The virus causing the deadly Crimea Congo Hemorrhagic Fever (CCHF) in Ahmedabad has jumped from infected ticks to local cattle like sheep, goat and cows. Cattle samples collected from six villages around ground zero -- Kolat village in Sanand whose resident Amina Momin was the first human in India to get infected with CCHF and die on January 3 -- have tested positive for high viral load. Speaking to TOI,...
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Kind to cash by Richard Mahapatra
The government has a plan to reach welfare to the poor without wasting money. It wants to put hard cash in their hands instead of spending on welfare programmes. To begin with, it wants to end the public distribution system of food grain and give money directly to the people. Its logic: the new system of cash Transfer will plug leakages and save an enormous amount of money. But is it...
More »Mirchpur violence: Court orders CRPF deployment at village
A Delhi court Tuesday ordered deployment of Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) at Mirchpur village in Haryana to protect the witnesses till they record their testimonies in the case relating to an attack on Dalits there in 2010, which led to the death of two community members. Special Judge (Scheduled Caste/Scheduled Tribal Act) Kamini Lau said: 'I now direct that CRPF deployment at village Mirchpur should be made preferably near the...
More »A platter of blather by Pratap Bhanu Mehta
The debate over food security is becoming an exercise in callow dissimulation, where we devote our energies to ensure that food security remains a mirage. The core objective should be simple. It is a scandal that after two decades of high growth, India still does not make adequate nutrition available to large sections of the population. There is simply no financial, technological or production related reason why this should be...
More »Trade-based money laundering on the rise in India by Shyamal Gupta
The term ‘money laundering’ is said to have originated from mafia ownership of Laundromats in the US. Gangsters there were earning huge sums in cash by extortion, prostitution, gambling and bootleg liquor. They needed to show a legitimate source for these monies. Money launderers now resort to the use of apparently legitimate commercial transactions to camouflage their laundering activities. There has been an increasing amount of interest of late in commodity...
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