Front Page
Superstorms killed 129 people across India in 24 hours, starting Wednesday night. The Times of India tells us that houses have been flattened, and trees and electricity poles uprooted. The maximum devastation occurred in Uttar Pradesh and Rajasthan, where the storms claimed 112 lives. To know the possible causes behind one of India’s worst dust storms, read NatGeo’s coverage.
They say lightning never strikes twice, but in Andhra Pradesh, it struck 77,774 times in eight days, Hindustan Times reports. The lightning strikes Tuesday, over 40,000 in 16 hours, killed 16 people in the state.
A decades-old portrait of Muhammad Ali Jinnah at Aligarh Muslim University (AMU) has triggered a row, with members of various right-wing groups trying to force their way into the campus this week to remove it. Now the student’s union has said students will boycott classes for the next five days in protest. “Eleven cops and 12 students were injured during the violence Wednesday,” The Times of India reports.
Meanwhile, the Centre told the Supreme Court that it won’t be able to draft the Cauvery water-sharing scheme by the 3 May deadline as the “Prime Minister and (other) ministers are travelling…because of the Karnataka elections”, The Hindu reports. “We are in a difficult position… we are only asking for 10 days more,” Attorney General K.K. Venugopal told a bench led by CJI Dipak Misra.
It also looks like the Supreme Court isn’t withdrawing the order that allegedly diluted the SC/ST Prevention of Atrocities Act. The top court says violence against Dalits isn’t continuing because of their order, but because there is no quick punishment for offenders, The Indian Express reports. At the same hearing, K.K. Venugopal also accused the SC of “passing rules which are in the nature of laws”, thereby crossing into the legislature’s jurisdiction.
Over 40 winners of the National Film Award skipped the ceremony because President Ram Nath Kovind only attended for an hour, Amrita Nayak Dutta reports for ThePrint. The President, who has historically handed out all the awards, only had enough time to give 11 of 125 on Thursday. The rest were handed out by information and broadcasting minster Smriti Irani, The Indian Express reports front page.
The UK and Indian governments don’t care if Cambridge Analytica is filing for bankruptcy and shutting shop. They are going to continue the probe into the political consultancy firm’s role in the Facebook data breach, The Times of India and The Hindu Bussiness Line report.
Out on bail, a man accused of a minor’s rape allegedly sexually assaulted a three-year-old in Rajasthan. Budhram Bavri, 20, has been arrested, Hindustan Times reports.
PM Modi has accused the Congress of defaming Ballari as a ‘region of thieves and robbers’. Incidentally, Ballari is the home turf of the Reddy brothers, and Modi shared the stage with BJP candidate Gali Somashekhara Reddy, whose brother is the prime suspect in an alleged multi-crore mining scam, The Indian Express and NDTV bring us the details.
A fire broke out Thursday at ISRO’s Space Applications Centre (SAC) at Ahmedabad. The possible cause was identified as a short circuit, but investigation is still underway. NDTV tell us that “the SAC is one of the most important hi-tech laboratories of the Indian space agency and it is involved in making specialised components for India’s satellites”.
In ThePrint
Nearly a year since the BRD Hospital tragedy in Gorakhpur, 247 children have died at the facility’s ‘killer’ AED ward, Ananya Bhardwaj reports. No steps seem to have been taken to control the situation, as “conditions at the hospital remain abysmal, with no infrastructure in place, not enough doctors, and overcrowded, filthy wards accommodating at least five children on each ventilator.”
‘You can’t sit with us’: Actor Prakash Raj has reportedly been sidelined by Bollywood ever since he started speaking out against Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Raj told D.K. Singh that “… there has been no offer from the Hindi film industry (Bollywood) since I started speaking out”. However, the actor is not worried, because he has “enough”.
Business Class
Flipkart bought back shares worth $350.46 million in its parent company in Singapore in what is perceived “as a precursor to US retail giant Walmart acquiring a majority stake” in the online retail giant, reports Business Standard.
With SoftBank on board, Walmart moves an inch closer to sealing its deal with Flipkart, reports The Economic Times.
The government is unlikely to soften the rules in power sector investment to meet the demand of SoftBank’s investment, reports The Economic Times.
News it’s just kinda cool to know
India is now among the top five countries in the field of scientific research output, ahead of Japan, France, Italy, Canada and Australia, according to the latest report by Elsevier, a global publishing house with 2,500 journals, including The Lancet, Millennium Post reports.
What’s in a name? Apparently, a lot of money — and the Delhi Metro seems to have figured it out. The DMRC is making up for the lack of non-fare revenue by ‘semi-naming’ stations after prominent brands who win the contract, The Indian Express tells us. You’ve probably seen the likes of ‘Honda 2 Wheelers Vishwavidyalay’, and ‘Bank of Baroda Sikandarpur’.
Bill Gates doesn’t think Aadhaar poses any privacy risk, and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has funded the World Bank to take this approach to other countries “as it is worth emulating”, The Times of India reports.
Donald Trump’s alleged ‘Stormy’ past has him in the news again. The US President admitted Thursday that he repaid his personal lawyer for hush money given to porn star Stormy Daniels, with whom he allegedly had an affair, “after previously claiming he didn’t know about the payments”, First Post reports.
Point of View
For the first time in the history of Kashmir, stone-pelters targeted a school bus. The Times Of India, in its editorial, writes, “The policy of giving amnesty to stone-pelters is also flawed. Instead of incentivising lawful behaviour it may well encourage the opposite, now targeting not just security forces but also tourists and children.”
Janata Dal (Secular) is contesting the assembly elections in Karnataka as a ‘secret agent’. The Hindu, in its editorial, writes the party is maintaining equidistance from both the BJP as well as the Congress to maximise its post-poll options.
In light of the government asking the Supreme Court to reconsider the recommendation to elevate Justice K.M. Joseph to the highest court, senior Supreme Court lawyer Anil Datar writes in his column in The Indian Express, “The deliberate refusal to implement the decisions of the collegium is hurting the judiciary.”
The Terms of Reference for the 15th Finance Commission elicited protest from some southern states. Deputy Bihar chief minister Sushil Kumar Modi, in his column in The Times Of India, says their protest is unfounded.
The development and use of artificial intelligence (AI) has changed the technological landscape dramatically. Union minister Ravi Shankar Prasad, in his column in The Economic Times, writes how the application of AI has the potential to revolutionise governance.
