There is a storm brewing and that is after an interim report from an SC-appointed panel found that the Delhi govt had grossly overestimated the city’s oxygen needs. Pakistan’s troubles with the FATF continues but it is so very close to getting out of the ignominious grey list and the Twitter-Govt spat is getting silly.
CORONAVIRUS NEWS
🦠 March of Delta+: The virus variant is now in 10 states. ICMR says that although Delta cases have plummeted, it would not be correct to assume that 2nd wave has ended.
💉 Vaccine manufacture: SII has begun manufacturing Novovax’s Covovax vaccine that had earlier reported 90% efficacy. Yet to get approval for administration in India. The company will apply for trying the vaccine in children.
😷 Mask Up: Israel, one of the most vaccinated countries, has reimposed indoor masks on its people after a rise in Delta variant cases.
🫁 Airy Situation: An interim report by a group in a Supreme Court-appointed panel has found that the Delhi government had exaggerated its oxygen needs. Report says Delhi asked for 1140MT, when its requirement was only 209MT. This has sparked a political slugfest with BJP and Congress demanding CM Kejriwal’s resignation. Two members of the panel said they had not signed off on it.
💰 Relief: If you got financial aid for treatment of Covid-19 (upto ₹10 lakh from anyone, no cap if it is from employer) or as compensation for a family member dying of the disease, then that will not be taxable.
INDIA NEWS
🤦♂️ Testing IT: Twitter blocked IT Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad over a copyright issue for an hour. Prasad thinks this was a blowback to him taking on “high handedness and arbitrary actions of Twitter”. Amit Shah was once blocked in 2020 over the same law.
😠“Then Suffer!”: This comment earned the Kerala Women’s Commission chairperson K C Josephine the ire of the people. She said this while talking to a person who did not approach police on her allegations of torture from in-laws and husband. Josephine resigned.
💎 Party Links: An accident on Monday in Kerala turned out to be a case of gold smuggling gone wrong. The five people who died in the accident were allegedly gang members who were after gold being smuggled from Dubai. Further probe revealed that another man, who was also allegedly after the gold, had links to the ruling CPM. The gold had been seized by customs.
🇨🇳🪖🇮🇳 LAC Standoff: India and China have agreed to more talks to find a solution to their border problems. This comes a day after China said their deployment in Eastern Ladakh was “normal”, while India called it “amassing” of troops and an attempt to change statu quo.
👨🏻⚖️ Hear it: The Supreme Court annulled a Calcutta High Court order and told it to hear a plea from Mamat Banerjee in the Narada scam case afresh. The HC had earlier refused an affidavit from Banerjee and her law minister saying that the state had concluded its remarks.
🏆 Smart Cities: Uttar Pradesh won the state-level award for Smart City mission judged on the basis of social aspect, governance, culture, urban environment, sanitation, economy, water etc. Madhya Pradesh and Tamil Nadu followed. Among cities, Surat and and Indore were joint winners.
Crime: A year after they sought police protection from the Punjab and Haryana High Court a couple was shot at, killing the man, in Delhi’s Dwarka allegedly by the woman’s family.
🔎 ED Searches: The enforcement directorate searched former Maharashtra home minister Anil Deshmukh’s house in connection with a money laundering case. State govt calls it political vendetta.
WORLD NEWS
Biden-Ghani Meet: US President Joe Biden promised support to Afghanistan, whose President Ashraf Ghani was a guest at the White House, even as his troops were going to pull out by September 11.
🚅 Chinese Bullet(train): Tibet now has a fully electrified bullet train that connects its capital Lhasa with Nyngchi, which is close to Arunachal. The 435-km route will be covered in 13 hours from 48 hours earlier.
🇵🇰 Pak Grey: The FATF, which looks into terror financing and money laundering, keeps Pak in the grey list. The country had 27 to-do list items of which it did 26. What was left was “investigation and prosecution of senior leaders and commanders of UN-designated terror groups”.
Don’t release him!: The United Nations, human rights groups and the US have criticised Sri Lanka President Rajapaksa’s decision to pardon his former ally, former defence secretary and convicted murderer Duminda Silva. Silva had killed his political rival in 2011. He was among the many released, including alleged Tamil separatists.
👮👮♀️ Sentenced: In the George Floyd murder case (that sparked protests across the US against police highhandedness over Blacks) the judge sent policeman Derek Chauvin to 22 years in prison for “abuse of a position of trust and authority, and also the particular cruelty shown”.
😔 Miami Building Collapse: Number of missing rise to 159. The collapse of the 12-storey building had happened suddenly when many of the residents were still asleep. Four confirmed dead.
🇩🇪 Germany New Citizenship Law: The country’s constitution allows for those who fled Nazi persecution and their descendants to get back their citizenship, but till now there had been no legal framework. It also bars those convicted of anti-Semitism, racism and xenophobia from getting citizenship.
⚖️ A Woman Freed: Valérie Bacot who was accused of killing her husband (once her step-father) who had been sexually abusing her since she was 12, has been found guilty of murder but the court said she could walk out a free woman.
BUSINESS/ECONOMY
👋 Gone: Toshiba chairman Osamu Nagayama was ousted from his company after shareholders won a case against the company whose management resisted a call to investigate allegations that its board had colluded with the govt against its foreign investors.
⭐⭐⭐ False reviews: Complaints over fake reviews on Google and Amazon have led the UK competition watchdog to investigate the two companies. Such reviews can mislead shoppers and is unfair to businesses.
ENVIRONMENT, SCIENCE & TECH
🛸 UFO: The US’s Pentagon interim report said there had been 144 reports of unidentified aerial phenomena since 2004 but they could not explain 143 of them.
🚀 Blast Off: India’s new liberalised draft policy will allow private firms to build and operate space vehicle launch sites.
😞 Shit: Saying that bird droppings were creating “unhygienic conditions”, an official in Assam ordered trees in which they were nesting to be felled. 200 birds were killed.
🚀 Gets Nod to Space: Virgin Atlantic’s rocket plane Unity gets US licence to carry passengers to the edge of space – 90km up.
🐲 Dragon Man: In China, the discovery of an ancient skull (nicknamed Dragon Man), dated at least 140,000 years ago has led scientists to believe they have chanced upon a new species of humans called Homo longi. The story behind the discovery is just as fascinating.
🐯 Rare Cat: A male tiger was found to be killing prey to feed four tiger cubs that had lost their mother to an illness.
NEWS OF YESTERDAY
The Charter of the United Nations was signed in San Francisco on this day in 1945
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