The great pandemic: a quick update
- First, the numbers. India added 1,79,339 new cases on Sunday—taking the total to over 700,000. Kolkata has the highest positivity rate at 55%—which is the percentage of Covid tests that turn up positive.
- Mumbai registered the highest number of cases last week with 86,000 cases. But Chennai and Bangalore experienced the sharpest jump—400% and 350%, respectively.
- The good news: the data shows no related spike in demand for oxygen or ventilators.
- According to an IIT-Kanpur professor, the third wave will peak in mid-January with 800,000 cases a day.
- Meanwhile, the Chinese city of Tianjin is planning to test its 14 million residents within the next 48 hours after the discovery of a cluster of cases. Two of the 20 discovered are linked to Omicron.
- Indian hospitals are reeling with Omicron spreading among their ranks. At least 750 doctors at Delhi’s top hospitals have tested positive. Also infected: 400 parliamentary staffers—creating chaos for the parliamentary budget session scheduled for the last week in January.
- Also feeling the pandemic effect: Airlines—with domestic air travel falling sharply over the past two weeks. IndiGo has now cut 20% of its scheduled flights.
- We have no clue how serious this is but a professor in Cyprus has discovered a new variant that may be a demonic love child of Delta and Omicron—and he has dubbed it Deltacron—due to “the identification of omicron-like genetic signatures within the delta genomes.” Bloomberg News has this exclusive.
- On Friday, 173 members on a Rome-Amritsar chartered flight tested positive. This is after 125 passengers travelling to the city from Milan did the same. It turns out there may be a problem with the lab that sent back the results—with many passengers testing negative in a fresh test taken just hours later. NDTV has more.
- Nine cities in China have detected traces of the virus on dragon fruit imported from Vietnam and the longan fruit from Thailand since December. Despite little evidence people can catch Covid-19 from food, supermarkets have temporarily shut down in these regions.
- Citigroup announced that it will fire all unvaccinated employees at the end of the month unless special circumstances merit an exemption.
- The big scandal in Canada is about a bunch of party animals who chartered a flight to Cancun, Mexico—and behaved like, well, party animals on the plane. The videos went viral and now many airlines are refusing to transport them back home. So most of them are stranded in Mexico.
- The 84-year-old man who openly admitted to getting 11 doses of the Covid vaccine has now been booked for cheating.
Kazakhstan in upheaval
At least 164 people have been killed and more than 5,000 detained during violent protests—which were initially sparked by anger over rising fuel prices. The protests have transformed into a broader uprising against the rule of President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev. A state of emergency has been declared—and the entire cabinet has resigned. Russian-led “peacekeeping" forces have been rushed in to help Tokayev—and plan to remain in the country until the situation is “fully stabilized.” (CNN)
Elections are coming!
The Election Commission has announced the dates for polls in five states—to be held between February 10 and March 7. The dates are as follows: Uttar Pradesh: February 10, 14, 20, 23 and 27, March 3 and 7; Manipur: February 27 and March 3; Punjab, Uttarakhand and Goa: February 14, 2022. Also, the EC has finally woken up to the Omicron wave—and declared there will be “no roadshow, padyatra, cycle/ bike/ vehicle rally and procession” nor any “physical rally” until January 15 (because one week is all it takes to beat the wave?).
In any case, everyone other than the BJP is upset because all campaigning will have to take place online—where the saffron party has a clear advantage. And as Indian Express notes, CM Yogi Adityanath has already got all his rallies in 250 constituencies out of the way. Also read: The Hindu on why these five elections will have a huge impact on Indian politics. (The Telegraph)
The Djokovic saga continues
Defending champion Novak Djokovic was given a medical exemption so he could play the Australian Open. No one knew why. Then when he landed in Australia, his visa was revoked. But no one knew why. He has now been detained in a hotel—and challenged his deportation in an Australian court. So we finally have some answers thanks to legal documents:
- An unvaccinated Djoko got an exemption from the tournament organisers on December 30 because he tested positive for Covid on December 16.
- But before that—on December 7—organisers also told participants that a confirmed infection in the last six months would be valid grounds for a “medical exemption.”
- That’s a bit odd since the Australian government clearly informed the Open’s director in November that a previous Covid infection does not qualify anyone for an exemption.
To put a cherry on this entire mess, we now have photos of an unmasked Covid-positive Djoko participating in a panel—and posing with fans—after he tested positive. And the whole thing has turned into an international incident. Fans are staging protest rallies outside his hotel room, and the Serbian ministry insists he was “lured to Australia … to be humiliated.” And the Oz government is threatening to re-cancel his visa and detain him again—even if Djoko wins in court. (CNN)
Speaking of sports: The Cricket Board of Sri Lanka now expects any player quitting international cricket to give a three-month notice—and wait for six months after retirement to play in any T-20 league. (NDTV)
Reliance gets fancy NYC digs
The company is planning to buy the Mandarin Oriental—a luxury hotel in New York—for $98.15 million, or Rs 72.94 billion (7,294 crore). This isn’t the company’s first foray into the hotel biz. It already owns 18.83% of EIH Ltd—which is the parent company of the Oberoi chain. And it owns Stoke Park—a country club and luxury golf resort in the UK. (The Telegraph)
Dileep faces new charges
Last week, we looked at the case of a Malayali actor who was allegedly gang-raped on the orders of the superstar Dileep (our Big Story is here). The Kerala police has now booked him on fresh charges—of trying to murder the officers investigating his case. (Indian Express)
Ashneer Grover’s big meltdown
The BharatPe founder raged at an employee of Kotak bank–calling Sushruta Arora a ‘bhen****’, threatening to have him killed in an ‘encounter’. The audio went viral, Grover claimed it was fake—but then deleted his claim from his social media handles. Now, the audio has disappeared as well.
- The incident has since been confirmed by Mint—which says the trigger for the rage was a loan Kotak was supposed to advance Grover to buy Nykaa shares–which is common with high net worth individuals. But that loan was never approved.
- MoneyControl also revealed that Grover previously sent a legal notice to Kotak– asking for compensation for “damages for the gains Grover and his wife would have made after subscribing to shares worth Rs 500 crore in the company besides Rs 1 lakh towards the cost of the legal notice.”
- Kotak then sent a response that has now been shared widely saying, “This notice was received by us and was replied to appropriately at the time, including placing on record our objections to inappropriate language used by Mr Grover. Appropriate legal action is being pursued.”
So let’s review. A very rich person thinks a bank should lend him money so he can become an even richer person—and owes him damages if it doesn’t? And its employees should be threatened with ‘encounter killings’ if they didn’t make it happen? Wow, this guy makes Nirav Modi look good.
Indian digital media vs Google
The antitrust body Competition Commision of India has ordered an investigation into Google thanks to a complaint filed by digital news arms of the biggest media companies—as in India Today, NDTV, The Indian Express, Times of India etc. Their grouse:
“[M]ajority of the traffic on news websites comes from online search engines, wherein Google is the most dominant search engine and consequently gets to decide the share of ad revenues to be paid to digital news publishers.”
Basically, Google decides how much traffic a news site receives thanks to its algorithm—and decides what share of that ad revenue it will take for that traffic. Indian Express has more details.
A big competitive exam scam
We missed this one last week, but it’s an astonishing story. The Delhi police have busted a gang that helped candidates cheat on a variety of competitive exams—ranging from the US MBA entrance test GMAT to the engineering college JEE test. And they did it with help from Russian hackers. The Print has the exclusive.
Meet a plant named Leo
The first newly identified plant has been named after none other than Leonardo DiCaprio. The critically endangered species—now called Uvariopsis dicaprio—is an evergreen tree native to Cameroon, has glossy, yellow-green leaves, and rises up to 13 ft. So why Leo? His activism helped save the forest of Ebo where this plant grows. Below is a vid with more on the forest. (Smithsonian Magazine)
Two cool animal things
One: We think that most things we say to our dogs are mostly gibberish—except they apparently know when we switch languages. So saying ‘sapadu’ is not the same thing as ‘khana’ or ‘food’ or ‘gobbledygook’ for your pooch—as a study using MRI scans shows:
“Sure enough, the brain scans showed different activity patterns in the primary auditory cortex when nonsense words were spoken than when natural speech occurred. It also showed unique areas of the brain became active when an unknown language was spoken versus when familiar speech was heard.”
Two: Moving on to goldfish, did you know they can drive? A study tested their navigation skills on dry land. Scientists used a fish-operated vehicle (FOV) with special software and a motion-sensing camera to test six goldish who were trained in “driving school.” The video is below. Smithsonian has details of the experiment.
Three things to see
One: Here’s where we are now. Crowds of Hindus taking an oath to boycott all Muslim businesses in Chattisgarh. The Print has the unhappy details.
Two: Sarah Jessica Parker in a saree…oh no, it’s a lehenga—as she prepares to attend a big fat Diwali party. Yeah, we are so fricking diverse that we don’t want to confuse white audiences between one item of Indian apparel and another. Arushi Sinha in Vogue offers an excellent takedown of this absurd episode of ‘And Just Like That…’.
Three: Kate Middleton turned 40—and decided to totally channel her princess status by releasing three Disney-esque portraits of herself. Umm, who else is getting bored of these English royals? (People)