Nothing wrong if one doesn’t recite Vande Mataram, says Modi govt’s minister

Jun 1: Gold prices rose on Monday as riots in major U.S. cities rattled investors already reeling from strained Sino-U.S. relations and boosted demand for the safe-haven metal, with a weaker dollar lending further support.

Spot gold gained 0.8% to $1,739.75 per ounce by 0242 GMT. U.S. gold futures ticked up 0.1% to $1,752.60.

"Concerns about the unrest in the United States at the moment appear to be weighing on market sentiment," said Michael McCarthy, chief strategist at CMC Markets, adding that rising tensions between the world's top two economies provided further support to gold.

Protesters have flooded the streets in the United States over the death of George Floyd in police custody, in a wave of outrage sweeping a politically and racially divided nation.

The closely packed crowds and demonstrators not wearing masks have sparked fears of a resurgence of COVID-19, which has killed more than 101,000 Americans.

In Asia, China's state media and the government of Hong Kong lashed out on Sunday at U.S. President Donald Trump's pledge to end Hong Kong's special status if Beijing imposes new national security laws on the city.

Gold is often used as a safe store of value during times of political and financial uncertainty.

Indicative of sentiment, holdings of SPDR Gold Trust, the world's largest gold-backed exchange-traded fund, rose 0.3% to 1,123.14 tonnes on Friday, a fresh seven-year high.

Further supporting gold's appeal, the dollar index fell 0.4% against its rivals.

Elsewhere, silver jumped 2% to $18.20 per ounce, its highest since Feb. 26, before retreating slightly to trade 1.8% higher at $18.16.

Speculators cut their bullish positions in COMEX gold and increased them in silver contracts in the week to May 26, the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission said on Friday.

Palladium rose 0.7% to $1,958.25 per ounce, while platinum declined 0.3% to $835.56.

New Delhi, Fevb 10: Of the countries most at risk of importing coronavirus cases, India ranks 17th, researchers have found on the basis of a mathematical model for the expected global spread of the virus that originated in China's Wuhan area in December 2019.

So far, India has reported three coronavirus positive cases -- all from Kerala.

Among the airports in India, the Indira Gandhi International Airport in New Delhi is most at risk, followed by airports in Mumbai, Kolkata, Bengaluru, Chennai, Hyderabad and Kochi, according to the model.

The new model for predicting global novel coronavirus cases has been developed by researchers from Humboldt University and Robert Koch Institute in Germany.

"The spread of the virus on an international scale is dominated by air travel," said the study.

"Wuhan, the seventh largest city in China with 11 million residents, was the relevant major domestic air transportation hub with many connecting international flights before the city was effectively quarantined on January 23, 2020, and the Wuhan airport was closed. By then the virus had already spread to other Chinese provinces as well as other countries," it added.

The researchers said that it is possible to estimate how likely it is that the virus spreads to other areas by looking at air travel passenger numbers.

"The busier a flight route, the more probable it is that an infected passenger travels this route. Using these probabilistic concepts, we calculate the relative import risk to other airports. When calculating the import risk, we also take into account connecting flights and travel routes that involve multiple destinations," said the study.

The top 10 countries and regions at risk of importing coronavirus cases are: Thailand, Japan, South Korea, Hong Kong, Taiwan, USA, Vietnam, Malaysia, Singapore and Cambodia, according to the model.

While Thailand's national import risk is 2.1%, it is 0.2% for India, found the research.

The foundation of the model is the worldwide air transportation network (WAN) that connects approximately 4,000 airports with more than 25,000 direct connections.

The model accounts for both, the current distribution of confirmed cases in mainland China as well as airport closures that were implemented as a mitigation strategy.

This network theoretic model is based on the concept of effective distance and is an extension of a model introduced in the 2013 paper "The Hidden Geometry of Complex, Network-Driven Contagion Phenomena" published in the journal Science.

The current outbreak of the 2019-nCoV virus started in Wuhan city, Hubei province, China. While the first cases were reported as early as December 8, 2019, the outbreak gained global attention on December 31, 2019, when the World Health Organization was alerted to "several cases of pneumonia" by an unknown virus.

The new virus was soon identified as a novel coronavirus and named 2019-nCOV. It belongs to the family of viruses that include the common cold and viruses such as SARS and MERS. On January 20, 2020, it was confirmed that the coronavirus can be transmitted between humans, greatly increasing the risk of a global spread.

The death toll due to the novel coronavirus outbreak in China has increased to 811 on Sunday, surpassing that of the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) epidemic in 2003.

Although about 20 countries have confirmed cases, China has accounted for about 99 per cent of those infected. The first foreign victims of the virus both died on Saturday in Wuhan.

Jan 28: After Union minister Anurag Thakur, on Tuesday, BJP MP Parvesh Verma has stoked a controversy by saying that "Shaheen Bagh protesters will enter houses and rape sisters, daughters." The BJP MP even went on to say that if BJP is voted to power in Delhi, they "will clear Shaheen Bagh protest within an hour."

"If the BJP comes to power in Delhi on February 11, we will clear Shaheen Bagh of all protests and protesters within one hour. Not a single person will be visible," Parvesh Verma said during a meeting at Vikaspuri assembly constituency.

"Lakhs of people gather there [Shaheen Bagh]. People of Delhi will have to think and take a decision. They will enter your houses, rape your sisters and daughters, kill them. There's time today, Modi ji & Amit Shah won't come to save you tomorrow..." the BJP MP told news agency ANI.

"If our government is formed, then give me just a month after February 11, and I will remove all mosques built on government land in my Lok Sabha constituency," the BJP parliamentarian added.

Well, these statements didn't go down well with the netizens, who took to Twitter to express what they felt about the BJP leader's comments. A user wrote, "This is pure, unadulterated hate speech." While other user said, "Only when you thought BJP couldn't stoop any lower."

Earlier, on Monday, BJP leader and Union Minister Anurag Thakur triggered a row after he led the crowd to raise an incendiary slogan that "traitors should be shot". At the rally, Thakur, the Minister of State (MoS) for Finance, shouted: "desh ke gaddaron ko" to which the crowd responded, "goli maro saalo ko" (shoot down the traitors).

Addressing the meeting in support of BJP candidate from Rithala, Manish Chaudhary, Thakur raised the pitch of nationalism as he linked opposition parties with anti-CAA protests in Shaheen Bagh and with alleged anti-India slogans, and then asked the crowd to raise the controversial slogan.

For more than a month, over 200 women have been joined by hundreds of others every day at South East Delhi's Shaheen Bagh at a sit-in protest against the CAA which promises citizenship to only non-Muslim refugees from three neighbouring countries.

Protests have been ongoing in different parts of the country against the amended Citizenship Act (CAA) which grants citizenship to Hindus, Sikhs, Jains, Parsis, Buddhists and Christians fleeing religious persecution from Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Bangladesh if they entered India on or before December 31, 2014.