SAMBALPUR l saturday l march 02, 2024 l `9.00 l PAGES 16 l CITY EDITION Google removes popular apps from play store over fee row Ten companies avoided paying fees The search giant on Friday started removing a few Indian apps from its Play Store for not paying platform fees. Google did not name them Dark day for net, says matrimony.com Google said many well-established Indian companies avoided paying fees despite benefiting from the platform. It wants companies using its Play Store to use its billing facility and remove other third party payment services. Google charges between 11%-26% as fee. Earlier a few companies protested, went to the Supreme Court, but did not get interim relief | P14 ■ ■ Matrimony.com founder Murugavel Janakiraman said the move was a ‘dark day’ for Internet in India. Kuku FM co-founder Vinod Kumar Meena said that Google was behaving like a ‘monopoly’ Internet and Mobile Association of India said as the case is pending before the Supreme Court, Google should not take coercive action 2,00,000 indian developers use Google’s play store CHENNAI ■ MADURAI ■ VIJAYAWADA ■ BENGALURU ■ KOCHI ■ HYDERABAD ■ VISAKHAPATNAM ■ COIMBATORE ■ KOZHIKODE ■ THIRUVANANTHAPURAM ■ BELAGAVI ■ BHUBANESWAR ■ SHIVAMOgGA ■ MANGALURU ■ TIRUPATI ■ TIRUCHY ■ TIRUNELVELI ■ SAMBALPUR ■ HUBBALLI ■ DHARMAPURI ■ KOTTAYAM ■ KANNUR ■ VILLUPURAM ■ KOLLAM ■ TADEPALLIGUDEM ■ NAGAPATTINAM ■ THRISSUR ■ KALABURAGI Indiranagar Odisha to count leopards too as spots show sharp decline Hoodi Doddanekundi BENGALURU E x p r e s s N e w s Se r v i c e @ Bhubaneswar Brookefield bomb explosion site The Rameswaram Cafe in Bengaluru moments after it was rocked by a low-intensity bomb explosion on Friday, as captured in CCTV | PTI Bomb explosion in popular B’luru cafe leaves 10 injured Low-intensity ied used suspect dropped bomb-laden bag in cafe and left multiple teams formed to catch the culprit P r av een K u m a r @ Bengaluru TEN persons were injured as a low-intensity improvised explosive device (IED) went off at The Rameshwaram Cafe, a popular restaurant located in Kundalahalli on the ITPL Main Road in Bengaluru, on Friday at around 1 pm. There were no fatalities, but an injured woman has sustained 40% burns. According to police, a person came to the restaurant carrying an IED-laden bag and dropped it there. The explosion happened an hour later. The device is said to have been kept in a tiffin carrier inside a bag. The suspect took the token from the cashier and ate in the restaurant. He, then, placed the bag near the wash basin area and left. An hour later, it exploded, leaving 10 people, including customers and restaurant staff, injured. Panic gripped Green Avenue opposite Kundalahalli Colony, where the restaurant is located, as people ran helter-skelter. The CCTV footage showed two Expect warmer summer this year, says IMD j i ten d r a c h o u b e y @ New Delhi Most parts of the country are likely to witness a warmer start to the summer this year because of El Niño, the India Meteorological Department (IMD) predicted on Friday. The country may witness above normal maximum and minimum temperatures in most parts between March and May, IMD Director General Mrutyunjay Mohapatra said. Telangana, Andhra Pradesh, parts of Karnataka, Maharashtra and Odisha may witness more heatwaves and higher temperatures than normal. But heatwave conditions are not expected over north and central India in March, he said. El Niño refers to the unusual warming of surface waters in the eastern Pacific Ocean. In India, El Niño is known for weaker monsoon. However, IMD expects a transition to neutral conditions from El Niño by the beginning of the monsoon season, which may bring more rains during t h e s o u t h we s t m o n s o o n . March will be hotter and is likely to receive above normal rainfall due to western disturbances. That could be a boon for the rabi wheat crop. A total of eight western disturbances—cyclonic storms originating in the Mediterranean region—brought rain and snow to the western Himalayan states for three days in the winter. it crowd On Friday, there was a smaller crowd at the restaurant compared to Saturdays and Sundays. Most customers were IT professionals who had come for lunch. The 46-year-old woman who got 40% burns, Swarnamba, is an employee of an IT firm in the city explosions within a few seconds apart. Initially it was sus, pected to be a blast due to a leaking LPG cylinder. However, after a thorough examination of the blast site, experts from the Bomb Detection & Disposal Squad and the Forensic Science Laboratory declared it a bomb blast as all the LPG cylinders were intact. Deputy Chief Minister D K Shivakumar, who visited the spot with Home Minister G Paramaeshwara, said the suspect, aged 30-35 years, came in a bus. He ordered a plate of Rava Idli and ate it, before drop- ping his bag and leaving. Alok Mohan, Director General & Inspector General of Police of Karnataka, said Central agencies including the National Investigation Agency and Intelligence Bureau have been roped in for the investigation. The explosion site was filled with nuts and bolts and blood stains as several were injured. The roof of the restaurant was completely damaged. Smoke was visible for 500 metres. A woman sustained severe burns in the blast. Two senior citizens sustained injuries after broken glass pieces of the restaurant hit them. A restaurant worker also sustained injuries. All the injured are undergoing treatment in nearby private hospitals. Ramesh, a security guard at the restaurant, told TNIE that the explosion was so loud that he lost hearing for some time. “The sound was unbearable. I saw people running helter-skelter. The blast happened near the wash basin area, behind the hotel.” We have clues about the suspect and 7-8 Crime Branch teams have been formed. The culprit will be nabbed soon —D K Shivakumar, deputy CM No gas leak: Cafe Ruling out gas leak, the cafe’s MD Divya Raghavendra Rao said the cylinders are kept inside the kitchen. She said there was no lapse in security measures Rejecting married daughter’s claim for job on compassionate ground against Constitition: HC E x p r e s s N e w s Se r v i c e @ Cuttack The Orissa High Court has held that rejection of an application of a married daughter for compassionate appointment under Rehabilitation Assistance Scheme is plainly arbitrary and violates fundamental rights guaranteed under Articles 14, 15, and 16(2) of the Constitution of India. The court said, “The yardstick for extending the benefit of compassionate appointment should be dependency of the dependents on the deceased government servant and the marital status of dependent should not be an impediment for his/her consideration on compassionate ground to provide support to suffering family on account of loss of an ear ning member in the family .” The single judge bench of Justice SK Panigrahi passed the ruling in a judgment in the case of one Seemarani Pandab who had applied for appointment under the Rehabilitation Assistance Scheme against her deceased father. Her father had died while in service as PET in CRS High School at Tihidi in Bhadrak district. The authorities had rejected her application citing an August 30, 2010 government circular which prohibits married daughters from availing the benefit of such recruitment on compassionate grounds. While Seemarani had challenged it, advocate Chiranjeev Bidyabhushan presented arguments on her behalf. Justice Panigrahi set aside the order rejecting her application and directed for considering the application from the day her application was considered for the first time in 2013. “Since about eleven years have passed when the applicant applied for appointment under Rehabilitation Assistance Scheme and many years have been spent in litigation, in the interest of justice and fair play, the age of the petitioner shall not be a factor to consider her for a suitable job,” Justice Panigrahi directed in the order. He further observed that a daughter after her marriage does not cease to be the child of the father or mother and is obliged to maintain their parents. A daughter cannot be allowed to escape her responsibility on the ground that she is now married. “Therefore, such a policy of the state government disqualifying, a ‘married’ daughter and excluding her from consideration apart from being arbitrary and discriminating is a retrograde step of state government as welfare state, on which stamp of approval cannot be made by this court,” he ruled. express read New ISBT befitting tribute to Babasaheb: Naveen Bhubaneswar: In a major boost to state’s transport infrastructure, Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik inaugurated the much-awaited Dr Babasaheb Bhimrao Ambedkar Bus Terminal (BSABT) at Baramunda here on Friday. The chief minister termed the swanky facility as a befitting tribute from people of Odisha to Babasaheb, the father of the Indian Constitution, on 75 years of the nation’s independence | P4 Days after releasing state’s own tiger estimation report, the Odisha government hinted that it may conduct a leopard enumeration exercise to ascertain exact population of the big cats in the region. It came a day after the Status of Leopard in India 2022 report stated that leopard population in Odisha has recorded a ‘significant’ decline. As per the report, the total number of leopards in the state stands at 568 - around 192 less than the previous count of 760 in 2018. The decline in leopard numbers comes in the midst of an uptick in leopard poaching in the state. In the last six years, more than 100 leopard skins have been seized by multiple enforcement agencies, pointing at rampant poaching and slackened conservation and enforcement. In fact, the Special Task Force of Crime Branch seized about 57 leopard skins between 2019 and 2014 whereas Forest department reported seizure of 59 hides during the 2018-2023 period. This indicated that the actual rate of poaching and smuggling could be higher. The national report revealed leopard presence was not recorded in Nayagarh and Ghumsur forest divisions in the latest cycle of monitoring. In fact, leopard distribution in Odisha is now mostly concentrated in Similipal and Satkosia tiger reserves and Hirakud, Kotagarh, Khalasuni wildlife sanctuaries.The report indicated that leopard density in both Similipal and Satkosia tiger reserve has recorded a significant CONTINUED ON P7 increase. Modi raps Mamata over Sandeshkhali P r a n a b M o n d a l @ Kolkata In a scathing attack on the ruling Trinamool Congress and its chief Mamata Banerjee at a rally on Friday Prime , Minister Narendra Modi alleged that they were insensitive to the atrocities and sexual assault on women in Sandeshkhali. “The entire nation is in dismay, in anger over what happened with our mothers and sisters in Sandeshkhali,” he said. Without naming TMC strongman Shahjahan Sheikh, who was arrested on Thursday, Modi indicated that the Sandeshkhali stir by the local women will be the BJP’s key poll plank for the Lok Sabha elections. Urging the women electorate across the state to respond decisively against the heinous acts by TMC leaders in the North 24 Parganas island, Modi said, “Every injury inflicted by TMC leaders in Sandeshkhali must be replied with a vote.” Later in the day, Mamata met Modi at Raj Bhavan. “I met the PM as part of protocol and courtesy she said af,” ter the meeting. In his rally at Arambagh in Hooghly Modi gave credit for , Sheikh’s arrest to the BJP’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi speaks during a public rally at Arambagh in Hooghly district on Friday | PTI functionaries in the state, saying they kept up pressure on the Bengal police. “For Didi (Mamata), political allegiance of certain individuals is more important than addressing the atrocities against women in Sandeshkhali,” Modi charged. Highlighting the alleged corruption in the recruitment in schools, municipalities and distribution in foodgrain, Modi assured that the looters would have to pay back. “Lootnewalo ko lautana parega, Modi chod ne wala nehi hai (Looters will have to refund, otherwise Modi will not spare them),” he war ned. Modi spent the night at Raj Bhavan as he is scheduled to address another rally in Krishnagar, Nadia, on Saturday .
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