DRDO lab develops bike-based ambulance

KV Prasad Jun 13, 2022, 06:35 AM IST (Published)

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A DRDO laboratory on Monday handed over to the Central Reserve Police Force a bike-based ambulance that has been developed to provide quicker medical support to those living in congested streets and remote locations, the defence ministry said.

The vehicle named ‘Rakshita’ has been developed by the Institute of Nuclear Medicine and Allied Sciences (INMAS), a premier laboratory of the Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO).

“It will provide life-saving aid for evacuation of injured patients from low intensity conflict areas. This will be handy in the congested streets and remote locations, where access through ambulances is difficult and time consuming,” the defence ministry said in a release. “The bike can respond to a medical emergency need of patients faster than a four-wheeler due to its functionality and integrated emergency medical support system,” it said.

It said Rakshita is fitted with a customised reclining casualty evacuation seat (CES) which can be fitted in and taken out as per requirement. “The vital parameters of the patient can be monitored on the dashboard mounted LCD. It is also equipped with air splint, medical and oxygen kit for on spot medical care,” it added.

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US Capitol shut down temporarily out of caution over fire incident

KV Prasad Jun 13, 2022, 06:35 AM IST (Published)

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The US Capitol was shut down temporarily on Monday out of an abundance of caution after a fire broke out near the complex, the Capitol Police said, underscoring security jitters days before President-elect Joe Biden’s inauguration.

“There is no threat to the public,” the U.S. Secret Service said in a tweet.

The US Capitol Police said in a statement that members and staff were advised to shelter in place while the incident was being investigated.

The lockdown follows the January 6 attack on the US Capitol in Washington by Trump supporters, some of whom called for the death of Vice President Mike Pence as he presided over the certification of Biden’s election victory.

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KV Prasad Journo follow politics, process in Parliament and US Congress. Former Congressional APSA-Fulbright Fellow

COVID-19 vaccination drive: 580 adverse events reported so far, says Health Ministry

KV Prasad Jun 13, 2022, 06:35 AM IST (Published)

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A total of 3,81,305 beneficiaries have so far been vaccinated for coronavirus, even as 580 adverse events following immunization were reported in the country, the Union health ministry said on Monday.

Addressing a press briefing, Manohar Agnani, Additional Secretary in the ministry, said 1,48,266 beneficiaries were vaccinated across 25 states and Union territories till 5 pm on Monday.

“A total of 3,81,305 beneficiaries have so far been vaccinated (till 5 pm on Monday) as per provisional reports,” he said. Of the 1,48,266 beneficiaries who were administered the vaccine on Monday, 8,656 were from Bihar, 1,822 from Assam, 36,888 from Karnataka, 7,070 from Kerala, 6,665 from Madhya Pradesh, 7,628 from Tamil Nadu, 10,352 from Telangana, 11,588 from West Bengal and 3111 were from Delhi.

Agnani said a cumulative 580 adverse events following immunization (AEFIs) and seven hospitalizations have so far been reported in the country since the nationwide COVID inoculation drive which began on January 16.

In Delhi, three hospitalisations were reported, out of which, two have been discharged, and one with fainting is under observation at Max Hospital, Patparganj. In Uttarakhand, one of the beneficiaries is stable and under observation at AIIMS Rishikesh, the official stated.

In Chhattisgarh, one beneficiary is under observation, while in Karnataka, two cases of hospitalizations were reported, he said. “No case of serious/severe AEFI attributable to vaccination till date,” the additional secretary added.

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COVID vaccination in Delhi: Further dip in healthcare workers’ turnout, only 8 get jabs at AIIMS

KV Prasad Jun 13, 2022, 06:35 AM IST (Published)

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Nearly 3,600 healthcare workers received the COVID-19 vaccine shots in Delhi on Monday, a further dip in the figures compared to that on opening day of the immunisation drive, with sources saying just eight medical staff got the jabs at AIIMS.

Under the nationwide mega vaccination drive launched on Saturday, a total of 4,319 (53 per cent) health workers against a target of 8,117were administered the vaccines at 81 centres across the city. The sharp fall comes after one severe and 50 minor cases were reported, following the vaccination drive on Saturday.

Various reasons are being attributed to the low turnout, including some technical issues and fears related to adverse events. However, the government has maintained that no case of serious/severe AEFI (adverse events following immunisation) is attributable to vaccination till date.

“On day two, 3,598 people have been administered corona vaccine.AEFI was reported in 26 persons,” a senior official of Delhi health department said. One “severe” and 51 “minor” cases of AEFI (adverse events following immunisation) were reported among health workers who were administered the coronavirus vaccine in Delhi on Saturday, according to official figures.

An All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) security guard had developed an allergic reaction after receiving the vaccine. He was kept under observation of doctors, an official had said on Saturday. According to the Union health ministry, 3,111 vaccinations were done in Delhi on Monday till 5.00 pm.

The numbers reported on day two were much lower, a dip of nearly 28 per cent from the corresponding figures on Saturday. According to sources, eight vaccinations were done at AIIMS, 20 in Safdarjung Hospital and 69 healthcare workers were vaccinated at Ram Manohar Lohia (RML) Hospital. Around 45 beneficiaries had turned up at the Safdarjung Hospital but then many of them had comorbidities or are on medication which are contraindicative for vaccination and that is why only 20 could be vaccinated. Messages were sent to 100 healthcare workers, a source said.

As far as eight vaccinations at AIIMS are concerned, an official source said, it was related to multiple factors, including apprehensions of adverse events and late notifications through the Co-WIN app, due to which many people got the information late and were not able to come. “Also, those who had refused on Saturday were again included in the list and they did not turn up again on Monday. Around 20 people had turned up at AIIMS, of which some had fever while others had history of allergies, only eight beneficiaries received the shots,” the source said.

At the Delhi government-run LNJP Hospital, only 12 healthcare workers showed up, compared to 32 on day one, as per data shared by official. At Rajiv Gandhi Super Speciality Hospital, the number for Monday stood at 20, nearly half of the figures on day one — 45, officials said.

Delhi Health Minister Satyendar Jain on Sunday had said some people did not turn up for coronavirus vaccination at the last moment, adding that the government cannot ask anyone to compulsorily take the jab. He also said that the number of vaccination centres in Delhi will be increased from 81 to 175 soon.

Jain noted that a similar trend was observed across the country, with around 50 per cent of those registered getting the jabs on the first day. The vaccine is to be administered on four scheduled days of the week — Monday, Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday. It will not be given on Sunday and two others days of the week when other regular vaccination work will be carried out.

So, January 18 was the first working day of the week since the mega exercise was inaugurated by Prime Minister Narendra Modi across the country. Oxford COVID-19 vaccine Covishield is being administered at 75 centres while Bharat Biotech-made Covaxin doses given at the remaining six facilities.

The city government has received a total of 2.74 lakh doses of the vaccine so far from the Centre, which would be sufficient to cater to 1.2 lakh healthcare workers, Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal had earlier said. The Delhi government will take measures like counselling and formal phone calls in the coming days to raise the percentage of healthcare workers turning up for being administered COVID-19 vaccines, officials said on Sunday.

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KV Prasad Journo follow politics, process in Parliament and US Congress. Former Congressional APSA-Fulbright Fellow

‘Tandav’ makers issue ‘unconditional’ apology, say no intent to hurt religious sentiments

KV Prasad Jun 13, 2022, 06:35 AM IST (Published)

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The makers of web series ‘Tandav’ on Monday issued an “unconditional” apology following complaints that one of its episodes had hurt “religious sentiments”.

“We have been closely monitoring viewer reactions to the web series Tandav and today during a discussion, the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting informed us regarding a large number of grievances and petitions received on various facets of the web series with serious concerns and apprehensions regarding its content hurting the sentiments of the people. “ the series makers said in a statement.

“Tandav is a work of fiction and any resemblance to acts and persons and events is purely coincidental. The cast and crew did not have any intention to offend the sentiments of any individual, caste, community, race, religion or religious beliefs or insult or outrage any institution, political party or person, living or dead. The cast and crew of Tandav take cognizance of the concerns expressed by the people and unconditionally apologize if it has unintentionally hurt anybody’s sentiments,” the statement said.

Our sincere apologies . pic.twitter.com/Efr9s0kYnl

— ali abbas zafar (@aliabbaszafar) January 18, 2021

On Sunday,  an FIR was registered against Aparna Purohit, the head of Amazon’s India head of original content, director of the series Ali Abbas, producer Himanshu Krishna Mehra, writer Gaurav Solanki, and an unknown person for allegedly depicting Hindu gods in a manner hurtful to religious sentiments of the people.

The series starring Saif Ali Khan, Dimple Kapadia, Sunil Grover, Tigmanshu Dhulia, Dino Morea, Kumud Mishra, Mohd Zeeshan Ayyub, Gauhar Khan and Kritika Kamra, premiered on the streaming platform on Friday.

(With inputs from PTI)

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With the success of WFH, securing the workplace becomes critical

KV Prasad Jun 13, 2022, 06:35 AM IST (Published)

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One of the defining trends of the COVID-19 pandemic is how it has boosted digital uptake in the enterprise space. Companies that were previously in neutral to nascent stages of digital transformation, accelerated their efforts and rushed through with the implementation of technology solutions, built around the cloud. Digital transformation provides an immense opportunity for businesses to increase productivity and pursue growth. Yet, technology can’t be just a reactive response to the crisis; it can lead to fundamental changes in how businesses operate. Research has shown that the right investments in sound technology can have long-term outcomes on the company, especially in agility, productivity, stability, and performance.

The digital shift witnessed in India and elsewhere is truly remarkable in terms of the extensive scope achieved in a limited time. Large banks developing remote sales and services capabilities to mom-and-pop neighbourhood stores launching websites and mobile apps, schools becoming completely online, and doctors using video-conferencing for diagnosis and consultations, there are innumerable examples of technology helping people reimagine their daily lives. One of the most significant examples of this shift is the emergence of the Work From Home (WFH) phenomenon. Before lockdowns necessitated by the pandemic, only a small portion of the workforce was working remotely. But that changed drastically in a matter of months, with almost 100% of employees (for some industries) working from the confines of their homes. It was for the very first time that remote working happened at such scale and such speed. The results have been mostly favourable, with many companies deciding to incorporate WFH into their business ethos. And this is a win-win for all, companies can cut costs in real estate, and employees have a better work-life balance. According to a report by MoveInSync, on average, Indians spend 2 hours a day commuting, which is the highest in the world. A vast majority of this workforce would be amenable to work from home, even with little increments to their salaries.

Yet, the digital shift does with its own set of unique challenges, primarily in collaboration and security. With the footprint of the corporate increased manifold, securing every nook and corner becomes imperative. To deliberate and discuss the different facets of the ‘new normal,’ CNBC-TV18 and Intel dedicated a complete episode on the topic of Securing Fluid Workplace under the aegis of the tech-centric series “Future-Proof Your Business.” The episode charts how different companies, especially in the IT sector, provide secure and seamless services to their clients.

Talking about the various challenges posed by digital transformation, Jayan Narayanan, Global Head-IT, Servion Global Solutions, spoke about how his company has been working in collaboration with Intel to secure the workplace. He talked about how the company had installed the Intel vPro® platform that enables end-point security across the network. “Post lockdown, our employees and IT teams are working remotely. Seamless IT support is of paramount importance for a business to succeed. Today employees can be anywhere, using end-point management assistance, our IT team is able to troubleshoot all hardware related problems remotely and also manage security very efficiently,” he stated, adding, “End-point is our new perimeter.”

Roshni Das, Director, Marketing, Intel India, spoke about the enterprise space’s emerging megatrends. She highlighted how WFH had resulted in an increase in productivity and increased connected devices, around 125 billion connected devices as predicted by IHS. “A lot of enterprises have begun to look at new technology implementations over the last few months, cloud-based PC management, risk-based security monitoring tools, firmware level, and hardware-level security technologies and others. Over the past 12 months, AI & ML are going to be implemented within the enterprise space,” she added.

Ashok Krish, Global Head, Digital Workplace, TCS, emphasized the role of technology in helping companies become resilient. “Organizations that embrace the idea of a secure borderless workplace, powered by the cloud where you have employees working from anywhere. Working in a workout-loud manner in which they stay hyper-connected with the rest of their teams, employees, customers, and business partners. Those organizations will become future-proof,” he stated.

The episode also highlighted some of the broader trends in the industry that can be seen:

• Artificial intelligence (AI) & machine learning (ML) solutions create new security responsibilities to protect digital business initiatives.
• Extended detection and response (XDR) solutions are emerging to improve accuracy and productivity.
• Search process automation is eliminating repetitive tasks.
• Zero trust network access (ZTNA) technology is starting to replace VPNs.
• Network security focus shifts from LAN-based appliance models to secure access service edge (SASE).

With the emergence of all these technologies, securing a fluid workplace is becoming easier and manageable. For the future to be digital, it needs to be secure.

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KV Prasad Journo follow politics, process in Parliament and US Congress. Former Congressional APSA-Fulbright Fellow

WHO says expects global COVID deaths to top 100,000 a week

KV Prasad Jun 13, 2022, 06:35 AM IST (Published)

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Global deaths from COVID-19 are expected to top 100,000 per week “very soon”, from more than 93,000 reported last week, the World Health Organization’s top emergency expert Mike Ryan said on Monday.

In an epidemiological update provided to the WHO’s exective board meeting, he added that the Americas region accounted for about 47 percent of current deaths. In Europe, cases and deaths are stabilising but at a high level, he said.

“Currently our epidemiological situation is dynamic and uneven, it’s futher complicated by variants,” he told the board.

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Thursday’s filing dispelled some doubts, though Musk still has work to do. He and his advisers will spend the coming days vetting potential investors for the equity portion of his offer, according to people familiar with the matter

KV Prasad Journo follow politics, process in Parliament and US Congress. Former Congressional APSA-Fulbright Fellow

Leveraging the connected network to transform India

KV Prasad Jun 13, 2022, 06:35 AM IST (Published)

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In our everyday English language, the term smart would be listed out as an adjective or at rare times as a verb. Yet, over the past decade or so, the word seems to have gained a life of its own; it has become an idiom — a term that typically presents a figurative, non-literal meaning attached to it. The reason is apparent; we live in a world where everything is either ‘smart’ or becoming one. From the smartphones in our pockets to the smart homes in which we live, from the smart cars that have debuted on the roads to the smart cities coming up. Everything is becoming smart these days. And were we to break down this so-called smartness, it would merely mean digital and connected.

In reality, the driving spirit behind the smartness is the inter-connectedness or what we call as the connected network. The hallmark of this interconnected world is that the devices and machines interact with each other seamlessly, almost without human intervention. With the availability and spread of high-speed internet, India sees a boom in new devices coming online. Take, for instance, the fact that India ranks second in terms of the number of telecom subscriptions, internet subscribers, and app downloads. Still, India holds the world’s highest data usage per smartphone at an average of 9.8 GB per month. It is expected to double to 18 GB by 2024. In fact, the number of internet subscribers in the country is expected to double to 829 million by 2021.

The next big thing in connectivity will be the arrival of 5G or the fifth generation of cellular technology in India. Broadly speaking, due to its inherent design and network usage, 5G has numerous advantages over 4G; namely higher speeds, less latency, massive capacity for more connected devices, less interference and better efficiency. According to estimates, 5G networks will enable up to 100 gigabits per second, as much as 100 times faster than 4G, the current networks.

This upgrade has the potential to truly revolutionize India’s digital transformation journey. To explore the various facets of this transformative journey, CNBC-TV18 and Intel dedicated a complete episode on the topic of Connectivity Revolution under the aegis of the tech-centric series “Future-Proof Your Business”. The episode featured how telecom companies, especially Airtel, are driving the connectivity revolution.

Randeep Sekhon, CTO, Airtel India & South Asia, spoke at length on how 5G could impact India. “5G brings along with its higher throughput, lower latency, capabilities to do slice networks, and have mass concurrencies to support, smart cities, smart factories, smart homes. It will also trigger a lot of other innovation that will happen on the core; what we call as cloud, around areas like transport, as an ecosystem would create things that unlock many potentials. It will also unleash the power of artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML,)” he said.

One of the primary reasons why technologies like 5G have been immensely successful is how companies collaborate to build use cases. For instance, Intel and Airtel are working together to leverage the connected network and cloud computing power to provide a variety of solutions to the enterprise space and even individuals.

Werner G Schaefer, VP, Sales, Marketing & Communications Group, Intel, highlighted how 5G would connect the world in real-time. “5G will connect the world in real-time is a sweeping change in its ability to advance data from the edge device to the cloud and back with a latency that is 100 times better than 4G. What we can see is the next generation in digital experience, autonomous vehicles, smart stadiums, smart cities, and smarter workforce,” he said.

Delving on the topic a bit more deeply, Manish Gupta, Senior Director & GM, Data Center & Compute Business, Dell Technologies, India, spoke about how various sectors will employ 5G connectivity to be more productive and grow sales. “Banks will be able to hyper-personalize customer experience and create new business models. You can reduce the risks and detect fraud at an early stage. Let me go beyond 5G, and connected network, so many new technologies are at the anvil, there’s quantum computing, drone technology, 3D printing, biotechnology, there’s so many out there, and it is difficult to guess which of this will succeed and change the world of the future,” he states.

In the end, the connectivity revolution is genuinely poised to change the Indian landscape. The best part of the technological shift is that it will make our lives better. For instance, technological innovations like telemedicine and digital education can truly change our society. That is the power of connected technology.

Elon Musk forms several ‘X Holdings’ companies to fund potential Twitter buyout

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Thursday’s filing dispelled some doubts, though Musk still has work to do. He and his advisers will spend the coming days vetting potential investors for the equity portion of his offer, according to people familiar with the matter

KV Prasad Journo follow politics, process in Parliament and US Congress. Former Congressional APSA-Fulbright Fellow

Yes Bank board meet on Friday, to consider fund raising plan

KV Prasad Jun 13, 2022, 06:35 AM IST (Published)

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Yes Bank’s board will meet on Friday to consider a proposal for further fundraising through various means, according to the private sector lender. The bank had floated follow-on public offer (FPO) of Rs 15,000 crore in July 2020 to shore up its buffers that have fallen below the regulatory thresholds.

However, it was subscribed 95 per cent on the final day so it raised Rs 14,267 crore through its FPO. Yes Bank in a regulatory filing on Monday said the board at its meeting — scheduled on January 22, 2021, for approving third-quarter results — will also discuss and consider raising of funds by issue of equity shares, debentures, warrants any other equity-linked securities, through permissible modes subject to necessary shareholders or regulatory approvals.

However, the filing did not give an indication on the quantum of the amount that the bank intends to raise. After battling stress for two years, Yes Bank was rescued by State Bank of India and a clutch of private-sector lenders in March 2020 from the collapse. It had reported a loss of 18,564.2 crore, in the third quarter of 2019-20 as against a profit of Rs 1,000 crore a year back due to mounting bad loans and alleged mismanagement by erstwhile promoters.

Elon Musk forms several ‘X Holdings’ companies to fund potential Twitter buyout

3 Mins Read

Thursday’s filing dispelled some doubts, though Musk still has work to do. He and his advisers will spend the coming days vetting potential investors for the equity portion of his offer, according to people familiar with the matter

KV Prasad Journo follow politics, process in Parliament and US Congress. Former Congressional APSA-Fulbright Fellow