Home » Catch Wire » Your Wire on 29 May
 

Kashmir: Key Hizbul Mujahideen man caught

The Army on Saturday apprehended a close associate of the Hizbul Mujahideen's commander Burhan Muzaffar Wani at a check-post manned jointly with the police in Pulwama, south Kashmir.

The arrest by the 55 Rashtriya Rifles of Tariq Ahmad Pandit is a blow to 21-year-old Wani who has lost several key members of his group over the past few months.

Pandit, 25, was one of 11 militants who posed with Kalashnikovs for a photograph that went viral. He had joined the Hizbul a few months before he appeared in that photograph, according to The Indian Express.

In UP, BJP banks on Buddhist monk to spread its campaign messages

A Buddhist monk leading a team of other monks is on a six-month yatra of Uttar Pradesh, spreading the messages of the BJP to Dalits and Other Backward Classes.

The 'Dhamma Chetna Yatra' began from Sarnath on 24 April and will end on 14 October in Lucknow, where Prime Minister Narendra Modi is likely to address the monks.

The UP assembly elections of 2017 are key for the BJP's growth in India. The party won 72 of 80 seats in the 2014 Lok Sabha elections. But it needs Dalit and OBC votes to be the top party in the state, according to The Indian Express.

EC cancels polls in two TN constituencies due to cash bribes to voters

The Election Commission on Saturday cancelled the polls of two seats in Tamil Nadu, Aravakurichi and Thanjavur, calling the atmosphere "seriously vitiated" due to bribes of money for votes.

In a statement, the EC said re-elections will be held "after a reasonable amount of time".

Seizures from the two constituencies amounted to Rs 7.12 crore in cash, 429.24 litres of liquor and 33.256 kg of silver worth Rs 9 lakh at Aravakurichi, and Rs 75,20,850 cash and 2,145.12 litres of liquor at Thanjavur up to May 15, apart from one lakh saris and dhotis each by the two parties, according to The Indian Express.

Attacks on Africans 'minor scuffles' and not racist: Delhi Police

Thursday night's attacks on Africans in the south Delhi village of Rajpur Khurd have been described by the police as "minor scuffles" and "isolated incidents" caused by "their loud music and public drinking".

Nine people have been detained, but so far there have been no arrests, according to The Telegraph.

Deputy commissioner of police (south) Ishwar Singh said: "During investigations, we found that the playing of loud music at late night hours and drinking in public places by the African nationals, when objected to by local residents, (led to) minor scuffles."

ISRO to launch 22 satellites in a single mission

The Indian Space Research Organisation will launch 22 satellites in a single mission next month, said its chairman Kiran Kumar.

Three of these satellites are Indian, while the others are commercial, said Kumar on Saturday. "The launch is scheduled for the end of next month," he said.

ISRO will use the Polar rocket PSLV C34 for the launch, K Sivan, director of the Vikram Sarabhai Space Centre, had said earlier.

The space agency had launched 10 satellites on a single mission in 2008, according to the Hindustan Times. Last week, it sent off India's first reusable launch vehicle from the Sriharikota spaceport in Andhra Pradesh.

For baby sea turtles, it helps to have a lot of siblings

Sea turtles do not have an easy start to life. After hatching, they have to break out of their shell, dig their way out from beneath the sand, then make a mad dash across the beach to the water where they may or may not find food and safety - hopefully without getting snapped up by a predator. All of this requires a bit of luck and a lot of energy. And the energy a hatchling expends on breaking out of the nest is energy that can't be used on surviving the rest of the journey.Now, a new study has quantified the amount of energy a baby sea turtle uses to dig itself to the surface. Having lots of siblings - and, thus, lots of help - can really be a time and energy saver, researchers have reported in the Journal of Experimental Biology. That also implies that the conservation technique of dividing clutches may instead make hatchlings worse off.Figuring out the energy expenditure of baby sea turtles took some trial and error, a report in sciencenews.org said. For the final experiment, the scientists buried clutches of eggs just about to hatch beneath 40 centimeters of beach sand in a chamber with opaque walls.

China: No country for academics?

Political scientists and law experts are fleeing to America as Beijing's grip on freedoms in China intensifies under President Xi Jinping.Many academics feel there is no longer a place for them in President Jinping's increasingly repressive China, the Guardian has reported.As Chinese activist and scholar Teng Biao sat at home on the east coast of America, more than 13,000 km away his wife and nine-year-old daughter were preparing to embark on the most dangerous journey of their lives."My wife didn't tell my daughter what was going on," said Teng, who had himself fled China seven months earlier to escape the most severe period of political repression since the days following the Tiananmen massacre in 1989."She said it was going to be a special holiday. She told her they were going on an adventure."One year after their dramatic escape through southeast Asia, Teng's family has been reunited in New Jersey and is part of a fast-growing community of exiled activists and academics who feel there is no longer a place for them in Xi Jinping's increasingly repressive China.Until about 12 months ago China's top universities "remained islands of relative freedom", said Cohen, who has studied the Asian country for nearly six decades.