its peaceful democratic transition, the EU will be there to accompany it.”
Ursula von der Leyen, European Commission president to Belarus authorities
🇨🇴 Colombia: 10 killed in protests over tax reforms.
🇽🇹🗳️ Voting Restrictions: Texas likely to pass a law that will no longer allow voting on Sundays and drive-through voting. Biden calls it “wrong and un-American”.
ENVIRONMENT, SCIENCE & TECH
🇫🇷🥘 French Cries: France has embarked on reducing meat in its diet with more vegetarian options at schools and public catering areas to reduce impact on climate. The bill that proposes this has sparked outrage and applause.
🦍🦓🌳🌱 0.1%: of GDP a year is all it’ll take to avoid the breakdown of natural ecosystems and maintain biodiversity imperative to human survival, says a UN report.
🛢️ Oily Waters: Concern over diesel leak after Indian Coast Guard finds oil in the Arabian Sea close to where a barge ran aground in last week’s cyclone. Meanwhile, the ship off the Sri Lanka coast continues to burn and may cause acid rain. Maybe this story on hair being used to stop oil spill could help?
🌼 Small Wonder: A dwarf pansy has bloomed on the Isles of Scilly for the first time in 16 years.
News Of Today 