Hello, this is your daily dose of news from Onmanorama. Tune in to get updated about the major news stories of the day.
Hello, this is your daily dose of news from Onmanorama. I'm your host, Ajish Jimmy George, and these are the major news stories of the day:
1. AN Radhakrishnan is the BJP candidate for high-voltage Thrikkakara bypoll
2. Spurned lover likely caused Indore fire tragedy that claimed 7 lives
3. Arrest warrant issued against Vijay Babu, red corner notice to follow
4. KSRTC salaries likely to be delayed again; decision to be taken by management, says minister
5. Sri Lanka in talks for 100 million dollar emergency funding from Beijing-backed bank
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Let's get into the details:
1. The Bharatiya Janata Party on Sunday announced AN Radhakrishan, the party's State Vice President, as its candidate for the upcoming Thrikkakara bypoll.
Radhakrishnan will join Congress' Uma Thomas, the wife of late MLA PT Thomas, and CPM's Dr Jo Joseph, a well-known cardiologist, in what will no doubt be a high-voltage contest.
Meanwhile, the Aam Aadmi Party has decided not to contest in the bypoll. This was confirmed by the party's Kerala unit convenor PC Syriac.
The party's national leadership will decide on alliance with Twenty20, Syriac said on Sunday.
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2. Police have arrested a jilted lover, who had allegedly ignited a fire in a three-storey residential building that left seven dead and nine injured in Indore in Madhya Pradesh.
He had fled after allegedly torching the scooter of a woman residing in the residential building in Vijay Nagar locality on Saturday after she rejected his marriage offer.
Dixit, who originally hails from Jhansi in Uttar Pradesh, was working in a private firm in Indore for the last couple of months.
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3. The legal noose is tightening around absconding Malayalam film actor-cum-producer Vijay Babu over a sexual harassment case. The local court in Kochi has issued an arrest warrant against him as a prelude to issuing a Red Corner Notice.
A Red Corner Notice is issued by law enforcers of a country to seek the arrest or provisional arrest of wanted criminals with the intention of extradition.
Following the issuance of the arrest warrant, photographs of Vijay Babu along with the case details in which he is an accused will appear on the website of the International Criminal Police Organisation or Interpol in the coming days.
Once a red corner notice is issued, Dubai Police will be able to legally detain the actor and extradite him to India. However, the police are not ruling out the chances of Vijay Babu crossing over to some other country, which does not have an agreement with India regarding handing over of the accused in criminal cases.
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4. The salary for the employees of Kerala State Road Transport Corporation is likely to be delayed this month too with the government withdrawing from the efforts to solve the issue after the employees went on a 24-hour strike on Friday demanding timely payment.
Earlier, the management had announced that salaries for April would be released on May 21. Some employees’ unions raised protests against this move and threatened to launch a strike.
Subsequently, the Transport Minister Antony Raju intervened in the manner and instructed the management to distribute salaries on May 10. He also held a meeting with the union leaders.
However, even after the Minister’s assurance, the KSRTC unions started their strike. This forced Raju to dissociate himself from the salary issue.
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5. The China-backed Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank is considering granting 100 million dollar in emergency support to Sri Lanka, the country's finance ministry said on Sunday.
Sri Lanka has requested foreign-exchange liquidity support for state banks from the lender, it said in a statement.
Hit hard by the pandemic, rising oil prices and populist tax cuts by the government of President Gotabaya Rajapaksa, the South Asian island's economy is in crisis, with usable foreign reserves down to 50 million dollar, Finance Minister Ali Sabry said last week.
Shortages of imported food, fuel and medicines have brought thousands onto the streets in over a month of mostly peaceful protests. Rajapaksa declared a second state emergency in five weeks on Friday.
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Now let's check out the COVID numbers:
India logged 3,451 new coronavirus infections taking the total tally of COVID-19 cases so fat to 4,31,02,194, while the active cases rose to 20,635.
The Union Health Ministry data released at 8 am also showed that 40 fatalities, including 35 from Kerala alone, were reported in a 24-hour span.
The daily positivity rate was recorded at 0.96 per cent and the weekly positivity rate at 0.83 per cent.
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That brings us to the end of this episode. Be sure to come back tomorrow. As always, thanks for listening to Daily News Dose.