Bombs, weapons seized near BJP office; 1 Sangh Parivar activist held, many escape

Udupi, Jan 8: Senior journalist Raviraj Valalambe passed away due to suspected cardiac arrest on Tuesday night at his residence in Kinnimulki, here. He was 50.

Raviraj was rushed to a hospital after he complained of chest pain. He breathed his last on way to medical facility.

He was the director of Prime TV, a local Kannada news channel.

He had worked as a reporter for ETV and Suvarna News channel earlier.

He is survived by wife and two daughters.

 Bengaluru, Jan 12: Two pilgrims from Bengaluru, who were siblings, drowned in sea off Auro Beach in Puducherry today.

The deceased have been identified as V Gauthman, 22, and his brother Vivek, 20.

Gauthman and Vivek were among a group of around 150 devotees from Bengaluru to the Adhiparasakhi temple at Melmaruvathur in Kancheepuram district of Tamil Nadu. They started their journey from Bengaluru in three buses on Friday.

After offering special puja at Adhiparasakthi temple and worshipping at a few other temples, they reached Auro Beach on Sunday afternoon. 

While they were having lunch on the beach, Gauthman entered the sea. He was caught in a huge wave.

Vivek, who tried to rescue his brother, too was caught in the wave.

Other pilgrims and fishermen began to search for them in fishing boats.

After an hour, their bodies were washed ashore, around two km from the spot.

The Auroville police retrieved the bodies and sent them for postmortem.

Bengaluru, Jul 13: The Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike (BBMP) has initiated the process of recruiting 1,700 medical professionals, doctors, staff nurses and support staff to scale up its workforce to set up 30,000 COVID-19 care beds, an official said on Sunday.

According to the official, to establish and run 30,000 COVID care beds, 1,800 doctors and 3,600 nurses are required. A 10,100-bed facility was set up last week in the Bengaluru International Exhibition centre (BIEC) on Tumkur road.

The Health Department has calculated that one doctor per shift is needed for every 100 patients and one staff nurse for every 50 patients. Similarly, two supporting staff and three Group D employees are needed per shift for every 100 patients. Generally, a day is divided into three shifts of eight hours each.

According to the director of medical education, there are 25,000 nursing students who have completed GNM and BSc Nursing courses and are pursuing higher education.

Likewise, there are 3,231 medical, dental and Aayush interns, while MD and MS postgraduate students have been identified to be 1,613 in Bengaluru colleges.

"The department plans to actively utilise the services of interns and postgraduate students for the COVID Care Centre (CCC) operations," said the official.

Currently, there are 2,100 CCC beds operational under the civic body in Bengaluru with a pool of 503 doctors, 167 ayush doctors, 128 nursing and paramedical staff.

Earlier in May, the civic body also notified the recruitment of 380 microbiologists, technicians and data entry operators for six months. In June, the civic body again notified the recruitment of 637 doctors, nurses, technicians and group d employees to strengthen its fight against the pandemic.

Bengaluru has recently seen a spike in COVID-19 in Karnataka, accounting for 61% of all active cases in the state.

On Saturday, the city reported 1,533 new cases, taking its total tally to 16,862, of which 12,793 are active.

Karnataka recorded 2,798 more coronavirus cases and 70 more casualties on Saturday evening, raising the state's total cases to 36,216 and the death toll to 613.