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Senior leader of the All India Trinamool Congress and former Rajya Sabha MP Chandan Mitra passed away Wednesday night at the age of 65. Mitra's son Kushan confirmed the news on social media, indicating that Mitra was suffering from some prolonged illness. Tributes poured in from across party lines. The former BJP man, who was now working with the TMC, was friends with the likes of Shashi Tharoor of Congress and Swapan Dasgupta of the BJP. Prime Minister Narendra Modi led the tributes and condoled the death of former BJP leader. "Shri Chandan Mitra Ji will be remembered for his intellect and insights. He distinguished himself in the world of media as well as politics. Anguished by his demise. Condolences to his family and admirers. Om Shanti," tweeted Modi. The journalist Before turning a politician, Mitra was an illustrious journalist. He was the former editor and managing director of The Pioneer newspaper in Delhi, a post from which he only resigned in June 2021 after the paper ran into legal troubles and was facing insolvency proceedings. Mitra started in journalism as assistant editor with The Statesman in Kolkata before he moved to The Times of India in Delhi and then The Sunday Observer; he went on to become editor of the paper, and later moved to the Hindustan Times as executive editor. Mitra left HT to join The Pioneer as editor, and eventually bought control of the newspaper from the Thapar family in 1998 when industrialist LM Thapar decided to cut his losses. He had dabbled in teaching as well shortly -- before taking the plunge in journalism -- as a professor of history at Hansraj college. Mitra holds a MA and M.Phil in History from Delhi University. He also received a doctorate degree at Oxford University. Political career Mitra was a part of the Bharatiya Janata Party for the longest part of his political career. Considered a close aid of BJP leader LK Advani, Mitra was brought into politics via the Rajya Sabha route. He was nominated as a member of the Upper House from August 2003 to August 2009. He was elected to another term in the Rajya Sabha, as a Bharatiya Janata Party MP from Madhya Pradesh, in June 2010. Mitra also contested the West Bengal Assembly elections in 2016 but lost. He was fielded as the party's candidate from Hooghly in West Bengal in the 2014 Lok Sabha election and came a distant third. However, his political stock in the party plunged under Modi and Union home minister Amit Shah. Mitra was found to be critical of his own government on several occasions, and as a result, was divested of important organisational posts. He resigned from the BJP in July 2018 and switched over to BJP's arch-enemy AITMC. "I have no bitterness against the BJP, but I had been feeling more and more frustrated that I was unable to do much in terms of effecting change in my home State. The feeling grew stronger after I contested the 2014 Lok Sabha poll [from Hooghly, West Bengal]. As a Rajya Sabha MP from Madhya Pradesh, I couldn’t contribute any funds to the State either. I found that given the acceptability of Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee among the people, the most appropriate vehicle for doing work in my home State would therefore be to join the Trinamool Congress," he had told The Hindu after changing parties. Mitra is survived by his wife and two sons.

As we live and breathe, ancient-looking fish known as bowfin are guarding genetic secrets that that can help unravel humanity's evolutionary history and better understand its health. Michigan State researchers Ingo Braasch and Andrew Thompson are now decoding some of those secrets. Leading a project that included more than two dozen researchers spanning three continents, the Spartans have assembled the most complete picture of the bowfin genome to date. "For the first time, we have what's called a chromosome-level genome assembly for the bowfin," said Braasch, an assistant professor of integrative biology in the College of Natural Science. "If you think of the genome like a book, what we had in the past was like having all the pages ripped out in pieces. Now, we've put them back in the book." "And in order," added Thompson, a postdoctoral researcher in Braasch's lab and the first author of the new research report, published Aug. 30 in the journal Nature Genetics. This is really important information for a few reasons, the duo said, and it starts with the bowfin being what Charles Darwin referred to as a "living fossil." The bowfin, or dogfish, looks like an ancient fish. This doesn't mean that the bowfin hasn't evolved since ancient times, but it has evolved more slowly than most fishes. This means that the bowfin has more in common with the last ancestor shared by fish and humans, hundreds of millions of years ago, than, say, today's zebrafish. Zebrafish -- which are modern, so-called teleost fishes -- are a notable example because they're widely used by scientists as a model to test and develop theories about human health. Having more genetic information about the bowfin helps make the zebrafish a better model. "A lot of research on human health and disease is done on model organisms, like mice and zebrafish," Thompson said. "But once you identify important genes and the elements that regulate those genes in zebrafish, it can be hard to find their equivalents in humans. It's easier to go from zebrafish to bowfin to human." For example, one particularly interesting gene is one that's used in developing the bowfin's gas bladder, an organ the fish uses to breathe and store air. Scientists believe that the last common ancestor shared by fish and humans had air-filled organs like these that were evolutionary predecessors to human lungs. In their new study, the Spartan researchers could see that a certain genetic process in the bowfin's gas bladder development bore striking similarities to what's known about human lung development. A similar process is also present in the modern teleost fishes, but it's been obscured by eons of evolution. "When you looked for the human genetic elements of this organ development in zebrafish, you couldn't find it because teleost fishes have higher rates of evolution," Thompson said. "It's there in modern fishes, but it's hidden from view until you see it in bowfin and gar." The gar is another air-breathing fish with "living fossil" status that's studied by Braasch and his team. With both the gar and bowfin genomes, the team was able to show where these genetic elements linked to gas bladder and lung formation were hiding out in the modern teleost fishes. The ancient fish enable researchers to build a better bridge between the established modern fish model organisms and human biology. "You don't want to base that bridge on one species," said Braasch, who added this finding also strengthens the implications for evolutionary history. "This is another piece of the puzzle that suggests the common ancestor of fish and humans had an air-filled organ and used it for breathing at the water surface, quite similar to what you see in bowfin and gar." Although these findings have insights that are pertinent to all of humanity, Spartans might feel a special affinity for the bowfin. For starters, male fish turn their fins and throats a bright shade of green during spawning season. Also, famed biologist William Ballard of Dartmouth College studied bowfin development from eggs to larval fish at Michigan State's W.K. Kellogg Biological Station during the 1980s. This was what he called his "Odyssey of Strange Fish," and Braasch's team now uses his work to guide their genomic analyses of bowfin development. Bowfins are native to Michigan. They could be in the Red Cedar River on MSU's campus now, according to Thompson, but they also can be quite elusive and, sometimes, very aggressive. This made collaborations essential for securing specimens. With colleagues at Nicholls State University in Louisiana, the team caught bowfins for genome sequencing. Amy McCune, a collaborator and professor at Cornell University, knew where to find bowfin eggs in upstate New York and had a graduate student gifted at securing these unique samples for investigating bowfin development. The Spartans also had connections at other universities and institutions with experts in bowfin biology, chromosome evolution and more. All told, the team included researchers from six states as well as France, Japan and Switzerland. Back in East Lansing, graduate students Mauricio Losilla and Olivia Fitch, research technologist Brett Racicot, and Kevin Childs, director of the MSU Genomics Core facility, also contributed to the study, which comes with an interesting twist at the end. Almost all vertebrate creatures that grow paired limbs or fins share a common gene. "Humans use it, mice use it. All fishes that have been studied so far use it," Braasch said. "The naïve expectation would be that bowfin do, too." But that's not what the team found. The bowfin, the "living fossil," has evolved a different way of growing its paired fins. "For whatever reason, it changed its genetic programming. Even 'living fossils' keep evolving. They're not frozen in time," Braasch said. "It's sort of a cautionary tale that we shouldn't take these things for granted. You have to look trait by trait, gene by gene and across many different species to paint the complete picture."

HIGHLIGHTS The new Royal Enfield Classic 350 has a few tweaks to the design. The new Classic 350 will now come in both single-channel and dual-channel ABS versions. The new Royal Enfield Classic 350 will be offered in 9 dual-tone colors for the dual-channel ABS version, and two color options for the single-channel version. After much to and fro, Royal Enfield finally launched the new Royal Enfield Classic 350 in India at a starting price of Rs 1,84,374 (ex-showroom, India). The new-generation Classic 350 is a completely new product built from the ground up, with underpinnings shared with the Royal Enfield Meteor 350. The new Classic 350 features design changes, enhanced ride quality, an updated features list, and new color schemes. Let’s take a look at what the new Royal Enfield Classic 350 has to offer. New Royal Enfield Classic 350 prices: Classic 350 Redditch Series- 1,84,374 Classic 350 Halcyon Series- 1,93,123 Classic 350 Signals Series- 2,04,367 Classic 350 Dark Series- 2,11,465 Classic 350 Chrome Series- 2,15,118 CHECK THESE OUT MORE UP govt to train over 50,000 youth under CM Apprenticeship Promotion Scheme RECOMMENDED 50 positive words to describe people TRENDING 2021 Renault Kwid launched in India at Rs 4.06 lakh RECOMMENDED Buying a car won’t be a cheap affair this festive season. Here’s why RECOMMENDED Over 23,000 compliances reduced but more needed for ease of living and doing business RECOMMENDED Kia Seltos X-Line launched in India at Rs 17.79 lakh RECOMMENDED New Royal Enfield Classic 350 design: The new Royal Enfield Classic 350 has a few tweaks to the design to keep it fresh in the segment. At front, the new Classic 350 features a new headlamp design which houses pilot lamps, while the handlebar is revised to provide an enhanced ride quality. Both the tail lamp and exhaust both sport a new design. The new Classic 350 also receives a new colored Tripper pod with turn-by-turn navigation, as well as a new instrument cluster with a semi-digital information panel. The new Classic 350 also features new shoes, a new 19-inch alloy wheel at the front shod with 100/90 tubeless tyres, while the rear features a new 18-inch alloy shod with 120/80 tubeless tyres. Royal Enfield will offer the Classic 350 in both alloys and spoke wheel options.

Kashmiri separatist leader Syed Ali Geelani has died at his home in Srinagar at the age of 92. He passed away after a lengthy illness. A veteran campaigner against Indian rule, he had been under house arrest for much of the past 11 years. Indian authorities have imposed a strict security clampdown in Srinagar, Kashmir's main city, placing barbed wire and barricades on the roads near Geelani's home. Reports say that internet services and voice calling have been suspended in most areas and a curfew may follow. His burial took place in the early hours of Thursday. Such measures are not unusual at moments of tension in Indian-administered Kashmir. Police typically describe them as precautionary, citing the need to stop online rumours fuelling potential violence. India and Pakistan control different parts of the Muslim-majority territory, but both say it is wholly theirs. There has been violence on the Indian-run side for 30 years, due to a separatist insurgency. The rise of homegrown militancy in Kashmir Why India and Pakistan fight over Kashmir Kashmir profile Geelani was a divisive figure in India. Experts said he always talked about Kashmir's freedom but personally favoured the region's merger with Pakistan. Tributes have come from Kashmiri leaders in India and also from Pakistani politicians. Mehbooba Mufti, former chief minister of Jammu and Kashmir, said she was "saddened" by his death. The BBC is not responsible for the content of external sites.View original tweet on Twitter Writing on Twitter, Pakistan's Prime Minister Imran Khan called Geelani a "freedom fighter" and declared Thursday a day of official mourning. He said the separatist leader had "struggled all his life for his people & their right to self-determination". Police in Kashmir allowed only close relatives to attend Geelani's funeral. Announcements were made from loudspeakers at the main mosque near Geelani's home after his death, asking local people to march towards it. However, Indian troops and armoured vehicles are said to be on the streets and police have urged residents to stay indoors. Geelani was a legislator for more than 15 years, representing Jamaat-i-Islami - a major political-religious organisation in Indian Kashmir, which was banned by Prime Minister Narendra Modi's government in 2019. He spent long spells in prison, including nearly 10 years after 1962, shortly after he began campaigning for Kashmir to merge with Pakistan. Geelani led a faction of the All Parties Hurriyat Conference, an umbrella group of almost two dozen separatist parties - but walked out in 2020, accusing others of "revolting against his leadership". He was known for his strong opposition to any kind of dialogue with India. He insisted that a plebiscite on whether Kashmir should remain under Indian rule should be held before talks could take place. This often put him in conflict with younger colleagues, who were more open to holding talks with Indian leaders. In 2020, Geelani was awarded the Nishan-e-Pakistan, Pakistan's highest civilian honour.

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Banks in the country will remain closed for 12 days in September. The list of bank holidays released by the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has a total of seven bank holidays next month, not counting weekends. These bank holidays will fall into categories such as religious events, festivals and respective state holidays. However, RBI will classify these holidays under ‘Holiday under Negotiable Instruments Act’ category. According to the RBI mandate, here is the list of holidays for September: Bank to be shut on 5 September as it is a Sunday. Banks to be closed on 8 September due to Tithi of Srimanta Sankardeva in Guwahati. Banks to be remain shut on 9 September on account of Teej (Haritalika) in Gangtok. Banks to be closed on 10 September for the occasion of Ganesh Chaturthi in cities including Chennai, Hyderabad, Bengaluru, Bhubaneswar, Nagpur, Panaji, Belapur, Ahmedabad and Mumbai. Banks will be shut on 11 September on account of second Saturday and Ganesh Chaturthi (second day) in Panaji, Goa. Banks to remain closed on 12 September on Sunday. 17 September due to Karma Puja in Ranchi, banks will remain closed in the region. Banks will be closed on 19 September, which is a Sunday. In Gangtok, banks will be shut on 20 September on account of the Indrajatra festival. In Kochi and Thiruvananthapuram, banks will remain shut to mark Sree Narayana Guru Samadhi Day. 25 September will be a holiday on account of it being the fourth Saturday. Bank will also remain closed on 26 September as it is a Sunday. The other arrangements for RBI's holiday listing come under ‘Holiday under Negotiable Instruments Act, ‘Banks’ Closing of Accounts’ and 'Real Time Gross Settlement Holiday’. However, these categories are not applicable for holidays this month. During the trials of ZyCoV-D, the company had also evaluated a two-dose regimen using a 3 milligram dose per visit and the immunogenicity results were found to be equivalent to the current three dose regimen,” he said. According to the company, the three-dose vaccine, which is built on the plasmid DNA platform, has 66.6% efficacy against symptomatic COVID-19 . However, the analysis is yet to be peer-reviewed. “While our Phase III clinical trial is still currently underway, we are preparing the manuscript based on the interim analysis and shall be submitting the same for publication to a reputed journal shortly,” he added. Vaccine stable at 25 degrees for three months Currently, ZyCoV-D is looked at as a potential option for opening schools. On being asked how the company plans to start delivering the vaccine, Patel said that they have completed the logistics planning.

Plump and ponderous, tardigrades earned the nickname "water bears" when scientists first observed the 0.02-inch-long animals' distinctive lumbering gaits in the 18th century. Their dumpy plod, however, raises the question of why tardigrades evolved to walk at all. advertisement Animals as small and soft as tardigrades seldom have legs and almost never bother walking. For example, round worms of similar size and body type thrash about, slithering their doughy forms over unpredictable substrates. Yet the water bear, a micro-animal so distinct that scientists were forced to assign it to its own phylum, uses eight stubby legs to improbably propel itself through marine and freshwater sediment, across desert dunes, and beneath the soil. Now, a new study in PNAS analyzes tardigrade gaits and finds that water bears walk in a manner most closely resembling that of insects 500,000 times their size. The discovery implies the existence of either a common ancestor or an evolutionary advantage that explains why one of the smallest and squishiest creatures evolved to walk just like larger, hard-bodied insects. "Tardigrades have a robust and clear way of moving -- they're not these clumsy things stumbling around in the desert or in leaf litter," says Jasmine Nirody, a fellow in Rockefeller's Center for Studies in Physics and Biology. "The similarities between their locomotive strategy and that of much larger insects and arthropods opens up several very interesting evolutionary questions." Smooth runners Nirody and colleagues first determined how water bears walk and run. "If you watch tardigrades under a light microscope for long enough, you can capture a wide range of behavior," Nirody says. "We didn't force them to do anything. Sometimes they would be really chill and just want to stroll around the substrate. Other times, they'd see something they like and run towards it." Nirody found that, at their most leisurely, water bears lumber about half a body length per second. At full throttle, their loping strides carried them two body lengths in the same amount of time. But the surprise came when she observed how a water bear's feet contact the ground as it gains momentum. Unlike vertebrates, which have distinct gaits for each speed -- picture a horse's hooves as it transitions from a walk to a gallop -- tardigrades run more like insects, scurrying at increasing speeds without ever changing their basic stepping patterns. "When vertebrates switch from walking to running, there is a discontinuity," Nirody says. "With arthropods, all stepping patterns exist along the same continuum." Ancient coordination Why do tardigrades share a locomotive strategy with much larger, hard-bodied insects? One possible explanation is that tardigrades, long assumed to fit neatly into no existing taxonomy, may share common ancestors -- and even a common neural circuit -- with insects such as fruit flies, ants, and other segmented scurrying creatures. In fact, some scientists advocate classifying tardigrades within the proposed panarthropod clade, a catchall group that would assign common shelf space to insects, crustaceans, velvet worms, and water bears. Another possibility is that there is no ancestral connection between tardigrades and arthropods, but that the unrelated groups of organisms independently arrived at the same walking and running strategies because they were evolutionarily advantageous. Perhaps the best way to navigate unpredictable terrain with a microscopic body is to plod like a water bear. Nirody is equally fascinated by both possibilities. "If there is some ancestral neural system that controls all of panarthropod walking, we have a lot to learn," she says. "On the other hand, if arthropods and tardigrades converged upon this strategy independently, then there's much to be said about what makes this strategy so palatable for species in different environments." Beyond the implications for evolutionary biology and the study of animal locomotion, the findings may have ramifications for the burgeoning fields of soft and microscale robotics. By studying how small animals evolved to move across challenging environments, scientists may be able to design robots that can more efficiently squeeze into small spaces or operate at the microscale. "We don't know much about what happens at the extremes of locomotion -- how to make an efficient small walker, or how soft-bodied things should move," Nirody says. "Tardigrades are an important porthole into soft-bodied, microscale locomotion."

HIGHLIGHTS The new Classic 350 comes with a new chassis and engine from the Royal Enfield Meteor. It now gets more features and a new instrument panel with a fuel gauge and Tripper navigation. The new Classic 350 will take on the Jawa, Benelli Imperiale 400 and the Honda H’ness CB350. Back in the early 2000s, Royal Enfield was in desperate need of a savior. That savior came in form of the Classic 350 and Classic 500. The bikes transformed the perception people had regarding the brand. It has been long since that revolution took place, and now it was time to give the Classic range a new lease of life. Enter the brand new Royal Enfield Classic 350. 2021 Royal Enfield Classic 350: Technical changes explained It is a strange predicament for a company which gets slack if it changes or makes their bikes a bit too modern. So the task at hand was to change everything and yet change nothing. At first glance one might be hard-pressed to spot the differences. But look closely, and you will spot the brand-new twin down tube frame which has come from the Royal Enfield Meteor. As far as dimensions go, the wheelbase remains identical at 1,390mm, but the overall length has gone up by a few millimeters. What is substantially better is the ground clearance which now stands at 170mm. The front suspension now sports 41mm forks and the rear shock absorbers offer a little more travel at 90mm. Moving on to other changes, we can tell you that the new Classic 350 comes with larger disc brakes. While the front disc is now a 300mm unit, the rear disc is a 270mm unit. Dual channel ABS also comes as a part of the package. The tyres are larger both up front and at the back. While the front tyre is now a 100/90 19in, the rear tyre is a 110/90 18in unit. Tubeless tyres will be offered with the alloy wheel variants. 2021 Royal Enfield Classic 350: The new engine Moving on to the other major change and this comes in form of the engine. The old UCE 346cc lump has been replaced with the 349cc single which we have seen on the Meteor 350. The motor is tuned to offer 20.2bhp and 27Nm of torque. Number crunchers out there by now have spotted that the torque on offer has gone down by 1Nm and power has gone up by 1.1bhp. The gearbox though remains to be a 5-speed unit.

Since they took control of Afghanistan just over two weeks ago, the Taliban have sought to portray a more moderate image than when they last seized power in 1996. They have repeatedly said they will grant amnesty to all, including those who worked for western militaries or the Afghan government or police. In a dramatic press conference after the group swept into Kabul, chief spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid made a declaration of forgiveness. But there is growing evidence that the reality on ground is different to the rhetoric coming from Taliban leaders and spokesmen. It was not lost on some watching the press conference in Kabul that Mr Mujahid made his declaration from the seat of the former government spokesman Dawa Khan Menapal, who had been killed by the group just weeks earlier, as "punishment for his deeds". Now sources inside Afghanistan, as well as some who recently fled, have told the BBC that Taliban fighters are searching for, and allegedly killing, people they pledged they would leave in peace. Several sources confirmed that Taliban fighters last week executed two senior police officials - Haji Mullah Achakzai, the security director of Badghis province, and Ghulam Sakhi Akbari, security director of Farah province. Video footage showed Mr Achakzai was kneeling, blindfolded, with his hands tied behind his back before he was shot. Those who managed to flee say they fear for their colleagues back home. Zala Zazai, a former Afghan policewoman, one of thousands trained since the Taliban was deposed in 2001, said she was still in touch with other former policewomen. "The Taliban call them from their office phones and ask them to come to work, and ask for their home address," she said. Ms Zazai said that even in Tajikistan she was not totally out of the reach of the Taliban. Her mother, who is with her, received messages urging both women to return to Afghanistan and "live in the Islamic way", she said. Follow live updates The Taliban are back - what next for Afghanistan? Afghanistan's Uyghurs fear 'double danger' under Taliban A former Afghan soldier who fled from Badakhshan province along with his three brothers, all of whom were in the army, said Taliban fighters were harassing his family, "asking them for money saying your son was in the special forces". And a former Afghan special forces soldier still inside the country told the BBC that he and his family were in hiding after former colleagues were killed. "Since the Taliban have come to power they haven't stopped killing," he said. "A few days ago, they killed twelve members of the special forces in Kandahar and three soldiers in Jalalabad as well. They were my close friends. I was in touch with them. The Taliban took them out of their homes and shot them." The BBC was not able to independently confirm the killings, and the Taliban have repeatedly denied committing any revenge killings. But the group was widely thought to be behind a spate of assassinations after signing a peace deal with the US in 2020, and there are mounting reports they have been searching for targets since taking power two weeks ago. Amnesty International reported earlier this month that Taliban fighters massacred nine ethnic Hazara men after taking control of Afghanistan's Ghazni province in July. And Human Rights Watch reported that Taliban fighters were conducting searches in Kandahar province as they swept the country and detaining anyone suspected of working with the government, reportedly killing some detainees. A high-ranking Afghan police official, who did not want to be named for fear of reprisals, told the BBC from hiding that he'd heard the Taliban were searching for him. "They caught my assistant and interrogated him for five hours," the official said. "They treated him very badly. They asked him, 'Where is your chief?' If they are forgiving everyone then why are they hunting for me?" He said he was changing location every day with his wife and children. "I have no money to cross the border," he said, breaking down as he spoke. "The problem is the Taliban have no justice system. They have no courts, no jail. They are just killing." It is not just people who worked in the security forces who say they are being targeted. Members of the civil administration, and those who worked in jobs disapproved by the Taliban told similar stories. "The Taliban took my car, beat up my guards and took their weapons," said Zarifa Ghafari, who was Afghanistan's first female mayor, governing Maidan Shar, the capital of Wardak province. "They were searching for me. They called all the people who used to be in contact with me asking where I was. They even went to my husband's parents' house to look for me," she said. Ms Ghafari was speaking via a video call from Germany, where she fled after the Taliban took power. "They made me do something I never wanted to do," she said. "They made me leave a country that I love."

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Mangaluru: Restrictions on the movement of people enforced at the border with Kerala will continue as there has been no change in the COVID-19 situation in Kerala, Dakshina Kannada district Deputy Commissioner KV Rajendra said. Giving a clarification on reports claiming that the Centre has lifted the requirement of RT-PCR certificates to cross the border, he said the Karnataka government's order mandating the RT-PCR test negative certificates for those coming to DK from Kerala is still in force. The order is meant to contain the spread of COVID-19 and the district administration will continue to implement the same, he said. Rajendra said more than 30,000 new COVID-19 cases are being reported from Kerala daily and the test positivity rate in neighbouring Kasaragod district is around 12 percent. In Dakshina Kannada, the positivity rate has been brought down to around 2 with a lot of effort and lifting of border restrictions will be like letting in new cases from Kerala. Though it is difficult to implement, the district has no other option than making the RT-PCR certificate mandatory, he said. The test positivity rate in the Dakshina Kannada district came down to 1.81 percent on Sunday. New Delhi: India has added 36,401 new COVID-19 infections, taking the total tally of cases to 3,23,22,258, while the toll has climbed to 4,33,049 with 530 more fatalities, according to Union health ministry data updated on Thursday. The national recovery rate has improved to 97.52 percent, the highest since March last year, according to the data updated at 8 am. The ministry said that active cases have declined to 3,64,129, the lowest in 149 days, and comprise 1.13 percent of the total infections, the lowest since March last year. A reduction of 3,286 cases has been recorded in the active COVID-19 caseload in a span of 24 hours. The ministry said that 18,73,757 tests were conducted on Wednesday, taking the total tests conducted so far for detection of COVID-19 in the country to 50,03,00,840. The daily positivity rate has been recorded at 1.94 percent and it has been less than three percent for the last 24 days, it said. The weekly positivity rate has been recorded at 1.95 percent and it has been below three percent for the last 55 days, according to the ministry. The number of people who have recuperated from the disease has increased to 3,15,25,080, while the case fatality rate stands at 1.34 percent, the data stated. Cumulatively, 56.64 crore COVID-19 vaccine doses have been administered under the nationwide vaccination drive so far. India's COVID-19 tally had crossed the 20-lakh mark on August 7 last year 30 lakh on August 23, 40 lakh on September 5 and 50 lakh on September 16. It went past 60 lakh on September 28, 70 lakh on October 11, crossed 80 lakh on October 29, 90 lakh on November 20 and surpassed the one-crore mark on December 19 last year. India crossed two crore cases on May 4 and three crore cases on June 23. The 530 fresh fatalities include 179 from Kerala and 158 from Maharashtra. A total of 4,33,049 deaths have been reported so far in the country, including 1,35,413 from Maharashtra, 37,061 from Karnataka, 34,610 from Tamil Nadu, 25,077 from Delhi, 22,787 from Uttar Pradesh, 19,049 from Kerala and 18,325 from West Bengal. The ministry said that more than 70 per cent of the deaths occurred due to comorbidities. "Our figures are being reconciled with the Indian Council of Medical Research," the ministry said on its website, adding that state-wise distribution of figures is subject to further verification and reconciliation.

There's been an age-old question going back to Darwin's time about the relationships among the world's five living rhinoceros species. One reason answers have been hard to come by is that most rhinos went extinct before the Pleistocene. Now, researchers reporting in the journal Cell on August 24 have helped to fill the gaps in the rhino evolutionary family tree by analyzing genomes of all five living species together with the genomes of three ancient and extinct species. The findings show that the oldest split separated African and Eurasian lineages about 16 million year ago. They also find that -- while dwindling po[CENSORED]tions of rhinos today have lower genetic diversity and more inbreeding than they did in the past -- rhinoceroses have historically had low levels of genetic diversity. "We can now show that the main branch in the rhinoceroses' tree of life is among geographic regions, Africa versus Eurasia, and not between the rhinos that have one versus two horns," says Love Dalén of the Centre for Palaeogenetics and the Swedish Museum of Natural History. "The second important finding is that all rhinoceroses, even the extinct ones, have comparatively low genetic diversity. To some extent, this means that the low genetic diversity we see in present-day rhinos, which are all endangered, is partly a consequence of their biology. "All eight species generally displayed either a continual but slow decrease in po[CENSORED]tion size over the last 2 million years, or continuously small po[CENSORED]tion sizes over extended time periods," said Mick Westbury of the University of Copenhagen, Denmark. "Continuously low po[CENSORED]tion sizes may indicate that rhinoceroses in general are adapted to low levels of diversity." This notion is consistent with an apparent lack of accumulated deleterious mutations in rhinos in recent decades. Westbury says that rhinos may have purged deleterious mutations in the last 100 years, allowing them to remain relatively healthy, despite low genetic diversity. The new study was inspired at a scientific meeting. Dalén and Tom Gilbert, University of Copenhagen, had been working separately on different rhino species. They realized that if they joined forces, along with colleagues around the world, they could do a comparative study of all living rhinos together with the three species that went extinct during the last Ice Age. There were some challenges to overcome, says Shanlin Liu, China Agricultural University, Beijing. "When we decided to put together all the rhinoceroses' data and conduct a comparative genomics study, we also confronted the 'big data' problem," Liu explained. The genome data represented different data types, in part due to the inclusion of both modern and ancient DNA. The team had to develop new analysis tools to take those differences into account. The new approaches and tools they developed can now be applied to studies in other taxonomic groups. Dalén says that the findings are "partly good news, and partly not." It appears that low levels of genetic diversity in rhinos is part of their long-term history and hasn't led to an increase in health problems related to inbreeding and disease-causing mutations. "However, we also find that present-day rhinos have lower genetic diversity, and higher levels of inbreeding, compared to our historical and prehistoric rhinoceros genomes," he says. "This suggests that recent po[CENSORED]tion declines caused by hunting and habitat destruction have had an impact on the genomes. This is not good, since low genetic diversity and high inbreeding may increase the risk of extinction in the present-day species." The findings do have some practical implications for rhino conservation, the researchers say. "Now we know that the low diversity we see in contemporary individuals may not be indicative of an inability to recover, but instead a natural state of rhinoceros," Westbury says. "We can better guide recovery programs to focus on increasing po[CENSORED]tion size rather than individual genetic diversity." The team hopes that the new findings will be useful for continued study of rhinoceroses and their conservation. Dalén reports that his team is now working on a more in-depth study of the extinct woolly rhinoceros. Meanwhile, Westbury is involved in comparing the genomes of African black rhinoceros sampled from before the recent decrease in po[CENSORED]tion size to those of contemporary individuals. "We hope that this will provide a framework to better understand where translocated po[CENSORED]tions may have arisen from, direct changes in genetic diversity, and whether any po[CENSORED]tions may have been lost forever because of humans," Westbury said

HIGHLIGHTS Bhavina scripted history by becoming the first Indian woman Paralympian to bring home a medal in table tennis. Rajeev Chaba announced a brand new SUV for Patel. The new SUV will come with required attachments for the Paralympian to easily access the vehicle. Recognizing the strength and determination of womanhood, the British carmaker MG Motor India salutes Bhavina Patel for her silver-medal winning game of table tennis at Tokyo Paralympics 2020. Bhavina scripted history by becoming the first Indian woman Paralympian to bring home a medal in table tennis. To honor her achievement, Rajeev Chaba, President & Managing Director, MG Motor India announced a brand new SUV for Patel once she returns from Tokyo. Additionally, Chaba revealed that the new SUV will come with the required attachments for the Paralympian to easily access the vehicle. Rajeev Chaba, President & MD, MG Motor India, tweeted, “It would be our honor and privilege to gift an MG car to Bhavinaben on her return. In the meantime, we will explore the right attachments.” MG Motor has been the title sponsor of the Vadodara Marathon since the British carmaker entered India and set up its manufacturing facility in Halol. The Vadodara Marathon is different from other marathons as it is always conducted with the aim of promoting various social causes, which includes participation in the specially-abled race titled, 'Divyang Run'. Recently, in its endeavor to extend unique experiences to MG brand enthusiasts and potential owners of the upcoming SUV Astor, MG Motor announced powering its personal AI assistant with the voice of Paralympic athlete and Khel Ratna Awardee Dr. Deepa Malik.

New Zealand has reported what it believes to be its first death linked to the Pfizer Covid-19 vaccine. An independent vaccine safety monitoring board said the woman's death was "probably" due to myocarditis, an inflammation of the heart muscle. It also noted there were other medical issues which could have "influenced the outcome following vaccination". European regulators say myocarditis is a "very rare" side effect and that the vaccine's benefits outweigh the risks. The official cause of death has not yet been determined. However, the Covid-19 Vaccine Independent Safety Monitoring Board said the myocarditis was "probably due to vaccination". "This is the first case in New Zealand where a death in the days following vaccination has been linked to the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine. While the Centre for Adverse Reactions Monitoring has received other reports of deaths in someone recently vaccinated, none are considered related to vaccination," it said in a statement. The woman's death is being investigated further and a coroner is due to rule on the case. Officials have not released any further details, including the woman's age. The European Medicines Agency has highlighted myocarditis as a "very rare" side effect of the Covid vaccines made by Pfizer and Moderna, adding that the side-effects were more common in younger men. For instance, the UK has seen 195 reports of myocarditis among people who have received the Pfizer vaccine, at a rate of around five cases per million. Most of those cases have led to mild symptoms. The EMA has urged people to continue to get vaccinated, as they help to stop people from getting very sick with Covid-19. Symptoms of myocarditis can include new onset chest pain, shortness of breath and an abnormal heartbeat. Experts are urging anyone experiencing these symptoms in the days after vaccination to seek medical attention promptly. Heart inflammation link to Pfizer and Moderna jabs On Monday New Zealand officials said they "remain confident about using [the Pfizer vaccine] in New Zealand". According to Johns Hopkins University, the country has seen 3,465 Covid cases and 26 deaths so far. New Zealand was initially praised for its handling of the virus, but has since seen a slow roll-out of vaccines although it has been ramping up in recent days. More than three million vaccine doses have been administered, and 23% of the po[CENSORED]tion are now fully vaccinated. A recent spike in Covid cases, attributed to the Delta variant, has put large parts of the country into lockdown. There are currently more than 560 cases in the country of about 5 million people. Restrictions are set to ease on Tuesday, barring the country's biggest city Auckland.

At the end of 2019, Nelly Sutro was living in New York, facing the fast-paced grind of city dating life. Fed up with apps, ghosting and rushed drinks with strangers after work, she complained to her friend Lina about the situation. Unbeknown to her, Lina had been in touch with another friend, Ryan Lacey, who was based in Germany for his US army job, and also struggling to meet someone. “She connected us on Instagram and suggested that we chat,” says Nelly. “She thought we’d be really good together.” The pair hit it off but, as they lived 4,000 miles apart, the conversation soon fizzled out. “We started chatting again when I was on a two-week trip in South America last February,” says Nelly. “By the time I got back to New York, the pandemic was taking hold, so I went back to my home town in rural Arizona to stay with my parents.” During lockdown, she and Ryan continued to talk on Instagram, before switching to FaceTime. Ryan says the slower pace of life meant they were able to invest more time getting to know each other. “Normally when you’re dating, you have so much else going on in your life you’re not able to concentrate on the person as much. I was able to get to know Nelly with nothing else in the way.” Nelly says living at home meant she wasn’t distracted by the “artificiality” of her New York life. The pair watched TV shows and took walks “together” on their video dates, and she was able to show him to some of her favourite childhood haunts. As soon as travel restrictions were lifted, they made plans to meet in his home city of Boston. “It was the end of June, and we had to balance social responsibility with meeting up. We invested in good-quality masks and rented an apartment that nobody had been in since February. We were really careful,” he says. Ryan was “super-nervous” but “immediately felt at ease” when he saw Nelly. After the trip, he went back to Germany to quarantine, feeling disappointed that they might not be able to meet again soon. During the trip, they had made jokes about getting married, so they could continue to see each other. “It wasn’t long before our marriage joke started to become a reality. There was no travel from the US into Germany at the time, and we didn’t see another option for being together,” says Nelly. “It sounds crazy, but it didn’t feel like a crazy thing.” They discovered that US military personnel were able to marry by proxy in the state of Montana with neither party physically present. Though neither of them had ever been to the state, proxies were sent to the courthouse, and they were legally married. They were emailed copies of the marriage certificate a week later, but haven’t celebrated yet. “Everything’s on hold until we can get our families together again safely,” says Ryan. When they married, his parents were “shocked” but supportive. “They’d met her briefly in Boston and my brother had picked us up from the airport. Now my mum wants to talk to Nelly all the time and send her gifts.” Because she’d been living with her parents as their relationship developed, Nelly says her family were less surprised. “It took them a while to get used to the idea, but they had watched the relationship grow.” In September, Nelly flew to Germany to be with her partner in Kaiserslautern in the south-west of the country, and now works remotely for Columbia Business School. “We had to make adjustments when Nelly moved here as we’d never lived together before,” says Ryan. “But we’ve been able to talk and communicate really well.” They agree that in many ways the lockdown made them stronger. “It’s hard because I guess everyone has had a bad year, but I have had an amazing year because I met her.” The couple love to travel and are making plans to explore Europe after the lockdown lifts. In the meantime, they are happy spending time with each other at home. “Nelly is so beautiful, and her personality really complements mine,” says Ryan. “She’s creative and emotional, whereas I am very logical. We work really well together.” Nelly loves her partner’s consistency. “He shows his love through actions and follows through on everything he says he will. We’re really lucky.”

Petrol and diesel prices remained static on Sunday. In Delhi, petrol costs Rs 101.49 a litre while the rate of diesel was Rs 88.92 per litre. In Mumbai, petrol can be bought at Rs 107.52 per litre and diesel costs Rs 96.48 for one litre. In Chennai, a litre of petrol is priced at Rs 99.20. On Sunday, the price of a litre of diesel was Rs 93.52. Petrol in Kolkata costs Rs 101.82 per litre while diesel costs Rs 91.98 a litre. While petrol can be bought at Rs 109.91 in Bhopal and diesel costs Rs 97.72 a litre today. Petrol and diesel prices are revised by the oil marketing companies including Bharat Petroleum, Indian Oil and Hindustan Petroleum. The new prices are implemented at 6 am every day. States and cities have different fuel prices because of the value-added taxes, local and freight charges which vary depending on the place. Following are the prices of diesel and petrol in a few metros and Tier-II cities in the country: 1. Mumbai Petrol - Rs 107.52 per litre Diesel - Rs 96.48 per litre 2. Delhi Petrol - Rs 101.49 per litre Diesel - Rs 88.92 per litre 3. Chennai Petrol - Rs 99.20 per litre Diesel - Rs 93.52 per litre 4. Kolkata Petrol - Rs 101.82 per litre Diesel - Rs 91.98 per litre 5. Bhopal Petrol - Rs 109.91 per litre Diesel - Rs 97.72 per litre 6. Hyderabad Petrol - Rs 105.54 per litre Diesel - Rs 96.99 per litre 7. Bangaluru Petrol - Rs 104.98 per litre Diesel - Rs 94.34 per litre 8. Guwahati Petrol - Rs 97.33 per litre Diesel - Rs 88.29 per litre 9. Lucknow Petrol - Rs 98.56 per litre Diesel - Rs 89.29 per litre 10. Gandhinagar Petrol - Rs 98.52 per litre Diesel - 96.00 per litre 11. Thiruvananthapuram Petrol - Rs 103.69 per litre Diesel - Rs 95.68 per litre

An international team of researchers including scientists from the Institute of Genetics of the University of Bern has unraveled the enigma of inheritance of coat color patterns in dogs. The researchers discovered that a genetic variant responsible for a very light coat in dogs and wolves originated more than two million years ago in a now extinct relative of the modern wolf. The inheritance of several coat color patterns in dogs has been controversially debated for decades. Researchers including Tosso Leeb from the Institute of Genetics of the University of Bern have now finally been able to solve the puzzle. Not only did they clarify how the coat color patterns are genetically controlled, but the researchers also discovered that the light coat color in white arctic wolves and many modern dogs is due to a genetic variant originating in a species that went extinct a long time ago. The study has just been published in the scientific journal Nature Ecology and Evolution. Two pigments and a "switch" for all coat colors Wolves and dogs can make two different types of pigment, the black one, called eumelanin and the yellow, pheomelanin. A precisely regulated production of these two pigments at the right time and at the right place on the body gives rise to very different coat color patterns. Prior to the study, four different patterns had been recognized in dogs and several genetic variants had been theorized which cause these patterns. However, commercial genetic testing of these variants in many thousands of dogs yielded conflicting results, indicating that the existing knowledge on the inheritance of coat color patterns was incomplete and not entirely correct. During the formation of coat color, the so-called agouti signaling protein represents the body's main switch for the production of yellow pheomelanin. If the agouti signaling protein is present, the pigment producing cells will synthesize yellow pheomelanin. If no agouti signaling protein is present, black eumelanin will be formed. "We realized early on that the causative genetic variants have to be regulatory variants which modulate the rate of protein production and lead to higher or lower amounts of agouti signal protein," Tosso Leeb explains. Five instead of four distinct coat color patterns The gene for agouti signaling protein has several initiation sites for reading the genetic information, which are called promoters. Dogs, on the one hand, have a ventral promoter, which is responsible for the production of agouti signaling protein at the belly. On the other hand, dogs have an additional hair cycle-specific promoter that mediates the production of agouti signaling protein during specific stages of hair growth and enables the formation of banded hair. For the first time, the researchers characterized these two promoters in detail, in hundreds of dogs. They discovered two variants of the ventral promoter. One of the variants conveys the production of normal amounts of agouti signaling protein. The other variant has higher activity and causes the production of an increased amount of agouti signaling protein. The researchers even identified three different variants of the hair cycle-specific promoter. Starting with these variants at the individual promoters, the researchers identified a total of five different combinations, which cause different coat color patterns in dogs. "The textbooks have to be rewritten as there are five instead of the previously accepted four different patterns in dogs," Leeb says. Unexpected insights on the evolution of wolves As many genomes from wolves of different regions on earth have become publicly available, the researchers further investigated whether the identified genetic variants also exist in wolves. These analyses demonstrated that the variants for overactive ventral and hair cycle-specific promoters were already present in wolves prior to the domestication of modern dogs, which started approximately 40,000 years ago. Most likely, these genetic variants facilitated adaptation of wolves with a lighter coat color to snow-rich environments during past ice ages. Today, the completely white arctic wolves and the light colored wolves in the Himalaya still carry these genetic variants. Further comparisons of the gene sequences with other species of the canidae family yielded very surprising results. The researchers were able to show that the overactive variant of the hair cycle-specific promoter in light-colored dogs and wolves shared more similarities with very distantly related species such as the golden jackal or the coyote than with the European grey wolf. "The only plausible explanation for this unexpected finding is an ancient origin of this variant, more than two million years ago, in a now extinct relative of wolves," Leeb says. The gene segment must have been introgressed more than two million years ago into wolves by hybridization events with this now extinct relative of wolves. Thus, a small piece of DNA from this extinct species is still found today in yellow dogs and white arctic wolves. "This is reminiscent of the spectacular finding that modern humans carry a small proportion of DNA in their genomes from the now extinct Neandertals," Leeb adds. The study was enabled by a sabbatical done by Prof. Danika Bannasch at the University of Bern with its longstanding research focus on the genetics of coat color in domestic animals. Bannasch, a professor in veterinary genetics at the University of California Davis, filtered the relevant promoter variants from thousands of other functionally neutral genetic variants. The evolutionary analyses were conducted by Christopher Kaelin and Gregory Barsh of the HudsonAlpha Institute and Stanford University. The study was financially supported by grants from the Swiss National Science Foundation SNSF, Maxine Adler Endowed Chair Funds, Jane and Aatos Erkko Foundation, and the Academy of Finland.