MONTH THAT WAS

Nepal detains 100 docs with bogus degrees

Patna: The matriculation and intermediate examinations results racket which led to the arrest of then chairman & secretary of the Bihar School Examination Board and 20 others, including five principals of colleges and toppers of the examinations has its immediate effect on the neighbouring Nepal where over 100 doctors have been detained by Nepal’s top crime investigation Bureau on charges of having fake mark sheets and certificates issued by BSEB.

Those detained include six women doctors. The doctors employed in government hospitals in Nepal had reportedly obtained certificates from BSEB as they claimed they had appeared at the examinations conducted by the board at the schools in bordering East Champaran, West Champaran, Shivhar, Araria, Madhubani, Darbhanga, Kishanganj and Sitamarhi in Bihar.

The doctors’ arrests started from Birgunj on Indo-Nepal border when the Nepal’s investigation agency got inputs that many doctors of Bihar origin were practicing there. 

Police had arrested 36 government doctors, including six women. The Nepal Medical Associations’ Birgunj unit filed a habeas corpus petition before the Nepal Supreme Court which on June 29 declined to give relief to the doctors and dismissed their writ petitions. Court directed the Nepal CIB to proceed with the probe against the doctors having certificates issued by Bihar board.

Nepal’s CIB told the court there were 3,000 doctors practicing in Nepal with BSEB mark-sheets and certificates.

With BSEB certificates, Nepalese citizens got admissions in different medical colleges in India under Nepal quota and got jobs there.

Hospital on Wheels: Silver Jubilee

The lifeline Express, the world’s first hospital train, completed 25 years of its journey. The train, started on July 16, 1991, was aimed at providing medical care to those living in rural and inaccessible areas.

To mark the occasion, a commemorative function was held at the Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus here, and was attending by G C Agarwal, general manager, Central and Western railway; and RC Sarin, chairman, and Zelma Lazarus, chief executive officer, Impact India Foundation.

The Lifeline Express, a joint venture of the Indian Railways and Impact India Foundation, had been serving the country for two decades against avoidable disablement. Till date, it has provided services to more than 5 lakh people in far-flung areas where medical facilities are almost non-existent. 

Between Russia &    China- A Bridge too far!

Nizhneleninskoye, (Russia): Trumpeted for the past decade as an emblem of Russia’s destiny as an Asian as well as a European power, the huge steel bridge thrusts out from the Chinese side of the Amur River, stretching more than a mile across the turbid waters that divide the world’s most populous nation from its biggest.

Then something strange happens: The bridge abruptly stops, hanging in the air high above the river just short of the Russian shore at Nizhneleninskoye, a remote frontier settlement nearly 4,000 miles from Moscow.

The gap between the bridge and the riverbank left by Russia’s failure to build its own, much shorter share of the project exposes the reality behind the pledges of an ever closer Russian-Chinese partnership made when President Vladimir Putin met in Beijing last month with China’s president and Communist Party chief, Xi Jinping. It was their 15th meeting.

United by a shared distaste for Western models of democracy, wariness of U.S. power and eagerness to find new sources of growth, Russia and China have never been closer, at least at the leadership level. With each meeting, leaders produce numerous agreements for joint projects and pledges to support a Russian “pivot to Asia,” an eastward shift in economic and political focus championed by Putin since his relations with the West soured over Ukraine in 2014.

The unfinished rail bridge across the Amur River, however, offers a more realistic picture of the chasm separating what the Russian foreign minister, Sergey Lavrov, recently described as the “truly inexhaustible potential” of Moscow’s “strategic partnership” with Beijing and the reality of unfulfilled promises and thwarted hopes.

Once completed, the bridge would slash the cost of transporting iron ore mined in Russia to China, cutting the journey to a big Chinese steel mill to just 145 miles, from 646.

The only sign of construction in Nizhneleninskoye on a recent afternoon was a group of border guards from Russia’s Federal Security Service, digging with their bare hands and a shovel near a security fence.

Russian officials insist that construction work is about to start and that the bridge will be ready to carry rail traffic within two years or so a decade after the Russian and Chinese governments agreed to proceed on the project.

430 mtr glass bridge above 300mtrs

Beijing: Chinese officials successfully drove a two-tonne truck onto the world’s longest and highest glass bridge in China’s central Hunan province to conduct a safety test ahead of its scheduled opening next month. To further convince the public of the sturdiness of the 430-meter bridge tucked between two steep cliffs at Zhangjiajie which is 300 meters above the ground, 20 volunteers used hammers to try to smash the glass, before an all-terrain vehicle carried 11 volunteers across the cracking glass.

Another team of 10 volunteers then tried again to smash the glass. Despite some fractures on the surface, the glass did not break, state-run Xinhua news agency reported. The bridge is made of three layers of the tempered glass, all together 99 pieces, each of 3 by 4.5 meters and 15 mm thick. Damaged pieces can be removed and changed. The unique pillar-like mountain formation in Zhangjiajie appeared in the Hollywood blockbuster movie ‘Avatar’. The Grand Canyon Scenic Area in Zhangjiajie received more than 1.2 million visitors from home and abroad last year. Last year a big throng of tourists had a fright of their life when a newly-built glass bridge built on the cliff of high-mountain in Henan province in China cracked setting off panic among the crowd. Hundreds of tourists flocked to that glass bridge at the Yuntai Mountain walkway which developed cracks under the weight of huge crowd. Meanwhile, China warned people to be aware of what it said are nefarious motives of the Dalai Lama after he met with Lady Gaga on a trip to the US and spoke about love and compassion. “The purpose of his visits and activities in other countries is just to promote his proposal for Tibetan independence,” Foreign Ministry spokesman Hong Lei stated.

When you buy liquor: This will happen

The main accused in the spurious liquor tragedy has been arrested even as the death toll from the alcohol poisoning climbed to 21.

The main accused Sripal was arrested from Nayagaon area last night, Superintendent of Police Ajay Shankar Rai said.

The incident happened, when several people from Luhari Darwaja and adjacent Laukhera village consumed spurious liquor and were taken ill.

Fourteen people died last night.

"Twenty one persons have died so far in the liquor tragedy," District Magistrate Ajay Yadav said. Five government employees, including three from the excise department, have been suspended following the incident.

Twelve other persons were taken ill after drinking the hooch. Of them, six have lost their sight, locals claimed.

Yadav has said said that an ex-gratia amount of Rs 2 lakh each would given to the families of the deceased and asserted that action will be taken against liquor mafias.

Rs 20 crore a day : Punjab Drug Bill

New Delhi: Even as the Punjab Government tried to deny the drug menace in the state, its own health department was involved in a shocking survey by the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) showing the problem much worse than one projected in the Shahid Kapoor- starrer Bollywood movie Udta Punjab.

The survey put the daily spend of the opioid dependents in the state to Rs 20 crore that works out to Rs 7,300 crore per annum in buying the drugs in the state. The report of the survey conducted during 2014 has come at a time when the Congress has mounted a state-wide campaign against the Akali DAl-BJP government for doing nothing to control the drug menace ruining most of the youths in the state.

Chief Minister Parkash Singh Badal has already condemned the study as an attempt to “malign” Punjab by blowing up the data collected in the “random samples.” The study was commissioned by the Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment and carried out by the Society for Promotion of Youth & Masses, the researchers from the AIIMS’ National Dependence Treatment Centre and the Punjab Health Department.

Punjab Congress President and former CM Captain Amarinder Singh asserted that the study is correct as it has been done by the country’s premier institute and that too with the collaboration of the state’s health department. “The Badals should take a dope test as they are the ones responsible for the problem,” he said. “The researchers spoke to 3,620 opioid (heroin) dependents across 10 districts and found that 70% of them were in the age group of 18 to 35 and 99% of them being married males,” the study report said. The survey was carried out in the districts of Jalandhar, Patiala, Kapurthala, Sangrur, Tarn Taran, Matiala, Moga, Ferozepur, Gurdaspur and Hoshiarpur, constituting 60% of the state’s population.

The study says 89% of the opioid dependents are literate and 21% of them farmers, 27% farm labourers and 15% businessmen.

Other 14% are transport workers moving on trucks and 13% skilled workers, while students and the government employees, including cops, constitute the remaining 10%.

Extrapolating the survey figures, the study claimed there are 8.6 lakh opioid users in Punjab, 2.33 lakh of whom have become dependents of heroin, the most widely used opioid in the state.  “Data suggests that among 18-35 age groups of men in Punjab, four in every 100 are opioid dependents and 15 of 100 could be opioid users,” the study said while hinting at a flourishing illegal opioid drug market in the state.

“On an average, a heroin using individual spends about Rs 1400 per day on drugs.

This figure is considerably lower for opium users (Rs 340 per day) an pharmaceutical opioid users (Rs 265 per day,” the study said.

The most commonly used drug in Punjab these days is heroin (53%), followed by opium which includes poppy husk (33%) and pharmaceutical opioid (14%).