Chennai, Aug 17: In a major turn of events, Tamil Nadu Chief Minister Palaniswami said that a Commission will be formed under a retired judge to probe the death of former chief minister J Jayalalithaa. 
He also announced that her(Jayalalithaa) Poes Garden residence in Chennai will be made into a memorial.
These developments are in accordance to the rival faction led by O Panneerselvam for the merger of the two groups.
More details awaited
New Delhi, Feb 5: Days after a gunman opened fire in Delhi's Shaheen Bagh, the epicentre of anti-CAA movement, YouTuber Gunja Kapoor was detained at the protest site on Wednesday after she was caught covertly filming the protests in a burqa.
Kapoor runs the channel ‘Right Narrative’ on YouTube and her pinned tweet on Twitter says she is followed on the microblogging site by PM Narendra Modi.
According to police, the protesters turned suspicious after Kapoor asked them "too many questions". She was caught by some of the women protesters after they identified her as the popular YouTuber. The incident led to a commotion at Shaheen Bagh, the epicentre of protests against the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA), a senior police official said.
#WATCH Political analyst Gunja Kapoor extricated by police after protestors at Delhi's Shaheen Bagh alleged that she was wearing a 'burqa' and filming them. #Delhi pic.twitter.com/llRiKhMvOd
— ANI (@ANI) February 5, 2020
She was taken to Sarita Vihar police station where her identity was ascertained, police said.
The incident sparked outrage on social media. Many took to Twitter to question why Kapoor was at the protest in disguise. Others expressed concern about her motives at secretly filming the protests.
Chaos at #ShaheenBaghProtest when a burka clad woman caught while making some video from her mobile. She is found out to a be a YouTuber. Objection was why she was covering the protest wearing burka. @DelhiPolice has detained her pic.twitter.com/W3Ypdey9il
— alok singh (@AlokReporter) February 5, 2020
Meanwhile, praises flew in for the women of Shaheen Bagh who can be seen defending Kapoor from angry protesters after she was caught.
This is not the first time that a right wing social media activist has landed in trouble in Shaheen Bagh where residents and other women and children have been sitting in protest for nearly two months since the passing of the contentious Citizenship Amendment Act 2019 in December last year.
A burka clad lady @gunjakapoor is caught in #ShaheenBaghProtest site,disguised as a Muslim.
She hs 20k+ followers in @twitter & one among them is PM.
Why BJP sent a prominent face like her & nt a small worker?
Why BJP is so scared?
What’s BJP plan?Mass murder?@IndiasMuslims— Seerat Raza (@iamseeratraza) February 5, 2020
In January, Deepa Sharma had posted videos online about the "traumatic" experience she had when she was allegedly heckled and harassed by Shaheen Bagh protesters. While the woman's claim could never be verified, other pieces of rampant fake news aimed at delegitimising and villainising protesters has taken social media by storm.
A right wing activist caught in Shaheen Bagh trying to infiltrate by wearing a Burkha and faking her name
She is “Proud to be followed by Modi” on Twitter pic.twitter.com/l1zklov0io
— Dhruv Rathee (@dhruv_rathee) February 5, 2020
From doctored videos of women protesters allegedly accepting they were paid Rs 500 to attend protests to alleged fights over biriyani and anti-India sloganeering, trolls on social media seem to be working overtime to taint the ongoing protests.
The latter, however, show no signs of giving up. In fact, as Delhi nears elections on February 8, protesters have arranged for music performances by eminent artists, including pop celebrity Prateek Kuhad, till February 7.
Sit in protests take place 24x7 with women showing up in thousands to spend the night and sing songs of protest. And with polls around the corner, the protests have become an active part of political discourse with Aam Aadmi Party's Manish Sisodia expressing his support for the protesters at a recent press conference.
New Delhi, Feb 4: Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath on Monday accused Arvind Kejriwal of having a "partnership" with Pakistan and appealed to the people in Delhi to not vote for the AAP chief as it will make Pakistan happy.
Ramping up his attack on the Shaheen Bagh protest, Adityanath said that the protest against the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) is merely an excuse for people to vent their anger against the scrapping of Article 370.
"You must have seen their partnership on 370. Arvind Kejriwal used to speak in the same voice as Imran Khan on Article 370. You must have heard it.
"Now when elections are taking place in Delhi, who is speaking in favour of Arvind Kejriwal? It is the ministers of Pakistan. They are aware that Kejriwal is feeding 'biryani to protesters at Shaheen Bagh'," he said, referring to Pakistan minister Fawad Chaudhry's tweet asking Indians to defeat Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
Adityanath addressed three rallies on Monday in the national capital ahead of assembly elections.
"Will Pakistan decide who Indians should vote for. If voting for Kejriwal will make Pakistan happy, should it be done," he asked at a rally in Mehrauli.
Adityanath said his Delhi counterpart Kejriwal has become a "toy in the hands of anti-social and anti-India elements".
Addressing a rally in Vikaspuri in west Delhi, he said that Kejriwal is not bothered about key issues such as providing clean drinking water but is concerned about Shaheen Bagh, the anti-citizenship amendment act protest site.
At another rally in Uttam Nagar in west Delhi, Adityanath said Kejriwal has played with the emotions of the people of Delhi for the last five years.
"He obstructed the development of Delhi. And knowingly and unknowingly, he became a toy in the hands of anti-social and anti-India elements," Adityanath said.
The protest at Shaheen Bagh, he said, has disrupted traffic across the capital.
"A guest with an appointment to meet him at 9.30 am could only reach at 11. He told me he had left as early as 7 am but got stuck because of the traffic in Shaheen Bagh," he said.
The Uttar Pradesh chief minister also slammed Kejriwal for "sympathising" with elements who he said gave anti-India slogans in Jawaharlal Nehru University.
Washington, Apr 23: Air pollution over northern India has plummeted to a 20-year-low for this time of the year, according to satellite data published by US space agency National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA).
The US space agency's satellite sensors observed aerosol levels at a 20-year low post the countrywide lockdown, implemented to slow the spread of the novel coronavirus.
"We knew we would see changes in atmospheric composition in many places during the lockdown," said Pawan Gupta, a Universities Space Research Association (USRA) scientist at NASA''s Marshall Space Flight Center. "But I have never seen aerosol values so low in the Indo-Gangetic Plain at this time of year," added Mr Gupta.
Acting Assistant Secretary of State for South and Central Asia Alice G Wells tweeted, "These images from NASA were taken each spring starting in 2016 and show a 20-year low in airborne particle levels over India. When India and the world are ready to work and travel again, let's not forget that collaborative action can result in cleaner air."
The data published with maps show aerosol optical depth (AOD) in 2020 compared to the average for 2016-2019. Aerosol optical depth is a measure of how light is absorbed or reflected by airborne particles as it travels through the atmosphere.
If aerosols are concentrated near the surface, an optical depth of 1 or above indicates very hazy conditions. An optical depth, or thickness, of less than 0.1 over the entire atmospheric vertical column is considered "clean." The data were retrieved by the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA's Terra satellite.
In the first few days of the lockdown, it was difficult to observe a change in the pollution signature. "We saw an aerosol decrease in the first week of the shutdown, but that was due to a combination of rain and the lockdown," said Mr Gupta.
Around March 27, heavy rain poured over vast areas of northern India and helped clear the air of aerosols. Aerosol concentrations usually increase again after such heavy precipitation.
"After the rainfall, I was really impressed that aerosol levels did not go up and return to normal. We saw a gradual decrease and things have been staying at the level we might expect without anthropogenic emissions," Mr Gupta said.
On March 25, the Indian government placed its 1.3 billion citizens under a strict lockdown to reduce the spread of COVID-19. The countrywide mandate decreased activity at factories and severely reduced car, bus, truck and airplane traffic. Every year, aerosols from anthropogenic (human-made) sources contribute to unhealthy levels of air pollution in many Indian cities.
Aerosols are tiny solid and liquid particles suspended in the air that reduce visibility and can damage the human lungs and heart.
In southern India though, the story is a little hazier. Satellite data show aerosol levels have not yet decreased to the same extent. In fact, levels seem to be slightly higher than in the past four years. The reasons are unclear but could be related to recent weather patterns, agricultural fires, winds or other factors.
"This a model scientific experiment," Robert Levy, program leader for NASA's MODIS aerosol products, said about the lockdown and its effects on pollution.
"We have a unique opportunity to learn how the atmosphere reacts to sharp and sudden reductions in emissions from certain sectors. This can help us separate how natural and human sources of aerosols affect the atmosphere," Mr Levy added.
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