·       Thirteen civilians were killed by the security forces in an “ambush” in Nagaland’s Mon district .

·       The incident took place on evening, December 4, 2021, when the victims were returning home from a coal mine in a pick-up truck. They were daily wagers at the coal mine.

·       The Eastern Nagaland People’s Organisation (ENPO) decided to withdraw from the annual Hornbill Festival which is ongoing at Kisama near state capital Kohima.

·    The ENPO, which represents six tribes, had adopted a resolution earlier against bloodshed in its area.

·       The Army has owned responsibility for the killings of civilians in Nagaland’s Mon district  on December 5, 2021.

·    “Based on credible intelligence of likely movement of insurgents, a specific operation was planned to be conducted in the area of Tiru, Mon district, Nagaland… The incident and its aftermath are deeply regretted. The cause of the unfortunate loss of lives is being investigated at the highest level and appropriate action will be taken as per the course of law,” Nagaland’s Dimapur-based 3 Corps said in a statement.

 The Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan has assured Sri Lanka's President Gotabaya Rajapaksa that there will be no mercy to the mob which lynched Sri Lankan national Priyantha Kumara Diyawadana over allegations of blasphemy . Khan telephoned Rajapaksa and said that 113 people have been arrested so far .

Prime Minister Khan informed President Rajapaksa that Diyawadana, who had served in Pakistan for a long time, had shown a high level of professionalism as a manager.

In a shocking incident on Dec 3 , angry supporters of the hardline Islamist party Tehreek-e-Labbaik Pakistan (TLP) attacked a garment factory and lynched its general manager Diyawadana, who was in his 40s, before setting his body on fire over allegations of blasphemy.

As pressure mounted on the Pakistani government to bring the guilty to justice, over 800 people have been booked under terrorism charges while 13 prime suspects are among 118 arrested so far in the horrific lynching of the Sri Lankan national in Punjab province.

Diyawadana, a graduate from the University of Peradeniya, is survived by his wife and two children. He left for Pakistan for employment in 2010 and has been working as the manager of the Sialkot factory since 2012.

China on Friday, December 3, 2021, launched the first USD 6 billion cross-border train of its multi-billion-dollar Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) from Laos, which Beijing says will help the small and only landlocked country in South East Asia turn into a land-linked hub, boost regional connectivity and supply chain resilience.

Chinese President Xi Jinping and his Laos' counterpart Thongloun Sisoulith jointly witnessed the opening of the China-Laos railway via video link on Friday, December 3, 2021.

The first train of the China-Laos Railway left Vientiane soon after the cross-border railway was officially put into operation, the state-run Xinhua news agency reported.

Besides China, Laos shares borders with Vietnam, Thailand, Myanmar and Cambodia which offered Beijing to extend the train project to those countries.

Laos is the only landlocked country in South East Asia.

Like China, which is ruled by the Communist Party, it is a one-party socialist republic governed by the Lao People's Revolutionary Party.

The 1,035-km electrified passenger and cargo railway, connecting Kunming in southwest China's Yunnan Province with Laos' capital Vientiane, fully adopts Chinese technical standards and consists of two sections, the report said.

Construction of the section in Laos from the border town of Boten to Vientiane started in December 2016, and construction of the section in China from the city of Yuxi to the border town of Mohan started in December 2015.

As a docking project between the China-proposed BRI and Laos' strategy to convert itself from a landlocked country into a land-linked hub, the railway is of great significance to bilateral economic, social and cultural exchanges as well as the regional connectivity, the report said.

With a maximum operating speed of 160-km per hour, the travel time from Kunming to Vientiane takes about 10 hours, including customs clearance time.

The railway is one of hundreds of projects under China's BRI to build ports, railways and other facilities across Asia, Africa and the Pacific.

This is the first cross-border project under the BRI, China's multibillion-dollar project in different countries with Chinese investments enhancing Beijing's global influence.

Billed as a showpiece of Laos' participation in the BRI, the railway has 11 stations on the Chinese section and 10 on the 409-kilometer Laos section.

The railway will shorten travel between Vientiane and the China-Laos border from two days to just three hours, and the trip from Vientiane to Kunming can be done overnight.

China believes that the railway could help Laos turn its strategy of turning from a landlocked country to a land-linked hub into reality, boost regional connectivity and supply chain resilience, and make contributions to regional development and prosperity, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin told the media here earlier this week.

The railway will also establish a rapid transit and commercial link between the Southeast Asian country and China, the world's second-largest economy, powering Laos' economic growth, a report in the state-run Global Times said.

A pet initiative of President Xi, the BRI was launched in 2013 to fund infrastructure projects in the world, taking advantage of China's massive USD 3.

21 trillion forex reserves to further Beijing's global influence.

Since then, the USD 60 billion China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) connecting China's Xinjiang with Pakistan's Gwadar Port has emerged as the flagship project over which India has raised protests as it is being laid through Pakistan-occupied Kashmir.

However, the lack of transparency of the BRI agreements and mounting debt to China by smaller countries have raised global concerns.

The 99-year lease of the Hambantota port in Sri Lanka to China has raised red flags about the downside of the BRI and Beijing's push for major infrastructure projects costing billions of dollars in smaller countries.

Since then, the USD 60 billion China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) connecting China's Xinjiang with Pakistan's Gwadar Port has emerged as the flagship project over which India has raised protests as it is being laid through Pakistan-occupied Kashmir.

However, the lack of transparency of the BRI agreements and mounting debt to China by smaller countries have raised global concerns.

The 99-year lease of the Hambantota port in Sri Lanka to China has raised red flags about the downside of the BRI and Beijing's push for major infrastructure projects costing billions of dollars in smaller countries.

·       The government has informed that the coal production from captive mines during this year till November has already reached around 50 million tonne and is likely to touch 85 MT during the current financial year (FY22). It also mentioned it is significantly higher than last year achievement of 62 MT.

·       This achievement, the government claims, will further fulfil the vision of Aatmanirbhar Bharat in domestic coal production.

·       Union Labour Minister Bhupender Yadav on  December 4, 2021, launched an annual preventive health check-up programme for Employees' State Insurance Corporation's insured members aged 40 years and above in pilot mode at ESI hospitals in Ahmedabad, Faridabad, Hyderabad and Kolkata.

·       Besides, in the ESIC's 186th meeting chaired by Yadav, a proposal was also cleared for the construction of a 500-bed ESIC Hospital at Gurugram (Manesar) for the expansion of services of the existing 100-bed hospital.

·       The minister also informed that this pilot would be further expanded in coming days with the increase in the number of IPs to five crores with implementation of Social Security Code.

·       The minister said the ESIC also wants to improve its hospitals to super speciality ones so that referral to others can be reduced in the coming days.

·       The minister also talked about roll out of a mobile app 'Santusht' for ESIC beneficiaries for improving the delivery of services.

·       Yadav further said that the construction of two ESIC hospitals at Bihta in Patna and Alwar in Rajasthan has been completed and soon these would be inaugurated.

·       The ESIC has  approved proposal and process of acquisition of identified land for construction of 100-bed ESIC Hospital at Meerut.

·       It also approved taking over of the state government-run ESIC Hospital, Tinsukia, Assam by the ESIC.

·       The ESIC also approved acquisition of land for proposed 30-bed ESIC Hospital at Atchutapuram, Visakhapatnam, Andhra Pradesh.

·       ESIC also approved setting up of a Sub-Regional Office (SRO) of ESIC at Jharsuguda in Odisha.The ESI Scheme is implemented in 24 districts of the State.

·       The ESIC also relaxed the contributory condition in the ESIC COVID-19 Relief Scheme.

·       In order to provide help and succour to the families of the IPs who died due to COVID-19, the ESIC COVID-19 Relief Scheme was introduced.

·       This contributory condition of payment of 70 days contribution is proposed to be relaxed to an extant that contributions for at least 35 days should have been paid instead of 70 days.

AHMEDABAD: People in India are in "extreme pain" and the economy is still below the 2019 levels, Nobel laureate economist Abhijit Banerjee said on Saturday.

He was virtually addressing students of Ahmedabad University during the varsity's 11th annual convocation which was also held online.

Sharing his observations from a recent visit to West Bengal, Banerjee, speaking from the US, said "small aspirations" of people have become even smaller now.

"You (students) are in a place where you can give back. Society really needs it. We are in a time of extreme pain in India."

"I just spent some time in rural West Bengal and stories you hear about, you know, all the aspirations that have been a little bit dashed are very real small aspirations which became smaller now," he said.

"I think that we are in a moment of great pain. The economy is still well below as against what it was in 2019," Banerjee said."

"We don't know how much below, but it is substantially below. And I am not blaming anybody, I am just saying," said the economist who won the Nobel Prize along with Esther Duflo and Michael Kremer in 2019.

He also urged the students not to succumb to pressure from family or society in choosing their career paths, but have the "courage" to do what they really want to do in life.

He also informed the audience that he had spent 10 days in Tihar jail during his student days at Jawaharlal Nehru University, Delhi.

"When I was about to leave JNU and go to Harvard, I was in a student demonstration and then I was taken to Tihar jail, and kept there for ten days. When I came out, lots of elders told me that I have ruined my career, and Harvard or the US will never let you in. They thought I should be regretful," he said.

To make his point about choosing careers, Banerjee pointed out that two of India's great film-makers - Satyajit Ray and Shyam Benegal - were economics graduates but chose to walk a different path.

"Yet, they did fine in life. So, instead of specific training, what is really important is that you are a lively, thoughtful and open human being. That's the most important part," he said.

During the convocation, 833 students, including four doctoral students, of the private varsity were conferred degrees.

WASHINGTON: Eminent Indian-American mathematician Nikhil Srivastava, has been jointly selected for the inaugural USD 5,000 Ciprian Foias Prize for the "highly original work" in Operator Theory by the American Mathematical Society (AMS).

Along with Srivastava, who teaches at the University of California, Berkeley, the two other awardees are Adam Marcus and Daniel Spielman.

Marcus holds the Chair of Combinatorial Analysis at the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) in Switzerland.

Spielman is Sterling Professor of Computer Science, a professor of statistics and data science, and a professor of mathematics.

The award recognises their "highly original work" that introduced and developed methods for understanding the characteristic polynomial of matrices, namely the iterative sparsification method (also in collaboration with Batson) and the method of interlacing polynomials, according to a media release.

"Together, these ideas provided a powerful toolkit with many applications, notably in the trio's breakthrough paper 'Interlacing families II: mixed characteristic polynomials and the Kadison-Singer problem' (Annals of Mathematics, 2015), which solves the famous 'paving problem' in operator theory, formulated by Richard Kadison and Isadore Singer in 1959," AMS said.

In a joint statement, the three awardees said they wish to accept it on behalf of the many people whose work contributed to the resolution of the Kadison-Singer problem.

"Our involvement was the final chapter of an amazing story we hope will inspire similar solutions to difficult problems in the future," they said.

The prize will be presented to Professor Srivastava and his colleagues on January 5 next year at the 2022 Joint Mathematics Meeting in Seattle, described as "the largest mathematics gathering in the world."

The Ciprian Foias Prize is the third major prize won by Srivastava, who earlier jointly won the George Polya Prize in 2014, and the Held prize in 2021.

The prize was established in 2020 in memory of Ciprian Foias, an influential scholar in Operator Theory and fluid mechanics.

The current prize amount is USD 5,000 and the prize is awarded every three years.

Indian-American mathematician among three selected for inaugural Ciprian Foias Prize

The award recognises their highly original work that introduced and developed methods for understanding the characteristic polynomial of matrices.

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Published: 04th December 2021 10:32 AM  |   Last Updated: 04th December 2021 10:32 AM  |  A+A A-

Professor Nikhil Srivastava (Photo | UC Berkeley website)Professor Nikhil Srivastava (Photo | UC Berkeley website)By PTI

.WASHINGTON: Eminent Indian-American mathematician Nikhil Srivastava, who teaches at the University of California, Berkeley, has been jointly selected for the inaugural Ciprian Foias Prize in Operator Theory by American Mathematical Society (AMS).

Along with Srivastava, the two other awardees are Adam Marcus and Daniel Spielman.

Adam Marcus holds the Chair of Combinatorial Analysis at the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) in Switzerland.

Spielman is Sterling Professor of Computer Science, a professor of statistics and data science, and a professor of mathematics.

The award recognises their highly original work that introduced and developed methods for understanding the characteristic polynomial of matrices, namely the iterative sparsification method (also in collaboration with Batson) and the method of interlacing polynomials, a media release said.

"Together, these ideas provided a powerful toolkit with many applications, notably in the trio's breakthrough paper “Interlacing families II: mixed characteristic polynomials and the Kadison–Singer problem” (Annals of Mathematics, 2015), which solves the famous “paving problem'' in operator theory, formulated by Richard Kadison and Isadore Singer in 1959,” AMS said.

In a joint statement, the three awardees said they wish to accept it on behalf of the many people whose work contributed to the resolution of the Kadison–Singer problem.

"Our involvement was the final chapter of an amazing story we hope will inspire similar solutions to difficult problems in the future,” they said.

The prize will be presented to Professor Srivastava and his colleagues on January 5 next year at the 2022 Joint Mathematics Meeting in Seattle, described as "the largest mathematics gathering in the world."

The Ciprian Foias Prize is the third major prize won by Srivastava, who earlier jointly won the George Polya Prize in 2014, and the Held prize in 2021.