Senior Congress leader Ghulam Nabi Azad retires from Rajya Sabha
•Prime Minister Narendra Modi bid an emotional farewell to the Leader of Opposition in Rajya Sabha Ghulam Nabi Azad, who is retiring from the House on February 15. The Congress stalwart has been in the Rajya Sabha for more than two decades.
•The Prime Minister was teary-eyed when he recalled his long association with the senior leader and his contribution to the country, the House and also his party.
•The Prime Minister said that person who will replace Ghulam Nabi ji as Leader of Opposition will have difficulty matching his work because he was not only concerned about his party but also about the country and the House.
•PM Modi recalled an incident where Azad's intervention led to the return of survivors and corpses of Gujarat residents who had faced a terrorist attack in Jammu and Kashmir.
•The 71-year-old veteran Congress leader said that he was among the fortunate people who never went to Pakistan and felt proud to be an Indian Muslim.
•He attributed his success to late Prime Ministers Indira Gandhi and Rajiv Gandhi, current Congress president Sonia Gandhi and Rahul Gandhi. He also praised late Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee for his ability to seek solutions by including everyone.
No sign of COVID-19 in Wuhan before December 2019: WHO Team
•WHO's international team of experts, who are currently investigating the origin of COVID-19 in Wuhan, have ruled out the Wuhan lab-leak theory propagated by former US President Donald Trump.
•The experts believe that the coronavirus disease, which has killed more than 2.3 million people across the world, originated in bats and could have been transmitted to humans through another mammal.
•WHO foreign expert Peter Ben Embarek said that the absence of bats in the Wuhan area have dimmed the likelihood of direct transmission. He added that identifying the animal pathway remains a "work in progress".
•He said that the virus "most likely" got transmitted from an intermediary species.
•The international team backed China's position that there was no evidence of "large outbreaks in Wuhan" before December when the first official cases have been recorded.
UAE, US and Chinese prepare to land missions on the Red Planet
•Three separate missions launched by the United States, United Arab Emirates and China are scheduled to enter Mars orbit this month. All three missions had taken flight within just 11 days of each other in 2020.
•All three missions have different aims and capabilities. While the US and Chinese missions plan to land exploratory rovers on Mars, the UAE is focused on surveying it from above through an orbiter.
•The UAE’s mission 'Al Amal' will be the first to arrive in Mars’s orbit on February 9, ushering in a new era of space exploration for the Gulf nation.
•Al Amal is the Arabic word for “hope”. The orbiter will spend 687 days — a period equivalent to one year on Mars — gathering information on the Martian atmosphere and surveying the planet’s weather patterns throughout its four seasons.
New Zealand suspends ties with Myanmar
•New Zealand's Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern on February 9, 2021 announced the suspension of ties with Myanmar. Ardern said that the government will suspend all high-level political and military contact with Myanmar.
•New Zealand will also impose a travel ban on the military leaders of Myanmar and ensure its aid programme to the country will not include projects that benefit the military government.
•New Zealand's Foreign Minister Nanaia Mahuta said in a separate statement that New Zealand does not recognise the legitimacy of the military-led government and called on the military to immediately release all detained political leaders and restore civilian rule.
Comments
All Comments (0)
Join the conversation