Counting begins for Lok Sabha, Assembly bypolls in Karnataka

Agencies
November 6, 2018

Bengaluru, Nov 6: Counting of votes for the bypolls to three Lok Sabha and two Assembly constituencies in Karnataka began on Tuesday.

Bypolls for the three Lok Sabha constituencies - Shivamogga, Ballari and Mandya; and two Assembly constituencies - Ramanagara and Jamkhandi, which were held on Saturday, are seen as a prestigious popularity test for the ruling Congress-JDS coalition.

An estimated 67 per cent voter turnout was recorded in the bypolls.

Counting of votes began at 8 am and a total of 1,248 counting staff have been deployed for it.

Elaborate security arrangements have been made to ensure to that no untoward incident takes place during the counting of votes, police officials said.

A total of 31 candidates were in the fray from the five constituencies, though the contest is mainly between the Congress-JDS combine and the BJP.

The bypoll results will determine the fate of Chief Minister H D Kumaraswamy's wife Anita Kumaraswamy, state BJP chief B S Yeddyurappa's son B Y Raghavendra and former chief minister S Bangarappa's son Madhu Bangarappa among others.

Anita Kumaraswamy is expected to have a smooth sailing in Ramanagara, after BJP nominee L Chandrashekhar withdrew from the contest and rejoined the Congress.

In Jamkhandi, it remains to be seen whether the Congress' Anand Nyamagowda will be able to make a successful electoral debut, riding on sympathy wave following the death of his father Siddu Nyamagouda.

Former chief minister Siddaramaiah, who is the Congress MLA from neighbouring Badami assembly constituency had invested lot of time for campaigning in Jamkhandi.

In Shivamogga, former chief minister Yeddyurappa's son B Y Raghavendra is testing his fortunes against another ex-chief minister S Bangarappa's son Madhu Bangarappa of the JD(S).

Janata Parivar veteran and former chief minister J H Patel's son Mahima J Patel is also in the fray as a JD(U) candidate. In Ballari, senior BJP leader Sriramulu's sister J Shantha is fighting against V S Ugrappa of the Congress.

In the Vokkaliga bastion of Mandya, JD(S)'s Shivarame Gowda is pitted against a fresh face -- Dr Siddaramaiah, a retired commercial tax officer, of the BJP.

Among the interesting things that one needs to watch out for is to what extent the BJP would be able to make inroads into the JD(S) bastion of Mandya and the Congress stronghold of Jamkhandi.

Of similar interest would be to what extent the Congress will be able to regain its significance in its erstwhile party stronghold of Ballari.

The Congress and JD(S) had fought bitterly against each other in the May Assembly polls, especially in the old Mysuru region, but had joined hands to form a coalition government after a fractured mandate.

The outcome of the bypolls is expected to have a bearing on the equations between the Congress and the JDS for the 2019 general elections and also be a factor in determining the bargaining power of the two parties.

The bypolls assume significance as the ruling coalition partners contested together, terming it a "prelude" to the Lok Sabha polls next year, and called for a similar "grand secular alliance" against the BJP at the national level.

The announcement of the bypolls for the Lok Sabha seats came as a surprise to all the three major political parties in the state -- the Congress, BJP and JD(S) -- who questioned the need for the exercise when the general elections are due early next year.

The byelections were necessitated after Yeddyurappa (Shivamogga), Sriramalu (Ballari), and C S Puttaraju of JD(S) (Mandya) resigned as MPs following their election to the Karnataka Assembly.

Bypolls to Jamkhandi Assembly seat was necessitated due to the death of Congress MLA Siddu Nyamagouda, while Ramanagara fell vacant after Kumaraswamy gave up the seat, preferring Chennapatna, the other constituency from where he had also won.

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Agencies
January 20,2020

Washington D.C., Jan 20: An American bride asked for money from her invitees so that they can be on the 'exclusive guest list'.

Weddings can be surely expensive. But is it feasible for one to charge the guests to make up for the expenses?

According to Fox News, that is exactly what happened in a recent American wedding. A 19-year-old shared on Reddit that her cousin was getting married on Sunday and announced that she would charge 50 dollars to those who wanted to attend her wedding.

"She said that they can Venmo her money so there won't be no [sic] problems and everyone who paid will be added onto the 'exclusive guest list' which basically means you won't have to wait in line while other guests pay," wrote the user named DaintySheep.

While she refused to pay for entry into her cousin's wedding the bride-to-be contacted the elders in the family which ended up in an embarrassing situation.

"She wanted to get the money she spent on her special day back. I told her I wouldn't be able to come because this was outrageous and that I wish her well on her special day. She contacted my aunt and my aunt called me cheap and rude. My parents offered to pay for my entry, but I refused," continued the disheartened girl.

While in almost every nook and cranny of the world gifting the bride-groom with money is a tradition, asking for money from friends and family to replenish the money spent on a wedding is can be said to be a rare scenario.

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Agencies
January 12,2020

Washington D.C., Jan 12: A recent study has claimed that people end up wasting almost an entire day when they take a vacation.

This can happen while standing in a queue or searching for places to visit, people do not keep a count of the time they have actually utilised during the trip. As a result, they end up doing much lesser activities than they originally had planned.

According to a recent report in Fox News, the study has also shared the fact that people try to justify time waste with planning and scheduling activities whereas the truth is that these things can be done well ahead to save time during the trip.

The average time waste according to the study commissioned by Sykes Holiday Cottages also said the people taking a seven days' trip waste a minimum of 17-and-a-half hours to figure out various factors.

But there are other causes involved as well. When one visits any crowded location, the real-time spent to enjoy the location is lesser than the time spent on reaching and trying to get involved. For instance, if one visits an amusement park, the activities take lesser time than the preparatory and other phases.

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Agencies
July 2,2020

Leiden, Jul 2: Astronomers have discovered a luminous galaxy caught in the act of reionizing its surrounding gas only 800 million years after the Big Bang.

The research, led by Romain Meyer, PhD student at UCL in London, UK, has been presented at the virtual annual meeting of the European Astronomical Society (EAS).

Studying the first galaxies that formed 13 billion years ago is essential to understanding our cosmic origins. One of the current hot topics in extragalactic astronomy is 'cosmic reionization,' the process in which the intergalactic gas was ionized (atoms stripped of their electrons).

Cosmic reionization is similar to an unsolved murder: We have clear evidence for it, but who did it, how and when? We now have strong evidence that hydrogen reionization was completed about 13 billion years ago, in the first billion years of the universe, with bubbles of ionized gas slowly growing and overlapping.

The objects capable of creating such ionized hydrogen bubbles have however remained mysterious until now: the discovery of a luminous galaxy in which 60-100 percent of ionizing photons escape, is likely responsible for ionizing its local bubble. This suggests the case is closer to being solved.

The two main suspects for cosmic reionization are usually 1) a population of numerous faint galaxies leaking ~10 percent of their energetic photons, and 2) an 'oligarchy' of luminous galaxies with a much larger percentage (>50 percent) of photons escaping each galaxy.

In either case, these first galaxies were very different from those today: galaxies in the local universe are very inefficient leakers, with only <2-3 percent of ionizing photons escaping their host. To understand which galaxies governed cosmic reionization, astronomers must measure the so-called escape fractions of galaxies in the reionization era.

The detection of light from excited hydrogen atoms (the so-called Lyman-alpha line) can be used to infer the fraction of escaping photons. On the one hand, such detections are rare because reionization-era galaxies are surrounded by neutral gas which absorbs that signature hydrogen emission.

On the other hand, if this hydrogen signal is detected it represents a 'smoking gun' for a large ionized bubble, meaning we have caught a galaxy reionizing its surroundings. The size of the bubble and the galaxy's luminosity determines whether it is solely responsible for creating this ionized bubble or if unseen accomplices are necessary.

The discovery of a luminous galaxy 800 million years after the Big Bang supports the scenario where an 'oligarchy' of bright leakers emits most of the ionizing photons.

"It is the first time we can point to an object responsible for creating an ionized bubble, without the need for a contribution from unseen galaxies.

Additional observations with the upcoming James Webb Space Telescope will enable us to study further what is likely one of the best suspects for the unsolved case of cosmic reionization," said Meyer.

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