Farm laws
CHANDIGARH, Nov 3: Punjab Chief Minister Amarinder Singh will lead a “relay dharna” of Congress MLAs at Delhi’s Rajghat on Wednesday after President Ram Nath Kovind’s refusal to meet a delegation led by him over the Centre’s farm laws.
Singh had sought an appointment with the President on Wednesday to seek assent to the bills recently passed by the state assembly in a bid to negate the Centre’s new farm laws.
But Rashtrapati Bhavan has declined his request for appointment, the state government said on Tuesday.
The CM on Tuesday said the protest in Delhi will highlight the situation in the state because of the suspension of goods trains by the Centre.
The Railways has stopped running trains to Punjab, saying the farmers protesting against the farm laws are still blocking some tracks. But the state government maintains that they have eased the blockade and are allowing goods trains to run.
Thermal power plants are shutting down in the state because of lack of coal, the Punjab government said.
The CM said since section 144 of the CrPC – which prohibits assembly of people – is in force in the national capital, MLAs will go from Delhi’s Punjab Bhawan to Mahatma Gandhi’s ‘samadhi’ in groups of four to hold a relay protest.
Singh will lead the first batch at 10.30 am.
Apart from the MLAs from the ruling Congress, Singh has urged Punjab legislators from other parties to participate. (PTI)

Rajiv assassination
NEW DELHI, Nov 3: The Supreme Court Tuesday expressed unhappiness over the pendency of a plea by a convict seeking pardon in the Rajiv Gandhi assassination case for over two years with the Tamil Nadu Governor.
The top court asked the counsel for petitioner A G Perarivalan, who is serving life sentence, whether the court can exercise its jurisdiction under Article 142 of the Constitution to request the Governor to decide his plea of pardon filed under Article 161. Article 161 empowers a Governor to pardon a convict in any criminal case.
A bench of Justices L Nageswara Rao, Hemant Gupta and Ajay Rastogi said, “We don’t want to exercise our jurisdiction at this stage but we are not happy that recommendation made by the government is pending for two years”.
The bench was hearing a plea of 46-year-old A G Perarivalan who has sought suspension of his life sentence in the case till the CBI-led Multi-Disciplinary Monitoring Agency (MDMA) probe is completed. During the hearing, the bench told senior advocate Gopal Shankarnarayanan, representing Perarivalan, that “the Governor has to act on the aid and advice of the council of ministers. But if the Governor does not pass order, what the court can do, you tell us”.
It asked Shankarnarayanan to apprise the court as to how it can request the Governor to take decision and what are the laws on the issue.
The top court then asked advocate Balaji Srinivasan, appearing for Tamil Nadu, as to why the state government cannot request the Governor to pass order without any specific order from this court?
Srinavasan said that Governor had sought report of the MDMA.
The bench then told ASG K M Nataraj, appearing for Centre, as to whether any request has been made by the state to send the report of MDMA.
He replied that the larger conspiracy probe is going on and the investigation is spread over various countries like in United Kingdom and Sri Lanka.
The bench told the ASG that the larger conspiracy theory is to find out if any other person, besides those convicted in the matter, are involved in this.
“It is not with respect to those who are convicted and are in jail. You look at it,” the bench told Nataraj, adding that the larger conspiracy probe is pending for almost 20 years.
It said that even after almost two decades of probe in the larger conspiracy aspect, the Centre is saying that it is in the process of getting response for Letter Rogatories (letters of request from a court to a foreign court for some type of judicial assistance) sent to various countries.
“You (Nataraj) look at it and tell us,” the bench said, while posting the matter for further hearing on November 23.
The bench allowed the petitioner and the Union of India to file additional documents, if any in the matter.
The state government had earlier told the top court that that the Cabinet has already passed a resolution on September 9, 2018 and recommended to the Governor for the premature release of all seven convicts in the case.
On January 21, the apex court had asked the state government to inform whether a decision has been taken by it on a pardon petition of a convict in the case.
The MDMA was set up in 1998 on the recommendations of the Justice M C Jain Commission of Inquiry which had probed the conspiracy aspect of Gandhi’s assassination.
Perarivalan’s counsel had earlier said his role was only limited to procuring nine-volt batteries, which were allegedly used in the improvised explosive device (IED) that had killed Gandhi.
On March 14 last year, the apex court had asked the MDMA to file a status report with regard to a LRs sent to Sri Lanka for examining one of the accused, Nixon alias Suren, who is lodged in a Colombo jail.
The top court had earlier dismissed a plea of Perarivalan seeking recall of the May 11, 1999, verdict upholding his conviction. It had said the material brought on record before it does not inspire confidence to interfere with the verdict in which Perarivalan and three others were initially awarded death sentence, which was later commuted to life term.
The CBI had earlier submitted that Perarivalan had even visited Jaffna in Sri Lanka in the first week of June 1990, besides attending a public meeting along with other conspirators which was addressed by former Prime Minister V P Singh on May 7, 1991 in Tamil Nadu. Perarivalan’s counsel had submitted that he was just a 19-year-old when the incident took place and had no knowledge of what he was doing and for what purpose the batteries were purchased.
Gandhi was assassinated on the night of May 21, 1991 at Sriperumbudur in Tamil Nadu by a woman suicide bomber, identified as Dhanu, at a poll rally. Fourteen others, including Dhanu herself, were also killed. Gandhi’s assassination was perhaps the first case of suicide bombing which had claimed the life of a high-profile leader. In its May 1999 order, the top court had upheld the death sentence of four convicts — Perarivalan, Murugan, Santham and Nalini — in the assassination case. (PTI)

HOUSTON, Nov 3: Temperature and humidity do not play a significant role in the spread of the novel coronavirus, that causes COVID-19, according to a study led by an Indian-origin researcher in the US.
The study, published in the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, suggests that the transmission of COVID-19 from one person to the next depends almost entirely on human behaviour, irrespective of hot or cold weather.
The researchers noted that weather influences the environment in which the coronavirus must survive before infecting a new host.
However, it also influences human behaviour, which moves the virus from one host to another, they said.
“The effect of weather is low and other features such as mobility have more impact than weather. In terms of relative importance, weather is one of the last parameters,” said Dev Niyogi, a professor at the University of Texas (UT) at Austin, US, who led the research.
The study defined weather as “equivalent air temperature,” which combines temperature and humidity into a single value.
The scientists then analysed how this value tracked with coronavirus spread in different areas from March to July 2020, with their scale ranging from US. States and counties, to countries, regions and the world at large.
At the county and state scale, the researchers also investigated the relationship between coronavirus infection and human behaviour, using cellphone data to study travel habits.
The study examined human behaviour in a general sense and did not attempt to connect it to how the weather may have influenced it.
At each scale, the researchers adjusted their analyses so that population differences did not skew results. Across scales, the scientists found that the weather had nearly no influence.
The researchers compared the weather with other factors using a statistical metric that breaks down the relative contribution of each factor towards a particular outcome.
They found that the weather’s relative importance at the county scale was less than 3 per cent, with no indication that a specific type of weather promoted spread over another.
In contrast, the data showed the clear influence of human behaviour — and the outsized influence of individual behaviours, according to the researchers.
Taking trips and spending time away from home were the top two contributing factors to COVID-19 growth, with a relative importance of about 34 per cent and 26 per cent respectively, they said.
The researchers noted that the next two important factors were population and urban density, with a relative importance of about 23 per cent and 13 per cent respectively.
“We shouldn’t think of the problem as something driven by weather and climate. We should take personal precautions, be aware of the factors in urban exposure,” said study co-author Sajad Jamshidi, a research assistant at Purdue University in the US.
Maryam Baniasad, a doctoral candidate at Ohio State University, US said that assumptions about how coronavirus would respond with weather are largely informed by studies conducted in laboratory settings on related viruses.
Baniasad said that this study illustrates the importance of studies that analyse how the coronavirus spreads through human communities.
“When you study something in lab, it’s a supervised environment. It’s hard to scale up to society. This was our first motivation to do a more broad study,” she added. (PTI)

VIENNA, Nov 3: Five people died, including an assailant, and 17 others were wounded in a shooting in the heart of Vienna hours before a coronavirus lockdown started, Austrian authorities said Tuesday.
The dead attacker was a 20-year-old Austrian-North Macedonian dual national who had a previous terror conviction.
Two men and two women died from their injuries in the attack Monday evening, Chancellor Sebastian Kurz said. The suspected attacker was shot and killed by police.
Vienna’s hospital service said seven people were in life-threatening condition Tuesday after the attack, the Austrian news agency APA reported. In total, 17 people were being treated in hospitals, with gunshot wounds but also cuts.
“It is now confirmed that yesterday’s attack was clearly an Islamist terror attack,” Kurz said. “It was an attack out of hatred — hatred for our fundamental values, hatred for our way of life, hatred for our democracy in which all people have equal rights and dignity.”
Interior Minister Karl Nehammer later told APA that the dead assailant, who had roots in the Balkan nation of North Macedonia, had a previous conviction under a law that punishes membership in terrorist organizations.
The attacker, named as Kujtim Fejzulai, was sentenced to 22 months in prison in April 2019 because he had tried to travel to Syria to join the Islamic State group. He was granted early release in December under juvenile law.
Fifteen house searches have taken place and several people have been arrested, he added. The attacker, he said, “was equipped with a fake explosive vest and and an automatic rifle, a handgun and a machete to carry out this repugnant attack on innocent citizens.”
Authorities were still trying to determine whether further attackers may be on the run. People in Vienna were urged to stay at home if possible on Tuesday and children did not have to go to school. Some 1,000 police officers were on duty in Vienna on Tuesday morning.
Among those wounded in the attack was a police officer, said Nehammer. The 28-year-old officer was in the hospital but was no longer in a life-threatening condition. (PTI)

BHOPAL, Nov 3: Amid the polling for by-elections on 28 assembly seats in Madhya Pradesh on Tuesday, Congress veteran Digvijaya Singh questioned the use of Electronic Voting Machines (EVMs) in India, saying the device is prone to hacking.
Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan responded to Singh, stating that the Congress has already sensed its defeat in these bypolls and hence its party leader is finding fault with EVMs which are being used in India during polls for decades.
“In a technological age, developed countries dont trust the EVM, but elections in India and some smaller countries are conducted by EVMs.
“Why don’t developed countries use (EVMs)? Because they don’t trust EVMs.
“Why? Because the chip in it can be hacked, Singh tweeted and posted a news item mentioning the list of countries using these devices.
Reacting to Singh’s tweet, Chouhan, while talking to reporters at the BJPs state headquarters here, said, “The Congress has started making ground for its imminent defeat in the bypolls by blaming the EVMs. Digvijaya Singh is raising questions on the EVMs now.”
Chouhan said, These are the same EVMs that led to the Congress victory on 114 seats in MP in 2018. These EVMs were fine at that time.
The BJP leader said the same EVMs were used in the 2018 assembly polls in Chhattisgarh and Rajasthan, where the results when in favour of the Congress.
The ruling BJP and the Opposition Congress are locked in a bitter fight for supremacy in the bypolls in Madhya Pradesh.
The BJP has to win at least nine of the 28 seats to reach the halfway mark (116) in the 230-member state assembly. (PTI)