Storm warning

The Hindu Newsletter - Storm warning Tuesday 19, May 2020 [alt_text]( The Evening Wrap Welcome to the Evening Wrap newsletter, your guide to the day’s biggest stories with concise analysis from The Hindu. We hope you are staying home and staying safe. Here are the big stories that you need to follow today: Bracing for Amphan Cyclone Amphan, now a full-fledged super cyclone along the West Bengal coast, is expected to make landfall tomorrow. Forty-one teams of the National Disaster Response Force (NDRF), including seven reserves, have been deployed in West Bengal and Odisha, NDRF chief SN Pradhan said today. “A total of 41 NDRF teams, including reserves, are deployed in the two Amphan-affected states of Odisha and West Bengal,” he said. Meanwhile, the Regional Meteorological Centre at Alipore in Kolkata asked people in the city not to venture out and keep shops and other establishments closed on Wednesday. “From Wednesday morning, wind speed in Kolkata will be 75-85 kmph. When the cyclone makes landfall, the wind speed will increase from 110 kmph to 120 kmph. We are issuing an advisory that there should be no movement of people in the city,” Dy. Director General of Meteorology, Regional Meteorological Centre, Alipore, Sanjib Bandyopadhyay said. Covid Watch: Numbers and Developments India’s Covid-19 case load has crossed the 1 lakh mark, with the number now standing at 1,05,514. The death toll has increased to 3,216. The Health Ministry today said that India has so far averaged 0.2 COVID-19 deaths per lakh population, as against the global average of 4.1. We must add here that the Health Ministry has not held a full briefing on the COVID-19 situation for a week now, and these numbers are being conveyed through press releases. Meanwhile public transport resumed in Karnataka and Delhi today, with buses, autos, and cabs plying after a gap of nearly two months. There were, however, restrictions on the number of passengers — 20 and 30 per bus respectively in Delhi and Karnataka — and wearing of masks was mandatory. Setback for Oxford vaccine A candidate for a vaccine that is being tested at Oxord University failed to protect monkeys from being infected by the virus. However, the test animals appeared to show immunity against pneumonia. [The vaccine candidate, ChAdOx1 nCoV-19](, is a weakened form of the common cold virus (adenovirus) that affects chimpanzees. The vaccine’s early promise had led to Indian vaccine manufacturer, the Pune-based Serum Institute, announcing plans to manufacture four to five million doses by end-May in India. However, detailed results of the trials in monkeys available on pre-print server bioRxiv suggest that the vaccine may not be the panacea for COVID-19. The research paper is yet to be peer-reviewed. Militants killed in encounter Two Hizbul Mujahideen militants, including the son of a separatist leader, were killed in an encounter in Srinagar on Tuesday, the Jammu and Kashmir Police said. The two militants have been identified as Junaid Ahmed Sehrai, the son of Tehreek-e-Hurriyat chairperson Mohammed Ashraf Sehrai, and Tariq Ahmed Sheikh, one of the outfit’s top commanders. Four road accidents in two days Abour 18 migrant workers were killed in four separate road accidents late last night and early today morning in U.P., Maharashtra and Bihar. In Uttar Pradesh, five migrant workers were killed in two separate accidents last night, while four migrant workers died today morning in another road accident in Maharashtra’s Yavatmal district. At least nine migrant workers perished after a truck collided with a bus in Bhagalpur, Bihar. Congress, BJP spar over buses for labourers The Congress and the BJP government in Uttar Pradesh on Tuesday continued to spar over the issue of [providing buses for stranded migrant workers](and exchanged a volley of claims and allegations. After the Congress claimed on Monday that it had sent the State government a list of 1,000 buses along with driver details, the U.P. government accused the party of including details of three-wheelers, ambulances, and goods carriers in the list. “They have no sensitivity or sense of service towards the migrant workers,” a U.P. government spokesperson told journalists. The U.P. Congress, however, has said the list was authentic and accused a few BJP leaders and a TV channel of spreading fake news. Evening Wrap will return tomorrow. 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