NATIONAL NEWS
Election Commission announces date for Bhabanipur bypoll
West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Bannerjee is ready to hit the mats with the Election Commission’s announcement of the schedule for bypoll in the Bhabanipur Assembly constituency while keeping by-polls to three Lok Sabha and 31 other Assembly seats pending. Banerjee, who lost from Nandigram in May, has time until November to get elected in order to continue as Chief Minister. The Bhabanipur Assembly Constituency by-election will be held on September 30 and votes will be counted on October 3. Nominations will be filed from September 6 till September 13. Polls for Samserganj and Jangipur in West Bengal and Pipli in Odisha, which had been adjourned due to the death of candidates during the Assembly elections, were deferred due to the COVID-19 situation in May. The EC announced polling for these three seats will also be held on September 30 and counting on October 3 after meeting state officials on Wednesday. Chief Secretaries of Andhra Pradesh, Assam, Bihar, Haryana, Himachal Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Meghalaya, Rajasthan, Telangana, Uttarakhand, Uttar Pradesh and the adviser to Union Territory of Dadra and Nagar Haveli and Daman & Diu informed the EC of flood-related constraints, festivals and the COVID-19 situation, the EC statement said. They suggested that it would be advisable to have byelections after the end of the festive season, the Election Commission said. Some States also stuck a note of caution with the possibility of a third wave predicted by scientists in October. The Chief Secretaries of Odisha and West Bengal, however, told the EC that the COVID-19 situation in their States were under control. The Bengal Chief Secretary also told the panel that the State was ready to hold elections and that the floods had not affected the poll-bound constituencies. The official also cited Article 164 (4) of the Constitution, saying that a Minister who is not an MLA for six consecutive months shall cease to be a Minister at the end of that period. He has also informed that in view of administrative exigencies and public interest and to avoid a vacuum in the State, byelections for 159-Bhabanipur, Kolkata from where Ms. Mamata Banerjee, Chief Minister intends to contest, may be conducted, the EC said. It said it had decided not to hold bypolls in the 31 Assembly seats and three Lok Sabha seats after considering the inputs of the Chief Secretaries and Chief Electoral Officers of those States. Considering the constitutional exigency and special request from State of West Bengal, it has decided to hold byelection in 159-Bhabanipur AC, the EC said. The poll panel said stricter norms had been put in place, including limiting indoor meetings to 30% of allowed capacity or 200 persons, whichever is less.
Gold and more for athletes at the Tokyo Paralympics
At the Tokyo Paralympics, it’s been raining medals for India. While reigning world champion Pramod Bhagat on Saturday claimed a gold medal in men’s singles SL3 class, Manoj Sarkar bagged the bronze for India after badminton made its debut at the Paralympics this year. Shooter Manish Narwal snagged India’s third gold while Singhraj Adana took the silver in the P4 Mixed 50m Pistol event. Bhagat beat Great Britain’s Daniel Bethell in the summit clash while Sarkar defeated Japan’s Daisuke Fujihara in the third place play-off, with both the Indians winning in straight games. In SL3 classification, athletes with lower limb impairment are allowed to compete. Bhagat, the current world No. 1, thus became the first Indian to win a gold medal in the sport. Indian gold medallist Pramod Bhagat poses on the podium at the medal ceremony for the Men’s Singles SL3 on day 11 of the Tokyo 2020 Paralympic Games at Yoyogi National Stadium on September 4, 2021 in Tokyo. Bhagat and his partner Palak Kohli will have a face-off with the Japanese pair of Daisuke Fujihara and Akiko Sugino in the bronze medal match on Sunday. They had lost the semi-finals 3-21 15-21 to Indonesian combination of Hary Susanto and Leani Ratri Oktila earlier in the day. Bhagat, who is afflicted with polio, contracted when he was four, picked up the sports after watching his neighbours play, emerging as one of the country’s best para shuttlers with 45 international medals under his belt, including four world championship gold medals and a gold and a bronze in 2018 Asian Para Games. Like Bhagat, 31-year-old Sarkar, whose right leg was affected after he contracted polio at age one, vanquished Fujihara 22-20 21-13. Earlier in the day, Suhas Yathiraj who is also an IAS officer, and Krishna Nagar sailed into the men’s singles finals of SL4 class and SH6 class respectively raising the hopes of more medals in the coming days. History under making! Suhas L Y, IAS, DM GB Nagar (Noida), UP, India in Men’s singles para-badminton SL4 finals. He beats Indonesia’s S Freddy 2-0 in semifinals. Now will be playing for Gold on September 5, the IAS Association, a group of serving and retired administrative officers, tweeted earlier in the day.
Dengue outbreak in Firozabad
More than 60 people, including 50 children have died of ‘dengue haemorrhagic fever’ – in western Uttar Pradesh over the past 10 days. With a majority of case being reported from Firozabad district, authorities are treating the cases in the district as a dengue outbreak. Union Health Ministry sources also confirmed that more than 50 % of the approximately 200 samples collected from Firozabad and nearby areas had tested positive for dengue. A six-member team from the NCDC, or National Centre for Disease Control – consisting of entomologists and experts in vector-borne diseases – has been rushed to the affected areas. The team is expected to submit its report on Monday. Sixty kilometers away from Firozabad in Mathura, 11 children died in 15 days – all from one village. The state government said the deaths were due to vector-borne diseases, primarily dengue. Fifteen people have died in the district so far. Congress leader Priyanka Gandhi Vadra took to Twitter to lash out at the state government. On Twitter, she claimed over 100 people had died from viral fever across the state, and questioned whether Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath had learned anything from the horrific consequences of disastrous Covid management. The chief minister has visited Firozabad and has promised that all measures will be taken to help patients.
INTERNATIONAL NEWS
Panjshir still holding up
Taliban sources have claimed that they have seized control over Panjshir valley, the last standing province that the Taliban has not been able to capture, however, a Resistance leader denied that the province had fallen. Panjshir valley is the only province that had resisted the first Taliban rule from 1996 to 2001. After the withdrawal of the US troops, and with the Taliban which is inching close to forming a government questions remain on whether such a government will be recognised by the world. Qatar’s ambassador to Afghanistan said a technical team was able to reopen Kabul airport to receive aid, according to Qatar’s Al Jazeera news channel, which also cited its correspondent as saying domestic flights had restarted. The airport’s runway has been repaired in cooperation with authorities in Afghanistan, the ambassador said, according to Al Jazeera. The channel said two domestic flights were operated from Kabul to the cities of Mazar-i-Sharif and Kandahar, Reuters reported.
Facebook mistakenly labels Black men ‘primates’
Facial recognition software has been criticised by civil rights advocates who point out problems with accuracy, particularly when it comes to people who are not white. Facebook on September 3 said it disabled its topic recommendation feature after it mistook Black men for primates in a video at the social network. A Facebook spokesperson called it a clearly unacceptable error and said the recommendation software involved was taken offline. We apologize to anyone who may have seen these offensive recommendations, Facebook said in response to an AFP inquiry. We disabled the entire topic recommendation feature as soon as we realized this was happening so we could investigate the cause and prevent this from happening again. Facial recognition software has been criticised by civil rights advocates who point out problems with accuracy, particularly when it comes to people who are not white. Facebook users in recent days, who watched a British tabloid video featuring Black men, were show an auto-generated prompt asking if they would like to keep seeing videos about Primates, according to the New York Times. The June 2020 video in question, posted by the Daily Mail, is titled White man calls cops on black men at marina. While humans are among the many species in the primate family, the video had nothing to do with monkeys, chimpanzees or gorillas. A screen capture of the recommendation was shared on Twitter by former Facebook content design manager Darci Groves. This ‘keep seeing’ prompt is unacceptable, Ms. Groves tweeted, aiming the message at former colleagues at Facebook. This is egregious.
