Wearing saffron turban Owaisi campaigns for BJP’s potential ally in Karnataka

Bengaluru, Jun 15: After a three-month delay, seven-time MLA and former state minister DK Shivakumar, who has been appointed as the Karnataka Pradesh Congress Committee (KPCC) president, will take charge on July 2 at a simple function at the new party office here.

Mr Shivakumar was appointed as KPCC president on March 11.

Party sources said on Monday that Shivakumar plans to take charge of the party through a “pratijna dina” (pledge day) ceremony that would be telecast live to 7,800 locations across the state and over 10 lakh party workers are expected to attend it virtually.

Bengaluru, Feb 16: Radhakrishnan V Nair embarked on a journey of exploring complex subjects and opening up the cocoon of existence that puts people in a zone of comfort. One sole mission of the book is to encourage the readers to break out of that comfort zone.

The architect by profession has a novel to his credit, 'The Cave of Freedom' that had earned him critical acclaim from Jnanpith Awardee UR Ananthamurthy. On February 13, a discussion and the reading of his book had the audience riveted to their seats.

The launch of the book on February 13 at Bangalore International Centre was presided over by Bhaskar Rao, Commissioner of Police, Bengaluru, along with Vasudev Murthy, Technology Management Consultant, leadership trainer and author and Ramessh RK, an industrial designer and choir singer who read out passages from the book.

'Radhakrishnan is trying to inspire you to discover the pleasure of breaking the glass barrier along with the protagonist Dr Prateek. The story 'burst out'", said Radhakrishnan when it could not be contained any longer.

The glass ceiling saw a lot of interest from the audience present. The book includes Dr Prateek who is obsessed with saving lives in the Emergency Room (ER) as the world slept. Then on an eerie rainy night, he is kidnapped.

He struggles to come to terms with the improbability of waking up somewhere in Europe and making his serendipitous escape and being back at work the next morning - all physically impossible from the point of view of time and locality.

The glass ceiling challenges you to see tragedies and their impact on a person's mental well-being from a different perspective.

Radhakrishnan V Nair is an architect by profession and runs his Bengaluru-based firm - Archaid, the tagline of which is 'Architecture in Collaboration with Nature'.

Bengaluru, Jun 21: As many as 453 new coronavirus cases were confirmed on Sunday including 196 in Bengaluru alone, taking the total number of infections in Karnataka to 9,150, the Health Department said.

Five more deaths took the toll due to COVID-19 in the state to 137, a bulletin issued by the department said.

An assistant sub-inspector posted in a traffic police station died due to coronavirus on Saturday night taking the number of policemen succumbing to the contagion to three, police said.

The entire police station has been sealed for sanitisation and 25 people including five primary contacts of the deceased have been quarantined at the designated hospitals.

The total number of COVID-19 cases include 5,618 discharges, 3,391 active cases, 137 deaths, four deaths due to non-COVID causes and 77 patients admitted in Intensive Care Units.

The 196 cases confirmed in Bengaluru today is the highest single-day spike ever since the outbreak of the pandemic.

With 64 deaths so far, the city's share in the total fatalities in the state due to COVID is 47 per cent.

The five deaths reported on Sunday included three in Bengaluru.

"Yes. It is a major single day spike in Bengaluru," a health department official told P T I.

Of the total cases reported in Bengaluru, 101 are Influenza-Like Illness (ILI) and 68 are those whose contact tracing is underway.

Apart from 196 in Bengaluru, 40 cases were reported in Ballari, 39 cases each in Kalaburagi and Vijayapura, 18 each in Mysuru and Gadag, 15 in Dharwad, 14 in Bagalkote, 13 in Bidar, eight each in Davangere, Uttara Kannada and Kolar.

The five deaths reported on Sunday consisted of four men and a woman.

In view of the rising cases in Bengaluru, the Chief Secretary on Saturday formed three teams.

According to an order, Principal Secretary in Cooperative department Tushar Girinath will head the team that will ensure shifting the patients from their houses or the institutional quarantine facilities to the designated hospital.

The second team headed by the Karnataka Public Service Commission secretary G Sathyavathi will monitor the containment zone and carry out extensive surveys of people with COVID-19.

The third team is headed by Karnataka State Mineral Development Corporation managing director Naveen Raj Singh and Additional Commissioner of police Hemant Nimbalkar who will ensure social distancing at public places.

These three teams will have senior bureaucrats and top police officers as members.