NEW DELHI: Indian police said Thursday they have launched an investigation after a newborn baby was found alive and well in a wooden box floating on the Ganges river. The inside of the box was lined with red cloth and contained images of Hindu gods as well as a horoscope giving the date and time of the girl´s birth and name, Ganga — the Hindi word for the holy river. The child, thought to be around a month old, was recovered earlier this week in the northern state of Uttar Pradesh by a man in a boat in bushes at the river´s edge. “It is difficult to ascertain how long she had been floating in the river. The boatman heard a sound coming from the box and that´s how he found the baby,” local police official O.P. Singh told media. “The baby is fine and is currently receiving medical attention. The government will take care of everything,” Singh said. “We are trying to figure out where she came from.”
Category: World
World
Iran holds presidential poll today
NUT desk- TEHRAN: On the eve of Iran´s presidential election, expected to hand victory to the ultraconservative cleric Ebrahim Raisi,
the candidate-vetting Guardian Council insisted Thursday that “the political contest is serious”. “The media and the people have testified that this is a good competition,” said the head of the 12-member council, Abbas Ali Kadkhodaee, a day before almost 60 million voters are asked to head to the ballots.
Three televised debates between the seven candidates, all men, who were approved by the unelected body of jurists and clerics, had shown that “the political competition is serious,” Kadkhodaee told a press conference. The vote Friday will choose a successor to Iran´s moderate President Hassan Rouhani, who cannot run again now after serving two consecutive four-year terms, and who leaves office in August.
Turnout is expected to be low in a country where many have been demoralised by years of painful economic crisis that was brought on by a crippling US sanctions regime and worsened by the Covid pandemic.
GM lifts e-car investment to 35bn
NEW YORK: General Motors (GM) again boosted its investments in electric and autonomous vehicles, announcing Wednesday it is raising planned spending by 30 percent to $35 billion through 2025 as it unveils new models and builds capacity. The big US automaker cited strong consumer reception to its early electric vehicle (EV) models and beneficial public policies as factors that give it confidence in the investment. The push includes the building of two additional battery cell plants in addition to the two factories currently under construction.
Pakistan origin Lina Khan to head US Federal Trade Commission
ASHINGTON: US President Joe Biden has named Lina Khan, a Pakistani-American, to lead the Federal Trade Commission, giving the regulatory authority”s top spot to one of the most prominent Big Tech critics. The move to elevate Ms. Khan to one of the most powerful regulatory positions in Washington was announced by Senator Amy Klobuchar, a Democrat, at the start of a hearing on Tuesday.
It came shortly after the Senate confirmed Ms. Khan as a commissioner in a 69-28 bipartisan vote. Democrats will now have a majority on the five-member commission, which Ms. Khan likely will steer toward more aggressive examination of tech companies” alleged abuse of monopoly power, according to experts. Elizabeth Warren, who belongs to the progressive wing of the Democratic Party, said,
Ms. Khan leading the FTC is “tremendous news,” saying in a statement that “giant tech companies like Google, Apple, Facebook and Amazon deserve the growing scrutiny they are facing and consolidation is choking off competition across American industries. “Biden’s decision caps an unusually rapid ascent for Ms. Khan, the New York Times pointed out. She was born in London to Pakistani parents who emigrated to the United States when she was 11. She first rose to prominence while a law student at Yale, where she wrote a paper laying out how modern antitrust laws had failed to check the power of Amazon.
The paper attracted notice from policymakers, other lawyers and the press. Ms. Khan, 32, was sworn in on Tuesday, making her the youngest chairperson in the F.T.C. ’s history. “I look forward to working with my colleagues to protect the public from corporate abuse,” she said in a statement. The Times called her appointment a victory for progressive activists who want Biden to take a hard line against big companies. He also gave a White House job to Tim Wu, a law professor who has criticized the power of the tech giants.
World´s ´third largest´ diamond doscovered
GABORONE, Botswana: Botswanan diamond firm Debswana said Wednesday it had unearthed a 1,098-carat stone that it described as the third largest of its kind in the world.
The stone, found on June 1, was shown to President Mokgweetsi Masisi in the capital Gaborone. “It is believed to be the third largest gem-quality find in the world,” said Debswana Managing Director Lynette Armstrong. The “rare and extraordinary stone… means so much in the context of diamonds and Botswana,” she said. “It brings hope to the nation that is struggling.”
It also the biggest stone of gem quality to be recovered in the history of the company, a joint venture between the government and global diamond giant De Beers. The biggest diamond ever discovered in the world was the 3,106-carat Cullinan, found in South Africa in 1905. The second largest was 1,109-carat Lesedi La Rona — a diamond the size of a tennis ball, discovered at Karowe, northeastern Botswana, in 2015.
Botswana is Africa´s leading diamond producer.
Medicine ´pump´ may cure Parkinson´s patients
PARIS: People suffering from advanced Parkinson´s disease could benefit long-term from continuous delivery of medication through a device similar to an insulin pump, a recent French study found. Published in Nature Partner Journals with the Parkinson´s Foundation, the real-world observational study followed 110 patients being treated at the Pitie-Salpetriere hospital in Paris.
The second most common neurodegenerative disease after Alzheimer´s, Parkinson´s is sometimes treated with the medication apomorphine to lessen symptoms such as shaking, stiffness or slowness of movement. It helps replace the dopamine typically lacking in Parkinson´s patients, but taken orally it can cause dopamine to spike and then drop, leading to dyskinesia or muscle spasms. “For those patients, continuous delivery is a good option,” study co-author and neurologist Emmanuel Flamand-Roze told media.
A randomised, placebo-controlled study of Parkinson´s patients in 23 European hospitals already found in 2018 that medication administered using the device reduced “off-time” — the period when symptoms worsen as medication wears off. Flamand-Roze said his real-world observational study provided an essential compliment to the randomised trial, which looked at patients over a period of 12 weeks.
Hyundai Motor in talks with chipmakers to cut exposure to shortage
SEOUL: Hyundai Motor Group is in talks with South Korean chip companies to help it reduce reliance on foreign supplies amid a global shortage that has halted assembly lines at automakers around the world, four people familiar with the matter told media.
Hyundai officials have met with local “fabless” firms – which design chips but outsource manufacturing to the likes of TSMC and Samsung Electronics Co Ltd – as it explores long-term strategies to better diversify its supply chain, according to two people at local fabless firms who met with Hyundai.
The South Korean auto group, which houses Hyundai Motor Co and Kia Corp, wants to shift chips such as microcontroller units (MCUs) to South Korean designers, the people said.
Such a shift will be hard, though, because local technology still lags industry leaders such as Dutch automotive chip supplier NXP Semiconductors and Japan’s Renesas Electronics Corp, industry experts said.
“On top of facing high entry barriers to the auto chip market, long and strict qualification processes make it more difficult for smaller chip companies to design auto chips,” a person at a South Korean fabless company said.
“It would take four to five years to supply auto chips, while it could take less than one year for designing and producing chips for home appliances,” the person said.
Baby boy set to become heir to ‘worth Rs69.5b’ assets
NUT Desk – LONDON: A baby boy is set to be “worth £135million” (Rs69.5) and become “heir to a family estate with a 40-bed mansion”, foreign media reported.
A baby boy named Henry was recently born in Gloucestershire. The catch? He’s worth £315million.
Baby Henry is already set to inherit both his father’s and grandfather’s titles, reports Toddler Henry is in line to become the Marquess of Worcester, after his dad Bobby and grandfather Harry, Duke of Beaufort, shed the title when they married.
Along with the prestigious title, the toddler with inherit the Badminton estate which is said to be worth a cool £315m.
After the birth of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle’s daughter Lilibet Diana Mountbattern Windsor, Henry is the second blue-blooded youngster to be born this month, Gloucestershire Live reports.
The Duke of Beaufort broke the news that his son and wife Lucy Yorke-Long had welcomed the new born into the world.
The former rocker, who now lives in the family seat in the Cotswolds, said: “‘I am absolutely delighted.
“It is with great pride that I have become a grandfather for the first time.”
Bobby and Lucy tied the knot at the family’s 40-bed, Gloucestershire mansion on the 52,000-acre estate in September last year.
Following the wedding the newly-weds rode off into the sunset as their guests waved from outside the imposing mansion.
Due to the coronavirus restrictions only 40 family and friends could attend the wedding at the country estate, where Prince Charles and Prince William are known to play polo.
Bobby’s sister Isabella, 29, and Lucy’s sister Aalish showed off the big day on their social media accounts.
The pair met through mutual friends when they sat next to one another at a dinner party.
Kourtney Kardashian angers Khloe with shocking decision
NUT Desk- LOS ANGELES: Kourtney Kardashian angered Khloe Kardashian as she stopped the family discussing her love life on their hit show ‘KUWTK’ .
Khloe Kardashian admitted she was “frustrated” by Kourtney’s move to shield her most recent partners from the cameras during the famous family show ‘Keeping Up With The Kardashians’.
The 36-year-old expressed her anger over sister’s decision during her talks with host Andy Cohen.
Responding to Andy’s question, Khloe said: “There’s been times that I think that was maybe what I was going through, because you could also say Kourtney and Scott at the beginning, it was so much was about them but maybe there wasn’t as much going on in other peoples’ lives.
“Kim and I have had this conversation really openly. It’s that we feel like we give so much and maybe others aren’t holding up their end of the deal too.”
Record-breaking heat hits across western US
NUT Desk- LOS ANGELES: Much of the western United States is braced for record heat waves this week, with approximately 50 million Americans placed on alert Tuesday for “excessive” temperatures, which could approach 120 degrees Fahrenheit (50 degrees Celsius) in some areas.
“A prolonged and record-breaking heat wave is underway across the western US,” said the US National Weather Service, with “above normal to extreme high temperatures” expected at least through the weekend.
The heat wave, which stretches like a blob over much of the western third of the US map, extends east to west from Wyoming to California, and north to south from Idaho to Arizona.
Average temperatures in the vast region are around 20 degrees Fahrenheit above the seasonal norm, with the arid desert states of Arizona and Nevada most likely to shatter records.
The Arizona city of Phoenix experienced temperatures of 115 degrees Fahrenheit on Monday but forecasters predict it could pass 118 degrees by the end of the week, with lows in the upper-80s at nights.