At least eight Uttar Pradesh police personnel, including a deputy superintendent of police, were killed in an encounter with criminals in Kanpur, officials said on Friday.
The encounter took place when the police team was approaching to arrest Vikas Dubey, a history sheeter facing 60 criminal cases, in Dikru village under Chaubeypur police station on the intervening night of Thursday and Friday, police said.
As the police team was about to reach the hideout of the dreaded criminal, a hail of bullets was showered on them from a building rooftop, leaving Deputy SP Devendra Mishra, three sub-inspectors and four constables dead, officials said.
Giving details of the incident, Uttar Pradesh Director General of Police H C Awasthi said the notorious criminal might have got an inkling of the impending raid.
He and his henchmen put up massive roadblocks to prevent the police personnel from proceeding towards their hideout. As the police team was caught unawares, the criminals fried at them from a building rooftop leading to the deaths, Awasthi said.
On getting information about the incident, additional DG (Law and Order), IG (Kanpur) and the senior SP of Kanpur rushed to the spot, where a forensic team has started investigations. The forensic team will be joined by another team from Lucknow.
The Special Task Force (STF) of the Uttar Pradesh police has also been pressed into action, the DGP said.
Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath paid tributes to the slain policemen and conveyed his heartfelt condolences to their family members.
According to a spokesperson, he directed the police chief to take stringent action against the culprits and collect detailed report from the spot immediately.PTI
Delhi recorded 2,442 fresh coronavirus cases on Wednesday, taking the infection tally in the city to over 89,000, while the death toll from the disease mounted to 2,803, the authorities said.
Recently, Delhi had eclipsed Mumbai as the city worst-hit by the pandemic in the country.
Sixty-one fatalities were recorded in the past 24 hours, the Delhi health department bulletin said on Wednesday.
The death toll from COVID-19 in Delhi stood at 2,742 on Tuesday.
The bulletin said the death toll due to the infection has risen to 2,803 and the total number of cases mounted to 89,802.
Besides, Mahesh Verma, the head of a Delhi government committee tasked with strengthening the preparedness of hospitals to battle coronavirus, has said the city’s COVID-19 tally may not reach 5.5 lakh cases by July-end as estimated earlier, but one needs to see how the virus behaves during the monsoon.
Meanwhile, a Delhi government panel has recommended roping in postgraduate students, pooling of resources and cash incentives to address the problem of staff shortage in hospitals amid a surge in coronavirus cases, sources said.
The two-member committee, comprising Verma and Dr BL Sherwal, director, Rajiv Gandhi Super Speciality Hospital (RGSSH), was formed last week.
According to the bulletin, 59,992 patients have recovered, been discharged or migrated so far, while the number of active cases stood at 27,007, adding that 5,51,708 tests have been conducted.
The number of containment zones in the city on Wednesday stood at 437.PTI
Actor Vaani Kapoor will play the female lead opposite Akshay Kumar in the high-end espionage thriller “Bellbottom”, producer Jackky Bhagnani announced on Thursday.
The project marks Vaani’s first onscreen pairing with Akshay.
Bhagnani said the “War” star has a “meaty” role in the much-anticipated movie.
“Vaani is an intelligent and an effective actor and I have loved all her performances. The female lead in ‘Bellbottom’ has to be in sync with Akshay Sir’s screen persona.
“The role is meaty and I am confident that Vaani will ace this one,” Bhagnani said in a statement.
Vaani said she is excited to share the screen space with Akshay.
“I am thrilled to partner with Pooja Entertainment who have already made me feel at home at this initial stage of our film. Hoping that this excitement will translate beautifully on screen,” the 31-year-old actor said.
Directed by Ranjit M Tewari, the story is set in the 1980s and is about one of India’s forgotten heroes.
It is written by Aseem Arrora and Parveez Shaikh, and will go on floors later this year.
“Vaani’s character in the film is extremely intriguing. She has a certain flair and we’re all very excited to have her on board,” Tewari said.
Pooja Entertainment presents in association with Emmay Entertainment, “Bellbottom” is produced by Vashu Bhagnani, Jackky Bhagnani, Deepshikha Deshmukh, Monisha Advani, Madhu Bhojwani and Nikhil Advani.
“Bellbottom” is scheduled to release on April 2, 2021.PTI
A 10-day complete lockdown has
been enforced from Thursday in Thane and two other civic administration limits adjoining Mumbai city to contain the spread of coronavirus, officials said.
Essential services and medical emergencies are exempted from the lockdown, while inter-city buses, autorickshaws and taxis will not be allowed to operate in these civic limits, they said.
The Thane Municipal Corporation (TMC), Kalyan Dombivali Municipal Corporation (KDMC) and Mira Bhayandar Municipal Corporation, all part of the Mumbai Metropolitan Region (MMR), jointly decided on the complete lockdown for next 10 days in view of the rising number of COVID-19 cases in these areas, the officials said.
The lockdown came into force from 7 am on Thursday and will continue till 7 am on July 12, they said.
The municipal corporations of Navi Mumbai and Panvel will enforce complete lockdown from July 3 midnight.
“We want to break the chain of coronavirus infection.
People working in essential services will be exempted from the lockdown and will be allowed to move out for work,” KDMC Commissioner Vijay Suryavanshi said.
A TMC official said inter-city bus services, auto- rickshaws, taxis and app-based cabs will not be allowed to operate.
“Medical emergencies are exempted. A patient can be accompanied by only one person in a cab or auto-rickshaw, he said.
Banks, ATMs, IT, ITeS, India Post, internet and data services and medical shops will be exempted from the lockdown, he said.
TMC Commissioner Dr Vipin Sharma, in an order issued on Tuesday, said the city will observe a total lockdown for 10 days from Thursday.
Non-essential services will not operate during this period, and nor would movement of vehicles for proposes other than medical and essential travel be allowed, the order said.
Movement of all essential goods as well as perishable items will be allowed during this period, it added.
Thane Collector Rajesh Narvekar on Wednesday said roads, market areas and other public places are becoming increasingly congested with the introduction of various concessions as per the ‘Mission Begin Again’ order.
Also, there is a lot of stress on the health system, police department and district administration. Against this backdrop, lockdown restrictions need to be re-enforced, he said.
Similar orders are applicable in Mira-Bhayandar.
Thane district on Wednesday registered 1,322 new coronavirus cases, pushing its overall tally to 34,646, the administration said.
Out of the total cases, Thane city reported 9,138 cases, Navi Mumbai reported 6,823 cases, while the tally in Kalyan was nearing 7,000.
The death toll in Thane district due to the viral infection has reached 1,094, including 340 in Thane, 217 in Navi Mumbai, 120 in Kalyan and 145 in Mira Bhayandar township.
Superstar Shah Rukh Khan on Sunday expressed gratitude to his fans for “allowing” his passion to become his long-standing profession, as he clocked 28 years in Bollywood this month.
Shah Rukh, who arguably made the most successful transition from TV to the big screen, made foray into Bollywood with director Raj Kanwar’s “Deewana” on June 26, 1992, after his playing lead roles in popular TV shows “Fauji” (1988) and “Circus” (1989).
The 54-year-old actor said more than his professionalism, it is his passion to entertain which will keep him going for many more years in the industry.
“Don’t know when my passion became my purpose and then turned into my profession. Thank you all for so many years of allowing me to entertain you. More than my professionalism I believe my passionalism will see me through many more years of service to all of you,” Shah Rukh tweeted alongside a latest picture of him.
In a subsequent tweet, the actor thanked his wife, producer-interior designer Gauri for clicking the photograph and wrote “28 years and counting…”
The actor’s initial years in films saw him play a mix of negative characters in movies like “Baazigar”, “Darr” and “Anjaam” and as a small-town simpleton with big dreams in “Raju Ban Gaya Gentleman” and “Kabhi Haa Kabhi Naa”.
It was, however, his turn in Aditya Chopra’s love story “Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge” (1995), which catapulted him to stardom and gave Hindi cinema one of its biggest romantic heroes.
From 1995 to mid 2000, Shah Rukh starred in titles like “Dil To Paagal Hai”, “Yes Boss”, “Kuch Kuch Hota Hai”, “Mohabbatein”, “Kabhi Khushi Kabhie Gham”, “Devdas”, “Kal Ho Na Ho”, “Main Hoon Na”, “Veer Zaara”, all of which were huge box office hits and earned the actor the tag of Bollywood’s ‘King Khan’.
He also featured in acclaimed films like “Swades”, “Chak De! India”, and “My Name is Khan”, in which he played a common man on a mission as opposed to his romantic hero staple.
The actor’s dream run came to a halt beginning 2011, with his sci-fi superhero project “Ra.One”.
Though the decade saw him deliver huge hits with comedies “Chennai Express” and “Happy New Year” between 2013 and 2014, his other attempts, including “Raees”, where he played a gangster, “Fan”, which had him playing a double role and “Zero”, featuring him as a vertically challenged man, fetched him acclaim but not box office glory.
Shah Rukh, who also owns production banner Red Chillies Entertainment, recently launched their collaborations with streamer Netflix India – espionage thriller series “Bard of Blood”, starring Emraan Hashmi, and “Betaal”, a zombie horror series, featuring Viineet Kumar and Ahana Kumra.
The actor is now reportedly gearing up for filmmaker Rajkumar Hirani’s next, two years since his last screen outing with “Zero” in 2018.PTI
The world surpassed two sobering coronavirus milestones Sunday — 500,000 confirmed deaths, 10 million confirmed cases — and hit another high mark for daily new infections as governments that attempted reopenings continued to backtrack and warn that worse news could be yet to come.
COVID-19 has taken a very swift and very dangerous turn in Texas over just the past few weeks, said Gov. Greg Abbott, who allowed businesses to start reopening in early May but on Friday shut down bars and limited restaurant dining amid a spike in cases.
California Gov. Gavin Newsom rolled back reopenings of bars in seven counties, including Los Angeles. He ordered them to close immediately and urged eight other counties to issue local health orders mandating the same.
More Florida beaches will be closing again to avoid further spread of the new coronavirus as officials try to tamp down on large gatherings amid a spike in COVID-19 cases. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis said interactions among young people are driving the surge.
Caution was thrown to the wind and so we are where we are,” DeSantis said.
South Africa’s health minister warned that the country’s current surge of cases is expected to rapidly increase in the coming weeks and push hospitals to the limit. Health Minister Zwelini Mkhize said the current rise in infections has come from people who moved back into the workplace.
New clusters of cases at a Swiss nightclub and in the central English city of Leicester showed that the virus was still circulating widely in Europe, though not with the rapidly growing infection rate seen in parts of the U.S., Latin America and India.
Poland and France, meanwhile, attempted a step toward normalcy as they held elections that had been delayed by the virus.
Wearing mandatory masks, social distancing in lines and carrying their own pens to sign voting registers, French voters cast ballots in a second round of municipal elections. Poles also wore masks and used hand sanitizer, and some in virus-hit areas were told to mail in their ballots.
I didn’t go and vote the first time around because I am elderly and I got scared, said Fanny Barouh as she voted in a Paris school.
In Texas, Abbott appeared with Vice President Mike Pence, who cut campaign events from upcoming visits to Florida and Arizona because of rising virus cases in those states.
Pence praised Abbott for both his decision to reopen the state, and to roll back the reopening plans.
You flattened the curve here in Texas … but about two weeks ago something changed, Pence said.
Pence urged people to wear masks when unable to practice social distancing. He and Abbott wore face masks as they entered and left the room, taking them off while speaking to reporters.
Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar, meanwhile, defended the fact that President Donald Trump has rarely worn a mask in public, saying he doesn’t have to follow his own administration’s guidance because as a leader of the free world he’s tested regularly and is in very different circumstances than the rest of us.
Addressing spikes in reported coronavirus cases in some states, Azar said on NBC’s Meet the Press that people have to take ownership of their own behaviors by social distancing and wearing masks if possible.
A reported tally Sunday from Johns Hopkins University researchers said the death toll from the coronavirus pandemic had topped 500,00.
About 1 in 4 of those deaths more than 125,000 have been reported in the U.S. The country with the next highest death toll is Brazil, with more than 57,000, or about 1 in 9.
The true death toll from the virus, which first emerged in China late last year, is widely believed to be significantly higher. Experts say that especially early on, many victims died of COVID-19 without being tested for it.
To date, more than 10 million confirmed cases have been reported globally. About a quarter of them have been reported in the U.S.
The World Health Organisation announced another daily record in the number of confirmed coronavirus cases across the world – topping over 189,000 in a single 24-hour period. The tally eclipses the previous record a week earlier at over 183,000 cases, showing case counts continue to progress worldwide.
Overall the U.S. still has far and away the most total cases. At more than 2,450,000 – roughly twice that of Brazil. The number of actual cases worldwide is much higher.
New York, once the nation’s pandemic epicenter, is now on the exact opposite end, Gov. Andrew Cuomo said in an interview with Meet the Press. The state reported five new virus deaths Saturday, its lowest reported daily death toll since March 15.
During the state’s peak pandemic in April, nearly 800 people were dying every day. New York still leads the nation in COVID-19 deaths with nearly 25,000.
In the state of Washington, Gov. Jay Inslee put a hold on plans to move counties to the fourth phase of his reopening plan as cases continue to increase. But in Hawaii, the city of Honolulu announced that campgrounds will reopen for the first time in three months with limited permits to ensure social distancing.
Britain’s government, meanwhile, is considering whether a local lockdown is needed for the central English city of Leicester amid reports about a spike in COVID-19 among its Asian community. It would be Britain’s first local lockdown.PTI
Three unidentified militants were killed in an encounter with the security forces in Jammu and Kashmir’s Anantnag district on Monday, police said.
The security forces launched a cordon and search operation at Khul Chohar in the south Kashmir district following information about the presence of militants in the area, a police official said.
The operation turned into an encounter after the militants fired upon a search party of the forces, who retaliated, the official said.
Three militants have been killed in the encounter so far, he said, adding that the identity and group affiliation were being ascertained.PTI
Pakistan has reported 6,397 new coronavirus cases on Thursday, the highest single day spike, taking the total number of infections in the country to 1,25,933, the health ministry said on Friday.
The new record single day spike was reported on a day when the Pakistan government was to present the budget for the 2020-21 fiscal year in Parliament after showing dismal negative 0.38 per cent Gross Domestic Product (GDP) growth in the outgoing year, for which the officials have blamed the coronavirus outbreak among the main reasons.
The Ministry of National Health Services reported that 107 patients died of coronavirus during the last 24 hours. A total of 40,247 patients have recovered from the contagious infection so far.
Punjab province has reported 47,382 patients of coronavirus, Sindh 46,828, Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa 15,787, Balochistan 7,673, Islamabad 6,699, Gilgit-Baltistan 1,030 and Pakistan-occupied Kashmir reported 534 cases till now, the health ministry said.
“A total of 809,169 tests has been conducted so far, including a record 28,344 in the last 24 hours,” the ministry said in a statement.
Though the government would present the Budget in Parliament on Thursday, the attendance is expected to be low as several of them have been diagnosed with the coronavirus infection, including opposition leader Shehbaz Sharif.
Advisor on economic affairs Dr Abdul Hafeed Shaikh, while launching the Economic Survey on Thursday, said that Pakistan’s economy suffered more than Rs 3 trillion losses due to the coronavirus.PTI
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