Security tightened in Mangaluru after fresh ‘communal clash’

Madikeri, Feb 23: Back-to-back floods and landslides in the last two years, has led to a fall in the number of tourists coming to the coffee-growing region of Kodagu, forcing the district administration to intervene and take confidence-building measures, telling tourists that Kodagu was safe to visit.

According to the statistics of the Karnataka State Tourism Department, Kodagu recorded a moderately good number of tourists in 2018 and 2019, the years that the district witnessed devastating floods and landslides.

The Department’s statistics reveal that 17 lakh tourists visited Kodagu in 2018 and 18 lakh in 2019. This means the flood-ravaged years did attract tourists contrary to what the stakeholders had claimed.

Bengaluru, May 22: Karnataka Congress delegation met Chief Election Commissioner, Dr B Basavaraju in Bengaluru, urging him to guide Karnataka Government to conduct local body elections and not to allow State government to nominate their party men to the local bodies.

The delegation was led by Congress leader Siddaramaiah and Karnataka Pradesh Congress Committee (KPCC) president D K Shivakumar.

"They (State government) wants to postpone the election, they have a lot of other provisions. We are demanding to protect the law, the government doesn't have the power to interfere in the system. We will not allow the state government to nominate their party men.

The CM and his entire team is responsible for this, they are killing the democracy and Panchayati Raj system of the State," said Shivakumar while speaking to the reporters.

The local body elections were scheduled to take place in the month of March or April, which were postponed in view of the COVID-19 crisis.

However, the date for conducting the local body elections has not been decided yet.

Dubai, May 18: An Indian working in a mining company in the UAE has become the latest expatriate to have lost his job for hate-filled social media posts targeting Islam and Muslims.

Brajkishore Gupta was fired without notice for calling Indian Muslims 'coronavirus spreaders' and hailing the Delhi violence as 'divine justice' in his Facebook posts.

Gupta, who is from Chapra, Bihar, was employed by Stevin Rock, a mining company headquartered in Ras Al Khaimah city.

"This isolated incident involving a junior employee was investigated and dealt with immediately resulting in the termination without notice of this person's employment with Stevin Rock," said the company's business development and exploration manager Jean-Francois Milian.

"Our company policy supports the direction of the UAE government in promoting tolerance and equality and strongly renouncing racism and discrimination and we have sent communications to all of our employees irrespective of their religious or ethnic background reminding them that any such behaviour is unacceptable and will lead to immediate dismissal," Milian was quoted as saying in the report.

Three Indians based in the UAE were either fired or suspended from their jobs for "Islamophobic" posts on social media early this month.

On April 20, India's ambassador to the UAE Pavan Kapoor had warned Indian expatriates against such behaviour.

"India and UAE share the value of non-discrimination on any grounds. Discrimination is against our moral fabric and the Rule of law. Indian nationals in the UAE should always remember this," he said in a tweet.

Last month, Sharjah-based businessman Sohan Roy had to apologise for "unintentionally hurting religious sentiments" through his poem, which alluded to a Muslim religious group.

In March, chef Trilok Singh was fired from a restaurant in Dubai for an online threat against a student in Delhi over her views on the Citizenship Amendment Act.