Mytube

Bhubaneswar: Over one million trees that once stood tall and provided green cover to the Odisha capital have been felled by the raging winds of Cyclone Fani, the uprooted trunks and bare branches testimony to the intensity of the storm that barrelled through the state last week. The extremely severe cyclonic storm on May 3 did not result in major casualties but the environmental damage in the city is immense and it will take more than a decade to recover, officials said. Uprooted trees and fallen electricity poles can be seen through the city, which is picking up the pieces from the storm that killed 29 people, mostly in the coastal town of Puri. Over one million trees have fallen in this city, adding to the herculean clean-up task. Many in Bhubaneswar had an emotional attachment with the trees, carefully tended for over two decades. "We were in tears seeing these trees lying on the roads. We raised them like our kids. We are now working hard to rehabilitate the re...

NEW DELHI: The students who missed their NEET exam on Sunday due to a train delay will get another chance, the Union Human Resource Development Minister Prakash Javadekar announced today. The exam will be held on May 20, PTI reported as the minister saying. The National Testing Agency, which is conducting the NEET, national level entrance examination for medical and dental courses in colleges across India,  the first time, has announced exam centres will remain the same. "Happy to announce that #Karnataka Students who missed #NEET exam, due to railway delay will get another chance," the minister has tweeted. The HRD Ministry has earlier assured the Karnataka government that it would soon decide on their request to allow the students to write it again, the Chief Ministers office said Monday. NTA organised this national level exam on Sunday for more than 1.5 million students, but, for hundreds of students who were heading from north Karnataka to take the exam in ...

NEW DELHI: Two explosions at polling stations in Pulwama in Kashmir and clashes between TMC and BJP in West Bengal were reported during the fifth phase of Lok Sabha polls on Monday across seven states in which 63.5 per cent turnout was recorded. According to the Election Commission, over 57.33 per cent of 2.47 crore eligible people cast their vote in 14 seats in Uttar Pradesh, where political heavyweights like Congress's Sonia Gandhi and Rahul Gandhi and Union ministers Rajnath Singh and Smriti Irani were in the fray. In Rajasthan, 63.78 per cent polling was recorded in 12 seats, while it was 63.88 per cent in seven constituencies in Madhya Pradesh, 57.86 per cent five seats in Bihar and 63.72 in four seats in Jharkhand that went to polls on Monday. The voter turnout was 74.42 in seven seats in West Bengal, where incidents of Trinamool Congress and BJP workers attacking each other, hurling of bombs, injury to a candidate due to lathicharge by central forces, manhandling o...

NEW DELHI: Pakistan-based terrorist Masood Azhar was designated a global terrorist by the UN Security Council in a diplomatic win for India on Wednesday. China, which had blocked moves to blacklist Masood Azhar four times, finally dropped its objections saying it "found no objection after a careful study of revised materials". The UN decision means a freeze on Masood Azhar's finances and assets, a travel ban and an arms embargo. "In our fight against terrorism, it is a big victory," Prime Minister Narendra Modi said on Masood Azhar's blacklisting at the UN. But in what is seen as a face-saver for Pakistan in negotiations to get its all-weather ally China to stop blocking the move, the UN Security Council resolution drops any reference to the Pulwama terror attack. The UN Security council resolution cites Masood Azhar's association with al Qaeda, Osama bin Laden and the Taliban and also his call for terror recruits to join the fight in A...

A week after coordinated blasts hit three churches and three luxury hotels, killing over 250 people and inuring more than 500 others in Sri Lanka, President Maithripala Sirisena made it illegal for Muslim women in the country to wear any form of face veils in public. So deeply entrenched is the impression of equating the violent Islamism of the Islamic State to the everyday habits of followers of Islam that it skipped the attention of the world at large that Sri Lanka had become only the second ever country in Asia to enforce such a countrywide ban. With the ban, Muslim women will still be able to wear the hijab (which covers the head and neck but leaves the face clear) but must eschew the niqab (a veil for the face that leaves the area around the eyes clear) and the burqa (which covers the entire face). A borrowed idea While a really large section of the world would not know how a burqa is different from a hijab, vast swathes of political discourse have been devoted into co...

US regulators considered grounding some Boeing 737 MAX planes last year after learning of a problem with a system that is now the main suspect in two deadly crashes, a source close to the matter said. US regulators considered grounding some Boeing 737 MAX planes last year after learning of a problem with a system that is now the main suspect in two deadly crashes, a source close to the matter said. Investigators in the Lion Air crash in October off the coast of Indonesia and the Ethiopia Airlines disaster in March have zeroed in on the planes' anti-stall system, called the Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System, or MCAS. Last year, inspectors with the Federal Aviation Administration discovered Boeing de-activated a signal designed to advise the cockpit crew of a malfunctioning of the MCAS system, the source said. The inspectors were in charge of monitoring Southwest Airlines, the biggest user of 737 MAX planes, with a fleet of 34 of them at the time, a...