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Lockdowns do no help much in lower & middle income countries, important to let people work: Lancet Paper

“Let shopkeepers sell their wares and provide services. Let construction workers return to building sites. Allow farmers to harvest their crops and to transport them to be sold on the open market,” the authors wrote, while arguing that restrictions should be placed only in clusters which report higher number of cases.




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Rajinikanth warns ruling AIADMK against reopening liquor outlets

His remarks came a day after Tamil Nadu moved the Supreme Court, seeking a stay against a Madras High Court order directing closure of liquor shops in the state.




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Javed Akhtar calls to end azaan on loudspeakers, says it causes discomfort to others

"In India for almost 50 years Azaan on the loud speak was Haraam. Then it became Halaal and so halaal that there is no end to it, but there should be an end to it. Azaan is fine but loud speaker does cause of discomfort for others. I hope that atleast this time they will do it themselves (sic)," Akhtar tweeted.




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Petrov hit with five-place grid penalty

Vitaly Petrov has been slapped with a five-place grid penalty for holding up Timo Glock during qualifying for the Italian Grand Prix




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'We underperformed' - Webber

Mark Webber believes Red Bull underperformed at the Italian Grand Prix and missed out on an opportunity to take a more commanding lead in the championship




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Alonso hails 'special moment'

Fernando Alonso hailed first victory in the Italian Grand Prix for Ferrari as one of the greatest of his career, only comparable to wining his home grand prix in Barcelona




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Alguersuari surprised at penalty

Jaime Alguersuari said he was more than a little surprised to receive a drive-through penalty for cutting a chicane during the Italian Grand Prix




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Webber takes five-place grid penalty

Mark Webber will not start from the front row of the grid at the Canadian Grand Prix, after Red Bull decided to change his gearbox on Sunday morning




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Sebastien Buemi 'super happy' with eighth in Canada

Sebastien Buemi confessed himself 'super happy' after finishing eighth in the Canadian Grand Prix




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Schumacher escapes penalty for tangling with Massa

Michael Schumacher was not penalised for his part in colliding with Felipe Massa while racing for position towards the end of the Canadian Grand Prix




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More speed to come from Ferrari - Raikkonen

Kimi Raikkonen says Ferrari can find more time from set-up changes and a clean lap on the medium tyres at the Malaysian Grand Prix, despite two promising Friday practice sessions




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Closer competition would be good for F1 - Rosberg

Nico Rosberg is hoping Mercedes' rivals can make a step up and start providing some competition this weekend in Malaysia and is particularly looking forward to Ferrari driver Sebastian Vettel joining in on his Friday debrief




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First McLaren win 'very special' - Button




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Hamilton makes peace with McLaren

Lewis Hamilton admitted he "understood" the pit-stop strategy which left him fuming in the closing stages of the Australian Grand Prix




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Hamilton handed five place grid penalty for gearbox change

Lewis Hamilton's championship chances have been dealt a further blow after the McLaren driver was handed a five place grid penalty for the team changing his gearbox




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Petrov handed Korea grid penalty

Vitaly Petrov has been slapped with a five place grid penalty for the Korean Grand Prix for his part in the accident at the start of the Japanese Grand Prix




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Montezemolo expects Massa to bounce back

Ferrari president Luca di Montezemolo is expecting Felipe Massa to return to form in the final three races and get amongst the five title challengers




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Testing from Jerez - As it happened

Follow live action from the third day of testing in Jerez




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Verstappen: F1 debut feels natural despite age

Max Verstappen says his early elevation to Formula One feels perfectly normal after he received some pearls of wisdom ahead of his debut from some of the sport's most experienced drivers




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Verstappen: Brakes cost me better than sixth

Seventeen-year-old Max Verstappen will start his second Formula One race from sixth on the grid but admitted it could have been even better without a brake issue in Malaysia




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Schumacher demoted to 12th after safety-car penalty

Michael Schumacher and Ross Brawn said they were confident there would be no penalty after Schumacher's last-lap overtake of Fernando Alonso




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Mercedes appeals Schumacher penalty

Mercedes will appeal the stewards' decision to penalise Michael Schumacher for overtaking Fernando Alonso at the final corner of the Monaco Grand Prix




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Mercedes ponders Schumacher appeal

Mercedes has not decided whether to proceed with its appeal against the decision of the stewards at the Monaco Grand Prix




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Kubica not expecting Monaco repeat

Robert Kubica has played down the chances of a repeat of his Monaco performance at this weekend's Singapore Grand Prix





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Can we escape Penalty for late filing of GSTR 10

Can we escape Penalty for late filing of GSTR 10 ? A penalty have been imposed for Rs. 10,000/- The case is applicable for a NIL Return Filler.




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Valuable Collections People Regret Getting Rid Of

We all like to think, in our own nostalgic haze, that our old toys would be worth something today. In actuality, most of your old magazines, cards and complete collection of McDonald's Transformers probably aren't worth anything. But in some rare cases, people realize 20 years after the fact that their mom threw away thousands of dollars worth of stuff. On the other side of things, here are stupid purchases people regret making.




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Wonderfully Incompetent Failures of Design

There wouldn't be design without a healthy number of design fails. There's people putting telephone poles in the middle of roads, goofing up headlines, photoshopping the ever-loving reality out of their ads, and making classic stupid signs. You've gotta love it when someone makes a great big sign for their local "Pubic Library." Here are some wonderfully unprofessional "not my job" moments.




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Touch-Typing On Fingertips? Prototype Says It Could Work

Touch-typing with thumbs on a mobile phone keyboard is a pretty familiar way to input text, and that is part of what led to BiTipText, a method of allowing bimanual text input using fingertips. The idea is to treat the first segments of the index fingers as halves of a …read more




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A century on, whatever happened to Labour's firebrand lost leader?

Victor Grayson was briefly the most famous socialist in Edwardian England. But in 1920 he disappeared. His fate remains one of the most compelling mysteries in British political history

Oh mad, foolish Grayson!
Editorial in the socialist magazine The Clarion, August 1907

In the aftermath of the general election of February 1974, the mood in Marsden socialist club in west Yorkshire was grim. David Clark, the young Labour MP for Colne Valley, in which the former mill town of Marsden sits, had lost his seat. Clark gamely attempted to lift his activists’ spirits with a rousing speech. But one elderly stalwart remained unmoved: “Old Harry was sitting at the bar nursing a pint,” recalls Clark, who is now 80 and a Labour peer. “He said: ‘All due respect to master Dave, but we’ve only ever had one true socialist MP around here. And that was Victor Grayson.’”

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Wine buying ideas from online specialists | David Williams

Sales from online dealers has shot up during the lockdown. Here’s your chance to find some great deals and also to try some new bottles and grapes

Shaw and Smith Sauvignon Blanc, Adelaide Hills, Australia 2019 (£14.95, slurp.co.uk) With most of us living out most of our lives in the virtual world at the moment, it’s not surprising that a lot of wine buying has migrated online, too. Depending on which statistical data gatherer you believe, sales of alcohol online were up by as much as 50% in the first weeks of the crisis v “normal” times. A lot of those sales went through the virtual tills of the supermarkets, of course. But the online wine specialists have been benefiting, too. If you’re looking to dip a toe into online wine buying for the first time, many retailers are offering discounted mixed cases to get you started. Slurp.co.uk, for example, has a 10-bottle “Indulge in Isolation” case, which at £120 works out as a £50 discount. There are some nice wines in there, although, personally, I’d rather go à la carte on slurp’s extensive list, filling a case with bottles such as Shaw and Smith’s superbly zingy, pristine sauvignon.

De Martino Viejas Tinajas Cinsault, Itata, Chile 2018 (£14.95, virginwines.co.uk) One mixed case that I do like the look of is Virgin Wine’s selection of contemporary German bottles, which, includes pinot blanc and pinot noir as well as a scintillating example of the country’s most famous grape variety, Gunderloch Fritz’s Riesling, Rheinhessen 2017 (a bottle of which is £14.99 on its own; The Best of Modern Germany case of 12 bottles is £140). You could also include any of those Germans in a mixed case with a wine such as the gorgeously light, rosehippy-red fruited, clay amphora-made Viejas Tinajas from Chile. Meanwhile, the UK’s oldest wine retailer, and one of the first to make a success of online, Berry Bros & Rudd, has a tempting 12 for £200 mix and match offer of 30 smart bottles, which is pretty good value for wines from the likes of De Martino, the Loire’s Vincent Carême, Beaujolais’ Julien Sunier and the Douro’s Quinta de la Rosa.

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TV tonight: on the journey to rap superstardom with Dave

Dave Burd brings a lightly fictionalised tale of his comedy rap career in a new sitcom. Plus: The Fantastical Factory of Curious Craft. Here’s what to watch this evening

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Can Iraq's new PM, and the region, escape Suleimani's long shadow?

Rise of spy chief to premier comes as Iran struggles to maintain momentum months after killing of powerful general

In late February, six weeks after the Iranian general Qassem Suleimani was killed by a US drone, a candidate for Iraq’s vacant premiership was nervously preparing for an interview that would secure him the role.

Mustafa al-Kadhimi’s rise from intelligence chief to the seat of national power had been unorthodox, as was the journey he had just made – from Baghdad, where high-stakes appointments like his had mostly been made over the past decade.

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The VE Day speeches that moved beyond words | Vanessa Thorpe

Sincerity is an increasingly rare commodity among our leaders, but sombre addresses by the Queen and Germany’s president had it in spades

Public suspicion is often aroused by the neat use of rhetoric, or by hearing a clever trick of speech. It is understandable that a stylish phrase or a persuasive analogy from the mouth of an authority figure should be met with caution.

Many are now also wary of the comparisons with the Second World War that are lobbed at the population each week by politicians, for the globe is not waging a military campaign or fighting a battle, there is no violent human enemy to defeat. Instead, we are all engaged in a unique and sustained mass experiment in protection and survival.

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I’ve craved a slower pace of life – and want to make it permanent | Dear Mariella

When lockdown has ended, we must continue to live simpler lives to benefit both us and the planet, says Mariella Frostrup

The dilemma I know we’re in the middle of a global pandemic with the economy knackered and the free world led by a man like Trump. I know our freedom has been temporarily taken away from us. But I’m dreading the end of lockdown.

For years I’ve craved a slower pace of life. Lockdown has allowed me to spend time with my family – and not on the relentless promise of success in my career. It has allowed me to play and learn with my child, rather than rush to drop-off or pick-up at wraparound care. It has allowed me to walk in woodland rather than standing on a crowded commuter train. In many ways it has been idyllic.

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The 'United States of Europe' speech that Winston Churchill so nearly made

A recently discovered document sheds new light on the wartime leader’s ‘iron curtain’ address

It was a speech that electrified the world, one that coined a phrase that was to characterise the political era that followed the second world war. But its content could have been very different, reveals a document freshly unearthed by a historian researching the life of Winston Churchill.

On 5 March 1946 in Fulton, Missouri, before a huge crowd which included the US president, Harry Truman, Britain’s wartime leader issued a famous description of the political division that was opening across Europe between the Soviet-dominated Communist east and the western democracies. “From Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic,” Churchill declared, “an iron curtain has descended across the continent.”

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The Observer view on the government's lack of a proper lockdown plan | Observer editorial

Ministers’ shambolic briefings expose a terrifying lack of competence


• Coronavirus latest updates

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‘In spite of the sunny bank holiday, it is vitally important that we continue to abide by the current restrictions: stay home, protect the NHS and save lives.” That was the message delivered by the environment secretary, George Eustice, at Friday afternoon’s press conference. Yet just the day before, most newspapers were emblazoned with excited headlines foretelling a significant relaxation of social distancing restrictions, based on briefing from government sources: “Lockdown freedom beckons”, “First steps to freedom from Monday” and “Stay home advice to be scrapped”.

Despite the critical importance of clear public messaging to any public health strategy, the government’s communications have been marred by mixed messages throughout this deadly pandemic. Its core message, asking the public to stay at home to protect the NHS and save lives, has been very effective, but this has consistently been undermined by ministers and advisers inaccurately briefing the press that there is about to be a shift in policy. Before the Easter weekend, reports appeared that ministers thought that the public had been too obedient in following the lockdown, and that a relaxation was imminent. The same happened before this bank holiday weekend, forcing the government to clarify that there was no change in restrictions and that people must continue to abide by the law.

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More people think UK has handled coronavirus worse than Spain and Italy, poll shows

Only US is judged to have dealt with it worse, after it was reported the UK has the highest death toll of any country in Europe

More people in this country now believe the UK has performed worse than Italy, Spain and France in the Covid-19 crisis than say it has done better than its European neighbours, according the latest Opinium poll for the Observer.

The data shows that only the United States is judged by a majority of people in the UK to have fared worse. While two weeks ago more people thought that the UK had done better than Italy and Spain, now the reverse is the case.

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People are speaking out in support of Costco after customers threatened to boycott the warehouse chain for requiring shoppers to wear masks

"I totally support your mask policy," a comment on Costco's Facebook said. "It is small minded individuals who don't understand the reason for it."





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Boris Johnson's lockdown speech: What to watch out for

Boris Johnson's address from No 10 is expected to set out a "roadmap" for easing lockdown restrictions.











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India Nature Watch - Having a big meal! Two-striped jumping spider (Telamonia) with blue bottlefly kill