Declare holiday for Hindu festivals; cut Muslim holidays: Yogi govt’s order to UP Madrasas

New Delhi, Jan 18: Senior advocate Indira Jaising urged the mother of Nirbhaya to pardon the men on death row who were convicted for the 2012 gang rape of her daughter.

Jaising took to Twitter to make the request shortly after Asha Devi on Friday expressed her disappointment following a Delhi court postponed the date of the execution of the four convicts.

"While I fully identify with the pain of Asha Devi I urge her to follow the example of Sonia Gandhi who forgave Nalini and said she didn't not want the death penalty for her. We are with you but against the death penalty," Jaisingh tweeted.

While I fully identify with the pain of Asha Devi I urge her to follow the example of Sonia Gandhi who forgave Nalini and said she didn’t not want the death penalty for her . We are with you but against death penalty. https://t.co/VkWNIbiaJp

— Indira Jaising (@IJaising) January 17, 2020

Asha Devi lashed out at Jaisingh suggesting pardon for the convicts. "I can't believe how Indira Jaising even dared to suggest such this. I met her many times over the years in Supreme Court, not once she asked for my wellbeing and today, she is speaking for convicts. Such people earn livelihood by supporting rapists, hence rape incidents don't stop," Asha Devi told ANI.

Nalini was arrested and convicted for her role in the assassination of former prime minister Rajiv Gandhi in 1991.

Earlier on Friday Asha Devi had lashed out at the courts and the government stating that "the same people who had in the year 2012 gone around participating in rallies and raised slogans for women's safety are playing with the death of my daughter for their political gains. They have stopped the execution for their political gains."

The death-row convicts who were earlier slated to be executed on January 22 at 7 am are set to be hanged on February 1 at 6 am.

Asha Devi rued that the convicts got what they wished for. "I will not be satisfied until they are hanged," she added.

Four convicts, Vinay, Akshay, Pawan and Mukesh were convicted and sentenced to death for raping a 23-year-old woman in a moving bus in the national capital on the intervening night of December 16-17, 2012.

The victim, who was later given the name Nirbhaya succumbed to injuries at a hospital in Singapore where she had been airlifted for medical treatment.

Beijing, Feb 19: The death count from China's new coronavirus epidemic jumped to 2,000 on Wednesday after 132 more people died in Hubei province, the hard-hit epicentre of the outbreak.

In its daily update, the province's health commission also reported 1,693 new cases of people infected with the virus.

This brings the total number of cases in mainland China past 74,000.

Most of the cases are in Hubei, where the virus first emerged in December before spiralling into a nationwide epidemic.

Wednesday's jump in the death count was an increase on Tuesday's figures, although the number of new cases reported in Hubei were the lowest for a week.

A study released by Chinese officials claimed most patients have mild cases of the illness.

Outside of hardest-hit Hubei, which has been effectively locked down to try to contain the virus, the number of new cases has been slowing and China's national health authority has said this is a sign the outbreak is under control.

President Xi Jinping, in a phone call with the British prime minister, said China's measures were achieving "visible progress", according to state media Tuesday.

However, the World Health Organization has cautioned that it was too early to tell if the decline would continue.

On Tuesday the director of a hospital in the central Hubei city of Wuhan became the seventh medical worker to succumb to the COVID-19 illness.

New Delhi, Jan 24: Although India's Ujjwala programme encouraged adoption of liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) for cooking among the poor, households availing the scheme have not shifted away from using highly polluting fuels like firewood, a study reveals.

The researchers, including those from the University of British Columbia (UBC) in Canada, found that additional incentives to encourage regular use of cooking gas are necessary for a complete transition to clean cooking fuel among poor rural households.

They noted that about 2.9 billion people across Asia, Africa, and Latin America burn solid fuels like firewood to meet their cooking energy needs.

This has significant negative implications for public health, the environment, and societal development, according to the researchers.

Through the Pradhan Mantri Ujjwala Yojana (PMUY), India has provided capital cost subsidies to poor women to adopt a clean-burning cooking fuel or LPG.

The researchers explained that within the first 40 months of the scheme, more than 80 million households obtained LPG stoves.

However, the full benefits of LPG adoption depend on near complete replacement of polluting fuels with LPG, according to a research-based policy brief published in the journal Nature Energy.

The scientists said this cannot be assumed solely on the basis of LPG presence in the household.

"Our research shows that Ujjwala was able to attract new consumers rapidly, but those consumers did not start using LPG on a regular basis," Abhishek Kar, a postdoc at Columbia University in the US, told PTI.

The study analysed LPG sales data for over 25,000 consumers, including PMUY beneficiaries, as well as general rural LPG consumers in Koppal district of Karnataka.

The scientists employed data covering all LPG purchases of PMUY beneficiaries through their first year in the programme.

They also assessed the general rural population's purchases during their first five years as consumers to assess the effect of experience on use.

The findings estimate that an average rural family needs to purchase five 14.2 kilogramme-cylinders annually to meet half of their cooking needs.

However, the study said just seven per cent of PMUY beneficiaries in Koppal purchased five or more cylinders annually, suggesting that the beneficiaries seldom use LPG.

The general (nonPMUY) consumers in this region use on average two times more LPG cylinders than PMUY beneficiaries, the researchers noted.

Yet, only 45 per cent of nonPMUY consumers use five or more cylinders per year -- even after several years of experience with LPG, they said.

The team assessed price and seasonal factors affecting LPG use among the general population over a three-year period.

It found that LPG consumers are sensitive to price and seasonality -- LPG cylinder refill rates are lower in the summer when agricultural activity is limited, and cash is scarce.

"There was no scheme incentives to promote use, except general LPG subsidies which is available to all, including the urban middle class," said Kar, who was a Ph.D. scholar at UBC when the research was published.

"If there is no additional income, what cost would a poor family on an already tight budget cut to pay for an extra expense on a regular basis.

"Ujjwala has started the scheme of 5 kg-cylinder in response, but the impact of that on LPG sales is still publicly unknown," he said.

These findings, the researchers noted, suggest the need for additional measures to promote regular LPG use for all rural populations.

Although the finding come from a single district in Southern India, it may also apply to other areas with similar socio-economic conditions, they said.

A more expansive evaluation of PMUY would help design targeted incentives to transform infrequent users to regular users, according to the researchers.