Modi receives Israeli PM Netanyahu at airport

New Delhi, Jul 24: Telecom companies lost 82.3 lakh subscribers during the COVID-19 lockdown period of April, data released by the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) on Friday showed.

As per the reports received from 342 operators in April, TRAI said the number of broadband subscribers decreased from 68.7 crore at the end of March to 67.6 crore at the end of April with a monthly decline rate of 1.64 per cent.

Top five service providers constituted 98.98 per cent market share of total broadband subscribers with Reliance Jio Infocomm (38.9 crore), Bharti Airtel (14.4 crore), Vodafone Idea (11.1 crore), BSNL (2.1 crore) and Atria Convergence (16 lakh).

The number of overall telephone subscribers decreased from 117.7 crore at the end of March to 116.9 crore at the end of April, showing a monthly decline rate of 0.72 per cent.

The TRAI said total wireless subscribers (2G, 3G and 4G) decreased from 115.7 crore at the end of March to 115 crore at the end of April, thereby registering a monthly decline rate of 0.71 per cent.

Wireless subscription in urban areas decreased from 63.8 crore to 62.9 crore but increased in rural areas from 51.9 crore to 52 crore. Monthly growth rates of urban and rural wireless subscription were minus 1.42 per cent and 0.16 per cent respectively.

New Delhi, Jan 17: A Delhi court Friday issued fresh death warrants for February 1, 6 am against the four convicts in the Nirbhaya gang rape and murder case.

Additional Sessions Judge Satish Kumar Arora was hearing a plea by one of the four death row convicts in the case, Mukesh Kumar Singh, seeking postponement of the date of his execution scheduled for January 22.

Earlier in the day, the Tihar jail authorities sought issuance of fresh death warrants against the four convicts.

Public Prosecutor Irfan Ahmed told the court that Mukesh's mercy plea was rejected by President Ram Nath Kovind on Friday.

The 23-year-old paramedic student, referred to as Nirbhaya, was gang-raped and brutally assaulted on the intervening night of December 16-17, 2012 inside a moving bus in south Delhi by six persons before being thrown out on the road.

She died on December 29, 2012, at Mount Elizabeth Hospital in Singapore.

Chennai, Jul 1: In a case of cluster infection, 58 of the 65 mourners who attended the funeral a Central government official, Selvam, 56, who had worked in the Ministry of Foreign Trade and who died in Coimbatore and was brought for burial at Pannavaadi near Kolathur near Mettur in Salem district, tested positive for Covid-19, after three of them initially tested positive as they neither wore face masks not observed social distancing during the funeral, sources said.

Even as Dr Vijayabaskar said AIADMK MLA from Sriperumbudur, K Palani who tested positive for Covid-19 has recovered and will be discharged from hospital in couple of days, the MIOT International Hospital in Chennai said that the State Higher Education Minister, K P Anbazhagan, who initially showed no symptoms of coronavirus, subsequently tested positive in his second sample. He was now under treatment, his condition very stable and all his vital parameters are normal, MIOT said in a statement.

In what continues to be an unrestrained run, Tamil Nadu added its biggest day-wise spike so far of 3,943 positive Covid-19 cases, while another 60 deaths due to the novel coronavirus confirmed on Tuesday took the total death toll in the state to 1,201.

Of the new positive cases, Chennai alone accounted for its highest per-day jump of 2,393 positives with the number of persons tested today across Tamil Nadu put at 30,053. The total number os Covid-19 positive cases in the State as a whole till date is racing towards the one lakh mark at 90,167.

However, these outcomes are all on anticipated lines with the ICMR's push for more aggressive testing, even if they want lockdown controls to be now more focused at the district level, and want the Chennai model to be taken to the districts.

In this backdrop, the Health minister, Dr C Vijayabaskar chaired a detailed Covid review meeting this evening through video conference with all the hospital deans and other top officials on different facets of the disease prevention and control measures and the state's overall preparedness.

Chief Minister, Mr. Edappadi K Palaniswami in a statement in Chennai assured that with the 'full lockdown' continuing in greater Chennai, parts of three neighbouring districts of Chengalpattu, Thiruvallur and Kancheepuram and parts of Madurai district till July 5, the free community kitchens for the elderly, disabled and destitute will continue to function in those places till July 5 and hygienically cooked food packets served to them.