The last few weeks have seen Virginia racked by government scandals, including Democratic Gov. Ralph Northam and Attorney General Mark Herring’s histories with blackface, and allegations of sexual assault against Lt. Gov. Justin Fairfax. Democratic Party leadership has since swiftly called for the resignations of Northam and Fairfax — demands that some on both sides of the aisle […]

Harrell launched the careers of 90s R&B megastars Mary J Blige and Jodeci on his Bad Boy label with the Notorious BIG

Andre Harrell, founder of the influential R&B and hip-hop label Uptown Records, has died. He was 59. The cause of Harrell’s death, which was announced early on Saturday by DJ D-Nice and confirmed by media outlets, was not immediately known.

Harrell started out as half of the early-80s hip-hop duo Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde but was best known for schooling an intern, Sean “Puff Daddy” Combs, in the music business.

When @JoshuaPotash shared this cute video on twitter, people couldn't handle the thought of a cute little squirrel going to a place where everybody knows its name.

The eruption of Hawaii’s Kilauea volcano in 2018 was caused by heavy rains – suggesting that extreme weather from climate change could lead to more eruptions

Slow-moving underwater currents are leading to build ups of microplastics in biologically rich areas on the sea floor

Using DNA to track down 67-year-old James E. Zastawnik, police made an arrest in the 1987 murder of an Ohio girl.

At React Conf 2019 we announced an experimental release of React that supports Concurrent Mode and Suspense. In this post we’ll introduce best practices for using them that we’ve identified through the process of building the new facebook.com.

This post will be most relevant to people working on data fetching libraries for React.

It shows how to best integrate them with Concurrent Mode and Suspense. The patterns introduced here are based on Relay — our library for building data-driven UIs with GraphQL. However, the ideas in this post apply to other GraphQL clients as well as libraries using REST or other approaches.

This post is aimed at library authors. If you’re primarily an application developer, you might still find some interesting ideas here, but don’t feel like you have to read it in its entirety.

Talk Videos

If you prefer to watch videos, some of the ideas from this blog post have been referenced in several React Conf 2019 presentations:

• Data Fetching with Suspense in Relay by Joe Savona
• Building the New Facebook with React and Relay by Ashley Watkins
• React Conf Keynote by Yuzhi Zheng

This post presents a deeper dive on implementing a data fetching library with Suspense.

Putting User Experience First

The React team and community has long placed a deserved emphasis on developer experience: ensuring that React has good error messages, focusing on components as a way to reason locally about app behavior, crafting APIs that are predictable and encourage correct usage by design, etc. But we haven’t provided enough guidance on the best ways to achieve a great user experience in large apps.

For example, the React team has focused on framework performance and providing tools for developers to debug and tune application performance (e.g. React.memo). But we haven’t been as opinionated about the high-level patterns that make the difference between fast, fluid apps and slow, janky ones. We always want to ensure that React remains approachable to new users and supports a variety of use-cases — not every app has to be “blazing” fast. But as a community we can and should aim high. We should make it as easy as possible to build apps that start fast and stay fast, even as they grow in complexity, for users on varying devices and networks around the world.

Concurrent Mode and Suspense are experimental features that can help developers achieve this goal. We first introduced them at JSConf Iceland in 2018, intentionally sharing details very early to give the community time to digest the new concepts and to set the stage for subsequent changes. Since then we’ve completed related work, such as the new Context API and the introduction of Hooks, which are designed in part to help developers naturally write code that is more compatible with Concurrent Mode. But we didn’t want to implement these features and release them without validating that they work. So over the past year, the React, Relay, web infrastructure, and product teams at Facebook have all collaborated closely to build a new version of facebook.com that deeply integrates Concurrent Mode and Suspense to create an experience with a more fluid and app-like feel.

Thanks to this project, we’re more confident than ever that Concurrent Mode and Suspense can make it easier to deliver great, fast user experiences. But doing so requires rethinking how we approach loading code and data for our apps. Effectively all of the data-fetching on the new facebook.com is powered by Relay Hooks — new Hooks-based Relay APIs that integrate with Concurrent Mode and Suspense out of the box.

Relay Hooks — and GraphQL — won’t be for everyone, and that’s ok! Through our work on these APIs we’ve identified a set of more general patterns for using Suspense. Even if Relay isn’t the right fit for you, we think the key patterns we’ve introduced with Relay Hooks can be adapted to other frameworks.

Best Practices for Suspense

It’s tempting to focus only on the total startup time for an app — but it turns out that users’ perception of performance is determined by more than the absolute loading time. For example, when comparing two apps with the same absolute startup time, our research shows that users will generally perceive the one with fewer intermediate loading states and fewer layout changes as having loaded faster. Suspense is a powerful tool for carefully orchestrating an elegant loading sequence with a few, well-defined states that progressively reveal content. But improving perceived performance only goes so far — our apps still shouldn’t take forever to fetch all of their code, data, images, and other assets.

The traditional approach to loading data in React apps involves what we refer to as “fetch-on-render”. First we render a component with a spinner, then fetch data on mount (componentDidMount or useEffect), and finally update to render the resulting data. It’s certainly possible to use this pattern with Suspense: instead of initially rendering a placeholder itself, a component can “suspend” — indicate to React that it isn’t ready yet. This will tell React to find the nearest ancestor <Suspense fallback={<Placeholder/>}>, and render its fallback instead. If you watched earlier Suspense demos this example may feel familiar — it’s how we originally imagined using Suspense for data-fetching.

It turns out that this approach has some limitations. Consider a page that shows a social media post by a user, along with comments on that post. That might be structured as a <Post> component that renders both the post body and a <CommentList> to show the comments. Using the fetch-on-render approach described above to implement this could cause sequential round trips (sometimes referred to as a “waterfall”). First the data for the <Post> component would be fetched and then the data for <CommentList> would be fetched, increasing the time it takes to show the full page.

There’s also another often-overlooked downside to this approach. If <Post> eagerly requires (or imports) the <CommentList> component, our app will have to wait to show the post body while the code for the comments is downloading. We could lazily load <CommentList>, but then that would delay fetching comments data and increase the time to show the full page. How do we resolve this problem without compromising on the user experience?

Render As You Fetch

The fetch-on-render approach is widely used by React apps today and can certainly be used to create great apps. But can we do even better? Let’s step back and consider our goal.

In the above <Post> example, we’d ideally show the more important content — the post body — as early as possible, without negatively impacting the time to show the full page (including comments). Let’s consider the key constraints on any solution and look at how we can achieve them:

• Showing the more important content (the post body) as early as possible means that we need to load the code and data for the view incrementally. We don’t want to block showing the post body on the code for <CommentList> being downloaded, for example.
• At the same time we don’t want to increase the time to show the full page including comments. So we need to start loading the code and data for the comments as soon as possible, ideally in parallel with loading the post body.

This might sound difficult to achieve — but these constraints are actually incredibly helpful. They rule out a large number of approaches and spell out a solution for us. This brings us to the key patterns we’ve implemented in Relay Hooks, and that can be adapted to other data-fetching libraries. We’ll look at each one in turn and then see how they add up to achieve our goal of fast, delightful loading experiences:

1. Parallel data and view trees
2. Fetch in event handlers
3. Load data incrementally
4. Treat code like data

Parallel Data and View Trees

One of the most appealing things about the fetch-on-render pattern is that it colocates what data a component needs with how to render that data. This colocation is great — an example of how it makes sense to group code by concerns and not by technologies. All the issues we saw above were due to when we fetch data in this approach: upon rendering. We need to be able to fetch data before we’ve rendered the component. The only way to achieve that is by extracting the data dependencies into parallel data and view trees.

Here’s how that works in Relay Hooks. Continuing our example of a social media post with body and comments, here’s how we might define it with Relay Hooks:

// Post.js
function Post(props) {
  // Given a reference to some post - `props.post` - *what* data
  // do we need about that post?
  const postData = useFragment(graphql`
    fragment PostData on Post @refetchable(queryName: "PostQuery") {
      author
      title
      # ...  more fields ...
    }
  `, props.post);

  // Now that we have the data, how do we render it?
  return (
    <div>
      <h1>{postData.title}</h1>
      <h2>by {postData.author}</h2>
      {/* more fields  */}
    </div>
  );
}

Although the GraphQL is written within the component, Relay has a build step (Relay Compiler) that extracts these data-dependencies into separate files and aggregates the GraphQL for each view into a single query. So we get the benefit of colocating concerns, while at runtime having parallel data and view trees. Other frameworks could achieve a similar effect by allowing developers to define data-fetching logic in a sibling file (maybe Post.data.js), or perhaps integrate with a bundler to allow defining data dependencies with UI code and automatically extracting it, similar to Relay Compiler.

The key is that regardless of the technology we’re using to load our data — GraphQL, REST, etc — we can separate what data to load from how and when to actually load it. But once we do that, how and when do we fetch our data?

Fetch in Event Handlers

Imagine that we’re about to navigate from a list of a user’s posts to the page for a specific post. We’ll need to download the code for that page — Post.js — and also fetch its data.

Waiting until we render the component has problems as we saw above. The key is to start fetching code and data for a new view in the same event handler that triggers showing that view. We can either fetch the data within our router — if our router supports preloading data for routes — or in the click event on the link that triggered the navigation. It turns out that the React Router folks are already hard at work on building APIs to support preloading data for routes. But other routing frameworks can implement this idea too.

Conceptually, we want every route definition to include two things: what component to render and what data to preload, as a function of the route/url params. Here’s what such a route definition might look like. This example is loosely inspired by React Router’s route definitions and is primarily intended to demonstrate the concept, not a specific API:

// PostRoute.js (GraphQL version)

// Relay generated query for loading Post data
import PostQuery from './__generated__/PostQuery.graphql';

const PostRoute = {
  // a matching expression for which paths to handle
  path: '/post/:id',

  // what component to render for this route
  component: React.lazy(() => import('./Post')),

  // data to load for this route, as function of the route
  // parameters
  prepare: routeParams => {
    // Relay extracts queries from components, allowing us to reference
    // the data dependencies -- data tree -- from outside.
    const postData = preloadQuery(PostQuery, {
      postId: routeParams.id,
    });

    return { postData };
  },
};

export default PostRoute;

Given such a definition, a router can:

• Match a URL to a route definition.
• Call the prepare() function to start loading that route’s data. Note that prepare() is synchronous — we don’t wait for the data to be ready, since we want to start rendering more important parts of the view (like the post body) as quickly as possible.
• Pass the preloaded data to the component. If the component is ready — the React.lazy dynamic import has completed — the component will render and try to access its data. If not, React.lazy will suspend until the code is ready.

This approach can be generalized to other data-fetching solutions. An app that uses REST might define a route like this:

// PostRoute.js (REST version)

// Manually written logic for loading the data for the component
import PostData from './Post.data';

const PostRoute = {
  // a matching expression for which paths to handle
  path: '/post/:id',

  // what component to render for this route
  component: React.lazy(() => import('./Post')),

  // data to load for this route, as function of the route
  // parameters
  prepare: routeParams => {
    const postData = preloadRestEndpoint(
      PostData.endpointUrl, 
      {
        postId: routeParams.id,
      },
    );
    return { postData };
  },
};

export default PostRoute;

This same approach can be employed not just for routing, but in other places where we show content lazily or based on user interaction. For example, a tab component could eagerly load the first tab’s code and data, and then use the same pattern as above to load the code and data for other tabs in the tab-change event handler. A component that displays a modal could preload the code and data for the modal in the click handler that triggers opening the modal, and so on.

Once we’ve implemented the ability to start loading code and data for a view independently, we have the option to go one step further. Consider a <Link to={path} /> component that links to a route. If the user hovers over that link, there’s a reasonable chance they’ll click it. And if they press the mouse down, there’s an even better chance that they’ll complete the click. If we can load code and data for a view after the user clicks, we can also start that work before they click, getting a head start on preparing the view.

Best of all, we can centralize that logic in a few key places — a router or core UI components — and get any performance benefits automatically throughout our app. Of course preloading isn’t always beneficial. It’s something an application would tune based on the user’s device or network speed to avoid eating up user’s data plans. But the pattern here makes it easier to centralize the implementation of preloading and the decision of whether to enable it or not.

Load Data Incrementally

The above patterns — parallel data/view trees and fetching in event handlers — let us start loading all the data for a view earlier. But we still want to be able to show more important parts of the view without waiting for all of our data. At Facebook we’ve implemented support for this in GraphQL and Relay in the form of some new GraphQL directives (annotations that affect how/when data is delivered, but not what data). These new directives, called @defer and @stream, allow us to retrieve data incrementally. For example, consider our <Post> component from above. We want to show the body without waiting for the comments to be ready. We can achieve this with @defer and <Suspense>:

// Post.js
function Post(props) {
  const postData = useFragment(graphql`
    fragment PostData on Post {
      author
      title

      # fetch data for the comments, but don't block on it being ready
      ...CommentList @defer
    }
  `, props.post);

  return (
    <div>
      <h1>{postData.title}</h1>
      <h2>by {postData.author}</h2>
      {/* @defer pairs naturally with <Suspense> to make the UI non-blocking too */}
      <Suspense fallback={<Spinner/>}>
        <CommentList post={postData} />
      </Suspense>
    </div>
  );
}

Here, our GraphQL server will stream back the results, first returning the author and title fields and then returning the comment data when it’s ready. We wrap <CommentList> in a <Suspense> boundary so that we can render the post body before <CommentList> and its data are ready. This same pattern can be applied to other frameworks as well. For example, apps that call a REST API might make parallel requests to fetch the body and comments data for a post to avoid blocking on all the data being ready.

Treat Code Like Data

But there’s one thing that’s still missing. We’ve shown how to preload data for a route — but what about code? The example above cheated a bit and used React.lazy. However, React.lazy is, as the name implies, lazy. It won’t start downloading code until the lazy component is actually rendered — it’s “fetch-on-render” for code!

To solve this, the React team is considering APIs that would allow bundle splitting and eager preloading for code as well. That would allow a user to pass some form of lazy component to a router, and for the router to trigger loading the code alongside its data as early as possible.

Putting It All Together

To recap, achieving a great loading experience means that we need to start loading code and data as early as possible, but without waiting for all of it to be ready. Parallel data and view trees allow us to load the data for a view in parallel with loading the view (code) itself. Fetching in an event handler means we can start loading data as early as possible, and even optimistically preload a view when we have enough confidence that a user will navigate to it. Loading data incrementally allows us to load important data earlier without delaying the fetching of less important data. And treating code as data — and preloading it with similar APIs — allows us to load it earlier too.

Using These Patterns

These patterns aren’t just ideas — we’ve implemented them in Relay Hooks and are using them in production throughout the new facebook.com (which is currently in beta testing). If you’re interested in using or learning more about these patterns, here are some resources:

• The React Concurrent docs explore how to use Concurrent Mode and Suspense and go into more detail about many of these patterns. It’s a great resource to learn more about the APIs and use-cases they support.
• The experimental release of Relay Hooks implements the patterns described here.

• We’ve implemented two similar example apps that demonstrate these concepts:

  • The Relay Hooks example app uses GitHub’s public GraphQL API to implement a simple issue tracker app. It includes nested route support with code and data preloading. The code is fully commented — we encourage cloning the repo, running the app locally, and exploring how it works.
  • We also have a non-GraphQL version of the app that demonstrates how these concepts can be applied to other data-fetching libraries.

While the APIs around Concurrent Mode and Suspense are still experimental, we’re confident that the ideas in this post are proven by practice. However, we understand that Relay and GraphQL aren’t the right fit for everyone. That’s ok! We’re actively exploring how to generalize these patterns to approaches such as REST, and are exploring ideas for a more generic (ie non-GraphQL) API for composing a tree of data dependencies. In the meantime, we’re excited to see what new libraries will emerge that implement the patterns described in this post to make it easier to build great, fast user experiences.

Monterrey’s Cardenas happy to be a hero

With the arrest of two persons, the Mumbai police have recovered 29 two-wheelers stolen from Mumbai and Navi Mumbai in the last three years, a senior official said Friday.

One Harshad Kohli had lodged a complaint with Yellow Gate police station that his scooter was stolen from Bhaucha Dhakka ferry wharf in Mazgaon area here some days ago.

Acting on a tip-off, police laid a trap and arrested Meraj Sheikh (19) Sunday from the Yellow Gate area. His interrogation led to the arrest of his accomplice Mushtaq Mansuri (19) from Belapur in neighbouring Navi Mumbai.

The duo revealed that they had stolen several two-wheelers from Mumbai and Navi Mumbai in the last three years, the official said. Police recovered 29 stolen two-wheelers from their possession and further probe was on, the official said.

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This story has been sourced from a third party syndicated feed, agencies. Mid-day accepts no responsibility or liability for its dependability, trustworthiness, reliability and data of the text. Mid-day management/mid-day.com reserves the sole right to alter, delete or remove (without notice) the content in its absolute discretion for any reason whatsoever.

Alia Bhatt's Gangubai Kathiawadi, a biopic on the fierce madam of the Kamathipura brothels, is among the many Bollywood projects that had to call time on their shoots due to the lockdown. In keeping with Sanjay Leela Bhansali's style of filmmaking, an elaborate set — depicting Kamathipura of the 1960s — had been constructed at Film City. With the set standing unused over the past five weeks, word is that Bhansali has instructed the production team to arrange for its demolition.

The set at Film City

A source says, "In March, Bhansali had cleared the payment for the set maintenance. Even when the shutdown was announced, the team had assumed it would delay the schedule only by a month or so. However, with the situation in Mumbai looking grim, it is unlikely that the shoots will resume soon. After a round of number-crunching, it was seen that recreating the set would probably be a cheaper alternative than keeping it standing in these uncertain circumstances, as the latter entails the daily rent that has to be paid to Film City. So, the team has decided to have the set razed to the ground." When quizzed if shooting in real locations is a possibility, the source added, "The final call will be taken post the lockdown."

mid-day reached out to Bhansali Productions, which did not respond till press time.

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Alaya F made an everlasting mark in the heart of the audiences with her debut in Jawaani Jaaneman. The audiences and critics alike loved how she aced her character. Being stuck at home in lockdown, Alaya being a learner and lover of consuming things that make her grow as an actor is making the most of her time watching films to grasp more knowledge.

Alaya is a lover of old school classics and is watching films that have where she can learn a lot in terms of acting, feel, speech delivery, body language and much more. This will certainly help the actress in refining her skills. Some of the classics that Alaya is watching include:

The film 'Platform' has radical and thought-provoking content. It's a socially relevant and extremely well-made film. Next, is the 1955 classic 'Devdas' by Bimal Roy, followed by Sanjay Leela Bhansali's Devdas. Adding to it is Anurag Kashyap's Dev D. What's interesting here is how one subject has been treated in such unique and different ways, in terms of direction and performance.

The next one being Sanjay Leela Bhansali's 'Black' which received a lot of critical acclaim for its intriguing storyline and the phenomenal performances by the actors. Another one being Super Deluxe, which is the perfect blend of nuanced performances and impeccable writing. Vijay Sethupathi is a treat to watch and Raasukutty's character shines throughout the movie.

The list ends with Chalti Ka Naam Gaadi, Howrah Bridge and other Madhubala classics. Clearly, the girl of the moment is enriching herself with all these films and learning as much as possible. Apart from seeing films, Alaya is making the most of her time staying indoors and indulging in a variety of activities.

Alaya F made her silver screen debut this what which hit the screens on 31st January 2020 where she shared the screen worn Saif Ali Khan and Tabu, yet moved all the audience and the Indian film industry with her performance.

The giant tub of popcorn has been replaced by a humble bag of chips, and the big screen by our 14-inch laptop screens — there's no denying that the lockdown has changed the way we watch movies. It appears there may be a further shift in cinema viewing pattern. Even as many filmmakers have decided to wait out the period and release their offerings on the big screen, the key players of digital entertainment have initiated dialogues with studios about releasing their films directly on the Internet. Amongst the first superstars to consider taking the leap is Akshay Kumar. Sources said Disney+Hotstar is in talks with the actor to procure the release rights of Laxmmi Bomb, which was slated to hit theatres on May 22.

A source reveals, "Akshay, director Raghava Lawrence and the producers are discussing the offer. There's a lot of post-production work left on the movie, including editing, background music, mixing and VFX. Since the team is working from home, the process is taking longer than usual. However, the makers are hoping to have the film ready by June. Although currently, the lockdown is on till May 3, theatres may continue to remain closed to ensure social distancing. In such a scenario, the team may consider having a direct-to-web release."

Akshay Kumar. Picture courtesy/ PTI

As a producer with sharp business acumen, Kumar had understood the potential of digital entertainment early on, and hence, decided to foray into it with the in-the-works series, The End. He is contemplating if releasing the horror comedy — a remake of the Tamil hit, Muni 2: Kanchana (2011) — online will be a wise move. "Akshay wants to make sure none of the invested parties make losses, and that the movie reaches a wide audience. While Disney+Hotstar ensures a worldwide reach, making the film available across small towns in India will be a concern for them."

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Unconfirmed reports suggesting the upcoming Ranveer Singh-starrer "83" will be sold for release on an OTT platform before it opens in the theatres, have been denied by Reliance Entertainment, co-producers of the much-awaited film. The rumours started after the film's release was pushed from its scheduled date of April 10 owing to the ongoing COVID-19 lockdown.

Lately, the trade circuit was abuzz with speculations that a global OTT giant with substantial reach in India has offered a whopping Rs 143 crore to the producers of "83" for the purchase of the film's release rights. However, Reliance Entertainment has denied all such reports, claiming they will "evaluate" if the situation did not become normal even after six months, reports bollywoodhungama.com.

"There is no truth to these reports. '83' has been made for the big-screen experience. Right now, there's no intention or interest on the part of the directors or us as producers, to take these films to the small screen. If the situation deteriorates rapidly or there is no visibility of normalcy even after six months, we will evaluate then. But right now, we are all quite positive and I foresee that between the next four to six months, cinema halls will start operating. So that's the hope and mindset which we currently have," Shibashish Sarkar, Reliance Entertainment Group CEO, told bollywoodhungama.com.

Directed by Kabir Khan, "83" narrates the story of India's first-ever cricket World Cup victory in 1983. In the movie, Ranveer Singh stars as the then skipper Kapil Dev while Deepika Padukone plays Kapil's wife Romi Dev. The film also stars Pankaj Tripathi, Saqib Saleem, Tahir Raj Bhasin, Harrdy Sandhu, Ammy Virk, Jiiva, Sahil Khattar, Chirag Patil and Adinath Kothare in key roles.

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I have watched everything that was pending on my must-watch list over the years," laughs Tahir Raj Bhasin, echoing the sentiment of many who have turned to digital entertainment to escape the lockdown ennui. A movie aficionado, the actor has been making the most of the stay-at-home period by acquainting himself with the works of the masters — from Russian director Andrei Tarkovsky to Oscar-winner Bong Joon-ho."

"My first recommendation would be Shoplifters on Netflix. It's a 2018 Japanese drama by Hirokazu Koreeda that traces the story of a dysfunctional family. It has a slow pace, but the lockdown is the perfect time to widen your horizon when it comes to movie consumption," says Bhasin. For those fascinated by crime thrillers like he is, the actor has a suggestion. "The 2002 HBO series, The Wire, was the first show that I had binged on. It was the first time that film budgets [were commissioned] for long-format storytelling on television, making it a path-breaking series. Being a fan of House of Cards, I revisited Borgen, the Danish political thriller that is said to be the inspiration for the American drama. I also relished the animation series, Love Death + Robots."

A still from Stalker

The movie that left an indelible impact on his mind was Tarkovsky's sci-fi offering, Stalker (1979). "It's available on YouTube. In Stalker, Tarkovsky is talking about an apocalyptic world where there are few human beings around and they have to stay away from each other. I was able to relate to it as it almost mirrors our current situation."

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The lockdown may have played havoc with the schedule of their next, but Rajkummar Rao and Kriti Sanon are seeking comfort in the small progress they have made. For months, the team had been on the hunt for a suitable title for the comedy that also features Paresh Rawal and Dimple Kapadia. Now, the makers have finally christened it Second Innings. "The title fits our story seamlessly," says director Abhishek Jain about his maiden Hindi venture.

The production house has previously tackled diverse social issues with their offerings Bala (2019), Luka Chuppi (2019) and the recent Angrezi Medium. Second Innings explores the idea of adopting parents through Rao and Sanon's characters, who feel a vacuum in their lives and decide to bring an older couple home to complete the family.

Dimple Kapadia and Paresh Rawal

"We were supposed to begin shooting in Delhi in March, but now everything has been pushed due to the pandemic," says Jain, indicating that the schedules will have to reworked when normalcy returns.

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The Kandivli police have arrested the father of an 18-year-old girl after she allegedly accused him of constantly molesting and sexually harassing her for two years. In her written complaint,  the girl has alleged that her father has been molesting her since 2016. She also said that she mustered courage and filed a complaint against him after he tried to 'touch her inappropriately' on the eve of September 11.

"On Monday, she came to the police station accompanied by an older woman from her neighbourhood. She said that over the last two years, her father has made several inappropriate comments and actions. And that he would also often make lewd gestures in front of her and try to make her uncomfortable in various ways,” said an official from the Kandivali police as reported in Mumbai Mirror.

Since the girl was facing and dealing with the abuse for a long time, the Kandivli police have booked the father under the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (POCSO) Act, along with the relevant
sections of the Indian Penal Code (IPC). Post the arrest of her father on Monday evening, the girl’s mother lashed out at her, accusing her own daughter of falsely implicating her father, the police sources said.

"The mother believes that the daughter is doing this under the influence of someone. She thinks that with the father in prison, it will give her the necessary freedom to do what she wants and scare her parents from taking any disciplinary action against her” said an official elaborating on the mother’s statement. 

In another incident, the parents of a four-year-old girl lodged a police complaint against a woman teacher from a Kandivli school on Monday for molesting their child during the school hours. The Kandivli police have booked the teacher under the stringent POSCO (Protection of Children from Sexual Offences) act. The police are probing the case and till now no arrests have been made.

The minor child, who is in junior KG, complained to her parents after returning from school on Monday that the teacher had touched her inappropriately. When the parents of the minor girl approached the school, the management informed the parents that the school premises are entirely covered by cameras, except inside the washrooms. The police were summoned and the CCTV footage was shown to the parents as well as cops. "Nothing concrete has been found in the CCTV footage." the police officer said. 

Also Read: Watch Video: Woman Steals Mobile-Phone From Mulund Shop

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The Amboli police on Tuesday arrested the main accused in the 20 kg ephedrine seizure case. On New Year's Eve, the Amboli police seized 20 kg ephedrine worth Rs 3 crore from Jogeshwari. Two people were arrested earlier. Now, Amboli police have also nabbed the main accused in the case.

The accused has been identified as Shankar Narsaiyya Madderla (49), who is the owner of Venus chemical and drugs Pvt Ltd, based in Karnataka. He was arrested from Hyderabad by the team lead by PI Daya Nayak. Before this, in 2013, the accused was arrested for possessing 250 kg ephedrine which was seized by the Narcotics Control Bureau.

On New Year Eve, the Amboli Police busted a drug haul which was supposed to be supplied at high profile parties across the city. Around 20 kg ephedrine worth more than 3 crores has been seized and the two suppliers were arrested on the same day.

Both of them had previous records of supplying drugs for high profile parties. One of them was a class 4 custom officer who was fired in 2013 after he was found smuggling drugs. Cops believed that this is a gang which mostly operates for big events, especially New Year.

The accused, who were arrested earlier, have been identified as Mohammed Ismail Gulamhusaind, 45, who hails from Hyderabad and Dayanand Manik Muddanar, 32, who was a resident of Vasai. 

An officer from Amboli Police said, "The accused arrested from Hyderabad has supplied drugs to the accused who have already been arrested earlier. We are probing as to where the drugs were supposed to be delivered. The accused has been arrested under various sections of the NDPS Act."

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A 58-year-old man was arrested after 11 kg of charas (cannabis resin) was seized from him here in Maharashtra, police said Sunday. Acting on a tip-off, the anti-extortion cell of Thane police laid a trap and apprehended Azimuddin Ahmed Ansari at Kalyan town here on Saturday evening, police spokesperson Sukhada Narkar said in a release.

A search of his bag led to the recovery of nearly 11 kg of charas, worth around Rs 22 lakh, she said. Ansari, a resident of Siwan district in Bihar, had apparently got the contraband from Nepal, Narkar said. A probe was underway to ascertain as to whom he was planning to sell the contraband, she said, adding that the accused was booked under relevant provisions of the Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances (NDPS) Act.

In another incident, the Mumbai Police has effected a massive drugs haul, valued at Rs 1,000 crore and arrested four drug-peddlers, a top official said on Friday.

The Anti-Narcotics Cell (ANC) swooped on a car parked at Shastri Nagar, in Vile Parle and seized around 100 kg of the banned Fentanyl, which is said to be 50 times more powerful than heroin. According to ANC chief, DCP Shivdeep Lande, following a reliable tip-off to a policeman Santosh Bhalekar about delivery of Fentanyl, the ANC's Azad Maidan Unit laid a trap on Wednesday.

Four drug peddlers were caught with the drugs near the service road outside the Mumbai Airport in Vile Parle East, said Lande, of the biggest success notched by Mumbai Police so far. "We have seized 100 kg of the banned drugs. It is worth around Rs 10 crore/kg and the total seizure is worth around Rs 1,000 crore," Lande said.

The four accused arrested are -- Salim Ismail Dhola, 52 of Ghodapdev and Chandramani Matamani Tiwari, 41 of Kandivali, both in Mumbai, and Sandeep Indrajeet Tiwari and Ghanshyam Ramraj Saroj, both from Nala Sopara town in the adjacent Palghar district. According to the tip-off, Dhola and two others were expected to arrive at a spot in Vakola, Santacruz east around 8.30 p.m. with the drugs consignment which was reportedly being smuggled to a North American country.

The vehicle halted near a tree on the road where a fourth accomplice was already waiting near his scooter for half an hour. After exchanging pleasantries, one of the car occupants came out and handed over a blue coloured container to the man waiting outside. This was the opportune moment when the waiting ANC team struck and caught them red-handed. They also recovered three more blue containers full of the banned drugs from the vehicle.

Later, it was found to be the very high-priced Fentanyl drug, and a mere 25 gm is lethal enough to kill a man, police said. Considered a party drug, with around 20,000 overdose-related deaths in the US in 2016, Fentanyl is basically an anaesthetic medicine, but made illegally into a recreational drug, with a lethal mixture of heroin or cocaine.

On December 27, the accused were booked under relevant sections of the NDPS and IPC acts for the offences, and have been remanded to police custody till January 1, police said.

With inputs from PTI

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Abbas Irani alias Abbas Khan is all smiles in his wedding photographs; there's not a frown or worried line on his face to indicate that the wanted fugitive was at all worried about the police showing up to arrest him. And why would he be? Despite the fact that he was wanted in two separate cases under the Maharashtra Control of Organised Crime Act (MCOCA), the city police had never bothered to arrest him.

It was no different at his grand wedding celebrations in Kalyan. The notorious conman and chain-snatcher celebrated for three days and got hitched amid much fanfare at his house in Ambivli. However, there was no sign of the police. It was the same in 2017, when he was released on bail after being arrested by the Delhi police. Neither the Mumbai police nor Thane cops bothered to take his custody upon his release, even though he had been wanted under MCOCA since 2016.

Modus operandi
While Abbas is notorious for chain-snatchings, his gang's most common modus operandi is to dupe women by posing as policemen. The gang members impersonate CBI or crime branch officers and target elderly or uneducated women. Claiming that a thief is on the loose, they ask the women to hand over their gold ornaments for safe-keeping and then disappear with the valuables.

Police records show that there are more than 100 cases registered against Abbas and his gang across the country, but somehow, the police can never seem to catch him. There are cases against him in Mumbai, Thane, Kalyan, Pune, Bangalore, Kolkata, Delhi, Hyderabad and Chennai. As many as 40 cases of theft are registered in Thane alone, and there are more than 30 in Delhi. Sources revealed that the Baroda police are also in pursuit of the crook for stealing a bike just before he headed back to Kalyan for his wedding.

Powerful crime family
Abbas took up crime following in the footsteps of his father, Amjad Irani alias Amjad Khan, who was arrested in 2015 for similar offences and was booked under MCOCA. Police records show that his uncle Ajij Khan is also wanted under MCOCA. A few years ago, Abbas's wedding was called off after the girl's family learned of his criminal background. On January 8, he finally got married amidst his family and fellow gang members.

Sources said that despite the high-profile wedding, Abbas is protected from police action by his family's connections. His gang members Jafar Gulam Hussain, Faisal Ali Yusuf Ali Shaikh, Ali Hasan, Firoj Irani serve as his lookouts. His mother claims she is a member of a powerful political party. The family and gang control a massive network of criminals who have spread out across the country. A senior officer from Mumbai police said only, "It is true, he is wanted in MCOCA cases."

100 Approx no. of cases against Abbas and gang

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A local court has sentenced a man from Mira Road in the district to one year jail for stalking and ca 16-year-old girl nearly six years ago. Special judge Kavita Shirbhate convicted Yogesh Borade, 33, on Friday and also slapped a fine of Rs 10,000 on him.

He was held guilty under relevant sections of the IPC and the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (POCSO) Act. The incident had taken place late evening on March 18, 2013.

The girl was walking towards her home, when two persons on a two-wheeler waylaid her, prosecutor Rekha Hiwrale told the court. Borade, who was pillion riding, started troubling and abusing the minor.

Later, he got off the vehicle and started walking alongside her and also mildly pushed her, she said. Based on a complaint, the police had booked the accused and later arrested him.

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Three persons were arrested in Bhiwandi in Maharashtra's Thane district for allegedly raping a teenage girl several times, the police said Sunday.

Senior Inspector K D Jadhav of Shanti Nagar police station said the 14-year-old girl was acquainted with one of the accused, Jamil alias Bullan Vali Mohammad Khan (58) as she used to purchase cosmetics from his handcart. "Jamil along with others raped the girl on multiple occasions between June last year and January 9 this year.

She revealed her ordeal to her mother who filed a complaint on Friday," Jadhav said. He identified the others arrested, apart from Jamil, as Shahnavaz Khan (19) and Rizwan Khan (23), adding that a fourth person, Firoz Siddiqui, was wanted in the case.

"We have charged the accused under relevant sections of the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Act. They have been remanded in police custody for six days," he informed.

In another incident, a teenage girl from Bompally village in Telangana's Peddapalli district has filed a rape case against her 24-year-old lover and his two friends, police said Sunday. Police have identified the main accused as Kotte Ranjith. A police officer said Ranjith allegedly maintained physical relations with the girl under the pretext of marrying her.

The officer said Ranjith's friends Methuku Satish (23) and Vykuntam (24) also allegedly raped the girl repeatedly in the last ten months, following which she became pregnant.

"The girl had delivered a stillborn foetus and asked Ranjith to marry her, but he refused and threatened her with dire consequences, following which the victim approached police," he said.

Police have registered an FIR against the trio under section 376 (D) of the Indian Penal Code (IPC) for gang rape and under the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (POCSO) Act. No arrest is made yet.

With inputs from PTI

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The Maharashtra Anti-Terrorism Squad has arrested a man in connection with an alleged ISIS-inspired group that wanted to carry out mass attacks at big events using poisonous chemicals, police said on Sunday. The arrest was made on Saturday from Mumbra in neighbouring Thane district and a laptop, tablet computer, hard disk, pen drives, router, mobile phones and diaries were seized from his residence, an ATS official said.

The ATS had earlier arrested eight people, and detained a minor, from Aurangabad and Thane after several teams carried out searches through January 21-22, an official said. They were charged under Indian Penal Code section 120B (criminal conspiracy) and relevant provisions of the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act (UAPA) and the Bombay Police Act. This group, during interrogation, had named the accused who was arrested Saturday, he added. He will be produced in a court on Sunday, the official
informed.

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A 17-year-old girl was arrested by the Thane police for allegedly kidnapping a minor boy and asking for a ransom of Rs 6 lakh. According to the 11-year-old boy's mother, who works as a tailor, her son went to his tuition classes on Saturday afternoon but did not return.

Later in the evening, the mother of the minor boy received a call from an unidentified person who demanding Rs 6 lakh if she wanted her son back, Shanti Nagar police station's senior inspector Mamta D'Souza said. The female caller threatened the mother that the boy would be killed if she approached the police, and asked her to bring the money in a bag and keep it on a bike near Shivaji Chowk in Bhiwandi town, the police officer said.

When the boy's mother rushed to inform her husband, who works at jewelry shop about the alleged kidnapping of her son, she found her son alone and crying near the shop on Quarter Gate road, D'Souza said.

The boy told his mother that a female, whom he referred to as "aunty", allegedly took him away while he was returning from his tuition classes and asked inquired about his father's workplace. He said that as he was walking along with the female aunty, he managed to give her the slip and came running to his father's shop, she said.

In a bid to find the culprit, the boy's mother informed Shanti Nagar police station about the incident and as per their instructions, she kept a bag on the bike, as specified by the kidnapper. When a 'burqa'-clad lady came to the spot to pick the bag, the police nabbed her the kidnapper, D'Souza said.

The arrested accused, who is a minor, told the police she used to go to the boy's mother to get her clothes stitched and that she kidnapped the minor boy for money, the official said. She was booked under Indian Penal Code Section 364-A (kidnapping for ransom) and sent to a remand home, D'Souza added.

With inputs from PTI

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Four people have been arrested for allegedly setting ablaze a chemical factory in Thane district of Maharashtra, police said on Thursday. According to assistant police inspector Pramod Badak, some unidentified persons barged into the factory located in Kashimira area on February 10 and set it ablaze. While there was no casualty, the factory suffered damage in the incident, he said.

The local crime branch investigated the case and found that the factory owner had failed to pay dues worth Rs 8 crore to a financier. The financier, in a bid to settle scores with the factory owner, allegedly gave a contract to some persons to destroy the chemical unit, Badak said.

While probing the case, the police on Tuesday arrested four people - Kamlesh Parekh (41), Rahul Munnalal Satpute (24), Akshay Chavan (21) and Lucky Raj Rajput (21) - for torching the factory, he said.

The financier and another key accused were yet to be nabbed, the official said. The accused were booked under Indian Penal Code Sections 435, 436 (both pertaining to mischief by fire or explosive substance with an intent to cause damage), 452 (house-trespass) and 120-B (criminal conspiracy), he added.

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Thane: With the arrest of a 22-year-old man, Thane district police on Saturday claimed to have solved a murder case within hours. Senior police inspector Kalyan Karpe said that Krishna Gautam (25) was found dead on the premises of a factory where he worked on the morning of March 21.

Gautam worked as a machine operator at this factory, located on Bhiwandi-Vasai highway, Karpe said. There were wounds on the victim's head and the police surmised that he was probably attacked when he was asleep.

The investigators identified a co-worker, Ramukumar Singh, as a prime suspect and arrested him on the same day, the inspector said. A probe revealed that Gautam opposed an illicit relationship between Singh and a woman, and the two often quarrelled over the issue.

On the intervening night of March 20 and 21, Singh allegedly attacked Gautam. Bhoiwada police in Bhiwandi have registered a case of murder and conducting a further probe.

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Counterfeit notes with a face value of Rs 15.76 lakh were seized from three persons in Mumbra area here in the early hours of Saturday, police said.

Assistance Commissioner of Police Ramesh Dhumal said the police had received a tip-off that some persons were going to arrive in Kismat Colony, carrying counterfeit notes with them.

Jainkumar Chunnulal (41), Mohammad Dilshad (26), both from Uttar Pradesh, and local resident Javed Ahmed Ansari (30) were arrested and a bag of counterfeit notes in Rs 2,000 denomination was seized from their possession, he said.

Jainkumar and Dilshad had allegedly procured the notes from Asansol in West Bengal by paying Rs 3.50 lakh, the ACP said. Police were probing if the contraband had any link with the ongoing election campaign, he said.

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The Roman Forum in the center of Rome. Pic Courtesy/Rosalyn D'mello

I did not account for what now seems like the inevitable consequence of so much travel: the blurring of existential categories that define my raison d'etre as I continue my Italian sojourn. What am I first, writer, tourist, traveller or pilgrim? To which of these vocations do I owe my primary allegiance?

Starting out in the northern region of Bolzano, within which I somehow managed to ensconce myself, thanks to my residency at Eau&Gaz, within exactly 30 days I have found myself in the deep south - the autonomous Mediterranean island of Sicily; a lived repository of continuous histories dating two millennia. I accessed the regions of Tuscany, Veneto, Neapolitan and Lazio through my explorations of Firenze, Venezia, Napoli and Roma, before taking a flight to Palermo, from where I am transcribing this dispatch. By the time you will have read this, I will already have returned to Roma where I will spend another night before I make my way to Ortona and Assisi, thereby initiating the more pilgrim end of my travel. I am deeply aware that I now have less than two weeks left in Italy, and I am struggling (really, really struggling) to make sense of everything I have encountered through my witness. How to distil the vast everything-ness of my recent realities into bottled significance; something that is easier to swallow, digest, imbibe, share?

I was grateful to land in Palermo; grateful to have found a cheap flight that got me here from Rome in under an hour, grateful to avoid what would otherwise have been a 14-hour journey. But, mostly, I discovered I was grateful to be in a city that felt like the opposite of Rome; un-pretentious, unabashed about its past, non-ostentatious and aesthetically more austere. Here I felt I could allow my body to recover from the sensual assault of the spectacle that is that city of grand beauty, magnificence, un-mindful excess. No guide I'd perused had prepared me for my sensory dyslexia, particularly on the perceptual front, like the difficulty I would experience in simply focussing my gaze.

As a sightseeing tourist, one is mentally prepared to encounter a monument; a spectacle; a historic site. In Rome, however, you are condemned to stumble upon multiple. You walk into a street and your eyes rest first on a fountain, then naturally zoom out to witness the larger frame, except you spot, next door, an opulent church façade, and across from it another, but perhaps from another century altogether, and for a moment you feel like you're experiencing a glitch in a time-travelling machine. You walk later at night to catch your bus back to your Airbnb and come upon a vast excavation site bearing just a two-paragraph description and you empathise with the historians and archaeologists who seem themselves to be struggling with this excess; this dense populace of relic, debris, pagan vestige and Catholic worship sites.

Each night my feet, exhausted and overwhelmed from walking, cried themselves to sleep as my mind, unable to still my still-restless body, tried to make sense of what I'd seen, thought, remembered, and referenced: the Sistine Chapel, the wonders of Bernini, the cinematic odes by Fellini, Rosselini, Passolini and Sorrentino; and the more obscure works of writers like Malcolm Lowry. I had to re-read one of his protagonist's visit to the Keats and Shelley Memorial Museum next to the Spanish Steps as I sat by the side of The Pantheon, after having been to that museum, and in preparation for the next day's visit to the Non-Catholic cemetery containing both poets' tombs. Had I not had the sense of mind to seek solace in relatively more obscure churches and smaller chapels, both to escape the madding crowd of tourists and to offer my body an indulgent moment of pause, I'm sure I would have been defeated by that city.

It was the only reason why, despite being drained of all energy, I could make one final schlep towards the Coliseum and also convince Mona to meet me there. After a very leisurely stroll at what felt like perfect timing, when the final rays of the sun hit the millennia-old façade, we found a corner to park ourselves for a while. I couldn't help, but show her a clip from Sorrentino's The Great Beauty; of Sister Maria on the balcony of the protagonist's home in front of the Coliseum, gathering the flamingos in the thick of night, then blowing into the air to gesture at them to fly away. I felt as though I'd finally 'got' Sorrentino's film, despite having seen it a while ago. I had to come to Rome to solve its mystery.

I cannot shake off this lingering feeling that something beyond my own free will is designing my itinerary, is customising each imprint my feet make. Whether I am either or interchangeably a writer, tourist, traveller or pilgrim has become inconsequential. All that matters now is that I willingly surrender in order to be remade.

Deliberating on the life and times of Everywoman, Rosalyn D'Mello is a reputable art critic and the author of A Handbook For My Lover. She tweets @RosaParx Send your feedback to mailbag@mid-day.com

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An auto driver has been arrested by the Mumbai police for looting a senior citizen in Chembur last month. According to the police, the arrested accused has been identified as Subedar Bind, 34. An officer said that on March 23, 72-year-old Kalawati Pednekar was looted by Bind and a friend. Pednekar told the police that on that day she had visited Chembur Gymkhana to attend a wedding.

However, owing to her advanced age, she had become tired and left the reception around 9pm. Outside, she found Bind's auto and got in. On the way to Pednekar's residence in Kalina, the driver stopped his auto near Kurla, where his friend, whose name is not known, got into the auto. Bind told Pednekar that the friend wanted to be dropped off at Kalina.

On the way, he stopped the auto and told Pednekar that because he had some work, the friend would drop her home. Bind's friend drove the auto for a few kilometers when he stopped the auto and told her that the fuel was over and hence he could not drive any further. Pednekar paid him and took another auto home. Once she reached home, she found all her valuables missing from her bag.

She approached the Chembur police and lodged an FIR against the auto driver. An officer said, "We scanned CCTV footage and spotted the accused. On April 26, we arrested him from Uttar Pradesh. We are looking for the other accused." During investigation, the police came to know that Bind had arrived in Mumbai one month ago and had been driving the auto of one of his friends.

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