LET DELHI BREATHE - Anti-cracker drives fail,
city chokes on Diwali air again
Anti-cracker campaigns by the central and Delhi
governments appeared to have made no significant impact as the capital
celebrated another dirty Diwali, with fireworks well into the night, leaving
the city's air choked with alarmingly high levels of pollution.Real time
data showed lev els of coarse pollution particles (PM 10) peak up to 19 times
the national safe standard for 24 hours and levels of fine, respirable
particles (PM 2.5) peak to over 10 times the safe standard at some spots. Even
sulphur dioxide lev el were high, at least twice the standard, during the peak
hours (9pm to midnight) in many parts of the city , indicating the use of
crackers with very high sulphur content. This, despite traders claiming a
serious slowdown in cracker sales this year.
400 cases in 36 hours, city has most fires in 10
yrs
Around 400 fires were reported from the capital
in the last 36 hours, making it the highest in the past 10 years.Officials
said 290 fire-related incidents occurred on Diwali, while 127 were reported
from midnight to 8am on Thursday . However, no deaths or major injuries were
reported.The fire department made elaborate preparations to handle the spurt in
distress calls. “We deployed fire tenders at 20 vulnerable spots, including
congested areas and key markets,“ said A K Sharma, director of Delhi Fire
Service.
Govt eyes Lokayukta
route to beat rivals on Jan Lokpal
With the winter session of the Assembly scheduled
to start on November 18, deputy CM Manish Sisodia on Friday met Union home
minister Rajnath Singh to build consensus on several bills that may require
approval of the Centre.With both BJP and Congress de With both BJP and Congress demanding
that the Jan Lokpal Bill be introduced as an anti-corruption measure in keeping
with AAP's manifesto, the Kejriwal government is trying to fight them off by
amending the Lokayukta Act. After a long delay , the government had appointed
retired Justice Reva Khetrapal as the Lokayukta last month. However, she is yet
to assume office.
FBI rules out
radioactive poison
More than a fortnight after the FBI sent Sunanda
Pushkar's viscera report to the ministry of home affairs, who in turn
communicated it to Delhi Police, commissioner B S Bassi has confirmed its
receipt, saying the radiation levels of the samples were well within the safety
limits, according to the report . However, there is still no clarity on the
exact cause of her death.Bassi said on Thursday evening the report had come to them through
“government channels“ and was being con veyed to the AIIMS team which had
conducted Sunanda's autopsy and given its opinion on the samples. The FIR of
murder had been registered on the basis of this medical team's findings which concluded
that the cause of death was poisoning.
IISc first Indian
institute to make it to top 100 univs list
An Indian University has featured on the list of
top 100 varsities in the Times Higher Education (THE) ranking for the first
time. Bangalore's Indian Institute of Science (IISC) has been ranked 99th in
engineering and technology category of the ranking released on Wednesday.“This
year's stand-out success story has to be India, making its debut in this
prestigious engineering and technology ranking, which represents the top few
per cent of world universities for these subject disciplines,'' said THE World
University Rankings editor Phil Baty .
BMS voices dissent
on FDI reforms
The Centre has called an informal meeting with
Sangh-affiliated trade union Bharatiya Mazdoor Sangh (BMS), which has strongly
opposed the Modi government's decision to allow Foreign Direct Investment in
retail and defence sectors, and have written to the PM seeking a review of the
decisions.According to sources, finance minister Arun Jaitley has asked for
a meeting with the BMS on Friday . The BMS leadership it is learnt, does not
believe that there will be “any positive outcome from the meeting“ and hence is
treating it as a “courtesy meeting“ with the finance minister. BMS general
secretary Brajesh Upadhyay is likely to meet Jaitley on Friday.
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