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Mathura violence: Death toll up to 21. Akhilesh Yadav orders probe, announces Rs 20 lakh ex gratia for slain cop

In the wake of the violent clashes that ensued between illegal occupants of Jawahar Bagh in Mathura, and the policemen who attempted to evict them, Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav has announced an ex-gratia of Rs 20 lakh for the Station House Officer, who was among those slain. He has also ordered a probe into the matter.

With the inclusion of the SP, the SHO and other constables, the death toll has risen to 21, according to NDTV reports.

The cult-like group of nearly 2,000 protesters, who claim to be the "true followers of Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose", became violent after they were asked to evict the land they were allegedly encroaching upon, following the directions of the Allahabad High Court.

UCLA gunman was from IIT Kharagpur, had a 'kill list' that included his wife

Mainak Sarkar (38), the gunman who shot dead a professor at the University of California, Los Angeles, on Thursday, had first killed a woman, Ashley Hasti, apparently his wife, at his home in Minnesota before driving 3,200 km to UCLA to kill one of his former professors and take his own life, said Los Angeles police chief Charlie Beck on Thursday.

Sarkar had also planned to kill another professor who remained unharmed, according to a 'kill list' (that was the title on the page) found in his Minnesota home, says NDTV.

Sarkar had been at IIT Kharagpur, according to reports.

Haryana gears up for second phase of Jat stir, deploys BSF and RAF

Accused of administrative paralysis when the Jat community in Haryana went on the rampage in February, the state government is preparing for the next phase of the community's agitation for reservations which could begin on 5 June.

Paramilitary forces have been deployed in seven sensitive districts of Haryana, while Section 144 of the Criminal Procedure Code (CrPC) has been enforced in eight districts for two months as a preventive measure, says the Hindustan Times.

Ajit Jogi may quit Congress, float own party

Former Chhatisgarh chief minister Ajit Jogi has decided to quit the Congress party and float a new political party to fight elections in the state. He says this is because his supporters believe that they cannot fight the BJP as long as they remain in the Congress.

"I am under tremendous pressure from party workers to carve out my separate way as they feel the Congress has been giving a walkover to the BJP in Chhattisgarh.... I am prepared to launch a new party if they ask me to do so," said Jogi, according to The Telegraph.

India's border with Bangladesh to be completely sealed by June 2017

Union home minister Rajnath Singh on Thursday issued an order to completely seal India's border with Bangladesh by June 2017.

At present, there is a 223.7-kilometre fence between the two countries, but 122 locations across 60.7 kilometres have no physical barrier.

At a review meeting on Thursday, the home minister said that 100 locations over 11.9 kilometres will be fenced, while 22 locations on rivers will have technological barriers, according to The Economic Times.

Bajrang Dal, Gau Raksha Samiti beat up cattle transporters in Rajasthan

About 150 people beat up three alleged cow transporters in BJP-ruled Rajasthan's Pratapgarh district on Tuesday. One of the transporters was stripped and paraded naked.

According to sources, the police, accompanied by members of the Bajrang Dal and the cow protection vigilante group Gau Raksha Samiti, stopped two trucks transporting 96 bullocks that were allegedly headed to slaughterhouses in Gujarat and Maharashtra. While the police seized one truck, the members of the Bajrang Dal and Gau Raksha Samiti allegedly beat up three reported cow transporters and stripped one, says the Hindustan Times.

Govt ponders proposal to regulate aggregator-based taxi services Uber and Ola

The government plans to bring taxi aggregators like Uber and Ola under the Motor Vehicles Act with fixed fares that will eliminate surge pricing.

As of now, app-based cab services do not operate under government regulations. They are popular because they are easily available and offer discounted fares, but they also increase fares when the demand is high in a practice called surge pricing, says the Hindustan Times.

The road transport ministry's proposal will bring taxi aggregators within the Motor Vehicles Act under a new category called 'intermediaries'.

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.