13 dead as Tauktae batters
Gujarat; 90 missing from barge
The severe cyclonic storm
Tauktae that entered Saurashtra early on Tuesday,
whipping up winds close to
180 kmph, has reduced in intensity and lay about 35 km
west of Ahmedabad late in
the evening, according to the
India Meteorological Department (IMD).
Rain is expected to continue in Gujarat and Rajasthan
for the next 24 hours as the
storm further weakens into a
“depression” near Jodhpur
by Wednesday.
At least 13 people were
killed in Gujarat as the storm
wreaked damage on roads,
power lines, trees and buildings.
The Navy and the Coast
Guard have so far rescued
320 people on board two
barges in the Arabian Sea,
near Mumbai.
Over 16,000 houses were
damaged, and more than
40,000 trees and over 1,000
poles uprooted due to the
cyclonic storm in Gujarat,
Chief Minister Vijay Rupani
said. Many areas of Ahmedabad were inundated after the
city received 75.69 mm of
rain between 6 a.m. and 4
p.m
CBSE extends
deadline for
Class X results
The Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE)
on Tuesday extended the
deadline for schools to submit Class X exam results to
June 30, citing COVID19.
On May 1, the CBSE notified a policy for tabulation
of Class X results based on
internal assessment by
schools, with the deadline
for submission of marks as
June 5 and for internal assessment marks out of 20
on June 11. The CBSE said
that it would declare the results by June 20.
ExIMA head
K.K. Aggarwal
passes away
K.K. Aggarwal, 62, former
national president of the
Indian Medical Association
(IMA) and Padma Shri
award winner, passed away
from complications related
to COVID19 at the All India
Institute of Medical Sciences on Monday night.
“Even during the pandemic, he made constant
efforts to educate the masses... through numerous
educational programmes,”
a statement shared on his
Twitter account said.
New naming system for virus variants
The World Health Organization (WHO) would unveil a
system of naming of coronavirus variants drawn from
the way tropical storms are
named, WHO Chief Scientist
Soumya Swaminathan says.
“The new naming system
should go live soon — yes, it
will be names like hurricanes. This is so as not to
stigmatise and deincentivise
countries from making their
sequencing results public. It
will also be easier for the lay
public to remember rather
than these complicated lineage numbers,” she said in
an email to The Hindu.
The WHO and health and
science agencies across the
world, for instance the Indian Council of Medical Research, the United States’
Centres for Disease Control
and the Public Health England refer to viruses and
their variants by formal lineage names, which are a
combination of letters and
names that point to the relationships between different
variants.
To the trained eye, variants such as B.1.1.7 and
B.1.617 suggest that they
have certain mutations in
common and as well clues to
their evolutionary history,
Sri Lanka’s Chinabacked tax haven clears final hurdle
A Chinese funded taxfree
enclave billed as Sri Lanka’s
answer to Dubai and Singapore cleared the final legal
hurdle on Tuesday as the Supreme Court in Colombo
ruled it could go ahead with
only minor tweaks.
The largest single foreign
investment in Sri Lanka is
one of several massive Asian
infrastructure projects funded by China as Beijing increases its regional
footprint.
Sri Lanka’s top court rejected 19 petitions challenging the “Colombo Port City
Economic Commission” Bill
and approved the $1.4billion project subject to minor
amendments which the government immediately said
it accepted. Project officials
have said they hope the
brand new “Port City”, an
area of reclaimed land, will
attract billions of dollars for
trade, banking and offshore
services similar to what is
available in Dubai and Singapore, two of its potential
competitors.
Named the “Colombo
Port City” because of its
proximity to Colombo’s
main harbour, the sea reclamation — carried out with
considerable Chinese labour
— completed in 2019 has
doubled the size of Colombo’s financial district by adding 269 hectares.
Under the proposed legislation expected to be passed
by Parliament, the Port City
will be administered by a
commission with unprecedented powers to fast track
investment approvals. ll
transactions within the Port
City will be denominated in
foreign currency and all salaries earned by any worker
will be tax exempt.
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