CHENNAI, Nov 19: Tamil Nadu’s D Bhuvaneswaran defeated Nazeer by four frames to two in a second round match in the in the Ajay Rastogi Memorial All-India Open Snooker Championship 2020, here on Thursday.
Bhuvaneswaran, the state no.2 in billiards currently, showed his snooker skills as he completed a comfortable win over his opponent.
In first round action, Rizwan (QBC) defeated Bommisetty Lakshmikanth (MUC) by four frames to two while Ram Narayan got past Karthik by a similar margin.
The tournament, the first national level event in the city since the COVID-19 outbreak, is being played as per standard operating procedures mandated by the authorities.
Results: Round 2: D Bhuvaneshwaran (ABC) beat Nazeer (QBC) 42.
GENEVA, Nov 19: Female soccer players should soon get their maternity rights protected under new employment rules announced Thursday by FIFA.
The governing body of soccer is preparing to mandate clubs to allow at least 14 weeks of maternity leave paid at a minimum two-thirds of a player’s full salary. National soccer bodies can insist on more generous terms.
“Her club will be under an obligation to reintegrate her into football activity and provide adequate ongoing medical support,” FIFA said.
Any club that ended a player’s contract for becoming pregnant faces having to pay compensation and a fine, and being banned from the transfer market for one year.
“The idea is to protect female players before, during and after childbirth,” FIFA chief legal officer Emilio Garcia said on a conference call.
The move is seen as a key step in professionalizing women’s soccer — and respecting players’ family lives — after a successful 2019 World Cup and more investment by elite clubs in having a women’s team.
United States forward Alex Morgan, a World Cup winner last year, signed with Tottenham in September, four months after giving birth to her first child. She played her first game this month.
The rules are expected to be approved by the FIFA Council next month and would take effect on Jan. 1.
Although FIFA’s judicial bodies have not been presented with contract disputes over maternity rights, Garcia targeted getting ahead of potential problems in the fast-growing women’s game.
“We think these rules are part of common sense,” he said of the move, which follow International Labor Organization standards on compensating maternity leave.
At least eight weeks of the 14-week minimum maternity leave must be after the player gives birth. (AP)
Excelsior Correspondent
UDHAMPUR, Nov 19: Police today foiled an attempt of bovine smuggling at Tikri and rescued three animals.
The bovine animals were being smuggled to Kashmir in Tata Mobile vehicle, bearing registration number JK02CL-7472, which was intercepted by a Police party, led by Incharge Police Post Tikri, SI Jaswinder Singh.
Police team rescued the animals and arrested the vehicle driver, identified as Mohd Rashid, son of Mohd Shafi of Dansal, Jhajjar Kotli.
In this regard, a case FIR, under section 188 /11PCA Act has been registered at Police Station Rehamble.
NEW DELHI, Nov 19:The All India Tennis Association (AITA) has postponed the national camp it had planned for the country’s elite players from November 30 due to a recent surge in COVID-19 cases in the national capital.
Delhi’s tally crossed the five-lakh mark on Wednesday with thousands of fresh cases being added in the last few days. The national capital also reported a record 134 deaths on Wednesday.
The AITA had laid out a plan for the top-20 elite men’s and women’s players for the camp, which was to culminate with a national championship in the singles format among the assembled players in a bio-secure environment.
The planned 21-day camp was scheduled to begin for the men’s players from November 30 and was to be followed by a women’s camp from January 4.
AITA secretary general Anil Dhupar, DLTA President Rohit Rajpal and former AITA president Anil Khanna had a meeting to take stock of the situation and decided to postpone the camp.
India’s Davis Cup coach Zeeshan Ali even spent five days at DLTA to set up the camp, overseeing the required arrangements, but flew back to Bangalore after cases start to rise in Delhi.
“The staff at both DLTA and AITA is shaken up. Life is important, so we have decided to postpone the camp. We were ready for it, a system with proper infrastructure was created but unfortunately we are postponing the camp,” Dhupar told PTI.
“We will wait normalcy to return. Whenever players are comfortable to travel, we will re-schedule. We will see if we can follow the same order (men’s, women’s boys, girls) or change the sequence,” added Dhupar.
The AITA official also said that all those players who are not travelling had agreed to join the camp.
India’s top men’s players, Prajnesh Gunneswaran and Ramkumar Ramanathan, are already competing on the ATP Challenger Tour while Sumit Nagal has been in Germany for training for a long time. (PTI)
Excelsior Correspondent
UDHAMPUR, Nov 19: A middle aged man was found dead under mysterious circumstance at Birma Nallah, here today.
Police identified the deceased as Diwan Chand (50), son of Balku Ram of village Dalsar, Ramnagar Tehsil. The body was spotted by some locals who immediately informed the Udhampur Police, which rushed to the spot.
The dead body was later shifted to District Hospital Udhampur for the postmortem for ascertaining exact cause of death. A case has been registered in this connection for further investigation.
Washington, Nov 19:
China perceives a rising India as a “rival” and wants to constrain its strategic partnership with the US, its allies, and with other democracies, the State Department said in a report, emphasising that Beijing intends to displace America as the world’s foremost power.
Coming ahead of the transition of power from Donald Trump’s administration to President-elect Joe Biden’s administration after the November 3 US presidential election, the detailed policy document highlights that China is undermining the security, autonomy and economic interests of many nations in the region.
“China perceives rising India as a rival and seeks to impel it to accommodate Beijing’s ambitions by engaging economically while constraining New Delhi’s strategic partnership with the US, Japan, Australia and its relations with other democracies,” the report said.
“China is undermining the security, autonomy, and economic interests of many others in the region – such as member states of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), including those in the vital Mekong Region, as well as the nations of the Pacific Islands,” the report added.
The 70-page report states that awareness has been growing in the US – and in nations around the world – that the ruling Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has triggered a new era of great-power competition.
“Yet few discern the pattern in China’s inroads within every region of the world, much less the specific form of dominance to which the party aspires,” said the report.
The CCP aims not merely at preeminence within the established world order – an order that is grounded in free and sovereign nation-states, flows from the universal principles on which America was founded, and advances US national interests -but to fundamentally revise world order, placing the People’s Republic of China (PRC) at the center and serving Beijing’s authoritarian goals and hegemonic ambitions.
“In the face of the China challenge, the US must secure freedom,” said the report.
China, it said, seeks to diminish US influence by fostering a sense in the region’s nations that China’s dominance is inevitable.
“Prime targets include US treaty-based allies – Japan, South Korea, Australia, Thailand, and the Philippines – as well as emerging strategic partners such as India, Vietnam, Indonesia, and Taiwan,” it said.
The People’s Liberation Army, the report said, recently provoked skirmishes along its disputed border with India, which killed dozens on both sides, and remains in a tense standoff with India’s military.
Indian and Chinese troops have been locked in a bitter standoff in several areas along the Line of Actual Control (LAC) in eastern Ladakh since May 5. The situation deteriorated after the June 15 Galwan Valley clashes in which 20 Indian Army personnel were killed and an unconfirmed number of Chinese soldiers died.
The report also highlighted Beijing’s hard relations with Taiwan, which it claims as its territory. “Beijing menaces democratic Taiwan, which it considers a renegade province, intending to reunify Taiwan with the Mainland – by force if necessary. And the PLA Navy and Chinese Coast Guard increasingly challenge Japan’s administrative control of the Senkaku Islands,” it said. “The Trump administration achieved a fundamental break with conventional wisdom. It concluded that the CCP’s resolute conduct and self-professed goals require the US and other countries to revise assumptions and develop a new strategic doctrine to address the primacy and magnitude of the China challenge,” according to the document.
The report also highlighted the outbreak of contagious coronavirus from China’s Wuhan city. The disease has so far infected 56,178, 674 people and killed 1,348,348 others across the world. The US is the worst affected country.
“The CCP’s recklessness in allowing the novel coronavirus born in Wuhan to develop into a global pandemic coupled with the concerted disinformation campaign that Beijing undertook to conceal China’s culpability should put doubts to rest. Yet many people lack a proper understanding of the character and scope of the China challenge,” it said. (PTI)
LAHORE, Nov 19:
Mumbai terror attack mastermind and Jamat-ud-Dawa (JuD) chief Hafiz Saeed was on Thursday sentenced to 10 years in jail by an anti-terrorism court in Pakistan in two more terror cases.
Saeed, a UN designated terrorist whom the US has placed a USD 10 million bounty on, was arrested on July 17 last year in the terror financing cases. He was sentenced to 11 years in jail by an anti-terrorism court in February this year in two terror financing cases.
He is lodged at the Lahore’s high-security Kot Lakhpat jail.
“The Anti-Terrorism Court (ATC) of Lahore on Thursday sentenced four leaders of Jamat-ud-Dawa, including its chief Hafiz Saeed, in two more cases,” a court official said.
Saeed and his two close aides – Zafar Iqbal and Yahya Mujahid – have been sentenced to 10 and a half years each, while JuD chief’s brother-in-law Abdul Rehman Makki was sentenced to six months imprisonment.
“Judge Arshad Hussain Bhutta of ATC Court No. 1 heard the case No. 16/19 and 25/19 filed by Counter Terrorism Department in which the verdict has been announced after the statements of witnesses were cross-examined by Naseeruddin Nayyar and Mohammad Imran Fazal Gul Advocate,” the official said.
A total of 41 cases have been registered by the CTD against the JuD leaders, out of which 24 have been decided while the rest are pending in the ATC courts. Four cases have been decided against Saeed so far.
Saeed-led JuD is the front organisation for the Lashkar-e-Toiba (LeT) which is responsible for carrying out the 2008 Mumbai attack that killed 166 people, including six Americans.
The US Department of the Treasury has designated Saeed as a Specially Designated Global Terrorist. He was listed under the UN Security Council Resolution 1267 in December 2008. (PTI)
JAMMU, Nov 19: The voluntarily retired workers of J&K Road Transport Corporation (JKRTC) held protest demonstration against the management of the Corporation and UT Administration at Exhibition Ground, near Press Club here today.
The VRS given workers of the J&K Transport Corporation led by Dev Raj Bali, president All J&K SRTC Voluntarily Retired Employees Association, assembled at Exhibition Ground here in the morning and started protest demonstration. They proposed Secretariat ‘gherao’ which was later foiled by police. The protesting retired workers were shouting slogans in support of their demands.
Bali while speaking on the occasion strongly criticized the SRTC authorities for not paying arrears of the VRS given SRTC employees. He alleged that nearly 700 VRS given workers of the Corporation are feeling cheated as they have been deprived of their arrears by the management of the Corporation.
He alleged that merely 50% arrears have been given to the workers while arrears of the 6th Pay Commission and COLA installments have been denied by the SRTC management. He demanded 6th Pay Commission arrears from January Ist, 2006 and COLA arrears since 1999 besides pension benefits and 8.33 % bonus on the basic pay.
Bali said they were struggling for the last seven years now. About 40 retirees have expired so far during struggle but unfortunately, Government was adamant to release their dues. He sought intervention of Lt Governor, MK Sinha into the matter.
Surinder Singh, Shiv Kumar, D N Sharma, Surinder Kumar, Dhian Singh, Surjeet Singh and others also accompanied.
NEW DELHI, Nov 19:
Amid rising cases of COVID-19 in the national capital, authorities have allowed all coronavirus facilities of the city government here to engage MBBS students in fourth and fifth years, interns and others to assist doctors on duty at a fixed honorarium, as per an order issued by the health department.
The order, dated November 18, comes at a time when hospitals are again getting swamped with infection spreading faster every single day, leading to an overwhelming number of deaths in the last several days.
Delhi recorded 7486 fresh COVID-19 cases on Wednesday, taking the infection tally in the national capital to over 5 lakh, even as 133 new fatalities, the highest single-day death count till date, pushed the toll to 7943.
As per the order, all COVID-19 hospitals of Delhi government have been allowed to “engage fourth and fifth year MBBS students, interns and BDS doctors to assist duty doctors at an honorarium of Rs 1000 (8 hours shift) and Rs 2000 (12 hours shift) per day”. In case of interns, the honorarium would be over and above their stipend, it said. RGSSH, a dedicated coronavirus facility under the Delhi government has 200 ICU beds with ventilators, all occupied, while at LNJP Hospital, another dedicated facility, only seven such beds out of the 200 were available at 12:30 PM, according to online Delhi Corona dashboard.
Delhi Health Minister Satyendar Jain on Wednesday had told reporters that more beds are planned to be added at LNJP Hospital. However, the number of doctors there at present is adequate, he had said. (PTI)
SRINAGAR, Nov 19: The Chinar Corps paid rich tributes to Sepoy Nikhil Sharma who made supreme sacrifice in the line of duty in Tangdhar sector in the frontier district of Kupwara.
Sepoy Sharma attained martyrdom and two other soldiers were injured when a forward post in Tanghdar sector was hit by a snow avalanche at 2000 hrs on Tuesday. However, two other soldiers were rescued in an injured condition and shifted to hospital. Click here to watch video
Chinar Corps in a tweet said “salute the valour & sacrifice of Sopy Nikhil Sharma, who made Supreme Sacrifice in the Line of Duty when the post which he was deployed was hit by an avalanche in Tangdhar sector, Kupwara. Deepest condolences to the bereaved family.
