BJP holds state-wide hartal protesting killing of party activist

Mangaluru, May 6: Three more coronavirus positive cases have been reported in Dakshina Kannada district. 

According to fresh bulletin of health and family welfare department, an 11-year-old girl and a 36-year-old woman from Boloor in Mangaluru and a 16-year-old girl from Bantwal tested positive for the covid-19. 

All of them are undergoing treatment at Wenlock Hospital. Their condition is said to be stable. 

With this the total number of cases in the district reached 28 including 22 residents of Dakshina Kannada, 4 from Kasaragod, 1 from Udupi and 1 from Uttara Kannada.

Bengaluru, June 27: In the wake of mounting covid-19 cases across Karnataka, the state government has decided to extend the night curfew hours and to re-impose Sunday lockdown. 

Chief Minister BS Yediyurappa held an emergency meeting on Saturday with the state's top officials to discuss measures to further contain the spread of the novel coronavirus. 

During the meeting, it was decided that a state-wide lockdown will be imposed on each Sunday starting July 5. Only essential services and supplies will be allowed on Sundays.

Timings of the night curfew have also been revised to 8 PM - 5 AM from the earlier 9 PM - 5 AM. “We have decided to impose a curfew starting Monday, June 29, from 8 pm to 5 am every day. Right now, the curfew timing is 9 pm to 5 am, but it’ll be advanced by an hour to 8 pm,” said Home Minister Basavaraj Bommai

Commissioner of Bengaluru's civic body, BBMP has been directed to set up more wholesale vegetable markets to deter large crowds.

Meanwhile, government offices in Karnataka will open only five days a week and the weekend will be off for government employees.

It was also decided during the meeting on Saturday that a centralized bed-allocation system for Covid-19 patients will be taken up to ensure that each patient gets a bed without overwhelming the healthcare infrastructure.

Yediyurappa has also instructed officials to increase the number of ambulances for Covid-19 patients to 250 apart from arranging separate vehicles to carry mortal remains of victims. The police control room will aid officials in identifying the location and easing the movement of ambulances.

Information about nodal officers working for COVID management will be published. Joint Commissioners of 8 regions will be given additional responsibilities and KAS officers will be appointed to assist them.

The services of 180 ESI doctors appointed by the Labour Department will also be relied on by the state government. CM Yediyurappa has also asked officials to reserve wedding halls, hostels and other institutions in Bengaluru as COVID Care Centres.

Bengaluru Urban DC, on the other hand, was instructed to identify more places for the last rites of patients and also to form more teams for this purpose. 

The BBMP Commissioner has been told to notify reservation of 50 per cent beds in medical colleges and private hospitals.

Bengaluru, Feb 28: Historian S. Shettar, 85, breathed his last early on February 28 in Bengaluru. He was suffering from respiratory problems and was hospitalised for over a week.

Shettar was known for his multi-disciplinary work, encompassing linguistics, epigraphy, anthropology, the study of religions and art history. He had extensively worked on the Jain practice of ritual death in Karnataka and Asoka edicts. He had studied and compiled early edicts in Kannada and worked extensively on the growth of Kannada language down the ages.

Born in 1935 at Hampasagara, Ballari district, he went on to study at Cambridge University and started his career as a Professor of History at Karnatak University, Dharwad, his alma mater. He later headed the National Museum Institute of the History of Art, Conservation and Museology in 1978 and Indian Council for Historical Research in 1996. He was also a visiting professor at the National Institute of Advanced Studies, Bengaluru.

He was a bilingual historian who wrote in English for most of his career, but started writing in Kannada in later years. In the last two decades, he developed a keen interest in linguistics and wrote multiple books on classical Kannada and Prakrit. His 2007 book “Shangam Tamilagam” is considered a seminal work in the study of the early period of Dravidian languages. It won him Bhasha Samman from Central Sahitya Akademi. He later wrote two works on Halegannada, classical Kannada. His most recent work was “Prakrita Jagadvalaya” in 2018.