Friday, September 18, 2015

Dengue Toll Rises to 16 in Delhi


Dengue Toll Rises to 16 in Delhi

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Dengue Toll Rises to 16 in Delhi
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New Delhi:  Two girls, aged three and nine, have become the latest victims of dengue in the city, taking the toll to 16 today in what is being billed as the worst outbreak of the vector-borne disease in the national capital in the past five years.

Three-year-old Neha Mathur, a resident of Sangam Vihar area in south Delhi, died of dengue at Saket City Hospital yesterday, doctors said.

The nine-year-old girl, a resident of Okhla died on September 15 at RML hospital, doctors said.

According to Neha's father Vinod Mathur, she had fever for quite some time and on September 11, he got her tested but the results were normal.

"The test results were normal. But as fever did not subside, on September 15 we took her to Pt Madan Mohan Malaviya Hospital. Doctors there did not carry out any tests, just gave her drip and discharged. Around 3 am yesterday, she developed high fever and we rushed her to Majeedia Hospital in Hamdard Nagar where again the doctors gave her injection and stabilised her. They did not admit her or did not carry out any tests," said her father.

"We brought her home but her condition deteriorated and we took her to Saket City hospital around 11 AM where she died. She tested positive for dengue at the hospital," said Mr Mathur.

"The patient had come with internal bleeding and died of dengue shock syndrome," said Dr Shashishekhar Singh, senior consultant at the hospital's Paediatrics department.

According to municipal corporation officials, over 2,000 people have tested positive for the vector-borne disease.

The death toll as per the official data still stands at 5
source-http://www.ndtv.com/delhi-news/2-girls-succumb-to-dengue-today-as-toll-rises-to-16-1218846

A Delhi Father Who Lost Both His Children to Dengue

A Delhi Father Who Lost Both His Children to Dengue

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A Delhi Father Who Lost Both His Children to Dengue
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Dinesh Kumar's 11-year-old son died of dengue in 2010. Last month, he lost his 11-year-old daughter to the disease
New Delhi:  The deaths of two young boys from dengue outraged the country after reports that both had been refused treatment by a number of Delhi hospitals. The parents of one of the children jumped off a four-storey building in South Delhi over the weekend, forcing the government to intervene urgently in a crisis which has spiraled into the capital's worst dengue outbreak in five years.

Others may find it hard to disbelieve that the reported callousness of hospitals cost two young lives. Not Dinesh Kumar. In 2010, his 11-year-old son, Ankit, died of dengue. Last month, he lost his 11-year-old daughter, Maneka, to the epidemic.

"Both my children are dead, I'm helpless. I told the doctors I will sell my house my everything but save my kids," said Mr Kumar, 45, in his house in Madanpur Khadar in South Delhi. Outside, on the streets of his neighbourhood, children play in stagnant water. Despite the dengue outbreak, no major clean-up effort of fumigation has been seen here.

Mr Kumar says for both his children, he begged doctors not to delay the treatment. But he claims that last month, doctors at one hospital ordered him to move his feverish daughter to another; she died two days later. Medical records show the 11-year-old died of a heart attack.

Maneka's 11-year-old brother died five years ago. He too was moved between hospitals. At the state-run where he died, his family says they waited several hours to get a doctor's attention.

The government has warned that hospitals will lose licenses if they turn away dengue patients. Surprise checks are being carried out at state-run hospitals by Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal and other ministers. But the wards at hospitals are packed with patients in need of assistance, and not enough doctors to attend to them urgently.

So far this year, more than 1,900 cases have been reported - and experts warn that the crisis will peak in October after the monsoon ends. 
source-http://www.ndtv.com/delhi-news/a-delhi-father-who-lost-both-his-children-to-dengue-1218379

Dengue Outbreak: Goat Milk and Papaya Leaves Being Sold at Sky-High Rates in Delhi


Dengue Outbreak: Goat Milk and Papaya Leaves Being Sold at Sky-High Rates in Delhi

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Dengue Outbreak: Goat Milk and Papaya Leaves Being Sold at Sky-High Rates in DelhiCan goat milk cure dengue? There is no scientific answer to this, but the sales of the same has increased phenomenally in the capital as the mosquito-borne disease has seen a spurt. Delhi's civic bodies have so far confirmed only five dengue deaths in the national capital and the number of cases as 1,872. However, independent inquiries have confirmed 18 deaths till Thursday evening in the city.

Since there is no specific vaccine or drug to prevent dengue, people are looking for alternative or natural home remedies to control the dangerous disease. "It is mentioned in our books that goat milk helps in recovering fast from dengue fever as the milk is light and easy to digest. However, there is no mention that it increases platelet count," said Ayurveda practitioner Dr. Aftab Ahmad.

Following suggestions by traditional healers that goat milk may be beneficial to people infected with dengue, its price in the capital has reportedly soared to Rs. 2,000 per litre from Rs.800 a litre a few days back, while a dry, shrivelled blade of papaya leaf is available for Rs.500.

Goat breeders Jai Kishan and Nadeem Gowhar from south Delhi's Hauz Rani area said there was a huge demand for goat milk. "The goat milk is being sold at Rs.500-Rs.2,000 per litre in Malviya Nagar and adjoining areas," Kishan said.

"We have over 60 goats, but many of them are in the calving stage. Currently, only 3-4 litres of milk is available with us," he said. "The demand is so high that people have to wait for days to get a glass of goat milk."

Kishan said the normal price for goat milk is about Rs.35-40 per litre.

On patients suffering from dengue and asking for goat milk, Gowhar said: "We don't charge for the milk and don't provide one person more than 400 ml. People often return with gifts to our home after recovering from dengue."

However, allopathic doctors are not very impressed with the efficacy of goat milk for treating dengue. "We don't recommend it (goat milk) for dengue treatment as no major study has been done on this," said Dr Rommel Tickoo, senior consultant, internal medicine, Max Hospital.

As far as papaya is concerned, it is believed that the juice of papaya leaves can be alternative treatment for dengue. "The juice of crushed leaves of papaya can prove to be helpful during treatment for dengue," said Dr. Shobha Mathur, a nutritionist based in Gurgaon.

"Neem, fresh coriander leaves and tulsi can also be taken in the form of tonic to reduce dengue fever," Mathur added.

Mathur advises: Drink as much water as possible to keep the body hydrated and to replace fluid loss. This will also bring down the body temperature while easing symptom like headaches and muscle cramps.

Meanwhile, yoga guru Baba Ramdev told a press conference on Thursday that instead of running from pillar to post for admitting their kin in the hospitals, people should take the help of Ayurveda and herbal medicines like aloe vera, pomegranate and papaya juice.

Wednesday, September 9, 2015

Behind Rakesh Maria's Removal as Mumbai Police Chief, a History of Friction

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Behind Rakesh Maria's Removal as Mumbai Police Chief, a History of Friction
Mumbai Police Chief Rakesh Maria with Lalit Modi in London last year
Mumbai:  Rakesh Maria's abrupt transfer as Mumbai's police chief in the middle of the high-profile Sheena Bora murder investigation came just three days after a telling comment by Maharashtra Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis.

Mr Fadnavis had questioned the heavy duty focus on the case and said that the police should devote similar attention to other cases that are not in the spotlight.

Rakesh Maria, a veteran of prominent investigations, had personally interrogated the three accused - Sheena Bora's mother Indrani Mukerjea, her step-father and a driver - for long hours, and making another exception, also briefed the media. Hours before his removal, he had questioned Indrani Mukerjea's husband, TV tycoon Peter Mukerjea.

Sources say the Chief Minister was unhappy about Mr Maria's unusual level of engagement in the case that has had  many in the nation riveted for a fortnight, and wanted him to step back.

Mr Maria, however, decided to go to the police station and handle the questioning himself because he was reportedly told that the accused were "high profile, not cooperating and speaking in hi-fi English."

Mr Maria, 58, was promoted as Director General of Home Guards, Maharashtra on Tuesday; he swapped places with Ahmed Javed, who has taken charge as Mumbai police commissioner.

Sources close to Mr Maria said he was expecting a promotion but when it came 22 days too early, he was surprised and upset.

The Chief Minister signed off on the transfer before leaving for Japan on Monday night. It is not known yet whether a police establishment board meeting was held before the decision, as mandated by the Supreme Court.

Sources say the working relationship between Mr Maria and the chief minister had been patchy since Mr Fadnavis took charge last year.

Earlier, the two disagreed over a proposal by Aaditya Thackeray, a young leader of the Shiv Sena, to keep restaurants, clubs and bars in Mumbai open through the night. Mr Maria gave his all-clear to the proposal but the ruling BJP objected, saying such a move would burden the overworked city police.

More recently, Mr Maria was asked by Mr Fadnavis to explain his meeting with corruption accused former IPL boss Lalit Modi last year.

Sources close to Mr. Maria denied any rift between Mr. Maria and Mr. Fadnavis and blamed the transfer to an "internal rivalry" in the IPS or Indian Police Force.
source-http://www.ndtv.com/mumbai-news/behind-rakesh-marias-removal-as-mumbai-police-chief-a-history-of-friction-1215738
 

NASA Assembles First Pieces for Deep Space Mission

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NASA Assembles First Pieces for Deep Space Mission
Washington:  In a small yet significant to send astronauts to Mars, NASA engineers have welded together the first two segments of the Orion crew module that will fly atop NASA's Space Launch System (SLS) rocket on a mission beyond the far side of the moon.

The primary structure of Orion's crew module is made of seven large aluminium pieces that must be welded together in detailed fashion at NASA's Michoud Assembly Facility in New Orleans.

"Every day, teams around the country are moving at full speed to get ready for Exploration Mission-1 (EM-1) when we'll flight test Orion and SLS together in the proving ground of space, far away from the safety of Earth," said Bill Hill, deputy associate administrator for Exploration Systems Development at NASA Headquarters in Washington, DC.

"We are progressing toward eventually sending astronauts deep into space," he said in a statement.

The first weld connects the tunnel to the forward bulkhead, which is at the top of the spacecraft and houses many of Orion's critical systems, such as the parachutes that deploy during re-entry.

Orion's tunnel, with a docking hatch, will allow crews to move between the crew module and other spacecraft.

"Each of Orion's systems and subsystems is assembled or integrated onto the primary structure, so starting to weld the underlying elements together is a critical first manufacturing step," added Mark Geyer, Orion programme manager.

During the coming months, engineers will inspect and evaluate them to ensure they meet precise design requirements before welding.

Once complete, the structure will be shipped to NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida where it will be assembled with the other elements of the spacecraft, integrated with SLS and processed before launch.

SLS is one of the most experienced large rocket engines in the world, with more than a million seconds of ground test and flight operations time.

When completed, SLS will enable astronauts to begin their journey to explore destinations far into the solar system. 
source-http://www.ndtv.com/world-news/nasa-assembles-first-pieces-for-deep-space-mission-1215757

Saturday, September 5, 2015

Government to Declare One Rank One Pension Today: Sources

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Government to Declare One Rank One Pension Today: Sources
Ex-servicemen on an indefinite hunger strike over non-implementation of One Rank One Pension (OROP) at New Delhi's Jantar Mantar (Press Trust of India photo)
New Delhi:  The government is likely to announce the implementation of the long-awaited One Rank One Pension or OROP today, sources have said. Protesting veterans, who met Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar today, have said that they will make their next course of action known after that meeting.
Here are the latest developments:
  1. The government, sources say, has accepted 98 per cent of the demands made by ex-servicemen. But it will stick to its offer of a revision of pension every five years and not the one, or maximum two years as demanded by the veterans, sources say, adding it is willing to examine that demand.
  2. That is not acceptable, the veterans today said at a press conference, as are reported plans to exclude ex-servicemen who had opted for premature retirement from OROP benefits. "This will be only called as OROP only when it's applied to all," said Major Gen (retd.) Satbir Singh.
  3. "Our main proposal is that a senior should not get pension less than a junior. We will wait for full plan of government and then come with a calibrated response," he said.
  4. The veterans leading the OROP protests at Jantar Mantar in Delhi - which has entered its 84th day - had earlier said that the government's move to announce OROP was "unilateral" and had announced plans for a protest rally in Delhi on September 12.
  5. Explaining the delay in implementing OROP, top sources told NDTV that the Koshiyari committee - set up by the Congress-led UPA government to examine the issue - had recommended about Rs 1,500 crore for the scheme. But a re-look by the NDA government threw up a much higher figure - over Rs 8,000 crore. "Getting consensus from all stakeholders took some time," a top source told NDTV.
  6. Top sources said the government was willing to accept the veterans' demand that OROP be effective from July 1, 2014, with arrears. The government is considering paying arrears in four installments, the sources said.
  7. The lowest-ranking retired jawans, widows and the disabled are likely to accrue the maximum benefit from the announcement, sources say. Widows and ex-servicemen over 70 are likely to be paid first. With the current proposal, jawans will get a pension hike of at least 3,500 to 4,500 a month, say sources.
  8. Since there are many cases of veterans of the same rank earning different pensions, the government proposes to take the average of the maximum and minimum pension paid per rank, while protecting those who earn above average pensions in their rank.
  9. The veterans and the government have been involved in negotiations for months now. The Prime Minister's Office stepped in last month after the strike escalated into a hunger-strike.
    1. OROP was a key promise made by Prime Minister Narendra Modi when he was campaigning for last year's national election. OROP will give the same pension to ex-servicemen who retired many years ago as that which soldiers of the same rank retiring now draw. The scheme will benefit three million veterans
source-http://www.ndtv.com/cheat-sheet/government-to-declare-one-rank-one-pension-today-say-sources-1214481
The Indrani Mukerjea Case and the Art of Living Dangerously

The Indrani Mukerjea Case and the Art of Living Dangerously

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At a minimum, Indrani Mukerjea was an unhesitant risk-taker as composed from myriad accounts offered by people she knew well, and those not on the inside but nevertheless with a lot to say.

When she was 18 and known as Pori Bora, Indrani Mukerjea met Siddharth Das who was a college student in Shillong. They then moved in with Indrani Mukerjea's parents who reportedly ran a rickshaw-for-hire business in Guwahati. Siddharth Das says that without marrying, they had two children - Sheena and Mekhail.

For a young woman, these were - still are - bold strokes, colouring outside the lines.

Siddharth Das was careful to mask himself, first with a helmet, and then a red cap and scarf, at two recent interactions with reporters in Kolkata. He said Indrani Mukerjea told him in 1989 that she was leaving him; their children remained with her parents; he moved back to Kolkata, she relocated to Shillong. Siddharth Das told reporters "she always had ambition", electing, like huge swathes of the country, to pin that as the cause of a duly hellish descent.
 
Siddharth Das claimed that Sheena Bora and Mekhail were born out of his and Indrani's live-in relationship.

Both gender and the provenance of her allegedly outsized drive ("small-town" has done double duty as noun and adjective for the former media executive) seem to have influenced the jury appearing nightly on prime time to size up just what sort of woman abandons her young children. The same sort of woman, the Greek chorus of commentators have suggested, that plots to kill them when they were grown.

Raise your hand if you're feeling the burn of freshman psychology.

In the early part of 2012, the police says, Indrani Mukerjea Skyped uninhibitedly with Sanjeev Khanna, her first husband, finalizing the details of how to eliminate her older two children. Sanjeev Khanna and Indrani Mukerjea share a daughter, Vidhie, now 18. Sanjeev Khanna has reportedly told the police that his former wife revealed to him that the Bora siblings were planning to kill Vidhie. The theory, which he allegedly bought, was greased with the offer of money, a promise made good on he has reportedly confessed to the police.
 
Vidhie (right) is the daughter of Indrani Mukerjea's ex-husband Sanjeev Khanna who has reportedly admitted to the crime

By the mid-2000s, Indrani Mukerjea seemed to have come into substantial money. In 2002, she married Peter Mukerjea, the powerful top boss of Star India. Her head-hunting firm was successful. By common consent, the media circuit, known for its high self-regard, classified Ms Mukerjea as an arriviste, "a wannabe media tycoon" according to a commentator on an NDTV discussion.

In 2007, the Mukerjeas co-founded the INX broadcasting group with three channels and multiple partners for 750 crores. Indrani Mukerjea, as CEO, ran the show. Two years later, the couple exited INX. There was talk of unscrupulous accounting, money being siphoned into proxy firms, the failure to launch of the couple as media moguls. The Mukerjeas appeared to find shore in Bristol. Vidhie enrolled in college there.
 
Indrani, who married Peter Mukerjea in 2002, allegedly introduced the Boras as her younger siblings

Sheena and Mekhail Bora, childhood friends recall, had been brought up by affectionate grandparents. Their mother re-entered their life, right around the time she married Peter Mukerjea, according to Mekhail, and offered the brazen bargain of financial help if they concealed the inconvenient truth of their biology. Siblings, it was agreed all around. Sheena Bora then moved to Mumbai, studied at trendy St Xavier's, and began dating step brother Rahul, Peter Mukerjea's son from his first marriage.

Since the arrest of Indrani Mukerjea, the Mumbai police has, in more leaks than the Titanic, expounded with cheerful enthusiasm on the intricacies of its investigation. Frequent briefings by police chief Rakesh Maria have also been atypical. Initially, police sources said they were examining Indrani Mukerjea's anger at Sheena Bora's lengthy romance with Rahul Mukerjea as a possible motive for murder. Soon, sources say, the relationship was relegated to the background to centre-stage a possible financial knot between mother and daughter.
 
Rahul Mukerjea and Sheena Bora had been romantically involved, to the displeasure of both Indrani and Peter.

The police has strung together this version of how Sheena Bora was killed on the basis of the alleged confessions of Sanjeev Khanna and Indrani Mukerjea's driver: the young woman was collected by the trio in a car on Mumbai's famous Linking Road; she was then drugged and strangled. With the body in the boot, the hired car was kept overnight at the home of the Mukerjeas. The next morning, according to the police, Indrani Mukerjea made the astonishing call of asking for the corpse to be placed next to her in the backseat. She then allegedly drove with her two accomplices to the forests of Raigad, where the body was set on fire.

If it seems puzzlingly contrapuntal for a murderer to display a corpse in clear view on a lengthy journey rather than transporting it in the perfectly accessible boot, the police hasn't offered an explanation. Apparently, they're not over-thinking it.  

After Sheena Bora went off the grid in April 2012, Indrani Mukerjea, with relatively minimal fuss, seemed to convince family and friends that the young woman had chosen a different life in the US. Text messages sent to Rahul Mukerjea from Sheena Bora allegedly included this shorthand: "have found a new guy". The police says Indrani Mukerjea, in a risky proposition, used her daughter's cellphone for upto a year after the alleged murder.
 
Indrani was brought face-to-face with husband Peter Mukerjea at a police station

If the (from all accounts) hasty suspension of disbelief among her circle allowed Indrani Mukerjea considerable rope, the Mumbai police has been no less fortuitous, catching all sorts of devilishly lucky breaks. An anonymous phone call warned that Sheena Bora had been killed three years ago. Indrani Mukerjea's driver was arrested in an arms case and allegedly corroborated the murder. And last week, CSI Raigad played out on the outskirts of Mumbai as the police exhumed a skull it quickly pronounced as Sheena Bora's even before it requested DNA and forensic tests, results of which are still awaited.  

In different editorials and television debates, commentators have said the police's biggest windfall has been the eagerness of the media to report on leaks and leads without distinction from facts.

Which leads us to the question - all things considered, in this case, is it really Indrani Mukerjea who has most evidenced the art of living dangerously? 
source-http://www.ndtv.com/india-news/the-indrani-mukerjea-case-and-the-art-of-living-dangerously-1214265?utm_source=ndtv&utm_medium=top-stories-widget&utm_campaign=story-4-http%3a%2f%2fwww.ndtv.com%2findia-news%2fthe-indrani-mukerjea-case-and-the-art-of-living-dangerously-1214265