Shocking: No passport for PM's wife, as she has no marriage certificate

Thiruvananthapuram, Jun 15: Kerala Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan''s daughter Veena married top DYFI All India president Mohammed Riaz at the chief minister''s official residence in the presence of selected guests.

Riaz and Veena became husband and wife at a solemn function held under Covid protocols with not more than 50 people present.

This was the second marriage for both, as their first ones ended in divorce.

Riaz has two children, while Veena has a son from their respective previous marriages.

Riaz is a lawyer by profession and had contested the Kozhikode Lok Sabha seat in 2009 but lost to the Congress'' M.K.Raghavan.

Veena runs her own software company in Bengaluru.

While the marriage has already been registered recently, the wedding event was a closed door affair, with just very close relatives of the couple besides a few senior party colleagues of Vijayan.

The current physical distancing guidelines provided by the World Health Organisation (WHO) and by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) may not be adequate to curb the coronavirus spread, according to a research which says the gas cloud from a cough or sneeze may help virus particles travel up to 8 metres. The research, published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, noted that the the current guidelines issued by the WHO and CDC are based on outdated models from the 1930s of how gas clouds from a cough, sneeze, or exhalation spread.

Study author, MIT associate professor Lydia Bourouiba, warned that droplets of all sizes can travel 23 to 27 feet, or 7-8 metres, carrying the pathogen.

According to Bourouiba, the current guidelines are based on "arbitrary" assumptions of droplet size, "overly simplified", and "may limit the effectiveness of the proposed interventions" against the deadly pandemic.

 She explained that the old guidelines assume droplets to be one of two categories, small or large, taking short-range semi-ballistic trajectories when a person exhales, coughs, or sneezes.

However based on more recent discoveries, the MIT scientist said, sneezes and coughs are made of a puff cloud that carries ambient air, transporting within it clusters of droplets of a wide range of sizes.

Bourouiba warned that this puff cloud, with ambient air entrapped in it, can offer the droplets moisture and warmth that can prevent it from evaporation in the outer environment.

"The locally moist and warm atmosphere within the turbulent gas cloud allows the contained droplets to evade evaporation for much longer than occurs with isolated droplets," she said.

"Under these conditions, the lifetime of a droplet could be considerably extended by a factor of up to 1000, from a fraction of a second to minutes," the researcher explained in the study.

The MIT scientist, who has researched the dynamics of coughs and sneezes for years, added that these droplets settle along the trajectory of a cough or sneeze contaminating surfaces, with their residues staying suspended in the air for hours.

"Even when maximum containment policies were enforced, the rapid international spread of COVID-19 suggests that using arbitrary droplet size cutoffs may not accurately reflect what actually occurs with respiratory emissions, possibly contributing to the ineffectiveness of some procedures used to limit the spread of respiratory disease," Bourouiba wrote in the study

Mangaluru, Apr 23: Muslims in coastal Karnataka will fast tomorrow (April 24) along with Middle Eastern Muslims as the Khazis in the region have confirmed the beginning of the blessed month of Ramadan tonight.

Religious authorities in Saudi Arabia and a few Middle Eastern countries have already declared that Friday will be the start of the month of fasting.

In Kerala and twin districts of coastal Karnataka - Dakshina Kannada and Udupi- the announcement was made following maghrib praers as the cresent moon was sighted in a few places in Kerala.

The Thakbeer was pronounced from the minarets of the mosques across Dakshina Kannada and Udupi after Maghrib Namaz as the religious heads confirmed the moon sighting. 

However, the religious heads including Mangaluru Khazi Twaqa Ahmed Musliar and Udupi Khazi Ibrahim Musliyar Bekal, have urged the Muslims to offer all the prayers including Taraveeh at homes along with family members due to the lockdown imposed to prevent the spread of coronavirus. 

There will be no congregational taraveeh prayers in mosques and Muslims should follow the covid-19 guidelines of the government, they stated.

Ramadan begins around 11 days earlier each year. Its start is calculated based on the sighting of the new moon, which marks the beginning of the Muslim lunar month that varies between 29 or 30 days.

During the month, Muslims are expected to abstain during daylight hours from food, drink, smoking and sex to focus on spirituality.