Gandhi family used INS Viraat as ‘personal taxi’: PM Modi

Miami, Mar 12: The NBA has suspended its season "until further notice" after a Utah Jazz player tested positive Wednesday for the coronavirus, a move that came only hours after the majority of the league's owners were leaning toward playing games without fans in arenas.

Now there will be no games at all, at least for the time being. A person with knowledge of the situation said the Jazz player who tested positive was center Rudy Gobert. The person spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity because neither the league nor the team confirmed the test.

"The NBA is suspending game play following the conclusion of tonight's schedule of games until further notice,'' the league said in a statement sent shortly after 9:30 p.m. EDT. "The NBA will use this hiatus to determine next steps for moving forward in regard to the coronavirus pandemic.''

The test result, the NBA said, was reported shortly before the scheduled tip-off time for the Utah at Oklahoma City game on Wednesday night was called off. Players were on the floor for warmups and tip-off was moments away when they were told to return to their locker rooms. About 30 minutes later, fans were told the game was postponed ``due to unforeseen circumstances."

Shutdown for two weeks?

Those circumstances were the league's worst-case scenario for now -- a player testing positive. A second person who spoke to AP on condition of anonymity said the league expects the shutdown to last a minimum of two weeks, but cautioned that time-frame is very fluid.

"It's a very serious time right now," Miami Heat coach Erik Spoelstra said. "I think the league moved appropriately and prudently and we'll all just have to monitor the situation and see where it goes from here."

The Jazz released a statement saying a player -- they did not identify Gobert -- tested negative earlier Wednesday for flu, strep throat and an upper respiratory infection. That player's symptoms diminished as the day went along, but the decision was made to test for COVID-19 anyway. That test came back with a preliminary positive result.

"The individual is currently in the care of health officials in Oklahoma City," the Jazz said, adding that updates would come as appropriate.

New Delhi, Feb 12: The Centre on Wednesday said the NRC data in Assam is safe even though some technical issues were visible and that will be resolved soon.

The Union Home Ministry clarification came in view of reports that data of the final list of the National Register of Citizens has been made offline from its official website.

"The NRC data is safe. Some technical issues are in visibility on cloud. These are being resolved soon," a home ministry spokesperson said.

The data was not available for a couple of days and it created panic in the public, mostly among the people excluded from the list as the rejection certificates were yet to be issued.

NRC State Coordinator Hitesh Dev Sarma accepted that the data has been made offline, but refuted the allegation of any "malafide" intent in it.

The cloud service for the huge set of data was provided by IT firm Wipro and their contract was till October 19 last year. However, this was not renewed by the previous coordinator.

So, the data got offline from December 15 after it was suspended by Wipro, Sarma said.

He said the state coordination committee had decided to do necessary formalities in its meeting on January 30 and wrote to the Wipro during the first week of February.

"Once Wipro makes the data live, it will be available for public. We hope people will be able to access it in the next 2-3 days," Sarma said.

The complete detail of exclusion and inclusion of bonafide Indian citizens in the NRC was uploaded on its official website http://www.nrcassam.nic.in after the final list was published on August 31, 2019.

The final NRC was published by excluding 19,06,657 persons. A total of 3,11,21,004 names were included out of 3,30,27,661 applicants.

After the earlier NRC State Coordinator Prateek Hajela relinquished the charge on November 11 following his transfer to home state Madhya Pradesh on a direction from the Supreme Court, Sarma was appointed in his place on November 9.

Washington, Jun 1: Police fired tear gas outside the White House late Sunday as major US cities were put under curfew to suppress rioting as anti-racism protestors again took to the streets to voice fury at police brutality.

With the Trump administration branding instigators of six nights of rioting as domestic terrorists, there were more confrontations between protestors and police and fresh outbreaks of looting.

Violent clashes erupted repeatedly in a small park next to the White House, with authorities using tear gas, pepper spray and flash bang grenades to disperse crowds who lit several large fires and damaged property.

Local US leaders appealed to citizens to give constructive outlet to their rage over the death of an unarmed black man in Minneapolis, while night-time curfews were imposed in cities including Washington, Los Angeles and Houston.

One closely watched protest was outside the state capitol in Minneapolis' twin city of St. Paul, where several thousand people gathered before marching down a highway.

"We have black sons, black brothers, black friends, we don't want them to die. We are tired of this happening, this generation is not having it, we are tired of oppression," said Muna Abdi, a 31-year-old black woman who joined the protest.

"I want to make sure he stays alive," she added in reference to her son, aged three.

Hundreds of police and National Guard troops were deployed ahead of the protest.

At one point, some of the protestors who had reached a bridge were forced to scramble for cover when a truck drove at speed after having apparently breached a barricade.

The driver was later taken to hospital after the protestors hauled him from the vehicle, although there were no immediate reports of other casualties.

There were other large-scale protests in cities including New York and Miami.

Washington's mayor ordered a curfew from 11:00 pm until 6:00 am, as a report in the New York Times said that President Donald Trump had been rushed by Secret Service agents into an underground bunker at the White House on Friday night during an earlier protest.

Stores ransacked

Large-scale violence has rocked many US cities in recent days, and looters ransacked stores in a neighborhood of Philadelphia on Sunday.

In the Los Angeles suburb of Santa Monica, looting was reported at stores in a popular beachside shopping center.

Officials in LA -- a city scarred by the 1992 riots over the police beating of Rodney King, an African-American man -- imposed a curfew from 4:00 pm Sunday until dawn.

"Please, use your discretion and go early, go home, stay home and help us make sure that those who want to change this conversation from being about racial justice to be about burning things and looting things, don't win the day," the city's mayor Eric Garcetti said on CNN.

The shocking videotaped death last Monday of an unarmed black man, George Floyd, at the hands of police in Minneapolis ignited the nationwide wave of outrage over law enforcement's repeated use of lethal force against unarmed African Americans.

Floyd stopped breathing after Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin knelt on his neck for nearly nine minutes.

Chauvin has been charged with third-degree murder and is due to make his first appearance in court on Monday. Three other officers with him have been fired but for now face no charges.

Governor Tim Walz has mobilized all of Minnesota's National Guard troops  -- the state guard's biggest mobilization ever -- to help restore order.

Police fired tear gas and stun grenades to clear streets of curfew violators Saturday night in Minneapolis.

Walz extended a curfew for a third night Sunday and praised police and guardsmen for holding down violence. "They did so in a professional manner. They did so without a single loss of life and minimal property damage," he said.

"Congratulations to our National Guard for the great job they did immediately upon arriving in Minneapolis, Minnesota, last night," President Donald Trump tweeted, adding that they "should be used in other States before it is too late!"

The Department of Defense said that around 5,000 National Guard troops had been mobilized in 15 states as well as the capital Washington, with another 2,000 on standby.

The widespread resort to uniformed National Guards units is rare, and it evoked disturbing memories of the rioting in US cities in 1967 and 1968 in a turbulent time of protest over racial and economic disparities.

Trump blamed the extreme left for the violence, saying he planned to designate a group known as Antifa as a terrorist organization.

"The violence instigated and carried out by Antifa and other similar groups in connection with the rioting is domestic terrorism and will be treated accordingly," added Attorney General Bill Barr.

'A nation in pain'

Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms said Trump, who has often urged police to use tough tactics, was not helping matters.

"We are beyond a tipping point in this country, and his rhetoric only enflames that," she said on CBS.

Joe Biden, Trump's likely Democratic opponent in November's presidential election, visited the scene of one anti-racism protest.

"We are a nation in pain right now, but we must not allow this pain to destroy us," Biden tweeted, posting a picture of him speaking with an African-American family at the site where protesters had gathered in Delaware late Saturday.

Floyd's death has triggered protests beyond the United States, with hundreds rallying outside the US embassy in London in solidarity.

"I'm here because I'm tired, I'm fed up with it. When does this stop?" Doreen Pierre told AFP at the protest.

In Germany, England football international Jadon Sancho marked one of his three goals for Borussia Dortmund against Paderborn by lifting his jersey to reveal a T-shirt bearing the words "Justice for George Floyd".