New Delhi: Ahead of the Karnataka Assembly elections, the Election Commission of India led by Chief Election Commissioner Rajiv Kumar on Monday, held a video conference with the officials to review the election arrangements, law and order condition in the state.
The video conference was held with Chief Secretaries, Director Generals of Police, Nodal Police Officers, Nodal Officer CAPF and senior officials from enforcement agencies including Coast Guard, NCB, Income tax, etc of Karnataka and border states of Goa, Maharashtra, Telangana, Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu and Kerala, the ECI stated.
During the review meeting, CEC Rajiv Kumar directed state teams to enhance vigilance on the state borders. He specifically emphasized the need for vigil over the 185 Interstate check posts across the six neighbouring States, to ensure no cross-border movement of illicit cash, liquor, drugs, or freebies takes place.
While taking note of the seizure of over Rs 305 crores to date (as compared to only Rs 83 crores during the 2018 elections), the CEC asked to fix the responsibility of local officers failing to control money power.
He asked the officials to step up the seizures with support from adjoining border states and instil fear of administration amongst the violators to fulfil the Commission’s resolve of an inducement-free election in the state. Kumar also directed Coast Guard and Narcotics Control Bureau officials to keep strict vigil and help curtail the drug menace.
The CEC further directed the officials to keep a strict watch over social media for any violations and fake narratives vitiating the election atmosphere. He also urged the officials to raise the bar further on voter turnout, gender, youth and urban electors participation.
Election Commissioner Anup Chandra Pandey asked the officials for strict action against anti-social elements, follow-up of pending NBWs and strict vigil during the silence period to ensure elections without fear and favour. While emphasizing the scope of improvement in illicit liquor seizures, he directed officials to act against kingpins, prevent stockpiling of liquor and ensures no diversion of molasses meant for export or any other use as defined by law.
Election Commissioner Arun Goel asked the officials to tighten the vigilance without causing inconvenience to the public and ensure thorough follow-up post-seizure operations. He said that the objective of this review is to sensitize neighbouring states and also to put in the best efforts for the smooth conduct of elections.
On March 29, the Election Commission announced the schedule for the assembly elections in Karnataka.
The polling of votes will take place on May 10, and the counting of votes will take place on May 13.
“Alaska LNG is a carbon bomb 10 times the size of Willow,” said Lukas Ross, program manager at the environmental advocacy group Friends of the Earth. “By rubber-stamping projects like these, Joe Biden is putting his own climate legacy at risk.”
The White House did not comment on questions about Alaska LNG. The administration has previously pointed to the major actions it has taken to tackle climate change, such as making major investments in clean energy and opening more public land to wind and solar energy projects.
But while Biden has pledged to move the United States away from fossil fuels, the country’s role as the world’s top natural gas producer has become a bright spot for the U.S. economy and a lifeline for allies in Europe and Asia, especially amid the disruptions caused by Russia’s war on Ukraine. Biden’s State Department and his ambassador to Japan, Rahm Emanuel, are among the project’s supporters.
“Look, I’ve been critical of the Biden administration on a whole host of issues,” Alaska Republican Sen. Dan Sullivan, who has pitched the project to foreign companies and governments, said in an interview. “But this even has the strong support of the Biden administration.”
Government financing from last year’s landmark climate law and the 2021 infrastructure package have also improved the outlook for the plant, for instance by offering expanded tax credits for carbon-capture technology.
The project, which still faces major economic challenges, would ship 3.5 billion cubic feet a day of liquefied natural gas produced in the state’s North Slope. Buyers in Japan, South Korea and elsewhere are giving the project a close look, people in the industry said.
The momentum is a sharp change from 2019, when the company behind the project laid off half its staff and indefinitely delayed a final investment decision. At the time, the Trump administration’s steel tariffs and the trade war with major gas consumer China were creating uncertainty about the project’s future.
Environmental groups point to estimates from the Energy Department that the project would spew the equivalent of 1.5 billion tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere over its 30-year lifetime, even if it uses carbon capture technology. That’s akin to burning more than 8 million rail cars full of coal.
Green groups say the administration’s approval of the Willow project and its breakneck pace of approving permits to drill for oil and gas on public land are in stark contrast to Biden’s own words.
On Thursday, Biden pledged $1 billion to help developing countries fight climate change and renewed his call for more clean energy development.
“We can keep the goal of limiting warming to just no more than 1.5 degrees,” Biden said at the 2023 Major Economies Forum on Energy and Climate, a virtual gathering that included leaders of Canada, Mexico, Brazil, Australia and the European Union.
Oregon Democratic Sen. Jeff Merkley, who sits on the Senate Environment and Public Works and Foreign Relations committees, rebuked the Energy Department’s decision to approve a key permit for the Alaska gas project. The permit allows the project’s backers to ship gas to most countries around the world.
“Another massive fossil project from a president who promised to drive the transition to renewables!” Merkley tweeted last month. “We have to lead by the power of our example—this is exactly the wrong example for the world!”
The project’s backers say Alaska LNG would be one of the cleanest sources of natural gas. Wells in the North Slope already have enough natural gas to make new drilling unnecessary, and the carbon capture technology the project plans to use will help cut emissions, they said.
The project as first proposed in 2012 always had a strategic appeal to investors. It would be close to Alaska’s mammoth natural gas reserves, and its location along the West Coast would significantly cut the shipping costs and time needed to transport U.S. natural gas to the Asian countries that are the biggest LNG market in the world.
But what looked good as a blueprint never really penciled out in the ledger books, with its massive price tag deemed too large for investors. Especially daunting was the 800-mile pipeline that would be needed to transport the gas from Alaska’s North Slope to a liquefaction plant and export facility in Cook Inlet along that state’s southern coast. Alaska’s remote geography and brutal winters make any construction project more costly than it would be in the lower 48 states.
A lot has changed in the past 18 months, however. Sullivan and fellow Alaska Republican Sen. Lisa Murkowski included language in the bipartisan infrastructure law that made Alaska LNG eligible for billions of dollars in federal loan guarantees, Sullivan said. Then Democrats included a tax credit in the Inflation Reduction Act, H.R. 5376 (117), for carbon capture technology that Alaska LNG’s backers say could generate $600 million a year for the project.
Meanwhile, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine sent global energy markets into a tailspin. Japan, South Korea and European countries have scrambled to source alternative supplies of natural gas to replace what they have stopped taking from Russia. And with Alaska LNG being the only new, fully permitted gas export plant on the U.S. West Coast, Asian buyers in particular are giving the project a long look, said Frank Richards, senior vice president for project developer Alaska Gasline Development Corp.
“Out of the calamity of Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, we’ve seen a very positive increase of interest from buyers who don’t want to rely on adversarial countries for their energy supply,” Richards said in an interview. “Now those countries are seeing opportunities in Alaska LNG as a West Coast Pacific project.”
“We’re poised to be ready to go to a final investment decision,” Richards added.
Just as importantly, project backers say, State Department officials in the Biden administration have thrown their support behind the project.
Emanuel, the former Chicago mayor and President Barack Obama’s former chief of staff, convened an Alaska LNG Summit in Tokyo in October that brought together project officials, State Department energy security coordinator Amos Hochstein and Assistant Secretary for Energy Resources Geoffrey Pyatt with representatives of Japan’s Ministry of Economics, Trade and Industry. Major Japanese gas-importing companies including JERA and Tokyo Gas also attended, Sullivan and Richards said.
Also attending were representatives from investment bank Goldman Sachs, the Japan Bank for International Cooperation and private equity firm BlackRock, according to summaries of the meeting.
Neither the White House nor State Department offered comment on the meeting. But in a December op-ed in The Wall Street Journal, Emanuel singled out Alaska LNG as a potential source for gas for Japan as the country seeks to reduce its use of coal. He is expected to discuss Alaska LNG at an energy conference in Anchorage next month, project backers said.
“Alaska LNG can travel to Japan in six days without any strategic chokepoints and can make Japan the energy export hub for the Indo-Pacific to reduce its coal dependency,” Emanuel wrote in the newspaper.
Sullivan, who said he helped organize the meeting with Emanuel, said the presence of the Biden official and Emanuel’s continued promotion of the project have helped ease foreign buyers’ fears that the Biden administration would abruptly kill the project.
“Japan and Korea want to see that federal government support,” he said.
Representatives of METI, the Japanese government agency in charge of setting energy policy, declined to comment on the meeting in Tokyo.
While the reshaping of global energy markets amid the war in Ukraine and the political and financial help from the federal government have improved Alaska LNG’s prospects, high costs could still tank it, analysts warn.
“Proximity to growing demand and resource depth make the project appealing, but complexity and cost create offsetting risks,” said Kevin Book, managing director of the consulting firm ClearView Energy. “And amid higher interest rates, bigger can be harder.”
But the project’s backers and detractors both agree that Alaska LNG is much closer to the finish line now than it had been four years ago.
“The State Department seems to be driving an agenda of exporting as much U.S.-produced methane gas as possible regardless of the climate impact,” said Alan Zibel, energy research director at progressive advocacy group Public Citizen. “The last thing the Biden administration should be doing is getting in bed with the oil and gas industry to export climate destroying methane gas.”
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( With inputs from : www.politico.com )
“It’s heartbreaking,” Rico Henry says as he thinks back to his childhood and remembers trials ending with clubs telling him he was too short to become a footballer. “Especially when you’re young. You can’t do anything about it. But I sort of knew it would work out. I had a lot of pace. I looked up to left-backs like Jordi Alba, who’s short. Marcelo and Ashley Cole weren’t the tallest. I always believed in myself. I knew there were other players in the same position who were a similar height to me.”
Brentford’s 5ft 7in left-back laughs and says being rejected by Aston Villa, Birmingham and West Brom spurred him on. “I was 11, 12 years old but teams were saying I was too timid and not big enough,” Henry says. “It gave me more fire. You’ve got to learn from it. You can’t get too down. You’ve got to keep going. I think maybe the way I played, going into tackles, I was probably not as aggressive as I could have been. I learned as I got older to be more aggressive in certain situations. It was hard but I got through it.”
Henry, who has developed into one of the best left-backs in the Premier League, maintained a good perspective. He points out that his teammate Ethan Pinnock and the Leicester striker Jamie Vardy were late bloomers. Henry had time on his side. He joined Walsall and embraced playing at a lower level. “The right step,” he says. “You see a lot of youths go into top clubs and they can’t progress, they can’t get minutes. When I was 18 I was playing first-team football.”
Dean Smith managed Walsall and gave Henry a chance. “League One was really tough,” he says. “It was physical. I learned a lot. I was playing reserves before. Dean Smith came up to me after a game against West Brom and said: ‘Listen, go home, you’re starting tomorrow.’ I was nervous. Excited. I remember going home and telling my dad. As far as I remember the game went well. I was around the first team after that, so it must have done.
“That’s exactly what I needed at the time – someone who believed in me and trusted me. I knew he [Smith] loved me when he brought me to Brentford. That’s what you need when you’re young – a manager who believes in you.”
Rico Henry in action during Brentford’s win at Chelsea on Wednesday. Photograph: Kirsty Wigglesworth/AP
Henry joined Brentford in 2016. They were a Championship side and he thought they were a stepping-stone club. He soon realised he was wrong. On Wednesday night Brentford went to Chelsea and won 2-0. They are ninth in the Premier League before hosting Nottingham Forest on Saturday and have a chance of qualifying for Europe.
Brentford know how to maximise their resources. They did not panic when Smith went to Villa in 2018. Thomas Frank was an inspired appointment. The Dane led Brentford into the top flight in 2021 and has built a young, hungry side. Brentford flourished after winning promotion and have kept standards high this season. “They say the second season’s the hardest,” Henry says. “But we’ve stayed together. The gaffer said: ‘Don’t take your foot off the pedal.’
“We’ve been amazing against the top six. Against the lower teams we need to do more. We’ve had draws where we could have won. It’s just putting the game to bed sometimes. Maybe it’s game management. The dark arts, maybe a bit of time-wasting. I saw Arsenal the other day. Gabriel [Magalhães] took a shot on the head and just went down. Stuff like that kills a game. It’s smart from him. We’ve got to do what we can to win.”
Henry, who has had to overcome long-term knee and shoulder injuries, describes himself as a bad loser. Frank calls the 25-year-old a defender who would run through a brick wall for the team. Henry is sharp and tenacious but he knows he has room for improvement.
“The manager wants me to get involved more attacking-wise,” he says. “Get crosses in and get goals and assists. I’m trying. There’s times where I could have had an assist if the lads had put it in the back of the net. But I’ve got to put more crosses in. It’s that end product I need.”
More output in the final third would boost Henry’s hopes of an England call-up. He was disappointed not to make the last squad. “I knew I was being talked about in the media,” he says. “It’s going to be tough with Luke Shaw and Ben Chilwell ahead of me. It did hurt in a way because I think I can play at that level. But I’ve got to concentrate on Brentford and keep doing what I can.
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“One of my big dreams is to play international football. To play in a top-six team in the Premier League has always been a dream. I’m not there yet. I want to play in Europe. I want to play in tournaments.”
Henry, who is also eligible for Jamaica, played alongside Mason Mount, Fikayo Tomori and Dominic Solanke at youth level for England. He was gutted when injury stopped him being part of the squad that won the Under-20 World Cup in 2017. He hopes a strong end to the season will give him a shot of making Gareth Southgate’s squad for their Euro 2024 qualifiers in June. He has the skillset to play at international level. The role of full-back has changed since Henry’s youth.
“It’s more up and down, more attacking, and that’s what I want to do,” he says. “We play two formations: sometimes back four, sometimes back five. I try to get forward in both. I like wing-back because I can get in the box more. But I just want to help the team.”
Henry thinks of those shortsighted rejections again. “Back then it was more long ball,” Henry says. “But I don’t mind. Looking back, it’s obviously laughable. But it’s helped me progress.”
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( With inputs from : www.theguardian.com )
Srinagar, Apr 27 (GNS): Chairperson J&K Waqf Board, Dr Darakhshan Andrabi on Thursday chaired a review meeting of District Verification Teams constituted earlier to carry out verification of all Waqf notified properties which have been left ignored over the years and have remained outside administrative control of J&K Waqf Board.
On the instructions of Waqf Board Chairperson, the District Verification Teams had been constituted vide order number 62 of 2023 in January this year & these teams were mandated to peruse all public representations/complaints of general public, wherein requests had been made to the Chairperson Waqf for take-over of all Waqf notified properties that were being managed locally with no legal accountability and there were lots of complaints of irregularities.
These committees had been directed to prepare a list of all Waqf notified properties & yet-to-be notified properties along with their assets, liabilities, staff, & income details.
Pertinently, J&K Waqf Board has also initiated the process for compilation of details of un-notified religious places & their assets, wherever representations have been made by the general public for take-over. The initiative of take-over of properties under the leadership of Dr Andrabi is being thought of as another major reform within J&K Waqf Board.
In her address Dr Darakhshan said that reforms in the Waqf Board have restored the trust in public and the Board is taking all steps to cleanse the wrongs in the management system of religious places. “We received thousands of requests from all corners of J&K about administrative take-over of notified religious sites and many others ill-managed by the local committees. We have taken over a couple of notified places after proper verification and are looking forward to taking control of many other such religious places after due checks in future”, said Andrabi. (GNS)
San Francisco: To avoid an official antitrust probe by European Union (EU) regulators, Microsoft has announced that it will no longer require users of its popular Office software to also install its Teams video conferencing and messaging app on their devices.
According to the Financial Times, citing sources, Microsoft has made the concession to avoid a formal investigation, following a 2020 complaint by rival Slack (an enterprise chat app) alleging Microsoft bundling the service together was anti-competitive.
Slack has requested that EU officials compel Microsoft to sell Teams independently of its Office software.
Slack’s complaint came at a time when the trend towards working from home was accelerating.
Apps like Teams and Slack exploded in popularity during the Covid pandemic, creating a multibillion-dollar opportunity as users and businesses increasingly adopt tools that enable remote working, the report said.
“We are mindful of our responsibilities in the EU as a major technology company. We continue to engage cooperatively with the commission in its investigation and are open to pragmatic solutions that address its concerns and serve customers well,” Microsoft was quoted as saying.
Moreover, the report said that Microsoft was accused by the commission in 2008 of using its dominant position to force users to download its Internet Explorer browser by bundling it with Windows.
Although the company settled with the commission and offered users a choice of browsers, the EU fined the company USD 561 million in 2013 for failing to fulfil its promise.
Meanwhile, Twitter CEO Elon Musk has threatened to sue Microsoft over claims that the company “trained illegally using Twitter data”.
Musk reacted after Microsoft dropped Twitter from its advertising platform as it allegedly refused to pay Twitter’s application programming interface (API) fees.
SRINAGAR: High-velocity hailstorms on Friday caused massive damage to orchards and standing crops in various parts of the valley.
According to reports received by the news agency Kashmir News Observer (KNO), the massive hailstorms created havoc in many areas of Kashmir, especially in Kulgam, Baramulla, and Anantnag districts.
Kulgam district in south Kashmir was hit the hardest, as hailstorms caused significant damage to orchards and vegetation.
Growers from various areas of the valley said that hailstorms and other climatic events have caused extensive damage to their orchards and crop fields.
Abdul Jabbar Naik, a grower from Kulgam, said that hailstorms caused severe damage to his orchard, and the fruit-bearing capacity of the trees will be reduced this year.
He said orchardists have been spending all their earnings on fertilisers and labour for their orchards and crop fields. “This year, we expected a good crop as our orchards seemed to be abundant with apples, but the hailstorm dashed all our hopes,” Naik said.
The growers have urged the government to compensate them for the huge losses they have suffered over the past several years.
Meanwhile, Director of Agriculture Kashmir, Chowdhury Mohammad Iqbal said that Kulgam was the worst affected by the hailstorm that hit the valley.
“Our teams are on the ground to assess the damage,” he said. (KNO)
SRINAGAR: Foreseeing the possibility of stunt biking during the Eid-ul-Fitr festival, Traffic Police Srinagar on Friday said they have formed special teams to monitor and stop any such activity.
Senior Superintendent of Police Traffic for Srinagar, Muzaffar Ahmad Shah said that that they have apprehensions that stunt biking may occur during the Eid festival and they have made pre-arrangements to curb any such occurrence.
“In view of the Eid festivities from tomorrow, there are apprehensions that stunts using four-wheelers and bikes by young boys may occur and to curb that we have constituted special teams,” he said.
SSP City Traffic said they have identified some of the areas where pre-arrangements have been made in collaboration with the district police.
In an appeal to parents, Shah said they should ensure that no vehicle is given to minors. “The parents should keep an eye on their young children so that they do not engage in stunt acts,” he said, adding, “Parents should not give an easy hand to their children on bikes or cars unless they are sure that their kids ride or drive sensibly and more importantly are eligible.” (KNO)
Telangana Director General of Police, Anjani Kumar (left), Additional DG CID, Mahesh Muralidhar Bhagwat (right)
Hyderabad: The Telangana Crime Investigation Department (CID) will soon train officers of clues teams in fingerprint collection and preservation techniques as they play a crucial role in crime detection.
Owning to the importance of ‘fingerprints’ in the detection of property offences, identification of unidentified bodies and verification of the suspects, crime detection teams are being formed in five newly created zones in Rachakonda, Hyderabad, Cyberabad and Mulugu districts.
Director General of Police, Anjani Kumar held a video conference with fingerprint bureau officers of 41 units in Telangana on Wednesday and lauded the services rendered by the fingerprint bureaus.
“Five of the best units in the state will also be presented awards for good performance,” declared the DGP.
Additional DG CID, Mahesh Muralidhar Bhagwat said, “In all the five zones in the city and Mulugu district we will have clues teams which would include a fingerprint bureau officer.”
“The officials will be trained by experts to assist in the collection of scientific evidence for two weeks,” Mahesh Bhagwat added.
San Francisco: Microsoft has added a green screen feature in Teams, which will provide an enhanced virtual background effect during meetings.
“Microsoft Teams now supports a green screen feature which provides an enhanced virtual background effect. Green screen improves the sharpness and definition of the virtual background effect around your face, head, ears, and hair. It also allows you to show a prop or other object in your hand to be more visible to other meeting participants,” Jan Steberl, Microsoft Teams program manager, said in a blogpost.
Moreover, the company said that the green screen will require a solid colour screen or a background wall behind users.A
“The screen or background wall must be flat without stains or other irregularities. Users must apply a background effect in Teams meetings to enable the green screen effect and should carefully select the backdrop colour so that the effect is applied correctly and better quality is achieved,” Microsoft said.
The green screen feature is available now for everyone in the public preview channel of Microsoft Teams.
The company also mentioned that the feature is only supported on Windows and macOS devices with Intel chips.
Meanwhile, Microsoft has rolled out ‘Avatars’ in a public preview in Teams.
“Avatars for Microsoft Teams offers an alternative to the current binary option of video or no video,” the tech giant said in a blogpost.
SRINAGAR: Following the horrible road accident on Boulevard near SKICC on Friday which resulted in the on-spot death of a 20-year-old youth, Traffic Police Srinagar on Saturday said special teams have been formed to identify individuals involved in stunt biking.
Senior Superintendent Police Traffic for Srinagar, Muzaffar Ahmad Shah said that the multilevel measures to curb stunts and rash riding by two-wheelers are being taken besides identifying the boys involved in it.
“It is not restricted to Srinagar only; there are some boys from other districts who come to Srinagar for these stunts. We are in the process of identifying them and are compiling data on it,” he said.
SSP City Traffic said they will also seek assistance from the district police as well, as they will be summoning those involved in bike stunts through their concerned police stations.
“We are going to come down heavily on the repeated and habitual offenders,” the officer said, adding, “We have summoned a few and are trying to reach out to the maximum to counsel them afresh.”
Speaking about Friday’s accident, the officer said the incident is “painful”. “I have been urging the parents to be more sensitive in giving two-wheelers or any other vehicle to their children.”
“In addition to law enforcement, parents play a crucial role in preventing these types of situations. If they want to offer their children two-wheelers or other vehicles, they should make sure they have all the necessary documentation, safety equipment,” he said.
Srinagar traffic police said last week that they now have specialized “Speed Radar Guns” to measure the speed of moving cars. They claimed that the technology will assist them to stop high-speed, stunt biking, and reckless driving by vehicles. (KNO)
