CYCLONE TAUKTAE MOVES INTO GUJARAT, AFTER MUMBAI BATTLES HIGH WINDS, HEAVY RAIN

A very severe cyclonic storm with winds gusting up to 185 km per hour began making landfall on the Gujarat coast Monday night, after dumping heavy rains on Mumbai, forcing the evacuation of over 1.5 lakh people in Gujarat and leaving two barges, with living quarters for oil rigs off Mumbai coast, with 410 people on board adrift in the Arabian Sea.

As the cyclone moved past the Maharashtra coast in the morning, Mumbai's Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj International Airport initially announced the suspension of operations from 11 am to 2 pm and later decided to keep all operations shut till 8 pm.

Over 1.5 lakh people were shifted from low-lying coastal areas in Gujarat, while 54 teams of the NDRF and SDRF remained deployed.

At least 17 COVID-19 patients on ventilator support in the Porbandar Civil Hospital's ICU were shifted to other facilities on Monday as a precautionary measure because of cyclone Tauktae which is heading towards the Gujarat coast, an official said.

The Centre has offered all help to Gujarat to deal with the cyclone and asked the Army, Navy and the Air Force to remain on standby to assist the administration if the need arises, the Gujarat government said.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Home Minister Amit Shah are in touch with the state government and have extended all possible help, said Gujarat Chief Minister Vijay Rupani after holding a meeting with collectors of coastal districts which are likely to face the maximum brunt of the cyclone.

A major cyclone in Gujarat on June 9, 1998 had brought widespread death and destruction in its wake, particularly in the port town of Kandla.

COAST GUARD, NAVY RESCUE 60 FROM BARGE OFF MUMBAI, HUNDREDS MORE AWAITING RESCUE

In a massive operation, the Coast Guard and Navy rescued 60 men from a barge servicing ONGC offshore operations on the Mumbai coast that went adrift in high-speed winds and rain arising from Cyclone Tautkae on Monday. They were continuing rescue operations overnight for the 200 more men still on board.

Three other vessels adrift in other locations off the Mumbai coast with hundreds of workers aboard have also sent distress signals and are waiting for rescue vessels to reach them. Senior Coast Guard and Navy officials said rescue operations would continue through the night and on Tuesday, when the weather is likely to clear up, and helicopters can also be pressed into service.

Four Coast Guard vessels, two Navy ships and one merchant vessel are deployed to rescue the four barges, which serve as living quarters for men working on several offshore rigs of the oil PSU.

The four vessels began sending distress signals after getting caught in Cyclone Tauktae to the Coast Guard, shipping ministry control room and their own control room. Coast Guard operations DIG T Ashish said there were an estimated 800 people on board in the four vessels, but there was no exact count.

The 60 men rescued were on board barge P 305, which had a total of 261 personnel and crew. The vessel went adrift after hitting an unmanned rig.

KEY COVID NUMBERS

Current Active Cases Countrywide: 33,48,894

New Cases in last 24 hours: 2,62,968

Recovered in last 24 hours: 4,22,394

Change in no. of Active cases in last 24 hours: -1,63,766

No. of deaths in last 24 hours (Total Covid Deaths so far): 4,340 (2,78,751)

Daily Tests: 15,73,515

Daily Positivity Rate (Proportion of Positives among total Tested): 17.9%

Most Affected States:

(S. No. / State / No. of Active Cases / New Cases in last 24 Hrs / Deaths in Last 24 Hrs)

1          Karnataka                     6,03,639           /           38,603  /           476

2          Maharashtra     4,45,495           /           26,616  /           1,000

3          Kerala              3,62,313           /           21,402  /           87

4          Tamil Nadu       2,31,596           /           33,075  /           335

5          Andhra Pradesh            2,11,554           /           18,561  /           109

6          Rajasthan                     1,76,363           /           11,597  /           157

7          Uttar Pradesh   1,49,032           /           9,345    /           271

8          West Bengal     1,31,560           /           19,003  /           147

9          Gujarat             99,620  /           7,135    /           81

10        Chhattisgarh     96,156  /           6,577    /           149

11        Odisha             94,240  /           10,757  /           22

12        Madhya Pradesh           88,983  /           5,921    /           77

13        Haryana                       83,161  /           7,488    /           114

14        Uttarakhand      78,608  /           3,719    /           223

15        Punjab              73,616  /           6,881    /           191

16        Bihar                69,697  /           5,920    /           96

17        Delhi                56,049  /           4,524    /           340

18        JnK                  50,852  /           3,344    /           73

19        Telangana                    49,341  /           3,961    /           30

20        Assam              44,942  /           6,394    /           92

21        Himachal Pradesh         36,633  /           3,546    /           58

22        Jharkhand        33,524  /           2,507    /           60

23        Goa                  25,753  /           1,562    /           53

24        Puducherry       17,383  /           1,446    /           28

25        Chandigarh       7,382    /           620       /           6

26        Manipur                        6,338    /           330       /           14

27        Tripura             4,931    /           335       /           10

28        Meghalaya        4,915    /           634       /           16

29        Nagaland                      4,253    /           273       /           7

30        Sikkim              2,939    /           70        /           5

INTERNATIONAL AFFAIRS

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ISRAEL UPS ANTE, KILLS GAZA COMMANDER

Israel pummeled Gaza with air strikes on Monday and Palestinian militants launched rockets at Israeli cities despite a flurry of US and regional diplomacy that has so far failed to halt more than a week of deadly fighting.

Israel’s missile attacks on the densely populated Palestinian enclave killed a top Islamic Jihad commander and left a crater in a seven-storey office building that Israel’s military said was used by Gaza’s Islamist rulers Hamas.

With the fiercest regional hostilities in years showing no sign of abating, US secretary of state Antony Blinken urged all sides to protect civilians. Washington, Egypt and UN mediators stepped up diplomatic efforts, and the UN General Assembly will meet to discuss the violence on Thursday.

Gaza health officials put the Palestinian death toll since hostilities flared up last week at at least 204, including 58 children and 34 women. Ten people have been killed in Israel, including two children.

The cross-border hostilities have been accompanied by an uptick of violence in the occupied West Bank, and by riots involving Arab and Jewish mobs within Israel and clashes in Jewish-Arab communities.

UK’S REOPENING JOY TEMPERED BY DOUBLE MUTANT

Drinks were raised in toasts and reunited friends hugged each other as thousands of UK pubs and restaurants opened on Monday for indoor service for the first time since early January. Yet the PM sounded a cautious tone, warning about a more contagious Covid variant that threatens reopening plans.

Theatres, leisure venues and museums were also reopening as part of the latest step in easing nationwide restrictions, raising hopes that UK’s economy may soon start to recover from the devastating effects of the pandemic.

The government also relaxed guidance on close personal contact — meaning people can hug friends and family they don’t live with and lifted a ban on foreign holidays, although only 12 countries and territories are on the list of “safe” destinations that don’t require 10 days of quarantine upon return.

But the rapid spread of a variant first discovered in India is tempering the optimism. Public health officials are urging people to continue to observe social distancing. “Please, be cautious about the risks to your loved ones,” PM Boris Johnson said on Twitter.

THE REST

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HIGH DRAMA IN KOLKATA AS CBI ARRESTS 2 MINISTERS IN NARADA CASE

Two Trinamool Congress ministers and an MLA along with a former party leader were on Monday arrested and charge-sheeted by the CBI in Narada sting case, amid high drama in West Bengal that saw Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee sitting on a dharna at the probe agency's office for six hours as her party supporters besieged the premises and indulged in violent protests in several parts of the state.

The CBI office at Nizam Palace in Kolkata became the latest political battleground in the state as chief minister Mamata Banerjee arrived along with the kin of these politicians and demanded that she also be arrested while angry protestors gathered at the site, defying the ongoing coronavirus lockdown, and hurled stones and bricks at security personnel.

A special court later granted bail to the leaders -- state ministers Firhad Hakim and Subrata Mukherjee, TMC MLA Madan Mitra, and former TMC leader and erstwhile Mayor of Kolkata Sovan Chatterjee, but soon after the Calcutta high court ordered a stay on it.

Frowning upon the action of Banerjee and her colleagues, the High Court said: “Confidence of the people in the justice system will be eroded in case such types of incidents are allowed to happen in the matters where political leaders are arrested and are to be produced in the Court. Public trust and confidence in the judicial system is more important, it being the last resort. They may have a feeling that it is not rule of law which prevails but it is a mob which has an upper hand and especially in a case where it is led by the Chief Minister of the State in the office of CBI and by the Law Minister of the State in the Court Complex.”

The high court had ordered a CBI probe into the sting operation on April 16, 2017.

The TMC accused the BJP-run union govt of using the CBI for political vendetta due to the saffron party's recent loss in the assembly election, after the agency arrested the four leaders, who were allegedly caught on camera while taking bribes in the 2014 sting by a news channel.

Taking note of the widespread protests across the state, state governor Jagdeep Dhankhar urged the chief minister to contain the "explosive situation" and asked her to weigh the "repercussions of such lawlessness and failure of constitutional mechanism".

WHAT CBI DIDN’T SAY ABOUT NARADA CASE

The CBI said the four leaders — Ministers Firhad Hakim and Subrata Mukherjee, Madan Mitra, Sovan Chatterjee — were arrested after Governor Jagdeep Dhankhar granted sanction for prosecution this month.

But what it left unsaid said a lot about the latest turn in the case.

Leader of Opposition Suvendu Adhikari, who switched sides from TMC to join BJP in the run-up to the state elections, is among those against whom prosecution sanction is still pending.

Also, the CBI has not applied for prosecution sanction against senior BJP leader, Mukul Roy, who was among the first to switch over from TMC in 2017, and is Accused No.1 in the agency’s FIR.

Adhikari, who provided a silver lining for the BJP by defeating Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee in Nandigram, is also an accused in the case along with 11 others. The request for prosecution sanction against him — along with TMC MPs Saugata Roy, Kakoli Ghosh Dastidar and Prasun Banerjee — was sent by the CBI to the Lok Sabha Speaker on April 6, 2019.

Adhikari was a Lok Sabha MP in 2014 when the Narada sting operation, in which TMC leaders were seen on camera accepting or negotiating cash deliveries to allegedly favour a fictitious company, was recorded. Roy was a Rajya Sabha member in 2014. The sting was aired in 2016, ahead of the previous Assembly elections.

Those arrested Monday face the same allegations as Adhikari and Roy.

INDIA DROPS PLASMA THERAPY FROM COVID TREATMENT PROTOCOL

India on Monday dropped convalescent plasma therapy (CPT) from its national clinical management protocol for Covid-19. The therapy uses blood plasma from people who have recovered from Covid-19 to help others recover.

It comes three days after findings of the RECOVERY trial, the largest randomised trial to report results of the effect of convalescent plasma in patients hospitalised with Covid-19, were published in The Lancet medical journal.

The study findings showed that compared with usual care alone, high-titre convalescent plasma did not reduce 28-day mortality.

Similar studies in China and the Netherlands have previously documented no significant benefit of CPT in improving clinical outcomes in hospitalised Covid-19 patients.

A RULER’S VOICE OF CONSCIENCE 3 CENTURIES AGO AND COMMUNAL HARMONY STILL PERSISTS

Even as the second Covid-19 wave muted Eid festivities this year, a box of sweets still quietly found its way from Malerkotla’s Aqsa Masjid to the town’s Laxmi Narayan temple with the message ‘Chand Mubarak’.

The mandir and masjid have shared a common wall for decades in Malerkotla’s Somsons Colony. And for years, their caretakers have greeted each other without fail on Eid and Diwali. A few kilometres away at Talaab Bazaar, prasad from shops of several Muslims owners is offered by devotees at Hanuman temple.

At the historic Gurdwara Haa Da Naara Sahib, devotees, irrespective of faith, prepare langar every day for Covid-19 patients.

At Malerkotla, the only Muslim-majority town in Punjab with over 90,000 Muslims, 28,000 Hindus and 12,800 Sikhs, as per 2011 Census, the gurdwaras, mandirs and masjids intersect each other’s path in almost every street, but people have always imparted some crucial lessons in peaceful co-existence.

On Eid, as Punjab CM Amarinder Singh declared Malerkotla as 23rd district of Punjab, it was a decision welcomed by all, irrespective of their faith.

Standing as a testimony of Malerkotla’s communal harmony is Gurdwara Haa Da Naara Sahib, which was built by Sikh community as a tribute to erstwhile ruler of Malerkotla, Nawab Sher Mohammad Khan, who had raised his voice (“Haa Da Naara”) against the execution of the two youngest sons of Guru Gobind Singh by Nawab of Sirhind, Wazir Khan, in the year 1705.

WHATSAPP PRIVACY POLICY VIOLATES IT LAWS: CENTRE TO HIGH COURT

The Centre on Monday told the Delhi High Court that it views the new privacy policy of WhatsApp as a violation of the Indian Information Technology (IT) law and rules, and sought directions to the social media platform to make it clear whether it was confirming to the same.

The Central government’s claim was made before a Bench of Chief Justice DN Patel and Justice Jyoti Singh during hearing of several pleas challenging WhatsApp’s new privacy policy, which according to the platform has come into effect from May 15 and has not been deferred.

WhatsApp told the Bench that while its new privacy policy has come into effect from May 15, it would not start deleting accounts of those users who have not accepted it and would try to encourage them to get on board.

The platform said there was no universal or uniform time limit after which it would start to delete accounts as each user would be dealt with it on case-to-case basis.

MUSK LOSES WORLD'S SECOND-RICHEST RANKING TO LVMH'S ARNAULT AS TESLA DIPS

Elon Musk’s Twitter posts keep sending Bitcoin prices tumbling. His own fortune is heading in the same direction.

On Monday, Tesla Inc.’s chief executive officer lost his spot as the world’s second-richest person to LVMH Chairman Bernard Arnault as the electric vehicle-maker’s shares fell 2.2%. That was on top of last week’s slump amid a global rout in technology stocks and fresh signs of trouble in its China business.

Musk, who held the top spot in the Bloomberg Billionaires Index as recently as March, now has a fortune of $160.6 billion, down 24% from its January high.

The drop follows a turbulent period for Musk, who sent Bitcoin tumbling as much as 15% last week after posting a statement on Twitter that Tesla was no longer accepting the digital currency as payment. Over the weekend, Musk wreaked havoc again when he seemed to imply that Tesla may sell or has sold its Bitcoin holdings before later clarifying in a tweet Monday that the company had done no such thing.

Musk’s fortune has dropped about $9.1 billion this year, the most among U.S.-based billionaires tracked by Bloomberg’s wealth index. Meanwhile, Arnault, 72, has added the most, with his net worth climbing by almost $47 billion to $161.2 billion as sales of his firm’s luxury goods surge in China and other parts of Asia.

RADHE’S MULTI-FORMAT RELEASE RAKES IN BIG BUCKS

Actor Salman Khan’s latest Bollywood Eid offering ‘Radhe: Your Most Wanted Bhai’ has seemingly garnered a good response upon its multi-format release on 13 May.

In a statement Monday, Zee Studios said Radhe garnered 4.2 million views across various platforms, reinforcing that multi-platform simultaneous release is the “future of entertainment” and will grow multi-fold in the years to come.

“…Radhe emphatically demonstrates the success of a hybrid release and shows an effective model of releasing a film during these very tough times,” the statement said.

In the wake of the rising Covid cases in the country and the pandemic-induced lockdown in several states, the film was released on Zee Network’s OTT platform ZEE5, with the pay-per-view service ZEEPlex. The film also released on leading DTH operators on a pay-per-view basis, apart from getting a theatrical release in international markets.

Zee Studios said that this “unique and never-seen-before distribution strategy” ensured Radhe’s widest possible reach to the audience at a place and time of their choice.

According to data shared by Zee Studios, in UAE, with theatre capacities running at 50 per cent, the film collected $3,79,000 on the opening day itself. This was higher than Salman Khan’s last film Dabangg 3 (2019).

Radhe was released in 750-800 screens across UAE/GCC, US, Australia, Indonesia, New Zealand, Singapore, and the UK.

INDIA’S TESTS AGAINST ENGLAND, AUSTRALIA WERE NOT FIXED: ICC

The ICC on Monday dismissed claims made by news channel Al Jazeera that India’s Test matches against England (2016) and Australia (2017) were fixed, saying the passages of play identified as fixed were entirely predictable, and therefore “implausible as a fix”.

Al Jazeera in a documentary—‘Cricket’s Match Fixers’—released in 2018 had claimed that India’s game against England in Chennai in 2016 and the one against Australia in 2017 in Ranchi were fixed.

The ICC also cleared five people—filmed by the channel -- of any wrongdoing saying even as they behaved in a questionable manner but no credible evidence was available to charge them. During the programme, an alleged bookie Aneel Munnawar was seen making claims about his dubious connections and history of fixing matches, including two Tests involving Virat Kohli’s Indian team.

The ICC had launched an investigation into the claims.

INDICATORS

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GBP 0.70 /US$, Euro 0.82 /US$, Jap.Yen 109.23 /US$, Aus$ 1.28 /US$, Sing 1.33 /US$, Bang Taka 83.24 /US$, Can$ 1.20 /US$, Mal Ring 4.12 /US$,

Pak Re 151.85 /US$, Phil Peso 47.82 /US$, Russian Rouble 73.91 /US$, NZ$ 1.38 /US$, Thai Baht 31.41 /US$, Ukraine Hryvnia 27.31 /US$

Bitcoin - USD 44,800

Dollar Index 90.10 Brent Crude 69.64  BDI 2939

Gold world Spot Price USD/aoz 1,868 India (Rs. per gm 24k/22k) 4,633 / 4,533, Silver (Rs. Per KG) 76,600

THOUGHT FOR THE DAY

There is some good in the worst of us and some evil in the best of us. When we discover this, we are less prone to hate our enemies. - Martin Luther King, jr

OFF TRACK

A man walks into a shoe store, and tries on a pair of shoes.

"How do they feel?" asks the sales clerk.

"Well they feel a bit tight," replies the man.

The assistant promptly bends down and has a look at the shoes and at the man's feet.

"Try pulling the tongue out," the clerk says.

"Well, theyth sthill feelth a bith tighth.