Temple rape: Lawyer braves threats, says it’s a fight for her daughter too

Srinagar, Jan 9: Envoys from 15 countries including the United States were shown around Srinagar on Thursday, the first visit by New Delhi-based diplomats since the government stripped Kashmir of its semi-autonomous status and began a harsh crackdown five months ago.

The diplomats were driven by Indian authorities in a motorcade amid tight security from the airport to the military headquarters in Srinagar, where they were briefed on the security situation, an army officer said. He spoke on condition of anonymity as he was not authorized to speak to reporters.

They also held discussions with civil society members and some Kashmiri politicians, said Raveesh Kumar, spokesman for the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA).

The objective of the visit, organized by the Union government, was for the envoys to see first-hand “how things have progressed and how normalcy has been restored to a large extent'' in Kashmir since August, Kumar told reporters in New Delhi.

In October, a group of European Parliament members had visited the region, which is claimed by both India and Pakistan.

The delegation that visited Kashmir on Thursday included US ambassador to India Kenneth Juster and diplomats from Bangladesh, Vietnam, Norway, the Maldives, South Korea, Morocco, Niger, Nigeria, Argentina, the Philippines, Fiji, Uzbekistan, Peru and Togo.

Offices, shops and businesses were open in Srinagar on the cold winter day, but the diplomats did not stop to talk to people as they moved to different venues of their meetings.

They were to fly to Jammu, the winter capital of Kashmir, later Thursday and return to New Delhi on Friday.

Congress leader Jairam Ramesh pointed out the oddity of taking foreign diplomats to the troubled state but not allowing allowing Indian political leaders to freely visit it.

The National Conference said it was "disappointed" with the way the government brought envoys from various countries to "endorse" its "claims of normalcy" in the union territory. The party alleged that it was no more than a "guided tour" with access limited to "handpicked individuals who toe the government line".

“The NC wishes to ask these envoys that if the situation in Jammu & Kashmir is "normal", then why are scores of people, including three former chief ministers, under detention for almost 160 days and why have the people been denied access to the internet for over 5 months?" a statement issued by the party said.

Kumar dismissed as unfounded criticism of the visit, and said more such visits to Kashmir by New Delhi-based diplomats are likely in the near future.

Bengaluru, Jul 1: A day after the Government banned several Chinese apps, popular short-form video app Mitron reported that its daily traffic jumped up by more than 11 times.

Just 5 days after crossing the 10 million (1 crore) downloads milestone, Mitron has now announced that the app has been downloaded by 17 million (1.7 crore) users in India. Mitron app has been one of the most downloaded apps in India during the last two months.

"It is incredibly exciting to see the rapid adoption of Mitron by Indian users. 11-fold jump in traffic, immediately after the ban of Chinese apps, was beyond our expectations," said Shivank Agarwal, Founder, and CEO, Mitron.

Anish Khandelwal, Founder and CTO said, " We have built a solid backend infrastructure and our platform is now completely scalable and autonomous and that is helping us to cater to the sharp rise in traffic on Mitron App."

Mitron has been rapidly enhancing the product with several improvements for the users including an updated video upload process that is much easier, enhanced audio library with a wide choice of Indian content, and a feature that enables users to flag any inappropriate content easily.

Users uploaded millions of videos in 10 different languages and the number of videos viewed on the platform increased sharply to cross 30 million video views per hour.

Shivank added "We are a young company and we are hiring some of the best product & engineering talent to scale up Mitron rapidly. We are confident that we can build Mitron into one of the best apps in the short-form video space. Our focus is on building features and content that uniquely resonates with Indian users, while being sensitive to community standards and local laws in India and we believe that will help us build Mitron into a very large business."

Founded by two Computer Science engineers, Shivank Agarwal (alumnus of IIT Roorkee) and Anish Khandelwal (alumnus of Visvesvaraya National Institute of Technology), Mitron app is a short-form video app that allows users to create, upload and view entertaining short videos.

Eminent river engineer and former professor of civil engineering at IIT in the Banaras Hindu University (BHU) Prof. U.K. Choudhary has said that the judicious use of river technology can help resolve the Coronavirus crisis as well as the plight of Ganga river.

Choudhary, who is also founder of Ganga Research Centre at IIT (BHU), said: "The Ganga water contains a significantly higher proportion of bacteriophages - a kind of virus that kill bacteria. Our ancient scriptures like Vedas, Puranas and Upanishads say that Ganga jal is medicinal water. Scientists later found that Ganga water has bacteriophages capable of killing pathogens."

Explaining further, he said, "Let us analyze the source of bacteriophages. If we take three rivers of Himalayan origin having sources at different heights -the Ganga (Gomukh), Yamuna (Yamunotri) and the Sone river, we find the colours of waters are different. The whitish colour of Ganga water, greenish colour of Yamuna water and the brownish colour of Sone water is also indicative. As Gomukh is the highest among the three, its water comes from lowest depth of aquifer as compared to Yamunotri and Sone river," he explained.

Thus, the quality of river water is proportional to height of origin point. This defines the genetic character of Ganga water. The balanced flow of this water in entire length of the Ganga defines the medicinal property of Ganga water," he stated.

Prof Chaudhary said that the bacteriophages in the Ganga can curb the spread of coronavirus through soil, water and air.
He suggested that the idea is to preserve the medicinal value of Ganga water and to use it to fight Corona. He said that this can be done by opening the gates of all the dams and barrages in a way that the discharge through each is similar to the water at Gomukh. In this way, the concentration of bacteriophage will be enhanced in Ganga water making it more effective against pathogens.

"With increasing diffusion of bacteriophages in water and soil, the spread of Coronavirus will be impacted and reduced. This methodology and technique can also help maintain the quality of Ganga water later when the problem of Corona ends," he said.